quickie

Went outside the hotel and ran a quick 3.5 miles and then did a mini kettlebell routine in the hotel. new cities are good for running since you are not really sure whats around each corner. a little more mental stimulation that normal. I hot the hotel exercise room last night and lo and behold they had an actual high quality set of spin bikes and treadmills. I used the spin bike for about 30 minutes and did pushups. I tend to do a few mini workouts each day when on business trios to help break up the monotony.

hit the hotel buffet for a somewhat nutritious breakfast. Oatmeal plain, Orange juice, 1 sausage and some eggs with Tabasco. and of course JAVA!!! Carbs, protein and small portion....not bad.

moto idea.

saw this in Bend the other day: HMMMMMM????????? good idea. same bike I have but the newer year. a local welded an adaptor to a hard case rack to mount a side bike tray....SWEEEEEET!!!

Volunteer race official at the mountain

So Mark and I did three races this season where we volunteered and were race officials. no skills needed as they trained you. we got to ski a few hours for free during the morning and after the races and also got some free ski passes for next year as well. Its good to volunteer. I have volunteered at a few running races as well and as I am not racing as much this year will likely do a few more volunteer positions at some triathlons as well. Mucho fun.

22.57

Steph and I decide we need to turn around on Mrazek trail


so cranked out on mostly ( say 95%) single track dirt from my house 22.57 miles of ridng the MTB today....Warm and perfect weather. Plan is to ride manana before I head off on a business trip for a few days for work. I will take a kettle bell and my running shoes and a jump rope. easier to haul around and fit in a suitcase on a somewhat limited schedule. off to eat sushi....rawfish=healthy love treat.

getting there

well I have the front wheel ready for the 69er bike ( 29 up front and 26 in the rear) I took a cyclocross front wheel I had and lo and behold Chris was right you can put a big fat 2.4 inch mountain tire on that......who would have guessed. should get the fork in a week, had a slight mix up at the LBS but an honest one and they treat me right so no big deal. I just want to get it rolling for the chainbreaker.

I found a super cool way to use craiglist. I have all of this stuff to haul to the dump here and there.....so I put up a free posting on craigslist to give some of the stuff away. today I gave away a queen size box spring that would have a) taken me time to haul to the dump and B) cost me $9.00 to dump, instead someone who needed on came it got it for free. I must admit my bro Akuma turned me on to this but wow I love it! ( I also got rid of my other mountain bike for a fair pric in about 1 day.)

workout: well "Angie" went well but I must admit i could only get about 35 pullups and the arms were smoked

plan for today

"Angie"

For time:
100 Pull-ups
100 Push-ups
100 Sit-ups
100 Squats

great photos

Bruce coming down Muddy...wow is he muddy!


Bruce going up clean




me coming down muddy....check the tires caked over with mud



Me still clean on the stairsteps

always have pre race and post race excuses prepared

22nd annual Mudslinger

Another casual drive to a Spring mountain bike race......IN THE SNOW! holy schnikes it just keeps snowing, last year we were riding full time about mid Jan. on but this year Winter is going to roll until September. Bruce and I drove over that morning and at the race venue it was clod and snow and rainy....just like we like it. I wore knee and arm warmers but just a normal short sleeve jersey and was warm enough for the race. things I have found out in the past is that while racing I get plenty warm so I ditched the hat at the start line into a pocket and the toe warmers are for road rides since they just get muddy.

First race with the new rise and it performed flawlessly. I must say the course was super hard. It was all Huge climbs to the tob of this forested area up some windy logging roads with one section called the stair steps that hit 27% ( not sure if thats right as that is what the promoter said....but read the people in front of me all walked their bikes their for 100 feet) then some granny gear climbs that jdub would have loved I am sure. I was in the mix in the front pack until it leveled out a bit at top and they rolled away. those hills got me. I felt solid as I had not trained for the race and was just here to kill the body and was doing that. made up a bunch of time in the first set of single track where I caught them again as they had likely bottled necked, the single track was Greasy. it was some of the greasiest, muddiest conditions I had raced in aside from cyclocross.

I thought I would catch them at the top but i had a shift/chainsuck incident that only took me about 30 seconds to fix but that was all it took and I lost sight of the group. Now somewhere mid pack I marched on a bit too hard trying to "make up" for the mistake. I got a leg cramp in my left leg for just a second that was quite the pain. I laughed as this is something i am usually giving Utrek and Bruce crap for as they cramp all the time and I never seem to.

a lot of super muddy downhill technical trails and a big climb up to the finish.

Shane took a lot of pics and are making them available to the group for free so I will post some after they come of race action shots.

I finished up a great race that of course as a workout is the way to go. you will never workout as hard as you race so racing into shape is the way to go. Thanks for talking me into it Bruce. I went and cleaned up at the car using a camp shower ( best thing since sliced bread) and got some free soup and bread. I waited at the finish line for Bruce who was racing expert. He predicted third place but alas was out gunned and got fourth ( see the video for his fullk explanation of the loss for the podium)

Great race, great day.

ready to roll for Mudslinger race on Sunday

got the bike race ready and number plate on for first race of the year...although I repeat I got suckered into this race and will go to have fun thought will still be hard workout. I like this pic too, doesn't it look like my two bikes are hugging? kind of a bike/moto snuggle eh?

I also realized the old Gregory backpack case I had for holding mountaineering crampons would work great on the back of a rack so I ziptied it up and will load this rack onto the cyclocross with some panniers I have for some alternate commuting ideas. sometimes the bag gets a bit heavy so we will try this a bit.

Steph raced at Sea Otter this weekend and I will post results when I get them, I just checked and no results from last nights short track yet.

Hump day

Well after a long...LOOONG day at work I was going to work out but ended up coming home, finishing work and just having a beer...ok to skip a day here or there. I did run about 4.5 miles yesterday at lunch and that felt great since the weather was so nice. I ended up signing up to do a mountain bike race this Sunday. I got sucked in so now I am racing...but I will treat as a hard workout so no pressure..just fun. The Mudslinger is the race. Here is a pic of Mark and I from skiing the other day.

rest day

Killer weekend

1st pic: Web's great ride this weekend
2nd pic: Monkey face at Smith Rock. I have climbed it severak times but never did a handstand on top I must admit.

So Saturday went up to Mt. Bachelor and skied about 12 runs with Mark since we got a free pass for being volunteers at a ski race ( remember volunteers make races happen!). So I was spent but my crossfit WOD was a 10 k run so I came home and managed to run 5 miles ( via the GPS watch) on some mountain bike trails. there is a new cut through the bottom of the Tetherow development near my house so I now spend about 500 meters of pavement before I am on hundreds of miles of singletrack........ahhh the good life. It was so hot though that i was sweating to the oldies. that hurt.

Day 2 did the Spring classic with the Webcyclery boys and girls riding with about 50 plus riders 43 miles of mixed pavement and dirt. actually a lot of dirt. great ride. now you would thing that would be enough but when we got back Rob and I took the gear outside and did FIGHT GONE BAD. OHHHHHHHHH it was sweet and we were hurting. great weekend and now I rest on Monday

dry today

finally dry. rode in to work at 6 am and it was dark but dry. Listened to the episode on the AGE GROUPER about Dick Beardsley. good show.

then i came home after work and did my crossfit workout, good thing you can scale it a bit.

"Kelly"

Five rounds for time of:
Run 400 meters
30 Box jump, 24 inch box
30 Wall ball shots, 20 pound ball

i did it as presribed excpet I only did 15 jupms and 15 wall balls each time. WOW was I sweating at the end of that. GOOD STUFF

April 8th and still snowing...

this is what I woke up to today...good thing I like skiing too, alot of grumpy cyclists around here though.

rest day

I will stay bike commute to work but otherwise a rest day. Did about 90 minutes on the mountain bike yesterday riding the Deschutes river trail up to the snow line then did a wide out and back on a snow road and back down the trail . trails were in perfect condition until you hit snow and then mud so do not want to trash the trails so turned around. Then went over to Robs house and we did the WOD:

With a continuously running clock do one pull-up the first minute, two pull-ups the second minute, three pull-ups the third minute... continuing as long as you are able.

Use as many sets each minute as needed.

We each got to 7 and that was all we had. not bad.

listened to the ipod with my buds Cara and Elizabeth:

LISTEN HERE

The Kite man....dont ask....if you know you know!

Kids: The Kite Man!

KM: Hey Kids! Is a safe kite made of metal? EVER?

Kids: NEVER!!!

KM: Wire or wet string? EVER?

Kids: NEVER!!!

KM: Do you stay away from streets, antennas, and power lines?

Kids: ALL THE TIME!!!

KM: What about frogs?

Little girl (was she missing her front teeth?): I like frogs.

KM: What do you do if your kite wiiinds (rolls his eyes in circles) around a power line?

Kids: CALL THE KITE MAN!!!

Announcer: ...at Pacific Power.

HELLO DIRT!!!!!!!

motivation for akbreezo

I got hooked up with a sweatshirt from My old school in Alaska. pretty sweet huh? what do you think AKBREEZO?

new bike

After a morning of doing a kettlebell routine that was nice, not too hard but felt a total body workout off to the office, got home in time for some trail riding on the new mountain steed...so this is a 2006 Rocky Mountain Element 70 that I bought used from my bud Bruce and Xterra champ! the funny thing was he had a giant MTB before but it was stolen so he needed to replace it and I helped him pick this very bike out as a good one as i had an element before and was very please with it. I even had the opportunity to tour the factory in Vancouver BC when I worked in the industry. very high quality built in Canada specs. good bikes. So he sold it to me for a steal so that he could buy an all carbon full XC Anthem by Giant that was raced by Carl Decker. Carl had nothing but the best stuff on it since he rides for team Giant and man is that a sweet bike. But back to mine. here are some pics and also showing my bling white handgrips and the 2.4 WTB up front that Chris suggested. Also a nice carbon rear. I took the stem and seat and seatpost off my Turner to make it fit right. Rode like a dream. still a few mid holes but down by the river the single track has pretty much dried up and is good riding.

Zen bread

So the crossfit for today was to run 800 meter repeats but that sounded pretty basic so I spent the lunch hour running outside ( as it was a great sunny day for once this Spring) then went into the gym, and did two sets of pull-ups ( 10 reps) on the pull-up bar. Then…are you ready for it…actually swam. I went to the 50 meter pool and did 400 meters. That is the first time I swam since Ironman last August. The 400 meters felt like a mile. I guess I have not used those muscles in awhile.

Overall a great workout and nice to do in the middle of the workday . I must say coming back to work after a solid workout id energizing and really breaks up the day.

Tonight the family and I are going to see a film of Zen bread making:

http://www.cookyourlifemovie.com/

Brett should like that one