Dirt Crits kick-off!

It's July and most of you know what that means - Dirt Crit Thursdays!!

Dirt Crit #1 was last night and what an event it was! The turnout was spectacular and the weather was better than anything we usually see here in STL in July.


Lone Wolf Coffee, Alpine Shop, Polk Audio, and O'Fallon Brewery were sponsors of the event and they did not disappoint.

I chose to hop on the 'Pain Train' for the event and race in the 'A' class with the Experts. This meant 40+ minutes at maximum heart rate. I knew it'd be humbling and my only goals were to not get lapped and not get last. However, if either of those happened I was not going to be surprised!


The race started with a crash 40 yards from the start. After getting through the pile-up relatively safe, I found myself in the second pack for the first lap and a half. Then on the second lap there was another pile-up after the creek crossing. I manged to get around that but the group in front had put a gap on me. There was noone in front of me and noone right behind me to work with. I rode the next 4-5 laps doing a solo time-trial. Not fun!! I kept praying for someone to catch me so I could grab a wheel and draft for awhile. It's amazing how much easier drafting came make the dirt crits! I finally caught Matt Grothoff, but he was admittedly spent and fading. That dude is awesome... giving up his single-speed to ride a 30lb hardtail w/gears and was still up towards the front of half the race!


A couple laps later, a guy from the Bike Surgeon team came by me. He was flying and I was unable to hold his wheel. Then Paul Krewet came by and he was obviously not giving it 100% because I was able to grab his wheel. That dude is strong so I was just honored to be sitting on his wheel!



I sat on Paul's wheel for a couple laps including the last lap. As we neared the finish on the last lap I mustered up some energy that I recovered from drafting off Paul to pass him. It was everything I had to do it. I actually had to cut him off a little bit and did apologize after the race, but he was cool with it.


So I wound up 18th out of 33 in my first Expert race and was very pleased with that. I need to avoid the crashes and solo efforts next time and maybe I can improve.









Karen raced the 'B' race and did awesome considering she'd been up since 4am. Worked a 12-hour day and rushed to make the starting line! I love that woman!

Casey raced the 'C' race and gave it 100%. She even did an extra lap for training - although she didn't know it at the time! :)

Season in full-swing

I've been pretty lazy with the blog the last month or so, but that's only because we've been busy racing, training, and enjoying the Summer with Casey.

But here's a recap for you readers out there (mom!):

Lumberjack 100 -

Karen, Mitch, Dwayne, and myself signed up months ago for the Lumberjack 100. So we all piled in the monster SUV and made the trip together. This race is part of a national 100-mile race series (NUE). We were hoping to do more of the races within the series, but schedule and travel time doesn't allow it.

This race was 'awesome'. It was a pro event all the way and the trail was fantastic! The trail was supposed to be 'flat', and to some that may be the case - if you're from Colorado! But Mitch's garmin had 6000+ feet of climbing. There were no long steep climbs at all but there were many short 40-50 yard grunt climbs and long false flats that really wore on you.

There were about 8 folks from Missouri that made the 9-hour drive up to MI for this race. The great news is that all of us finished.

There are several things I'd do differently next year for this race.

1. We left Thu night so we could chill on Fri, pre-ride a little and relax. I liked this, but next time we won't drive until 2am Fri. This just caused us to sleep in on Fri and still put us there at 4:30pm. If we'd have left Fri @ 7am we'd have arrived at the same time!

2. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate! I got so caught up in the race I didn't drink much the first few hours. This caused me to get dehydrated and really slowed me down for a few hours. Once I realized my issue and began slamming fluids I rallied to finish strong.

3. Don't try to drive straight home after the race. We finally got home about 5:30am Sunday, so Karen and I slept most of the day.

Dwayne and Mitch posted killer times - 8:15 and 8:20 respectively. I finished in 9:40 and Karen finished in 11:40. Awesome for our first 100-miler. Full results

This race was a real mental challenge as well as physical. The format was 3 31-mile loops. So after the first lap I told myself I was a one-third of the way done! Then after the second lap I told myself "1 more lap"! Sure, it was another 31 miles, but the fact that it was my "last" lap helped mentally.

Here's Mitch's race report

Brommelsiek Challenge -

The Ghisallo team did their part in giving back to the racing community by putting on this race. Mitch and Greg of course get all the credit, they were the organizers and put on an awesome event. Brommelsiek park is a truly amazing park. St. Charles Count Parks have done a great job on this park: pavillions with electric, many restrooms w/running water, nice parking, playgrounds, etc.

I helped by doing the marathon scoring and Karen helped with the Cat 2 scoring.

The weather was HOT and the racers were suffering so it felt good to rest the legs after the Lumberjack the previous weekend and sit under the pavillion while the rest of the racing community battled the elements!

Casey raced the kids 10-13 category and took home 2nd place. JD Peiffer took home 3rd nipping at Casey's heels

Thanks again to Mitch, Greg, St. Louis County Parks, and all the other sponsors for putting on a great race!

Middlefork non-race and formal

Team Seagal lived up to their reputation again this past weekend and put on a stellar event. Their first-annual Middlefork non-race would be the first such voyage on the famous trail for Karen and I.

Knowing the superior attitutude of the Team Seagal crew Karen and I had to arrive and non-race in style. Especially since were to have our middlefork cherry popped. The below picture doesn't incriminate Karen very much but it does give my enemies something to chew on... good thing I never plan on running for office !

The event and the trail were a blast! What a fun trail it is, but it's definitely demanding. A lot of climbing, but nothing too steep. Just long and steady.

Mitch came down with us and as a tribute of his own chose to pay homage to all the rain we've had of late:

But of course given the audience it wasn't empty for long!!!

Needless to say the heat was rediculous! I wound up stripping down the top part of my skinsuit within 3 miles of starting - yes this did make me a little nervous given the backwoods nature of the race! Mitch definitely felt the effects of the heat afterwards - I've never seen him so quiet. But as usual he raced strong and rallied soon after.

Karen was her usual strong self and pushed hard the whole way through taking home some prized hardware from the trip:

Go here for a much more enjoyable recapping of the event

Another Spring missing races

Last year it was my brutal crash 5 miles into the Ouachita challenge that left me with a separated shoulder and the need to miss a few races.

This year it's a little more my fault - not enough saddle time prior to taking on the Syllamo 24. I was very happy with the race and how I did. I manged to push myself and cross the finish line healthy - or so I thought. Turns out I caused some nerve damage in my left foot that left me with numbness and tingling in my left two toes. I couldn't really feel them for a few days. I stayed off the bike and tried to run one day but only ran in circles! :) Ok, little bit of a lie there!

Long story short, Dr said to stay off it. So, I sat out at Bone Bender - although I really didn't plan on this anyway due to the 24 being just 1 week prior. I sat out Tour de Tick 2 weeks after the 24, but helped Karen and Casey get their race on. Then most depressing of them all I sat out Syllamo's Revenge. I chose to stay home for the weekend while Karen travelled with Lo. I did manage to get in 64 easy road miles at the Tour de Stooges on Sat out on the IL farm roads. I love this ride! It's my hometown. It's a very well run event and a great lunch afterwards!

The good news is the foot felt pretty good during the 64. I pushed it on and off throughout the ride and only experience limited tingling - yes in my toes.

So, hoping that Greensfelder next week will be 'game on'!

24 Hours of Syllamo

(took me a few weeks to get this one posted - was waiting for pics but realized we didn't take any!!)

We knew it was pretty early in the season for such an event, but Karen and I headed down to Syllamo for the 24-hours of Syllamo race a couple of weeks ago.
My goal given this early season race was to simply stay healthy and ride it out as long as I felt comfortable doing so. Comfortable being a relative term of course because how could 24-hours on a bike seat be anything remotely close to ‘comfortable’!!!

Karen and I took off work on Friday to drive down to Arkansas and get our camp setup for the race. The weather was awesome on Friday and remained so all weekend long. We stopped in Rolla for what seemed like 2 hours to hit Wal-mart, Walgreens, and eventually Arbys for some grub. I think the Rolla visit alone cost $100!! Did we really need all that food?!?! – no, as usual we came home with most of it. But anyway, we eventually made it into AR and to the park where race HQ was. It was beautiful down there. Definitely rugged with plenty of opportunities to get some climbing in!

Race HQ was empty. We weren’t exactly sure where the race activities and our gear were supposed to go. But we did see the camp of Team Trailmonster/Segal so we threw our tent up next to theirs to claim a good spot. After scoping out the rest of the park we headed to the nearest watering-hole and had dinner to take in a good pre-race fatten-ing!

Even though we setup the tent, it was just a precaution. Our plan was to sleep in the back of the Yukon on a queen-size inflatable mattress. I had already tested this out at home prior to our trip and it worked perfectly!! And it worked as planned. We both got a great nights sleep!

The race started at high-noon on Saturday with a pretty small field: 5 solo men, 2 solo women (Karen and Wendy Davis), and about 3-4 teams. We were kind of hoping the race would get canceled but we’re glad it didn’t. As all races at Syllamo go, the gun went off and we headed for the infamous 1.1 mile climb up the gravel road. Yes, we’d have to do this on each lap! Half way up the hill on the first lap I went by Bob Jenkins as he was pulling over to fix his flat. Then almost to the top of the hill, I heard that dreaded sound myself – yep, I had a puncture in my rear tire. I got the stans sealant to seal up the puncture for about a mile then it blew open again. I decided to just throw a tube in it and got back on my way.

Each lap turned out to be 11 miles long. There was a 4-mile section where you literally ride the whole section without hitting your brakes more than a couple of times. Awesome!!!! Then the last 2 miles were a downhill delight!

Karen had an immediate battle going with Wendy Davis. The two single-speeding Chiquita’s were passing each other from lap-to-lap settling into their 24-hour paces. I too quickly settled into my 24-hour pace not caring about the random team racers blowing by me for their 60 minutes of racing in-between hours of resting.

With the exception of the flat on lap one, laps one and two went by pretty quickly. Lap 3 was going smoothly as well until.. yep, another flat! This time it was a torn sidewall that also tore the new tube I just threw in. With no boot on me, I used a zip lock baggy and hoped it would get me through the remaining downill section of the loop. Fortunately, I made it back to race hq and had a spare tire to put on and started more loops.

Just before 9pm after it had just gotten totally dark, I hit my head on a tree hanging over the trail that I missed on all previous laps. It hurt like hell, but I kept going. At the end of that lap I had a headache the size of Texas ! About 10pm Karen happened to be in the TA at the same time as me and she gave me a Tylenol – w/caffeine. W/o really thinking about it I also did a 5-hour energy. Note: how many times have you heard don’t try new things during a race?!?! From 11pm to 1am I was lit up like a Christmas tree! My legs were steam engines that no hill would deny! I was on fire from all that caffeine! Then 2am hit and I fell from that high real quickly! I was sick to my stomach and shaking. I tried to eat but that wasn’t working either. I knew I had to lie down a bit so I crawled into the tent – mistake! 5+ hours later I woke up!! It was daylight. Crap!! I felt better, but I slept through half the race. Not sure what I was expecting?!

So, I jumped back on the bike and knocked out two more laps before stopping about 11am. That gave me 16 hours of racing. Not too bad for April! I wound up 2nd place in the solo mens category.

Karen and Wendy were the race within the race – aside from the teams battling it out too. Those two were trading laps back and forth while each of them took their breaks. Karen battled some stomach issues too at one point but got back on the bike to keep going. Karen wound up winning 1st with 11 laps and Wendy did 10 laps.

What a great way to spend a weekend in April!

Results are now posted: http://www.syllamo.org/24hours/2010Results.pdf

Pure Excitement!

Well friends, I'm excited that my postcard was received by Team Segal HQ and my entry is in for the next Non-race!

Having never ridden the Middlefork trail before, I can't wait for this glorious event. Looks like the spots are filling up fast, so if you're postcard isn't in the mail yet I'll only ask what the heck you're waiting for?!

The wife and I are in hoping to see many of you as well!

MTB Season has begun

Yep, the mtb racing season has begun. Unfortunately, the family and I weren't there. With the bikes in the garage all cleaned, lubed, and ready to race, this race wasn't for them. It was going to be muddy. If/when it rains has much as it has, there's going to be mud! If by chance it's not muddy on the first lap, just wait until all the racers do a lap or two and then it for sure will be.

Sorry we couldn't make it out Mark Grumke! I totally respect the amount of work that goes into putting on a race and hate to not support them. But we made the decision to save the bikes on the first race of the year and spent some good family time around the house on a nasty rainy Sunday.

On Saturday Karen and I did go out to the GORC workday at Castlewood. They're putting in an awesome re-route on the Cedar Bluff (Blue ribbon) trail. The GORC guys really know what they're doing and we should all be thankful for the hard work that they do! It's only my second time attending a workday, but if you've never helped out on a workday please do so. They can use the help and you'll be happy that you did.



The new section actually reminds me a little of Greensfelder and Chubb. There's plenty of rocks and rock faces to keep your attention.

They say they'll finish the section on their next Castlewood workday in April.