Endurance races, ski trips, musings, and adventures on the East Coast.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Christmas Snow!

We got a late Christmas present in Vermont on Sunday night - snow. Lots of it actually. We were home visiting family, and 12 inches fell overnight, with another 4-6 accumulating over the course of the day. Not much incentive to go anywhere, especially when our backyard looks like this...


...lower down...


The sunset run...


...too sweet...


...the short commute home.



Thanks for the photos Vanessa.

Friday, December 24, 2010

Pow and Planning

The snow just keeps on coming, sort of, if you know where to look. But yesterday we hit it right, although unfortunately we didn't have it together enough to actually take pictures of the crazy powder face shots on the way back down. Oh well, they'll be more chances. So here we are, it's Deepcember, Christmas time, and I'm spending a lot of time thinking about seeing family and watching weather reports and radar trying to figure out when to clear the calendar for skiing.
But it's also time to start planning the season ahead, the bike season that is. The NUE 100 miler series schedule just got released, and most of the year's stage races are tentatively penciled in at this point too. So, how to put them all together? I was talking to a friend the other night, and Bank of America came up. "Oh yeah," I said, "I closed that account down." The reason for closing it? Well, when I left for Colorado last summer I had just enough money to pay for gas to get get to this Bank of America I'd looked up online outside of Buffalo, NY, where I could close out an old account and get $60 or so (there are no Bank of America's in Vermont), which was then enough to keep me on the road until my paycheck was deposited on Friday. Car breakage? Not an option. That memory brought up the idea of planning, namely that I could do a better job this year. Sleeping in the back of my car at Wal-Marts will probably still be part of the agenda, but there's definitely some room for improvement.
So, in trying to get it right I'm trying to start early. I'm on a new team for this year, which should make things a bit easier. There will be lot's of NUE racing on tap, a stage race for sure, and a 2011 edition of Bike Week somewhere out west: that's the plan anyway. Winter is awesome, but racing season will be here soon enough. Here's to it!

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Pow, pow, powderlicious

Somewhere in Vermont this weekend...

We skinned up on the late side, mostly in the shade, but the lighting on the mountains to the east was pretty amazing

Heading towards the light, and hopefully some fresh now too.

De-skinning at the top of an untracked run is always a pretty sweet moment.

The line opened with a nice little ledge drop.

Time for ripping it up.

Yup, yup, awesomeness.

Nothing like skiing without a track in sight to put a smile on your face, and, as Anne put it, "whoever invented skiing was pretty awesome!"

Friday, December 17, 2010

Weekend's Coming

It's Friday! Weekend's these days mean lots of time to play in the snow, which seems to be coming about again. In the process of psyching myself up for skiing I came across a few shots taken by a friend last weekend. Here's to hoping for more of the same tomorrow and Sunday.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

And the season starts.....now!

I suppose I'm lucky that exercise is one of the best ways for me to relieve stress. I've got a pretty stressful job, and so training is often what I most want to do at the end of the day. Maybe that's why working and racing work for me; they seem to compliment each other nicely.
I've been on the skiing train recently, for sure. And the snow's been good. Last week there were some pretty wild powdery runs to be had. I went solo mid-week, but these VT skiers brought the camera along. Check it out, pretty rad.
Right now though, there isn't much base in the mountains, which makes skiing at night a little bit sketchy, even with a bright headlamp. And it was dark when I got home, and I've been telling myself that mid-December is go time for training for a while now. So out came the trainer. I dusted off some old freeride movies, hooked up the headphones, cranked the volume, and pedaled. And you know, it was pretty fun to mull the recently released NUE 100 miler series schedule and stage race logistics over while listening to loud music and feeling my legs spin circles for the first time in months. My roomates were cooking for a potluck, it was snowing outside, and there I was with my head stuck in July, envisioning the deathmarch that was the Breck 100, the early morning start at the Wilderness 101, and the brutal heat of this year's ORAMM.
Turns out, I really love spinning my pedals in pursuit of rad trails and great views. And I love doing those things with friends even more. It's been great to have some time off the bike, but I'm ready. Because this year, I want to go really, really fast. So, I'm not asking for stress, but when it comes, the trainer will do just fine thanks.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Real Jobs and Training Part 1

Time for some musings:

It's a huge challenge to balance a "real job" and professional level racing. I work as a high school educator, so I can't just call in sick on days I need to get in a long ride or leave early for a race. Often it means my preparation is less that ideal. Most importantly, I think, is that it sometimes makes recovery hard. I teach outside; we're always moving i.e not resting or recovering.
Part of my hope with this blog is to articulate my fumbling attempts to balance these two parts of my life. How do they compliment each other? Because in reality they have to. It's not totally clear how many mountain bike pros make a living by racing their bikes in the US. Suffice it to say it's not many. A dozen maybe? Less? For the rest of us, there is a balance to be had somewhere.
This week, it worked out just fine. It's definitely time to start the long process of working towards race fitness once again. But, I live in Vermont and it's snowy. So I'm skiing - which is a great sport and a good workout. What makes it better from a training standpoint? A little competition. This week my competition was the sunset. Powder showed up in Vermont, literally 18-24 inches worth in a two day period. We don't get this kind of snow too often, so I've been super motivated to get out and sneak some turns in. The only problem is that it gets dark at 4:30, I have to work until close to that, and the lack of a base (and therefor the abundance of rocks) makes skiing by headlamp sketchy. So it's been a good game. Sneak out of work as early as I can, and sprint up the mountain to try to get some descent turns in before dark. I've been cutting it close but it's been working out, and I'm breathing hard doing something that doesn't feel like training.
So, for one week at least, work and training are complimenting themselves quite nicely.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Fast Grass

Winter is coming back to the mountains in Vermont after a brief hiatus. And while the near-constant flurries isn't adding up to feet yet (don't we wish), it is making the mountains skiable once again. Here is a quick shot from Sunday's outing, in which a New England favorite, "fast grass" was in full effect. Seriously fun skiing, you just didn't want to fall. Plus, I got to ski some new skis. I know what you're thinking, "not the best day for new skis!" Unless of course you are talking about the new Marquette Backcountry boards. 140cm long. 130mm waist. These things own marginal conditions, and I'm thinking they'll be pretty fun on some backdoor powder stashes later in the season. Check 'em out online. In other news, the iRide Adventures/MTBRacenews.com team is coming together for the 2010/11 season. Looks like we'll be ripping it up all over the country come springtime. Stay tuned to the blog for more backcountry ski adventures/photos and some fun winter training tips coming soon.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Ultimate Race Drivetrain

I recently wrote a comparison of Sram XX and XO component groupos for MTBRacenews.com that has been up for a few weeks now. If you're debating a new drivetrain for your bike, check it out. Or, if you prefer, here's the quick version: 2x10 is Awesome and is here to stay, and, unless you're a World Cup racer or an obsessive gram counter/tinkerer, XO is a great option.