Misc. Pics

Here are several pics from a couple races over the past few months. I was hoping to have a good one at BUMP(as well as a good race) but somehow I didn't get my pic snapped....probably a good thing, it's best to forget that day all together.

Dirty Spokes Ft. Yargo 12 Hr Event:

Cowbell Challenge Marathon...ie: doorstep of HELL

Kenda Cup East #3, Cowbell Challenge:

You know what they say, "pictures are worth...", whatever that's a stupid quote. You'd rather see pics than hear me ramble. There's a few teammates thrown in there for good measure, Tagg, Kevin, and Ed. Miss racing with those dudes. Hopefully they will be able to make it to the Dirty Spokes 12hr next weekend at Tribble Mill Park. Looks to be a great course. Stay tuned.

Last month on our 2 week west coast swing road trip we took a ton of pics...I've been meaning to post some. Here ya go, included with a small caption of the moment. The view from the drivers seat..we took back roads pretty much all the way to the Grand Canyon. Absolutely NOTHING for hundreds of miles. Anyone who says the world is overpopulated just needs to head west on some not so popular roads. Prior to the Canyon we spent a day in Flagstaff hitting up the Mt. Elden trail system and pretty much DIED after coming from 0 altitude to 7000ft and trying to hop right out of the car and hit it hard. For those who don't know, including myself till we got there, this is one of mtn biking best kept secret and according to the locals, they want to keep it that way. Not quite sure the exact mileage of this system but it's for sure an entire days worth of single track.

After spending a few days at the "HOLE", then Durango, then Fruita/Grand Junction(see prior post on those adventures) we headed back east to Golden, Co home of the "bestlitebeerifyouhavetodrinklitebeerbutwhohastoreallydrinklitebeersowhynotdrinkanewbelgiumbutthatsjustmewhatever," Coors Brewing Co. and our good friends Tyler and Renee Clark. Thanks for the floor space Clarks and the kayak rodeo, much appreciated.

It always amazes me when you hit up a local shop and ask for beta on the local spots and they tell you that, "this one is great, chill ride, not steep", that it is in fact a great ride, a little chill but a whole lot steep. We've just gotten spoiled living in Mobtown that we've forgotten about the word "mountain", in the term mountain biking. We climbed and we climbed for over an hour, then went down a little and climbed for another hour...tired/heavy legs to soon follow. Luckily on the whole trip we only had one little hiccup, a sliced tire headed back down to the car....thank god for Park Tool Emergency Tire Boots.

Dear Mr. Boot,

After a long road trip out west where i encountered countless tire splitting rocks, and my tire finally caved. It couldn't take it anymore, and i don't blame him. I just want to tell you that you are a life saver. You saved me even when Stan's couldn't, and that's gotta be one big hole. Mr. Boot without your service to the rescue I would have been walking in extremely stiff carbon soled shoes for over 3 miles down hill in steep and rocky terrain. But no. You saved me. For that I'm forever grateful. I will never again ride without you or toss you aside in the bottom of my bike bag in a dark, dirty, little corner. You will forever ride up front, with a good view and with wind in your hair. You held fast even when my large carcass railed you into a turn just moments from the car...your a true American hero. Godspeed Mr. Boot, Godspeed.

Forever grateful,

BLEE

I give up...

...I'm not a good blogger. What more do you want from me!? I'm sorry Betz, I'll try better next time!!! Seriously, we have been crazy busy since we arrived in Gville, moving, painting, entertaining in laws, riding, job-hunting, riding, organizing, riding, and riding. All that coupled with this weird east coast time zone thing makes for a long day and a really good nights sleep.

We finally got settled in the house and I'm slowly getting more time in at the new shop(http://www.carolinatriathlon.com/) as well as trying to get in as much training/riding as possible. There is definitely no shortage of rides/riders in the area so there really is no one to blame. For those following back home in good ole' Mobile there is a ride that leaves here on Tuesday nights that has over 300+riders....a WEEKLY ride!!! It divides up into an A1, A2, B1, B2 and several C groups. The A, B groups have police escorts!! Amazing the things that can happen when all shops/riders work together!!!! Some day, oh someday....

I've met several dudes up here who mtn bike, and one who I've been riding quite a bit with who is also doing the Leadville 100 in august. It's been so nice having your own personal guide of the Pisgah trail systems. For those that don't know the area, Pisgah is a national park just over the border in NC(40 minutes from here) that has over 150 miles of single track/fire road trails in it with absolutely ALL the climbing a man could want in a day. The map below shows some of the trails....too me, it's all a maze. One day I'll have it all figured out like Jeff, but for now, I'll just settle for riding his wheel.

Got the opportunity to hit up the Isaqueena trails in Clemson last week....another trail system less than an hour away that has roughly 100+ miles of single track in it. Fantastic trail system that hosts a SERC race every year. I couldn't help but notice on the trail though several bridges that we crossed and they all had the sign below on either side....it was too perfect, had to get a pic by it.

Definitely the nearest to the casa is Paris Mtn...only 9 miles to the trail head or a quick 45 minute ride on your nicest single speed. Really like this trail, tons of climbing up groomed trail with some really fast sweeping downhill sections...just about as close to Oak Mtn in Bham as one could get. Other than the trail claiming two tires and a rim in two rides as well as a few ounces of Blee flesh, our relationship is fine. Not a good first couple of rides out there. Oh and did i mention there are bees? Ya, stung twice on too separate rides...really makes it hard when your ripping down some trails and horizontal on a wall ride. Difficult.

I've got several other little post floating around the cabeza at the moment. I'll try and put "pen to pad" in the next few days and share some of those. Till then: do some homework and Google this dude...Dejay Birtch, and I'll tell you next time just how cool it was toeing the line with him. Till then...

Why is he so much smaller than me?? Must be the beard.

I haven't had the desire/time/whatever to sit down and right a huge post about the past 2 weeks, so I'll just give little blurbs with a few pics that will hopefully tell the whole story. After leaving the grand canyon we headed over to K-Colorado in Durango to visit friends during alumni weekend. We had a blast. There were about 15 alum from the first three years that we were there including 3 of my really good buddies. Good times were definitely had.

During our Durango stay we took part in the annual Ironhorse Classic, a 50 mile ride/race from Durango to Silverton with the goal being to beat the tourist train. I didn't beat the train this year. I was really hoping to have a good ride but being only 2 days removed from the Grand Canyon epic hike my legs were TOAST. Somehow though, Jill, felt fantastic. She dropped me on the first climb and I didn't see her again until the end. Very proud of her, this was an "A" race for her and she killed it. I ended up limping in with my boy Jack Fisher(old alum) who was having some serious cramp issues. I will place a little blame on the fact that we weren't going to do the race do to a forecast of 23degrees, feels' like 13 in Silverton with 60% chance of snow....and that didn't take into account the temp at the tops of the 3 passes we had to go over. All that to say it was looking doubtful that we would actually do the ride the night before, therefore i took part in some heavy/dark libations with my boys. The cycling gods were messing with me cause at 6:45 am we rallied and made the call to give it a shot. Lucky thing is it turned out to be a nice day, cold, moist but nice.

The biggest downer of the trip thus far was the weather. Of the 4 days we were in Durango it rained 3, leaving only the last day on our way out of town to hit up the sick Telegraph trails. My legs didn't argue, they were still tired and amazingly extremely sore. These are some of the best trails in the WORLD, good enough they've actually hosted the World Cup there twice in the past 12 years. If you are even a small fan of mtn biking and you ever get the chance you have to hit up these gems. Due to all the snow fall this year we headed to the Grand Junction/Fruita area instead of over to Crested Butte. Either one of these two places are absolutely fantastic and definitely have "destination" trails but the desert was the only dry place around. So....Grand Junction it is. I'll throw up a few pics then get back later to give you all the details of the ride. I look forward to hitting these up again in August with all my boys after Leadville.

Roadtrip 101

My plan was to blog everyday during this road trip...that didn't happen. We brought the laptop but the pain of trying to find Internet connection daily proved too much. We're on the backside of a 2 week trip with our last stop here in Golden, Co visiting friends, mtn biking, and catching the whitewater rodeo tonight. Pretty stoked about that, but it will only fuel my fire to get back in a boat! The plan on this trip was to ride, then ride some more, however mother nature had different plans. We did get in a solid day in Flagstaff, Az on our way to the Grand Canyon at the local Mt. Eldon trail system...if you ever get the chance to ride there, do it. The worst thing about it was the altitude, it was like a slap in the face from the get go, luckily over the next few days we acclimated rather quickly. This is one of the best layed out, sweetest single track I've ridden, definitely a secret the locals are trying to hide, more than one local instructed me to, "don't tell anyone" of these trails!

The next phase was to hit up the Grand Canyon and attempt a "top to bottom to top" hike all in one day. We succeeded, but not without some extreme soreness in the days to follow as well as a sweet experience of seeing a mule fly. Ya, a mule fly. Here's a video to wet your appetite...

I'll write up some more in the days to come of the rest of the trip, but Dr. J is getting antsy here in Starbucks. Time to go ride.

DELAYED

I apologize. I've turned into one of those people who has a blog but doesn't blog....nice. I've had so much happen the last two weeks and havent written about any of it. Let me sum up:

12hr race-As mentioned in previous post i was in a 12 hr race in GA, and was attempting it SS. Race went really well, except for the rain, and the fact that i had to change gears. Registerd in the Clydesdale class with expectations of a pretty easy win. I won. Also would have placed 3rd in the SS category which was the exciting part, kinda wish i had just raced it instead, oh well, the 26in tires i won will come in handy on my 29in wheel!! Gearing was good for the first lap when the course was hard packed and dry, but i knew that with a little knee pain sneaking in early that i needed a change. Swapped up to the 20 after the first lap and it was money after that. Good thing too cause it POURED for lap three and left the course a virtual river for an hour or so, which then turned to absolute mud slowing the lap times down considerably. I was shooting for 9 laps and quickly realized with some aerobic math while in the saddle that 8 was going to be more attainable with the rain, then it fell to 7 once the trail turned to straight mud. All in all i was happy with the outcome, 7 laps/88miles and a first place. I was really wanting to post some pics, but just haven't had time to steal them off the photographers page yet. They will come shortly once this whirlwind of madness slows down. Nutrition was dialed which makes me feel good about Leadville. Next test is July 11th at the next 12 hour.

House Hunting: The morning after the 12hour Dr. J and I headed to Gville to do a little house hunting. I'll keep this brief cause it could get boring real quick. Bottom line is we got a house after many emotional ups and downs. One cool thing is that we looked and thought we got a house owned by Craig Lewis who happens to ride on Team Columbia with George Hincapie. Was the perfect house, nice big basement for my shop, a garage for my other shop and plenty of room for Dr. J to do her thing. We ended the search after being told by the management company(Craig is in Spain training for the tour) that there would be no problem only to wake the next morning and find out on our way out of town that good ole' Craig doesn't allow dogs. Awesome. Jerk. I hope you wreck out of the Tour Craig. This is where the emotional roller coaster hit it's low. So we started over and miraculously found a house a few hours later that was just as nice. Only a mile to the hospital and a mile to down town as well as the exact size we needed. Done, we'll take it. Plenty of room for visitors, hope to see some of you all there. Also got a job at a super cool shop, Carolina Triathlon. Looking forward to meeting some new folks and getting on the local trails.

Last two weeks: As soon as we got home we hit the ground running with going away parties(thanks Suggs family), graduation(congratulations dr. babe, i'm so proud of you. you've earned it. I love you.), a trip to the beach and oh ya, packing all our crap up. It didn't take long to realize that no way all of our stuff was gonna fit in the POD, but after renting a UHAUL trailer and loading my Element down to the point where the wheels almost pop off, we got it all. I'm writing this with only 1:53 minutes left in Mob town then it's off to Bham-Dallas-Albuquerque-Grand Canyon-Durango-Silverton-Crested Butte-Leadville-Denver-Oklahoma City-Little Rock-Bham-then finally home in Greenville. Looking forward to laying on my couch in my new pad with nothing to do....that's a least a month away.

I've never peed so much in my life. Clear and copious is a good thing. I'm being shy when i say i have had probably 8 water bottles today in preparation for the 12hr event tomorrow....gotta hydrate now, definitely won't be able to get enough tomorrow. Right now I'm looking at a nutrition formula of 300cal/22oz water/400mg sodium/hour. Throw in some random Paydays, a few cokes and whatever else sounds good after 10 hrs on the bike and i think you have a winning formula. Fingers crossed.

I know, I know. I said that i wouldn't change gears for the duration of the race, however after experimenting yesterday with some cogs....it dawned on me to stack two on. Eureka! I've got it at about 30 seconds for a gear change, now that's almost as fast as a retro 90's Suntour/Biopace combo!!! (Godsey knows what i mean!) I'm gonna run 33x19 for as long as i can, hopefully the whole way, but I'll have a safety net just in case.

How sweet does that look!!

After the race Jill and I are headed to Greenville on a "burn the ships" mission to find a house. Wish us luck. Seems like our goal of finding a cool house in the downtown area may be killed by our current economic status....we'll see. More on Wednesday when I return.