Last Ogden Crit of the year!

Who is the grey haired old guy riding with the kids? Tonight was the last of the Ogden Crit Series. Adam was at school and unable to make it. I decided to give it as hard a effort as I could. It was the normal fast crazy ride. I think because it was the last, everyone was working hard the whole race. I was feeling surpisingly well and it helped that my daughter Alissa and granddaughter Emilie came to cheer me on. I could hear Emilie yelling, go grandpa every lap, pretty cool. My victory salute that I got around a four rider crash without going down. Crazy crits! Just about got a top 10 so I did improve over the season.

Cyclocross anyone? Ride safe. Doug

5 feet less!

My adventure wasn't as long as the GC ride on Saturday, but I got in 70 miles. I rode about 20 miles of flat rode with a head wind. That makes for a long ride. It was fun on the way back though.

Got in another break away on the Tuesday crit. 4 of us got away from the group and really worked hard into the wind to hold our lead. We got about 2/3 of a lap on them by the end. By luck of the draw I ended up in the lead with less than 1/2 a lap to go. I did a stutter then tried to pull away from the group, but one guy held onto me. He hadn't been pulling his weight in the break away, so he was a little more fresh than the other two guys. I pulled into the worst head wind section and coming around into the final stretch I thought I had him. He started creeping up beside me and with 5 feet to go he barely passed me for the win. Was a little disappointed, but that is racing.

I am trying to decide if I should upgrade. I have enough points now, but don't know if I want to race against the 1 and 2's. Any ideas?

This is a photo of me with the cool, lighted glasses that Liam thinks I should ride with. They blink!

Ogden/ Tour of Utah

Some teams have quite the support system. I love the look of Bissell's Pinarello Dogma.I finally found Levi in the lead group off the Snow Basin descent. The attempted break on the Snow Basin Climb.

There were neutral til Pineview Dam and then the attacks started.

Burke Swindlehurst giving his team some local course advice.

Former winner and local star Jeff Louder.

One of the stars of the field, BIG George Hincapie.

Local racer Dave Harward.

The big star of the future Taylor Phinney. He is big, look out Tom Boonen, look out one day classics.

Defending champ Mancebo in a Canyon Kit, strange.

It was a blast looking at all the bikes up close and checking out the riders. It is hard to watch a road race but pretty impressive. I was by a highway patrol car waiting for the racers to KOM at Snow Basin and I heard someone say they had 1 K to go and they passed going 17 miles/hr. That is one steep section, these guys are good. Ride safe. Doug

I some how lost these pictures and obviously added them again. I don't know how to delete them so enjoy again.

GC Ultimate Challange

Last night we had the great idea to give Dave a call to see if he wanted to ride. So we headed down to Dave's house at about 7pm to ride his favorite loop sat morning. We got up early and climbed Suncrest, then up American Fork canyon, looped down into Provo, Orem, and finally back over Suncrest. Little did we know the Tour of Utah Ultimate Challenge was also going on but in the opposite direction. However, we caught the tail end of the group going back up Suncrest (the tandem was even passing people). It took us 5 hours and 30 min on the tandem (80 hard miles with around 6000 feet of climbing). Next week we start at our house and we'll ride for a couple of hours.

Pfeifferhorn

This is the mighty "Horn" and boulder knife edge ridge that you have to work through. This is the view from the ridge looking down at Red Pine Lake, where we camped.

Daren, Tanner and some friends were also hiking the Horn the same time we did. We were going to hike up from the lake with them, but getting 18 people ready in the morning to go up with them just didn't work out. We were able to pass them coming down the assent as we went up. It is this steep!

This was our camp area at Red Pine Lake. It is quite a hike with full packs.

I took some young men up the Pfeifferhorn hike. We had 18 in our group and it was a great hike. It was a nice change from the bike and the workout was great. It was nice to be able to lead the young guys up the mountain. Betty and I are off to Oregon tues for Robbie's graduation and then help them move to our place til they can get setup in Albuquerque. See you all in a week. Ride Safe Doug

On the road again...

Liam had to go pretty bad.


Quick update on the crit racing. While Doug was here in Eugene we did a couple of crits. The legs were dead! Doug also crashed in one (see post below). The guy that crashed into him hit me first and about took me down. After the race I realized he knocked my rear tire out of alignment and I was riding the last 10 km with the brake on. This week I felt much better and actually finished 2nd in a field sprint. I think I could have caught the winner if I had a few more yards. He got a quick jump on me.

It was good to see everyone in Utah. I have a top five highlight list from my trip.

5. Utah is HOT! I forget how it is in a desert. I would be outside at 11:30 at night and it was 90 something degrees. Way hot!

4. Altitude. It is really a big factor when you don't train at altitude. My lungs were working hard to get air and my thighs were going to explode very quickly.

3. Your crits are full of kids, good racing, and well supported. There were tons of people out there racing with kids all over the place. My family of 4 is the weird exception in Eugene. The three groups was also nice as well. Everyone in the group was very competitive. I was suprised when someone got away they would hold up and wait for the group though. I kept thinking that they were going to pull away, but they would stop and wait after a couple of laps. I do have to say that the corners sucked. Not that they were too sharp (the last one is pretty sharp though) but that you don't have a lot of room to go out wide with those cones in the way. All and all the crits out there were a lot of fun. Glad to get out there. Just wish Sutt could have been behind me for the lead out.

2. The mountains. There is some great mtn biking out here, you just have to drive a long way to get there. This has put a stop to my mtn biking in Eugene. It was great fun going up with Daren and Doug to the top of Mt. Lewis. I had a blast. If you look at my knee you can see my results from my embarrassing crash (I coudln't get out of the peddle on a steep and difficult switch back). I could definitely get back into the mtn bike again.

1. Riding with family. It was good to see everyone and ride with the connection. Can't beat that!

Ogden Crit

Tonight's crit was fun and a special thanks goes out to Simply Mac. Without them those of us who can't get to SLC can still ride crits. Although the season is short, the numbers and ability levels are improving (at least for the B flight). Tonight's B flight had some strong guys and the riding within the group was good. The cornering tonight within the group was a lot better than the last two weeks. It took the edge off to know the guy in font of you would hold his line.

Any way, the thing I learned tonight is the guy who doesn't fit in (old bike and a t-shirt) is now a marked man for the sprints. He took both prims and finished second. I guess it's not always about the bike, you need the engine go with it.

Mt Lewis/Arrow shooters

I went up and watched world class archery at WSU. It was very impressive. My only problem was I couldn't see the arrows fly and the targets are so far away I couldn't see where they hit. I needed some magnification The whole world is here. This is a French shooter. What a back drop with big Ben Lomond in the back ground.

After a 3800 ft climb we are on the top of Mt. Lewis in Ogden. Good brother, son time.

It was great having Brady and his family here for a few days. We did get some good rides in.

The happy trio after our climb. The smiles are in anticipation of 3800 ft down.

This has been a very busy summer and time is flying by. Adam, Russ and I did a climbing 52 miler yesterday. It was a great morning. Russ came from working all night, I don't know how he does it. August 21 is our last lotoja trianing ride,(might be our first all together). We will be leaving early and going 100-120 miles. Good luck to the injured and recovering. Hopefully Bonnie will be up and riding soon. Ride Safe. Doug