Huck-A-Buck 2012

Another Huck-A-Buck at Lake Crabtree is in the books and for once it was not 100 degrees.  The race is put on by Happy Fun Racing and they do one hell of a job.  This race always draws a pretty big number of riders and the Single Speed Category isn't lacking either along with the competition in it.  The trail got some rain last night which helped tighten it up since it has been dusty and slick, but the trade off was slick roots and bridges along with 80 degree temp with about 85% humidity.  We had three 7 mile laps to sort it out on the trail.

Rockin' the 29nsngl kit
Photo by On the Mark Sports

They let the Single Speed Category loose on the course at 12:20 and it was on from the start when the siren went off.  The start line was maybe 40 yards from the entrance to the trail, so I had to mash on the pedals hard to hopefully get the hole shot or at least be close to the front.  I hit the trail running 3rd, but there was a nice line behind me that was pressing hard.  It seemed 1st and 2nd were trying to keep the pace down and with really no passing areas on the trails were going to be tricky.  So, I thought I would be nice and ask to pass, so that is what I did.  I can't blame the guy when I asked I got the response of, "what?" So, I asked again and he said sure at the next time that it was possible.  I went around in the first 2 miles and sat on 1st places rear wheel until about 5.5 miles when it widened out and was smooth, so I took a drink from the bottle and let 3rd go around me.  We crossed the start/finish line nose to tail and stayed like that until about 10 miles when 2nd made his move and he was gone.  We tried to stay with his pace, but backed off since 4th on back looked to be maybe a minute behind us.  I spent the rest of the race seeing 2nd through the woods and looking back and seeing 4th and 5th not that far behind me also.  There was no letting up for the entire 3rd lap for it looked like 4th was trying to close the gap and he was.  I crossed the line in 3rd at 1:32:19 for 21 miles (3 laps). 

I only ended up drinking one bottle of fluid and two Gu packets the entire race.  After uploading my Garmin 500 to Strava it really showed what kind of suffering was going on during the race for me by my heartrate.

http://app.strava.com/rides/14193435

For placing 3rd I got this nice poster of vintage Tour de France image of the racers drinking that I plan to frame and hang in my office at work.  Along with it was one of these handy dandy recycled bike parts bottle opener key chain that will get plenty of use.

2012 6 Hours of Warrior Creek

 

This was my first time racing the 6 hours of Warrior Creek and my first time riding the trails at Warrior Creek in Wilkesboro.  The week before the race did not go as planned because of being out of town for work all week and working some crazy hours.  Drive 5 hours back home on Friday then the 2 hour drive to Wilkesboro followed by some camping the night before.  I knew when I woke up on Saturday morning it was going to be a rough race because of how the body was feeling.  Since I wasn’t feeling fast I at least looked fast in the new METAL Kit.  I sucked it up and lined up about mid-pack since I knew the road section at the beginning I would be eaten up by some people with gears.  With the mass start and about one and half miles to sort it out and hopefully make up some ground before hitting the single track.  I fell in with a group of about 5-7 riders and made my passes when possible since some people geared down and spun up the hills unlike I was doing on the single speed and mashing up every hill.  Never riding here and not riding a lot of berms it made for a fun first lap with some learning at the same time.  With each lap around 12.5 miles and the first being slightly longer I was hoping I could make up more ground in the single speed division.  IT was difficult to know exactly where you may be in your division which made me want to not back off the pace on the first lap.  First lap down and as I roll into the pits I let my buddy know that is there as support that I am over geared and should have put an easier gear to spin.  There was a lot more climbing involved then I had suspected.  It ran through my head a few times to take the time in the pits and switch it out, but of course I decided not to do that.  This is where I will start to pay for that decision toward the end of lap three and through lap four.  A little over halfway through lap three the cramps started setting in slowly and I tried to fight them off, but turning the harder gear was taking its toll on the legs.  Lap four was a tough one, but I sucked it up and pushed on until I got to the top of one of the longer climbs and had to stop because the legs were cramping pretty bad.  I ended up rolling across the finished line in 18^th out of 37 in the single speed division.  Not what I had planned, but this was the hand I was dealt.

Bushwhack Mountain Bike Challenge

photo by biketriad.com

This was the inaugural Bushwhack Mountain Bike Challenge and it was limited to 100 riders, and I was one of the lucky ones that got a spot.  It wasn't that hard to get one as long as you signed up early and didn't wait until the last minute and then hope someone would back out so you could have their spot. This crazy cold front that came through had the temperature at 28F and a wind chill of 20F at the start which is not normal for Raleigh, NC. This race was every man or woman for themselves, no categories, just straight up racing.  They had us start with 1 mile on the road before hitting the singletrack to get us spread out sort of. It was great accept for everyone with gears went flying down the road which made it harder on the single speed to get a good spot going into woods. I spent the next 7 miles slowly moving around people before we hit the fireroads for the next 19 miles. It was fairly flat for the next 2.5 or so miles which made it easy for some the geared guys to come back by until we hit the uphill sections and I would make up time on some. Spinning out going downhill didn’t help when I would be within quarter mile or so of some others and they would just pull away. I think I only ended up passing 3 or 4 on the fireroads. Finally I hit the singletrack again and that is where I made up some spots passing 7 guys. I ended up covering the 35 miles in 2:37:49 and finishing 33rd out of 90 riders. The race didn’t go as well as I had hoped, but better than not showing up and not finishing.

Photo by Reward
Yes, I ran the rooty climb.  People were stopped at the top.

Lesson learned - Even though it is cold as hell outside you don't have to put on every cycling related piece of gear you own.  Well, the one extra piece was not actual cycling gear, but none other than running tights.  Huge mistake, not because they were running tights, but because when you slide your leg warmers over top of the tights the leg warmers like to slowly work themselves down over the miles.  This didn't happen with both legs at the same time, they somehow took turns sliding down.  At least 3 times in Umstead I slowed down to a crawl to pull them back up.  Only happened once in Crabtree, but it was flopping around by knee, so I had to come to a complete stop for this, it sucked.  So, next time I will have to not be a big wuss and HTFU and go with just the leg warmers or just hope it is warmer.

This race will be on my list every year they run it.  It makes you hurt in a good way.

The Feed Zone Review

The Feed Zone

I purchased The Feed Zone Cookbook a little less than a month ago and have been making a few meals and portables from it.  So far, I am highly impressed with everything that I have prepared.  Today, I made the Brown Rice Muffins and my main reason for this is the nutritional value it has for long endurance rides on the mountain bike.  It has 248 calories, 3 grams of fat, 49 grams of carbs and 25 grams of protein that will not leave you short of energy.  They are extremely easy to make as you can see from picture below.  Only things I used was a rice cooker (highly recommended), blender and muffin tin.  They are easy for me to eat at 5am during the week as I head out the door to hit the trails for a good 15-20 miles before work a couple times during the week.  I also will have an extra with me to eat right after the morning ride to help with recovery.  Also on weekend rides lasting more than 2 1/2 to 3 hours they can be put in a sandwich bag and stuffed in the jersey pocket or I can swing back by the car and grab it.

Brown Rice Muffins

   





To date I have made the following recipes:
Egg and Chorizo Sandwich
Sweet Potato Pancakes
Allen's Rice Cakes x 2
Chocolate Peanut Coconut Rice Cakes
Rice and Banana Muffins
Brown Rice Muffins
Angel Hair with Bacon and Sweet Corn
Pizza with Tomato and Basil
Chicken Tikka Masala
Spiced Black Beans
Spicy Cabbage Slaw

One of my favorite recipes to make is the Spicy Cabbage Slaw.  This has some great flavors and so far I have had it on Fish Tacos, Shrimp Tacos and just by itself.  There are other foods that it would be great on also from BBQ, Turkey or Veggie Burgers also.

Shrimp Tacos w/ Spicy Slaw and Homemade Guacamole

I have also been using PROBAR on my endurance rides for energy for sometime now because they are another great source of natural energy, and they are made of natural whole foods.  I have used gels and other products like them and after awhile they make my stomach hurt if I use a lot of them.  I have cut back on the number of gels that I use on a ride or if I use any at all.

I highly recommend picking up The Feed Zone Cookbook and PROBAR.  Both have changed the types of foods that I use for endurance rides.  I believe they make a good combination for getting energy from natural food sources that your body can easily digest.

Lake Hope Trails in Ohio

My brother-in-law and I hit the trails at Lake Hope State Park in Ohio on Black Friday.  This area had seen rain for nearly three days and maybe a day to dry by the time we started our ride.  I should have changed my rear tire before heading up to West Virginia for Thanksgiving.  I was running a Race King 2.2 on the rear which was not a smart move for how wet these trails were down in the hollows.  Brian on the other hand was running Nevegals on his bike since he rides in this nasty stuff all the time here in WV.  He was not having the same issues I was having on the trails.  The Race King was fine once we would climb out of the hollows, but running the trails down there and the first hundred or so yards climbing out you would have thought I had a road tire on the bike.  I had to hop or fall off a couple times from loosing traction.  The trails were fast and flowy even though they were slick on the lower trails.
Moving on to one of the best trail systems in Ohio that you could spend an entire day there lacing together a lot of mileage without running the same trails the same direction twice.  We ended up doing 16 miles and our route consisted of the following:  Parked at Hope Furnace parking lot on SR 278> Hope Furnace Trail > Habron Trail > Copperhead Trail > Wildcat Trail >Copperhead Trail > Bobcat Trail > Habron Trail > Hope Furnace Trail and back to the parking lot.

Afterwards, we headed into Athens to check out Cycle Path Bicycles.  Great little bicycle shop and their website is very informative.  That is where we did a little homework before hitting the trails that day.  Great maps that have a hover feature that gives a good description of the trail.  Then we went over to Rio Grande Mexican Restaurant that was just a couple buildings down to grab some post-ride food which was much needed.  I am looking forward to checking these trails out again when they are dry.  Next time working in some of the double track to add some mileage and hit the other trails that we did not touch on this go-round.

Angry Monkey 6 hour

Got up this morning at 5am and picked Ryan up at his house.  We were rolling to Gibsonville for the 2nd Annual Angry Monkey MTB Race 6 hour.  This year the course ran the opposite direction of last year.  First stop, McDonald's for a Bacon, Egg and Cheese McGriddle and some coffee.  We get to Northeast Park around 7:30am and get the pit area set-up, so Ryan would have a place to hang the next 6 hours while I am out on course. I ate four Honey Stinger Waffles before the start and it might be my new strategy.
The course was a six mile loop and we had about 3/10 of a mile of pavement before we hit the woods.  They started us in the Single Speed Category in the last wave.  I go into the woods in 5th and right off the start we are hitting traffic and get split from the the front four.  I am driving the train of the second group and the bike bell was ringing and I am calling out which side I (we) are passing.  First couple of laps was uneventful and I was setting a good pace to where no one wanted to pass me.  Finally on lap three I run up on 4th place and go by without a problem.  No stopping at the pit area for the first three laps, but now every time I would roll into the pit area Ryan would have the bottles and a waffle waiting, so I wouldn't have to stop but creep through.  Lap 6, I see third place ahead of me halfway through the lap and he has blown up.  I am a man with a mission now and the legs were feeling great.  I pass second place in the pits between Lap 9 and 10.  Lap 10 is when the legs are starting to cramp and that was not a good sign since I had no clue how close third was.  Going up the first of two steep but short hills my right quad locks up and I do the stiff leg shuffle to the top and try and massage it out.  It did not want to bend and I knew I had to be in by 5:40 to be able to get my last lap in.  Finally got to rolling after about thirty seconds and I made it with nine minutes to spare.  While standing in the pits getting my last bottle,waffle and massaging the thigh again, third place rolls by me and has about twenty seconds on me.  I finally catch and pass him with a little less than 2 miles to the finish and try to pull away, but burned my legs out catching him.  Once by he is hanging on and not letting me get away.  When we hit those final two hills that just sends my legs into crampville and have to walk the last hill.  He pulls away at the top of the second hill and I end up rolling across the line in 3rd and a minute and ten seconds off 2nd.  This was a great race that came down to the last lap to sort out second and third.  By the end I had consumed twelve bottles of Nuun Lemon Tea, eleven Honey Stinger gels and ten Honey Stinger Waffles.

Endurance Rides - HTFU

This past Sunday went out and knocked out 40 miles on the single speed with a group.  A few of them ended up doing 70ish miles.  A buddy of mine, James organizes these rides normally on Sunday morning starting at 7am.  It is a way for a group to get together and lay down some serious miles between singletrack and doubletrack in the Triangle.  We hit the majority of the trails in the area known as ORC (Old Reedy Creek) which is on the back side of Umstead Park.  A lot of the climbing miles (nothing like western NC) come in Umstead since that is the best we can do for climbing in the Triangle. Anyone who wants to come out and feel the pain for however many miles they want.  Then they can break off after however long and take it to the house.  Lately we haven't had much rain which makes for dry trails and by the end of a ride you will be covered in dirt and dust.  You can check out the sock line from the nice mixture of sweat and dirt.  If you want to come check one out then look on the trianglemtb website forums under race, rides and events.  And, if you were wondering HTFU has a couple meanings:  the clean version: Harden The Freak Up!!! or since it is summertime and hotter than hell:  Humid, Tropical, Flowy, Umstead.  James came up with these catchy phrases, so I can't take credit for them.

Huck-A-Buck 2011

The Huck-A-Buck 2011 had another great turn out this year. There was about 20 of us in the Single Speed Category. Today was going to be a brutal 3 laps of 6.75 miles of singletrack and not because of the trails, but 94 degrees and feeling like 101 at the noon time start. We have not had much rain and this trail is mostly sand the closer you get to the lake. I started prepping for this race on Friday by drinking lots of fluids the next two days. I weighed myself Friday morning and was at 178 lbs. The morning of the race I weighed myself again and was 181 lbs. I hit the woods in 6^th or 7^th place and let 2 guys go by halfway through the 1^st lap hoping that they would blow up because of the heat. With a mile to go in the first lap I was cruising through a turn about 15 mph when my tires came out from under me and I ended up 2-3 feet off the trail and ripped open a scab from the previous wreck at the race a month earlier. Had three more guys pass at this point since my arm was hurting and trying to make sure everything else between me and the bike was in working order. Lap 2, coming through the start/finish I hear from the organizers over the loud speakers how sweet the Metal Kit looks and had to be the best looking one on the course. I caught one of the other single speeders and the rest of the lap was uneventful except passing a couple guys with gears. Lap 3, I turned up the pace to see if I could hopefully catch at least one or two more guys who may have gone out to fast. Well, I ended up catching and passing three more guys, but they had gears so that did not help me. I ended up rolling across the finish line in 11^th. After the race a few people asked about the Metal Kit and proudly told them about Twin Six. When I got home I weighed myself and had dropped to 174 lbs, yeah that was a lot of sweating in less than two hours. I may not have finished as high up as I would of liked, but I looked damn good in the Metal Kit doing it.

Minnesota Trippin'

We started our journey to Minnesota on July 1st about mid-morning.  We packed the truck as if we were taking the house with us.  Our first stop over the next two days would be with my some of my in-laws in West Virginia, and to pick up our nephew.  It was just like all of our previous trips up to West Virginia, nothing exciting just six hours of highway driving.  We got to the in-laws some time after 4pm and got out what we needed for the night.  We hit up a Mexican restaurant that night for dinner and I called it a night around 10pm since we would be up the next day at 5am and I was the designated driver. 
The next morning came and we loaded the bicycles on the back of the truck.  Loaded up the kids in the backseat with enough electronic devices from DVD players to Nintendo DS's to keep them entertained for the next nine hours to Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  Our secret weapon that my wife packed was lollipops for when the natives started getting restless.  Of course that would happen when you have a three year-old strapped into a car seat for that amount of time.  After the nine hour drive we pull into Hawthorne Suites, and unpack the necessities for the night.  I get the boys and we unload the bikes and take them for a two mile ride down the Cedar River Trail to work the legs out after sitting for that long. 



Rockin' the Twin Six

 After waking up we grabbed some breakfast at the hotel before heading out for the last four hours to Minnesota.  We pulled into the farm right after noon.  The farm is where my wife's grandma lives in farmhouse that is around one hundred years old and nearly four tenths of a mile off the road.  It is surrounded by a few ponds and corn fields as far as you can see.  After unpacking the truck and grabbing some lunch I headed out for my first gravel ride.  Never done a gravel ride and on the drive in we passed kept passing gravel road after gravel road and I had to put some miles in to see what it was like.  I did a thirty mile ride and was eating up every mile of it.  I was on the Niner One9 and was running a 32x18 gearing which I needed my Fisticuff with the 2x10 to really crank some miles, that will be with me on the next trip out there.

For the Fourth of July we took the kids to the town of Okabena for a parade.  They collected more candy than what they have gotten combined for the last two Halloweens.  The following day we took a two hour trip north up to Minneapolis.  First stop, Twin Six.  Great visiting the company that I am racing for this year and hopefully down the road also.  I was a kid in a candy store with all the T6 gear around me.  The crew there was awesome in giving us the tour and seeing a few things that are coming down the pipe.  We checked into our hotel right across from the next stop at Mall of America.  We ended up spending 6+ hours in there from lunch until dinner.  We covered all three floors and went to the aquarium before grabbing dinner at Tony Roma's.  One of the only places the kids and I wanted to go was the Lego store.  Which we waited until almost last to visit, so that I would not be carrying around the bag of legos the entire time.  They had above the store these gigantic lego scenes that were larger than life.  One was a thirty-four foot robot, another was a helipcopter with lego SWAT members repelling down, a knight fighting this creature with a bull-head.  To believe that all of this was made completely of legos.  Along with this were pictures outisde the store made completely out of legos.  The next day we took the kids to the Minnesota Zoo.  It was fairly warm out that day, but since Minnesota gets so cold right much of the exhibits were inside which gave some relieve from the heat. Afterwards we drove back to the farm to make it in time for dinner. 

I was needing to hit some singletrack and had found this place up in Mankato called Mt. Kato Ski Resort that has mountain bike trails from May to October.  It cost $8/day to ride there.  Being my first experience at singletrack in Minnesota it was good riding.  Any day on the bike is better than none.  I found one of the people in the office there and he gave me the lay of the land on how the trails were laid out and a map.  First trail that you go up is Kato Climb and that is what you do to get to the top where all the ski lifts drop you off in the winter.  My first loop out went like this Kato Climb>Frog Pond Loop>Outlook Traverse>Back Loop>Get Tight>Cedar Climb>Killer Toad Climb>Dead Horse>The Maze>Staircase>Compressor>Cabin Run.  The only trails that really had me on my toes and using a lot of braking on the down hills were Dead Horse and Compressor.  The switchbacks on Compressor had you almost doing track stands to make the turns.  Cedar Climb and Staircase had the tougher of the climbs.  My second loop went like this Kato Climb>Frog Pond Loop>Outlook Traverse>Back Loop>Get Tight>Cedar Climb>Killer Toad Climb>Low Line>The Maze>Staircase>Ridge Run>Back Home>Cabin Run.  After getting out of the new Twin Six Masher jersey and socks I picked up the other day at Twin Six.  I went and got two chicken tacos and chicken burrito from Taco John's. 

Friday we got up at 4am to start our nice 14 hour drive back to West Virginia and that was one hell of a caffeine induced drive.  Had some Little Caesar's Pizza when we got to my brother-in-law's house hit the sack at 10pm and didn't wake until 9am.  That was some good hard sleeping and much needed with another 6 hours of driving to get to the casa.  It was nice vacation with lots of driving, but that is the best way to see this great country that we live in and to see how other parts of the U.S of A is living.