Falling Back

Lately it's been harder and harder to get out on the bike. For example, this week (so far) I have done 0 rides. Hopefully that will change tomorrow as I have a nice window in which to recreate in the morning. To compensate, I've been avoiding the elevator and taking the six flights of stairs between the lowest parking level and my office on the fourth floor. In fact, some days I take the stairs down to the garage and back up to my floor each time I leave the office to use the restroom. It's not much, but better than nothing.

As far as "real" exercise is concerned, I did manage to get out on a hike Monday evening. Together with a client who was in town from Doha, Qatar, I went up the Shoreline trail on the west side of City Creek. We didn't have time to go all the way to the radio towers, and besides, the view from the overlook is better anyway (in my opinion at least, though you can't really tell from this blurry picture courtesy of my phone):



I was surprised how steep the switchback climb turned out to be. I knew it was a lung buster on two wheels, but for some reason expected it to be easier on foot. Not so, and it was cool to see the lines I normally ride from a different perspective.
We started just before 6 PM so by the time we reached the top it was already quite dark. It didn't take long on the descent to switch on our headlamps and we enjoyed the hike down in the dark. Maybe I'm just a wimp, but hiking (or biking for that matter) at night isn't something I would do alone. However, with company it's super fun and I always come away asking myself why I don't do it more often. Given that the time changes this Sunday, which means it will get dark around 5:30 PM, I'm thinking that recreating in the dark will become more and more common.

Custom Built Road Wheelset For Sale

I've decided to sell my backup wheelset. It's been a difficult decision because the wheels are a sweet custom build courtesy of Lyle at Spin Lite Cycling. However, now that I've converted my Ksyriums to a tubeless setup I don't see myself using them very often. Plus, I need some $ to buy a pair of bindings for my new powder skis!

Here are the details:

Rims: Velocity Fusion (black)
Hubs: White Industries LTA (silver)
Spokes: Sapim CX Ray (silver, 24 front/28 rear, laced 2x front, 3x rear drive side and 2x rear non-drive side)
Skewers: Zipp titanium (black)
Weight (front, no skewer but with Velox rim strip): 720 grams
Weight (rear, no skewer but with Velox rim strip): 860 grams

Asking price: $350 Cash or PayPal.

Let me know if you want to check them out.

Flying Dog & Glenwild

Kris and I got out for a sweet 2 hours of riding in Park City this afternoon. If all fall days could be like this I'd be a happy, happy guy. With temperatures in the 60's, a bright blue sky, the earthy smell of fallen leaves and plenty of colorful leaves on the hillsides made for a near perfect day. Finish it off with a burger, fries and Coke from Five Guys and it doesn't get much better.

Flying Dog:




Glenwild:

Fall on the BST

Season of Change

Today I received the following text:

FRM: SheriffCynAlrt@slco.org
MSG: Test of Sheriff Canyon Alert System for 2009-2010 winter season

For more info or unsubscribe go to www.slsheriff.org

Yeah! Bring it.

Bobsled

I hiked up the Bobsled with Mark A. this afternoon to re-visit the scene of his accident. It was a bit unnerving walking uphill on a popular high speed, downhill-only trail. I kept expecting a rider to come flying around a corner but luckily we didn't run into (pun intended) anybody.

He went down just above where this car sits off to the side of the trail, on an off camber section of loose surface on top of a hardpacked base. To the side sits a big, rather innocent looking rock that we assumed inflicted the damage to his arm.

Emergency Extraction

No, I'm not talking about dentistry. I'm referring to a call from a friend that is hurt and needs help. This afternoon I received such a call. I won't go into any details (my buddy who called has a blog too and owns the rights to the first real post on the subject as well as the graphic image of the wound) other than to say he's ok. It's nice to have a hospital (LDS) just minutes from the office and trail, not that I plan to return anytime soon. This was my second time taking a friend to the ER after a cycling accident and it does make you think about the inherent danger in what we do on bikes. I'm just glad I'll soon be able to ride with him again. Be safe out there.

I love CarboRocket

Seriously. It's all I drink on the bike when water just isn't enough. Well, I also like Coke but usually I only drink that when I stop at a convenience store post ride. Anyway, so today I discovered another use for the stuff that I want to share.

Last night both myself and my 7 year old daughter got hit by a stomach bug. Hard. She fared worse than me, and had thrown up 11 times by noon today. As you can imagine she was starting to get dehydrated yet couldn't keep anything down. She kept asking for water but I didn't want her to keep throwing it right back up. It was at that point, in a true moment of desperation, that I had the idea to mix a glass of CarboRocket (raspberry lemonade if you were curious what flavor) for her to drink.

Brad claims it's easy on the stomach and I'm here to tell you that he's not lying. I started with a spoonfull every 5 minutes, then 2, 3, 4 spoonfulls until I just let her sip it from the cup. At that point I was getting pretty stressed and worn out as my wife had come down with the same bug and wasn't able to help our 4 month old baby. I was completely drained and turned to two things for help: CarboRocket and my in-laws. Let's just say that both were absolute super stars and my family and I are feeling much better now.

I can honestly say that CarboRocket got us through a very difficult day. I love that stuff.

Will Bart repeat in the Clarks TT?

Last night I received an email from Bart Gillespie, local hero and working man's pro mountain bike and cyclocross racer. He had ridden his cross bike to Sandy and decided to give the Clarks TT a go while in the area. In his words:

I started very conservative and just upped the pace as I went, it made it so it did not hurt all that bad becasue I never got close to blowing up.

The result? 8:24! To put that time in perspective consider it's 58 seconds faster than the 2nd best time and 34 seconds faster than Bart's previous best time from 2008.

Can Bart be beaten? From his email it sounds like with slightly higher tire pressure, lighter wheels and less traffic on the trail there's a good chance he could go sub 8 minutes!

I'd really like to see Alex, Ali, Eric, Art, Reed and the other elite cyclocross guys give it a shot on their cross bikes. If somebody is going to beat Bart it will probably be from that group.

Again, in Bart's words, the "dirt is in great shape and the cool temps make it nice" so if you haven't done the tt in a while (or at all for that matter) now is the perfect time. Get out and ride!

Wow! What a difference 10 days make.

When I last rode my bike on September 23rd it was in the afternoon, with SkiBikeJunkie, in very warm weather (the temperature was in the mid 80's). Today I did a similar ride, with SkiBikeJunkie, only the route was reversed (City Creek to Dry Creek) and the temperature was about 40 degrees cooler. What a difference 10 days makes!

However, given that fall in Utah is composed of extremes, and that the average temperature you see reported for October is just that - an average and not something that is normally experienced in real life - the fact that today's ride was abnormally cold wasn't surprising since the previous ride was abnormally hot. In fact, the average of 45 and 85 is 65, not coincidentally the average temperature for Salt Lake City in October.

Also, the fact that the mountains have received so much snow in the past week that some people have already completed their first backcountry tour of the 2009/2010 ski season means that my fall riding in the high country effectively ended before it could even begin. Which means that the fall season, at least as far as mountain biking above 8,000 feet is concerned, lasted just over 1 week this year.

And if you think that because of this abnormally cold weather the ski resorts will open early you'd be wrong, because again, fall in Utah is one of extremes. To balance out this string of extremely cold weather we'll probably be back in the 80's next week.