I'm Special!

Yesterday was the Santa Fe Century, which I attended for the first time.
Word on the street was that a group of racer types were heading out at 7am, and being friends with many of those guys, our plan was to head out with them.
So Danny picked me up at 5:30, then we picked up our buddy Frey, and off to Fanta Se.
After several cups of pre-race in-car coffee, I had some serious "business" to take care of by the time we got to the Start / Finish area. We arrived with about half an hour before our planned start time. With a long row of Port-a-pottys within site, my plan was to get dressed, fill waterbottles etc, then hit the port-a-potty right before we left. So I'm all dressed and ready, roll up behind the toilets, lean my bike against the last one in the row, and walk around to the front right as a door is opening. I grab the door to walk in only to hear a chorus of hollering behind me. "HEY BUDDY, THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS!" I look behind me to find a line, probably 40 yards long, of anxious cyclists giving me the stink eye.
There was several port-a-pottys on hand, but the line was significant, and some quick calculations told me that waiting in line was not an option. So I rolled off, away from the starting group of my buddies, right as somebody yelled "one minute 'til".
I eventually found the accommodations I was looking for, and as I expected, nobody was in sight by the time I was back on my bike. So off I went, through Santa Fe, pedaling as hard as I could from the start in desperate hopes of making up a gap of who knows how many minutes on the group of fast guys that I had little hopes of hanging with in the first place.
Banging through Santa Fe was fun, as I met up with our friends the Mazzolla's, who were hauling ass on their tandem. So I drafted off them for a while, until some madman on a Cervelo P4 came flying by, and then I hopped onto his wheel. He pulled me along for the majority of the way to Madrid, until I couldn't take the pace anymore and finally popped. I can't imagine doing 100miles on a TT bike, but for some reason I don't think this guy was much phased by the idea.
So I'm plodding along, with the occasional fast guy or tandem to draft off, but mostly just riding on my own. After a while there weren't that many people around, I had kind of put myself into no-mans land with my start time and the pace I was riding. Then in all my awesome special-ness, I missed the turn to heartbreak hill. My excuse is there were two guys in front of me who I was following, and it turns out they weren't doing the century course. But honestly, it's pretty special to miss a turn on a ride when there are a few thousand other people riding with you that day. I must have had my head down or something, but for whatever reason I blew right past that left hand turn.

I continue to hammer along in my own little world, kind of wondering how I managed to find such a large gap between other riders. But I convince myself that it was just weird timing on my part, until I roll into Cedar Crest.
Having only ridden that area of North 14 once before, I wasn't quite sure where the turn to heartbreak hill was, but I knew it was north of Cedar Crest. So I roll into the gas station at the base of the crest road, fill up my water bottles, and then ask some fellow cyclists how far north the turn to heartbreak hill might be, you know, to get a measurement of my stupidity. I'm told it's about 12 miles away.
So I'm standing at the gas station, debating if I should just give up and ride home to Albuquerque, or turn around, trek the 12 miles back, and get back on course and try to finish the century, only now it would be a century and a quarter.
Eventually I decide to turn around and try and finish. Mostly because I didn't really want to deal with my friend teasing me about doing the Santa Fe century and ending up in the wrong city at the end of the day. I figured if I turned around, maybe I could just not tell anybody that I missed the turn.
So eventually I find my way back on course. Coming back it seems pretty ridiculous to have missed the turn, except that I'm pretty sure no signs were posted, as there had been every turn before that.
Basically from there my experience was much like the couple thousand other people that did the ride that day. It's a great course. It's really fun to be on the road with that many other cyclists. I met a few new people, ran into a few customers and friends, and hopefully hundreds of other riders noticed me riding along in my pretty new Bikeworks jersey (and wind vest and matching arm warmers at the beginning of the day when it was cold).
I finally finished the ride a little bit after 2pm. Danny finished a little bit after noon. I eventually learned that had I not missed the turn, I would have caught Danny and co at the rest stop at the bottom of heartbreak hill, as they waited there to regroup and I was only minutes behind at that point. Nothing like adding insult to injury.
In the end, everything worked out though. I'm glad I went ahead and finished the ride. Pretty sure that is the biggest day I've ever had on a road bike. And even though I could have claimed a mechanical for my serious delay, and avoided the embarrassment of being the guy who missed the turn, I couldn't help but share my stupidity with others. I guess I'm just special.

More Bike Event Action!

Tomorrow, Tuesday May 12th, kicks off the Tuesday Night Crit series here in Albuquerque. The first of the races start at 5:30pm, and it takes place at Balloon Fiesta Park. Check out the flyer:

http://www.nmcycling.org/flyers/2009/2009_TNC_flyer.pdf

My understanding is that there will be different local shops out there every week. We will be out there tomorrow, planning on bringing our grill and beer. There seems to be some effort this year to create a more festive atmosphere at the races, which I am excited about. We will be out again on June 9th, and I believe at least one other time than that. Danny and I are planning on racing as many as possible, including tomorrow night. I encourage everybody to try and make it out.

Then this Sunday, as many people already know, is the Santa Fe Century. Definitely a classic and very well attended event. Looks like Danny and I will be out there, and hope to see some friendly faces.

May Racing: The Chile Challenge and The Pajarito Punishment

We've got a couple of cool events coming up.
Memorial Day weekend, running from Friday May 22 thru Monday May 25, the Chile Challenge is taking place in Angel Fire. Always a fun event, the Chile Challenge is the only race in the Mountain States Cup Series that takes place in New Mexico. Check out the website:

http://www.racemsc.com/events/chilechallenge.html

This year the race is a UCI points race for Downhill and 4X, which basically means there will be some badasses showing up, and there will be some good spectating to be had.
The list of sponsors is awesome as well. With Oskar Blues showing up giving away copious amounts of Dales Pale Ale, the best beer ever to come out of a can, Maverick sponsoring the Super D race, and our friends at Tomac showing up, there will be plenty of sweet bikes to oggle and cool people to chillax with.
The Downhill course is a former World Cup course, the XC is notoriously brutal, 4X is always entertaining, and the Super D is supposedely more "D" than "super." With a little short track XC racing thrown in, it is bound to be a great weekend.

As we have a habit of doing from time to time, we are going to close up shop so that we can go enjoy the festivities in Angel Fire. We are going to be closed that Saturday (May 23rd) and Monday (May 25th). So if you don't think you can get through the weekend without seeing us, you'll just have to go up to Angel Fire with us.

Then, the following weekend is the Pajarito Punishment, at the Pajarito Ski Area in Los Alamos. This year, there will be the XC race on Saturday, followed by a Downhill race on Sunday. Check out the sites:

Pajarito Punishment XC Race
Pajarito Punishment DH Race

Rumor has it that Bikeworks and Transition are going to be raffling off a frame for all DH racers that enter. Another rumor has it that there will be schwag from Troy Lee, 661, Magura, Commencal, Tomac, and Bikeworks given away at the DH race as well as beer from Marble Brewery. And further rumors will have you believe that the course is going to be rad, as it is being designed with the help of local pro Chris Boice, and local Bikeworks racer Vince Sanchez. Everbody who knows Chris and Vince knows that they can put together a good trail.

There will be a trail building day this saturday, 5/9, meeting at 10am in the lodge to help get the trail set in.

And that pretty much covers what we're excited about right now at Bikeworks.

Moab Pics

Here's a few pics from our trip:

Marc, Charlie and I somewhere along upper Porcupine, aka UPS trail.
















This is from the top of the Moab Rim trial, which we decided to ride up. In one mile you go from the elevation of the road seen in the pic. Probably the steepest, most relentless mile of climbing I've ever done.
You can't really see it, but Portal Trail is etched into the cliff in the picture, going from right to left downwards along the natural slope of the cliff. We would find out the next day how scary that trail is.







This is the best part of the Moab Rim trail. A sweet swoopy section of singletrack. Problem was, it only lasted for about 5 minutes.
















This is Charlie and Scott, from the top of the Gold Bar Rim trail, riding along the Blue Dot trail, which gets uncomfortably close to the edge on several occasions. The Blue Dot trail, linked up with Portal, our route on the third day, is an unbelievably technical section of trail. Very humbling, I can't remember the last time I've walked my bike over so many obstacles. Oh wait, yes I can, it was last year on the Blue Dot trail.






This is along Portal Trail. I've finished walking the deadly "Dont walk here 3 people have died" cliff section, and am looking back up at Scott working his way down. It's hard to even tell there is a trail in this pic, but if you look close you can see Scott and the trail.










Moab is good times.

Best Moab Trip Ever

Moab is good.

Charlie and I left Albuquerque around 8pm Friday night. Arrived in Moab at about 2:30am. About 4 hours later we were up and headed out to ride.
Saturday we rode Sovereign in the morning. We looped around quite a bit and did a bit of exploring on a bunch of stuff we missed during our last trip out. Then back into town for a quick lunch and we headed out to ride Amasa Back. Amasa Back was fun, particularly because of the 50mph wind gusts that would completely blow you across the trail, heading precariously close to the deadly cliffs. Up and down Amasa, and we were cooked for the day.

Saturday night was entertaining. There was a car show of some sort going on in town, and the evenings entertainment was standing on main street watching a couple hundred sweet cars cruise up and down. Watching the people watch the cruising was also very, very entertaining. This is apparently an annual event, as several people showed up with lawn chairs and were prepared to sit and watch for hours. Not being much of a car guy, I can't say much about what was there, but it was still cool.

Sunday we started with a shuttle up for Porcupine. We booked the shuttle with Uranium Cycles a cool new shop in Moab. Marshall, the owner who was also our shuttle driver for the day, suggested to ride up the road a little and start with the UPS trail. That was some good advice, it is an awesome addition to regular Porcupine, which is already an epic trail.
We got down Porcupine without any major incidence. I was happy because I rode several sections that I didn't during our last trip. Just like the day before, Scott rode a few lines that none of the rest of us had the nerve for. It was impressive.

Rode back into town for some lunch and a little relaxing, then we headed out again for our afternoon ride. Originally we talked about riding Slick Rock, but somehow we decided on checking out Moab Rim trail instead. I can say, that isn't a trail that I will be riding again. It was a lot of pain going up, then some sandy washes, then about 1 mile of sweet twisty singletrack, followed by a wicked hike a bike back down to the freeway. We still haven't decided whose idea that one was.

Monday we shuttled with Uranium again out to Gemini Bridges. We rode out from the drop off to Gold Bar Rim trial, which we rode up to the top of the cliff where the Blue Dot trail starts. We took that to Portal, and then got thoroughly puckered up and made our way down Portal trail. It was an extremely technical trail, that made all of us except for Charlie look like little girls. Charlie was the champion of the day, riding way more of the technical sections that the rest of us, including all of Portal once we were below the "don't ride here you will die sections".

Then a long drive back to town, and here I am at work today, sitting around being tired and useless. It was fun. If you haven't been to Moab, or haven't been in a while, you should go.

And if you're wondering what the best Moab bike in the world is, the answer is a Maverick ML8 with a 160mm travel fork, like the Rock Shox Lyric for example. I love my Maverick.

In other assorted shop news, we had Shaums March, two time Masters World Champion in downhill hanging out for a little while today. He was in town with a few other reps, apparently he'll be in Abq this week trying to coach some APD guys how to ride better. Looks like Tony's going to get a chance to ride with him, which should be cool.

Well, that's about my day. I've got a ton of picks on my camera, and once again my camera isn't with me. So I will attempt to post some pics from Moab in the near future.