2018 in pictures

Here's my 2018 race season illustrated. Turns out my race season starts around November of the year before because I typically have a March or April race I like to participate in. By "participate" I mean "win" of course but it hasn't happened yet.

December 2017: Broke Top Fuel. Large loose rock came up and bit the bike as I was rolling along the Bonneville Shoreline Trail. Limped back to the truck and went to Trek of Salt Lake City the next day because they're open on Sunday.

Trek is an excellent company in case you haven't heard me say that before. I'm a fan. They lent me a fat bike while my bike was down. Gretzky appreciated the fat bike rides.

Gretzky and I even got to play with Alex making a video in the snow with the Trek Farley!

During the month I had a fat bike available we got some snow. I rode in the snow cause that's what one does with a fat bike. I actually enjoyed most of the fat bike rides and found it to be a good workout tool.

In mid February a few of us joined up for a True Grit training camp which was an excellent experience. After the first day I wanted to ride more than "session" so I went for a quick lap, had a bit too much energy to release, went a bit too fast on a skinny fast rocky singletrack, found a large rock on the left side of the trail with my front wheel, and went over the handlebars into large jagged rocks. Wrist disapproved. Now I'm broken a few weeks before my first race.

I decided to race True Grit anyways because my wrist felt OK but mainly I'm stupid and stubborn. I like the True Grit course; it has a variety of trail elements for everyone and is a good early season beating. Note I bought the above picture but it hasn't arrived yet and I'm impatient.

I then raced a few road events because I try to take advantage of racing on the Utah Motorsports Campus every chance I get and because I also have a long history with the East Canyon Road Race. No pictures here.

My first "A" race was in Gunnison, CO: The Original Growler. That was rockier and rougher than expected. Nowhere near as rocky as the Grand Junction Off-Road which keeps the title of the roughest race I've ever done, but pretty rocky and tough. More desert racing than I thought given we'd been to Crested Butte in the past and found Crested Butte to be drool-worthy alpine trails.

Since I'm a geek and can work remotely we stayed the week at a nice little spot in Gunnison and toured around the area.

And then came the big one. The BC Bike Race. A 7-day stage race that I won't shut up about. It was phenomenal, spectacular, amazing, awesome, inspiring, gorgeous, and the list goes on. So much to talk about, so much to try to convey. Let me esplain... No, there is too much...Let me sum up. Maybe over a nice glass of wine some day. Anyone capable of this feat should participate in it. Anyone incapable at this time should work toward becoming capable then participate.

So far this is the most beautiful place I've visited on the planet. I've said this before about the Sea to Sky highway between Vancouver and Whistler, and now I got to race my bike in the out-of-this-world looking scenery to the west of that highway. No picture I took or have seen does this place justice. Go experience it already.

Vanessa and Gretzky got to ride a bit of the trails in Cumberland and found a video that gives a taste of the fun.

A few weeks after, back in Utah, I jumped in to the Snowbird Intermountain Cup race. Yeah I know I should pay for this picture; life isn't fair. Anyways I somehow ended up on the 3rd step of the podium that day which was an unexpected treat. A solid day.

El Doce at Pow Mow was next. This was a week before my last "A" race of the year so I chose to race as a team, and ended up putting the majority of the 24 hours of Moab team back together. It was so nice just to have fun instead of race seriously. Well, we tried to anyways. We are competitive people after all so we found ways to compete against each other and somehow ended up taking 2nd place in the team competition.

Last "A" race of the season: the Inaugural Big Sky Biggie. Our first time visiting Big Sky, MT thanks to Josh T's invitation. The trails there are so much fun! Alpine trail mix of new, flowy, fast, rolly, sexy stuff sandwiched in old school and even maybe goat trails that don't see much use, with the occasional double track service road in the middle of deep forests. It's worth the trip.

Finishing the race I see a paved section leading back to town as I drop out of the singletrack. I may actually beat the 5 hour clock depending on how long this road is so I destroy myself up the road climb. And I notice a guy on a bike, maybe motorized, pacing next to me as I'm drooling and dying. He took a pretty nice picture.

I managed to finish in 4 hours and 55 minutes, earning me a 1st place finish in my age group and an 8th place overall. Yeeeeeees!

One of my favorite races is the 8 hours of Sundance, previously a 12 hour event. The course is extremely scenic and has plenty of features to keep one entertained for the day. I managed to go around the place 9 times while overcoming four nearly simultaneous cramps and some mental funkiness to earn myself another W this year, and this time I placed first overall and in my age group.

Lastly, the day after racing my ass off (not kidding, it was raw) for 8 hours I decide to race, well, "participate in" the Tour Des Suds in Park City. It's an event that's become somewhat of a tradition with Rick L. and Elton R. It's a good time, a beautiful set of trails, a silly event, it's well organized, and it ends with this view, so why not finish the season here?

The End.

2017: Chasing the elusive W

Top: Lake Havasu in February, Bottom: Park City in August.

My 2017 racing season started in Lake Havasu for the Havasu Havoc in February which turned out to be a nice early season option. It was our first time visiting Havasu and we enjoyed it even though it's yet-another desert. The town has decent food and RV options, the mountain biking is decent, and the Havoc organizers did a good job with the course and event.

Part of the reason for racing my mountain bike in February was to prepare for Moab Rocks, the 3-day stage race I decided to participate in. This would be my first mountain bike stage race and my first time racing in Moab. We've been fortunate enough to spend a significant amount of time in the last 20 years or so, but this was my first race there.

Moab Rocks started the first day with a climb out of town to the top of Porcupine which worked out well for me, then I realized I brought a knife to a gun fight in the form of a 100 mm-travel bike. I thoroughly love my Trek Top Fuel and we do really well together, but the guys with 130+mm bikes zoomed by us on Porcupine making us feel like we had our names on our helmets. Not pretty. Regardless, we spanked the course to our best ability and earned a bunch of PRs on our way 
down.

The next 2 days taught me about stage racing on the mountain bike. Turns out there's still nowhere to hide on the mountain bike and stage racing is no different. Day 2 was a ton of fun in the Klondike area and my legs weren't quite happy about the intensity 2 days in a row. Day 3 at Mag 7 resulted in my legs and I having a disagreement during the second half of the climb. I lost the argument. We finished anyway, we accomplished a 3 day stage race, and I learned I need to do things differently if I expect to work that hard day after day.

In April came the Epic Rides Whiskey Off-Road in Prescott, AZ. I had that event on my to-do list for many years and finally made it over there. Vanessa also decided to take part in the fun by riding the 15-Proof on Friday which allowed me to spectate, cheer, and do a bit of crewing for her with the pup.

Another first time event in 2017, there's really never enough time to preride such a large course, so it's "blind" racing. The Whiskey single track can be burly and surprisingly rocky. I wasn't expecting some of the skinnier rocky trail but it was a good challenge. The whole course is super scenic, even the massive dirt road climb out of Skull Valley.

There's something special about descending forever on the road that you know you have to climb back. Everything in your head is telling you to stop and turn around to avoid all that work. It's masochistic. Maybe this particular dirt road is MASSochistic because I got to experience the "stop you idiot! Turn the F@#$ around!" voices for nearly 25 minutes of descending. To add to the fun, we were in a medium sized group of guys taking turns pulling at the front to go even faster descending and causing the descent to be a hard effort instead of a gravity-fed cruise.

Then we finally get to turn around and head uphill. Climbers rejoice. A bunch of people now decide it's their turn and ratchet up the effort to various degrees of pain. And after descending for 25 minutes the climb takes some serious time to conquer. I try my best to hang with the pace, stay in the top 5 area of the group we descended with, and we start picking off riders. The climbing group reduces in size in front of me and behind me for awhile and the rhythm becomes tolerable. Then there were three. Somehow only three of us continue to ride at the same pace, still picking off people that started the climb too fast and paid the price. I take a pull, someone else does, I get back to take a pull, I tend to do best when I stand and it's steep, and then, no one. I just rode everyone off my wheel during a hour and fifteen minute climb. All those hardcore guys foaming at the mouth on the descend making me barely hang on and making me curse the pace, gone. Heh.

At the top of this insane climb is a whiskey hand up and some excellent singletrack. Yeah, let's do both please. Then the paved road back to town for the finish. Pretty great event actually. As I'm writing this many months later I still feel accomplished for riding everyone off my wheel and am looking forward to this event again. Yeah, MASSochistic I know.

Three days after we return from Prescott I crash at 40 mph on my road bike. I'm down for a few weeks but luckily didn't break anything on my body.

I get the pieces back together and we later head to Bend, OR for the High Cascades 100. Winter snow accumulation forced a lower elevation course which I have no way to know if it's good or bad, and once again I'm racing "blind"; maybe it's the theme of the year. I ended up finishing in 8:35 averaging 11.9 mph for 100 miles while making approximately 16.5 MILLION turns. That is a twisty course. Fun singletrack all day, and I didn't realize I would ever want singletrack turns to end until that day. Bend has excellent fun trails, lots of them, with lots of turns. And lots of dust. I'd go back for sure regardless of the dust cause I love riding in forests and Bend has a ton of trails.

My 2017 finale was Point 2 Point.  This would be my third time participating in this event after taking a 5 year break from 2012. That year's drama included a missed 1.5 mile section of course. This year's drama involved a broken seat.

I was in good shape at this point in the season. I had a goal of 7:30 for this ridiculously difficult race. I had studied my competition, I knew some guys from the rest of the season and noticed they did well in past years at P2p, I knew their race kits, and I knew their bib numbers. I was going to stick with those guys as long as I could. I wasn't screwing around at the start to have a bunch of traffic; race on.

And, while riding in the group I wanted to be in during the Round Valley section, I make a simple mistake, slide off on a simple curve, and my saddle breaks. Lovely.

My most amazing crew is only a few miles away though, and I tucked a spare saddle in a bag just in case. Just in case I break a saddle, because I had a bad rash of breaking saddles recently. It took 1 minute and 47 seconds to fix and I was on my way to an excellent 7:36 finish, averaging 10.6 mph for 79 miles and 11,000 feet of climbing. Good day that earned me a 5th place podium and a year's worth of Natural Delights Medjool Dates!

No wins in 2017. I got close with a few second and third place finishes. I'll keep digging. It was a successful racing year which took us all over the western U.S. I'll take it.