It has been a while...

While the blog has taken a post season rest, I have not. I will wait until it is cold to do that=)
The mtbk racing season wrapped up for me at St. Cloud. The course is flat, fast, and twisty. It is a great course for the end of the season because it requires more skill and less leg snap. After the first lap, Jeff and I rode together for a while until he dropped me in the "obstacle course" section on the 3rd lap. He was riding that section at a brisk walking pace...I was riding it at a slow/normal walking pace=) It was fun either way, and I finished a minute or so behind him.
Since then, it has been family time, hockey playing, camping, running, and riding w/ no agenda. I love the fall because it is beautiful and the temperatures are great, but I also love the fall because of the diversity of activities I have more time for. I am thinking about doing a 1/2 marathon this fall to see how it goes. A full marathon has been on my list of "to do's" for a couple years, but I figured I should start w/ something shorter.
Hmm, what else...oh, I was promoted to engineering manager now at Seagate with a small group of engineers under me focused on developing new manufacturing technologies. What does that mean? My Group gets to play w/ really cool and really expensive equipment to see if we can improve how we build hard drives. The new job is definitely more demanding, but so far has been really challenging in a good way.
The economy? This is a bike blog, so maybe a comment on how it will affect biking: I think the bike industry will definitely have a tough year because much of their income comes from people buying "toys". With people feeling less wealthy - I say "feeling" because a lot of what people are loosing are non-liquid funds anyway - they are probably less likely to get that carbon wheel upgrade for their road bike (i.e. me=). Seriously though, it is amazing and sad what greed can lead to.
A final comment on cyclocross. I would like to do some...not sure when or where, but some. I really need to take a bit of time off (couple days at least) to get the leg ready for racing, but I am having too much fun right now for that!

-b

Wisconsin World Championships

My main goals in Chequamegon, given the super scary mass start and pack/road style racing, are to keep rubber side down and to be in the front group coming out of the Rosies field (for those that haven't done the race it Rosies field is where the race goes from pavement to ski trail).
On the pavement lead out, there was a large LOUD crash right behind me...it actually hit my rear wheel. I was a couple feet from being hauled into it and when it happened, my heart almost stopped. I found out later it was two of my friends and really strong racers, Aric Harlan and Scotty KJ...I hope you guys are alright!
After that, there was a split in the field as the 4 wheeler lead-out dropped the hammer (twisted their wrist a little more=) and I was spun out in the lead group in my biggest gear...that means in the low 30mph range. We hit Rosies and I was in a long line but still in the front group. Then crap hit the fan for me....About a mile later, one of the Grandstay guys had a yard sale that saw him tossing the bike right in front of me. I hit his bike and went OTB landing on my head and neck. I got up, remounted but was still quite disoriented. The next 5 miles were all about collecting myself and making sure the damage wasn't severe. My back and right calf hurt but I definitely didn't need to stop.
The rest of the race was uneventful and I was riding at a tempo pace in the second group not under very much pressure. I was ok with this though because I has lost my impetus to go hard and was sore from the crash. I ended up just inside the top 20 and definitely didn't have the race I could have.
On a more awesome note, Jeff seems to be back in form. I raced him a couple times earlier this year and figured that he was only a couple weeks of training/rest away from being back at the top. It is too bad he couldn't hold Page off.
This morning, my neck is quite stiff, my calf has a new bulge from swelling, but my legs feel fine so I am going out on the roady for a nice fall ride...during Tegan's nap of course=)
St. Cloud next w/e will wrap up the season for me. I thought about pulling the plug, but it is such a fun course that I can't pass it up. Oh, and CX will be thrown in as time and body permit.

CN Coverage

Jay is always good about getting the word out on Midwest racing:
http://www.cyclingnews.com/mtb/?id=2008/aug08/laddiesloppet08

Mapleblog

Lame title I know, but I couldn't think of anything better tonite.

Labor Day weekend up at Maplelag for a stage race and MNSCS#9 has become a tradition in our family. Jen and Tegan get as excited for it as I do!

I took the day off on Friday so we could roll out early, avoid traffic, and have some R&R once we arrived. It worked out great because Jake took me on a lap that afternoon and showed me all the fast lines.

Saturday morning was the time trial w/ the additional carrot of $50 extra to anyone that could break 10 minutes and win. The course was 3 miles of up and down ski trail with several sections of singletrack. It included suicide hill of course. My winning time last year was several seconds over 10 minutes but I figured I could do a little better. I went out too hard and while 10 minutes doesn't sound like much, this race hurt more than any other during the weekend. I finished up with a time of 9:50...point something. TJ came across soon after with a time of 9:50...but a couple tenths of a second longer. I wasn't counting my chickens though because Doug hadn't come in and he was fresh off a win at the state road race. He pulled an even faster time so I had to settle for second in the middle of a rigid 29" Superfly sandwich.

The rigid 29" Superfly vs 26" Trek (I rode my rigid 9.9) continued in the STXC. I was going good and not struggling to hang w/ TJ and Doug when we broke away. I went to the front and started to push it...up the steep side of the bowl my bike stopped. My wife got a perfectly timed pic of it: I zoomed way in on the pic and it looks like my tire is in a rut the width of one tire. How it got there???? The bike was pointed forward...hmm. I am sure I couldn't do it again even if I tried. Anyway, I went airborne sideways, and I quickly remounted w/ about 10 PSI in my front tire (it burped). Soon after the chase group caught us. From then on, I couldn't use the legs that I had because I had to corner like I had never ridden a bike before. Oh well, I finished 4th unable to really sprint.

The XC is on one of the coolest courses in the midwest. It is 1420 feet of climbing per lap, 3 laps, and is all punchy climbing with the longest sustained vertical gain less than 100 feet. Combine that with temps near 90 and you are bound to hurt. Doug went out like a wild man and TJ and I followed. I shouldn't have followed immediately because I popped and started making dumb mistakes. I let SamO go and rode for a while with Eric O. Later in the lap, we caught Doug who did the same thing to himself that he did to me. After that lap, I went to the front and started to pull away from Eric. I came close to pulling back TJ and SamO by the end...45 seconds and 30 seconds respectively. I wish I had it to redo because there were two dumb crashes that were just due to being so cross-eyed. Those cost me some of the time I needed in the end.

After the race a bunch of us headed for a dip in the lake. Man, it felt SO good on the legs. Every race should end that way. Follow that with Steak for dinner and you have some happy mountain bikers.
In the Omnium I ended up second to TJ who won it for a second year. SamO had 3rd, but more importantly for him, he wrapped up the MNSCS title. Of course I wanted to win it, but I couldn't have lost it to a more stand-up hard working guy. Nice work Sam!

Another noteworthy performance was turned in by Jake Richards. The kid is a mad man on the single track and can clearly generate the watts too because he was Top 10 in the Expert Omnium..in his first set of expert races.

Skinnyski.com has a ton of pics and all the results.

I only have 2 races (other than cx) left on my schedule, Cheq and MNSCS#10 in St.Cloud.

Cheers and it was great to hang out w/ everyone who was up at Maplelag=)

#2 and #8

First, the most exciting news. Number 2 is on the way! Jen and I are both really excited....Tegan hasn't a clue. I don't know what it will mean for training or the longevity of my racing, but only time will tell.

Second, a race report. Today was the Border Battle, as WORS race that counted as both MNSCS race number 8 and WORS race number??. The course was flat, which I expected, but had lots of singletrack, which I didn't expect. Anyway, I got to catch up w/ a few Wisco dudes before the race and at the starting line. It is always good to see them.

At the gun, my chain fell off which wasn't cool...still don't know why. Up the first hill I rode in the woods to get back into position. We were going pretty slow through first singletrack so I made a move at the next open section. When we entered the second section of single track, I grabbed for a gear or two and there was nothing...the rear derailleur stopped working. I tried to figure out what was going on but just decided to go with it (turns out I couldn't have done anything anyway, see below).

I was left with a single speed dual suspension and a 34-11 gear ratio. I don't know much about single speeding, but that seems a little tall to me=) Anyway, rather than get frustrated and quit, I had fun with it learning how to race a single speed for the first time. It took me a bit, but I started to get the hang of it by the end. I have no idea how I finished (Tego was in need of a nap, so Jen and I made a quick exit), but it couldn't have been good. I am lucky the course was flat because with that gear ratio, I would have had to run a lot or DNF on one of our typical hilly courses.

The mechanical was unfortunate because I had good legs...in fact they didn't hurt at all afterwards. Oh well, life goes on. I had fun, single speeding was mildly entertaining, and it leaves me feeling good about the coming long race weekend up at Maplelag.

BTW, it turned out that the failure was with the cable housing...it exploded! I didn't know it could do that.

Do the Dew

Not much exciting for me happened last weekend. The only racing for me last week was a TT at Murphy Hanrehenan....10 sweet miles of singletrack at a zoom zoom pace, and I set the course record.

The more exciting happening for our team was a Solo win at 24 Hours of Afton. With our normal team out due to 24x9 being 2 weeks earlier, Dan Dittmer represented Velo Rochester on the hills of Afton.
For those that don't know Dan, he is my co-worker who I recruited for Velo Rochester so Jo Mama wouldn't have to play alone at endurance events. Dan's background is in College level track and Semi-Pro/Pro adventure racing....more recently, he has been climbing mountains (Mt. McKinley this past spring and Kilimanjaro last spring) and doing painfully long mtbk races.

I don't have a race recap, but he got to quit riding 3 hours early because of the large lead he had built up through the night. I do have some cool stats from him for your enjoyment (hey we are Engin-nerds this is what we do).
From Dan:
Here are the stats from the Salsa 24. The laps were only 6.5 miles according to my GPS but there was 1100 feet of climbing per lap. I ran a 8500 calorie deficit despite drinking copious amounts of high fructose corn syrup.

Tally for 21 laps:
136 miles
23000 feet of climbing
pre-race meal - 3 slices of pepperoni pizza
During the race:
12 bottles of Gatorade - 1200 Cal
5 scoops Perpeteum - 650 Cal
5 scoops Heed - 500 Cal
15 cans Mt. Dew - 2550 Cal
3 packages of Shot Bloks - 600 Cal
8 chocolate chip cookies - 400 Cal
_________________________________________
Total consumed during the race = 5900 Calories
Total calories burned during the race = 14300 Calories

15 Cans of Mountain Dew???? Seriously!

Bumpin' Buck

MNSCS #7 was moved from the popular course at Welch Village Ski area to Buck Hill at the last minute due to construction. While Buck is a good venue, it is too bad we missed out on the Metric Drop and the Wall (a ~35% rocky rutted climb up a ski run).

The race organizers still put on a good show out at Buck, and even with 6 laps our times were the shortest I ever remember in a MNSCS race. Don't get me wrong...I am not complaining because I still have a little case of the 24 hour legs=)


Most of the normal hard hitters lined up, but Ben was replaced by the familiar face of Jeff Hall. Heath Wiesbrod, a newly crowned semi-pro, took off like a mad man at the start. Mid way up the first climb Jeff and I caught him and I put in a little effort up the gravel/pavement climb to get into the singletrack first. You see, the course was basically a 5 minute climb and 7 minutes of winding your way back down so getting clean look at the singletrack after the climb was key.Jeff hugged my wheel the entire race, and we slowly pulled away from everyone. We sort of shrugged our shoulders when lapped traffic started to get heavy through the later laps. We chatted on the last lap and agreed that the proper way to finish would be a sprint. The only hiccup came about 3 minutes from the finish when lapped traffic caused us to do some crazy maneuvering in one of the sand pits...Jeff cracked himself right in the seeds. I let up a little to make sure he was ok=) Coming out of the last down hill, I had the lead into the sprint and held him off for the win.

Tegan was working hard too and cheering everyone on "go guys, go guys" (for that matter any time he sees a picture of bike racing he says that=)

Next, I may try to hit up a Murphy Hanrehan TT. I have always wondered how fast of a lap I could do out there. There is NO race this weekend...we are not doing Afton, as that would end my season doing a second 24 hour race in 3 weeks. It is too bad that they were so close because 24 of Afton is one of my favorite events.

After this weekend is the combined WORS/MNSCS. I have a wedding the night before in Duluth, so we will see how that works out. From what I hear, it sounds like some awesome singletrack but no hills.

Last Buck of the Year..Almost

Last night was almost the last Buck Hill race of the year...this weekend's MNSCS #7 will be the last Buck race of the year. By my calculations, this weekends race will be laps 46-53 for me out there this year. I think that will be enough for a while=)

The race went fine. I won it over SamO, but we both agreed that the legs had very little snap. I always forget how long it takes to recover from 6 one hour time trials over one day! As an added bonus last night my long time friend and the guy who took me on my very FIRST mountain bike ride, Paul Oldenburg came out for the event, as he recently moved back here from Denver. It is great to have you back in Minnesota Paul!

I don't want to comment too much on the start (people messing with eachothers equipment, trash talking in an unfriendly way, pushing eachother over, and eventually almost a fist fight amoung some racers) other than to say it was a small irritation for me, but a true embarassment for our sport and the Minnesota mountain bike scene. I didn't like any part of the situation and to be honest it is still bugging me today.

Onward and upward.

A very Velo 24x9

This past Saturday-Sunday our Velo Rochester team including My brother, SamO, Chris, and I were in Wisco for the 24 hour National Mtbk Championships. We took second last year and were gunning for the victory this year. In our way were teams from North Carolina, Indiana, Michigan, among others. There were a total 1000 racers there competing in everything from the 6 hour duo competition to the 24 hour solo category. The course was 14 miles long with ~600 feet of climbing per lap. The terrain was a 1/2 and 1/2 mix of double track and rocky, rooty, twisty sweet singletrack.
SamO lead us out on the LeMans start and was quickly in a good position. Unfortunately, he didn't know that a guy from the Cannondale team (from NC) was up the trail. He didn't totally kill it and was about a minute back after the shortened first lap(they cut out the first section of singletrack to avoid trail clogging). I was worried, but hopped on and started pedaling. My legs didn't seem like they had any zip, but in the second single track section, I had already pulled in the lead rider.
I continued to roll in the lovely singletrack section that was most of the second half of the lap. I guess I was going fast enough because with the help a flat tire, I had put 19 minutes into the previous leaders. Chris was next and ended up breaking his seat off and riding 2/3 of a lap w/ only rails left attached to this bike...we lost about 9 minutes there. Ben brought us back w/ a hot one. We continued this trend through the day and first set of night laps.
At that point we went to our tried and true rotation schedule that had Sam, Me, Sam, Me, Chris, Ben, Chris, Ben. This got us through the night and allowed us to each to have a 5 hour break for some rest. I actually had a lot of fun and fairly fast night laps. My light setup of a Princeton Tec (thanks to them for hooking us up) Duo helmet light and a Tri Newt handlebar mount made is seem like daytime on the open sections. The really twisty singletrack was a little slower at night leading to 3-4 minute longer lap times. Everyone else was solid as well and Ben put in the fastest overall night lap that I could see in the results
An aside on why we do the different rotation: The 5 hour break is key when you are essentially doing 6 separate 1 hour time trials in 24 hours. It is a much sharper kind of pain and suffering than the solo riders experience. For us and our XC backgrounds, it suits us better.
Anyway, after those night laps in which we luckily had no issues, we each had one more lap. My legs felt like tar, but once I found the singletrack groove, I was able to roll a decent last lap time. Ben was our anchor man and the team trailing us didn't get to go out on their 24th lap because they came in after 24 hours...We had it WRAPPED! Ben knew this and was nice enough to help out woman's team rider who had a flat. While it is illegal to actually change her flat, he calmed her down when the tubeless system failed and talked her through a tube replacement.
Going into these races, I have 2 goals...the first and most important is to win the team competition. The second is to do the fastest lap and have the fastest average lap time. In this case I accomplished both with my first lap being just a hair over 56 minutes..and that was a full lap, not the shortened first lap=)
Some team stats: 14k feet climbed, 340 miles ridden, 4 sets of wrecked bodies
Very comprehensive results can be found here: http://www.grannygear.com/realtime/public/nm_index.php

At this point, I want to thank all the help: Matt at Rochester Cycling and Fitness for keeping us fed, hydrated (I probably had 15 bottle of Gu2O during the race), and riding sweet equipment, Maury and Trek for the sweet Top Fuel rocket bike, and most importantly, our pit crew of My DAD and JEN MEYER. Without them catering to our every need through the ENTIRE night, we couldn't have won....they deserved a jersey too. Oh, and Tegan did help out some with some bike repairs...thanks little man!

Stars and Bars!

National Champs! Race summary to follow....