Zion's and a Solar Eclipse

We had an adventure this past weekend as we went to St. George for a few days and hiked in Zions with the kids and view the solar eclipse in Kanarrville.  A great little getaway with an absolutely beautiful eclipse.

A Ride with a Friend

Last night I was able to go on a ride with a long time friend as he is training for a triathlon.  It's kind of weird riding your bike with a childhood friend.  It seems like yesterday we were riding our crappy bikes around the neighborhood looking for anything to do without a care in world.  Now we're both in our mid-thirties trying to recapture that feeling in some way, with the excuse of getting in shape or training for some event.

We ended up riding from his house in Riverton up Butterfield Canyon and back.  About 35 miles in total.  Below is a short clip as we made our way up:


The summary of our ride:

I'm in!

I just got word that I made it into Lotoja 2012.  The following is an excerpt from the confirmation email:

"Thank you for submitting your 2012 LoToJa Classic application and for your patience while you waited for our response.

CONGRATULATIONS!  Your application was successfully selected to ride/race in this year's LoToJa Classic.  We hope this is exciting news for you!"

 I am excited but again, I'm trying not to get too fixated on this one race.  One problem I'm having is finding a hotel room in Logan.  I thought something might open up this morning after all who found out they're not in the race cancel their hotel reservations but so far, nothing.

2012 Antelope Island Classic Road Race

So Saturday was my first road race and my goals for this race were to be safe, not finish last, and to learn as much as possible.  In that respect, it was a complete success.  I didn't crash, I finish 14th in my classification out of 44 riders, and I learned a boat load about racing on the road.

It was a cold morning.  It started by leaving the house by 6 a.m. and driving the hour and 20 minutes to the marina on the island.  I had some time to prepare before we lined up for the race so I pinned my number on in the car and took my time warming up with the heater on but in retrospect I should have taken my bike out to warm up on the road a bit, but it was so cold and I was nervous about missing my start time so I just stayed in my car.  As we lined up to start everybody started shivering so bad that it was hard to listen to the start officials giving final instructions.  I was thinking that I was going to wear myself out just by the violent shaking but finally we started and we headed west across the causeway away from the island with a heavy cross wind.  As soon as we got going I forgot all about the cold and just thought about the race.  Though it stayed cold most of the morning it never bothered me once as we raced.  In fact, it was quite nice not getting overheated.

I stayed on the front of the pack at a moderate pace until about mile 4 when a group of 15 to 20 riders attacked hard.  I thought for sure we'd all stay together until at least the first few hills, but that was not the case.  I tried hard to bridge the gap that formed but with the heavy wind I wasn't able to make it.  I was caught in no-mans-land battling the wind by myself and it was still really early in the race.  The main pack ended up getting destroyed as people began panicking.  I ended up getting with a small group of 3 other guys and we began working together as we made the turn back across the causeway towards the island.  We kept a quick pace and ended up dropping one of the guys in our group as we started up the first hill as we hit the island.  We had a pretty steady group as we did our three laps of the island, but it quickly became apparent that it would only be me and 1 other guy named Daniel doing most of the work.  Nobody would move up the paceline after a pull so we basically said to heck with it and pulled the rest of the group of maybe 6 or 7 guys the rest of the way to the finish.

The finish was an uphill climb for about a mile and after riding hard for so long it was hard to really go for it up the hill.  But still I tried and I felt good with the results.  I've never to date ridden so hard for so long before but it turned out to be real fun.  I really liked the course and I think I'd like to do it again.  I had so much fun that I forgot to take any pictures but antelope island is really beautiful by bike.  The one complaint most people have are the bugs but it was cold enough Saturday that I don't think I saw any.

My next road race is June 1st and 2nd.  It's a stage race with a individual time trial, a criterium, and road race over the 2 days.  It's also located near my home on the southwest end of the valley so I should know the roads pretty well.  I will be doing some crits in the meantime to try to improve but that race is my next big goal.  Also, on a side note, I find out if I made it into lotoja tomorrow.  Wish me luck!

Bike Upgrades, Training, and my First Real Road Race....

I had a major upgrade done to my road bike a couple of weeks ago. I got a pair of new carbon wheels.

As you can see they are deeper than your average wheel which makes them more aerodynamic.  This helps while going across long flat sections of road on your own.  These wheels are also much lighter than the average wheel.  This makes them turn with less effort making them a good climbing wheel.  One more big difference, these wheels are tubular's.  This means the actual tire has a rubber tube sewn into middle and then the tire is glued to the wheel rim.  This improves the bike's ride quality and makes the wheels a bit lighter but it also means that they are much harder to fix once they flat.  Most people save tubular's for a "race day only" wheel but I've been spoiling myself and training on them daily.  They have been so much fun and they really are faster.  I'll give them a true test at my upcoming road race this weekend.  

The Antelope Island Classic is a 43 mile race around Antelope Island of course, and I'm so excited to give this race a try.  It will be my first real road race and I have no idea really what to expect.  43 miles is a decent distance but add that with a "race pace" and I expect it to be pretty difficult.  Though I dream of glory, I'm not putting high expectations on myself for my first race.  My goals are to finish and try not to be last.  I want to learn as much as I can as well.  As I've been learning in the crit races, there is much I don't know about strategy and positioning in bike racing.  

Training has been as fun as ever.  Some warm weather made for some decent rides.  Compared with this time last year I am miles ahead of where I was in terms of fitness.  Slowly we are building up the distance and climbing.