Bear Lake Bike Camp

Every year we take a week to go to Bear Lake for a long family reunion on my wife's side.   Though this is meant to be a relaxing vacation it's common knowledge in my immediate family that I will be taking full advantage of the off time to ride my bike.  Jen affectionately calls it Bike Camp instead of a vacation.  So, even with the time off we'll be the first ones up in the rented house for our early morning rides.  Jen will go with me on the days she doesn't run but otherwise they are long mornings alone on the bike, riding along the lake or up Logan canyon.  It's beautiful and fun for the first couple of days but by day 5 I long for the roads back home.  There's just not a lot of variation in terrain and the traffic is terrible for being in such a small town environment.  We had our fun but I was glad to get home.  I'm learning that were we live is really ideal for road biking.  It may just be that I know the area so well but the roads I ride have hardly zero traffic and the terrain is always going up or down with a few areas where you can ride on flat roads if you want too.


The above is an example of my typical morning ride ad Bear Lake.  This one was done on the day the Tour de France climbed Alpe d'huez twice on stage 18, so I climbed Logan Canyon twice in tribute.  Like the title suggests, it was a sad tribute.

Headed around the lake.  They had a large section with loose gravel that made for miserable riding.  Still, the scenery is amazing. 

I took a few days rest after Bear Lake and I've been working my way into another training block since.  Ultimate Challenge is less than 2 weeks away now and Lotoja is less than 6.  I'm getting excited and I plan on doing some longer training rides in the coming week.  Nothing too crazy.  Just some good climbing up Alpine and Little Cottonwood Canyons.

Quick Post About the Weekend

We've had some afternoon showers the past few days and it's the first rain we've got for a least a month around here.  The result has been mud/rock slides in most of the nearby canyons.  Little Cottonwood was closed several times over the weekend and I know Big Cottonwood and Millcreek Canyons have had slides as well.  I new Butterfield would be ugly but I gave it a try on Saturday anyway.  I only got past the steep part before the road disappeared under the rocks and mud.  I already had to be very careful up to that point because of the rocks washed across the road but now it was unrideable.  So instead of going to the top I decided the do repeats of the the steep section in order to get my monies worth out of Butterfield Canyon.  

Butterfield Canyon Road after the steepest section.  As you can see, unrideable on a road bike.

Ultimate Challenge and Lotoja

It's been some time since I last posted so I'll give a quick update.  The next big rides/races on my calendar are the Ultimate Challenge and Lotoja.  They're both a ways away but they're on what I'm focusing my training.  I guess that's really what I've been focusing on all season but with B4K stage race done and not much more time for any other Saturday races they'll be my focus.  I plan on doing the ULCER again with my wife in early August but that's really just a warm-up for the next weekend's Ultimate Challenge ride.  They've added another 2,000 ft of climbing to that ride from what it was last year making it over 12,000 ft total over 112 miles.   It was brutal last year so it's a bit worrying that they've added more.  Still should be fun.

As for training, I've enjoyed some long solo rides with a bunch of climbing with the rare group ride with the infinite cycling team last Saturday.  I haven't been able to go to many group rides so it was nice to meet many of the riders that I see competing on Strava around here.  Speaking of Strava, I've been looking at my climbing ratio per mile and for the current year, with over 2,000 miles ridden I've averaged about 71 ft of climbing per mile.  See below...

YEAR-TO-DATE
Distance	2,324.0mi
Time	143hr 54m
Elev Gain	166,102ft
Rides	106

That's pretty high.  I'm hard pressed to find anyone around here who has a higher ratio.  I sometimes worry that maybe I climb too much given that I'm obviously not the fastest rider nor does it seem that I'm getting much faster.  The gains I've made in my fitness are very small and incremental vs. the first year of riding my bike.  Can you climb too much?  I do love the canyons around my home.  They are convenient and beautiful and it just makes cycling much more interesting for me.


With the worry of climbing too much comes the worry of over training.  Mentally it's the hardest thing to do for me but I've decided to be strict about taking a full rest period after a training block.  In the past I've taken one or two days and counted that as my rest week but I'm certain now that it was not enough.  Last week I came off of a full four days of rest after the block and it was very noticeable physically the bump I got.  My desire to ride was at a high as well.  The hardest part of the rest day is the mental game it plays on me.  Logic would say that after the pain of riding hard I should welcome a rest, but I had to literally force myself not to ride. (Even though the beautiful morning weather seemed to call for me each day.)  It's such a mental game but I've got to be strict with it to let my body recover.

4th of July this week and the weather is overly hot but I plan to enjoy it as much as possible with the family, and with my bike too.  As a side note, traditionally, 4th of July week is the week we go pick up our season passes for next season at Snowbird. I've found myself missing snow the past couple of days.  I'm excited about that and pray for a monster snow year!