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Breck Epic day 4
With 14 hours of riding completed this week, I’m starting to feel it. After thinking it couldn’t get any tougher than yesterday, it did, and it hurt a lot. Being in the high country is hard for multiple reasons, but the one I’m going to pick out is the steepness. I’m pretty good at getting […]
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Breck Epic day 3
Well, the ‘queen’ stage of this years Breck Epic was just completed, and I’m tired! With four big climbs, two of them sending us way above treeline, and one of them involving a good long hike a bike and a snow field, it was scenic, demanding and breathtakingly beautiful. Clicky for GPS-y Brief: I felt […]
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Breck Epic day 2
So, the second day of my first stage race. I wasn’t sure how waking up this morning would feel, but after a good breakfast and a quick warm up, I felt as fresh as the first day. CLICK HERE for my GPS readout for the day. Only just startied using a GPS, so hopefully it […]
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Breck Epic day 1
I’m sitting wearing pyjamas at 2pm on a Sunday afternoon. Unlike most people who are currently in this position, I’ve already raced 40 miles of sublime Breckenridge single-track this morning. Stage one of the Epic was as hard as expected. A brief synopsis for anyone not interested/has better things to do: I finished somewhere around […]
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Breck Epic day 0
I’m going to be breaking the one big rule I have for my blog and writing some really boring and detailed race reports from the Breck Epic this week. Well boring if you’re not a bike rider that is. Hopefully they’ll provide some details on a pretty cool race. If you’re unfamiliar, here are the […]
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Racing occasionally happens
Dripping. Somewhere to the left of my sleeping bag. In the hole above I can see a few stars, distant and shrouded by some wispy clouds. I readjust my pillow, curl over and wrap my bag over my head and ignore the cold seeping under the open bottom of the teepee. Yes, teepee. Its 4am. […]
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Anything but Eighth
Tunnel vision. The constant focus is burning my eyeballs as fleeting images of the trail flash past. The corners continue to hit me, one after another. Barely time to breathe, let alone drink or eat or look around. I know the mountains beyond the hill I’m currently descending are beautiful. I know the Aspen glades […]
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Nutrition
I had a terrible weekend of bike riding last weekend. My legs hurt, my back ached, my stomach grumbled, revolted and stopped functioning all together. I didn’t sleep enough, drink enough or eat enough. The result, expectedly, was that my planned 100 mile race turned into a slow painful 32 mile grind, before the motivation […]
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Cool kids in Boulder ride bikes
The kid flies through the air. His bike, many years too big for him, looks ungainly and out of control. His small build seems no match for the gargantuan weight of the steel hulk beneath him. But with finesse worth more than his 12 years, he guides the bicycle to the backside of the jump, […]
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Traction
I’ve just been reading the blog of mountain bike legend (legend is easy to use in the small world of mountain biking; such a young and small sport can only accommodate so many personalities, that people know exactly when to use the term) and Ergon Athlete Dave Weins. He was talking of Technology, the Interwebs, […]