Tanner makes up for lost time with an amazing bloging extravaganza

I have not fulfilled my promise to update you about every aspect of my out-of-control wild summer party of a life. The fact that I have not updated you on my life is slightly ironic because I most likely have the very least to do this summer except maybe for Doug. (You should feel happy knowing that you are living a life comparable to that of a 16 year old.) I will post some more pictures, story's, and perhaps, if I dare, a video.

All the pictures pictured above are from a awesome ride up Millcreek canyon that I did by myself a few weeks ago. And there is one from the partial epic ride that Captain Chris led through Park City.

I manged to get to Jackson Hole for the I-cup race even though my dad did not go. I would like to thank everyone who helped with that act of charity and kindness. It was quite the adventure and quite the race. I had herd mixed reports about the Jackson course, but I found it to be fast, very technical and fun. I ended up finishing 3rd in my group because a slow guy got bogged down on a steep hill in front of me blocking the only line and my chance at second place. It was a very fun trip, I hope that you will take the opportunity to live the adventure with me through the my very comprehensive documentation through pictures. Enjoy.

That is my ride Reed walking up the steep gravely climb that I lost 2nd on, its steeper than it looks as well as looser. Most everyone had to hike it at least once.

These are all the Jackson photos I deem suitable for GC Connection use. I hope you enjoyed, and will enjoy this next random sampling of pictures from my camera.

I can't figure out how to rotate images in blogger, so use your imagination.

I hope to see you all again soon, good luck on the the Park city Death March. Look forward to the blogging extravaganza part 2 sometime in the future.

Another Epic Battle

Tanner and I battled to the finish at Solitude last night.  It was fun.  T had his chance to put it to the old man after establishing a solid lead on the first lap.  However, a crash put us back together.  We went back and forth and I managed to get by him on the descent to win by 30 seconds.  One more chance for the boy next week.

Erin's home in less than 2 days.  We can hardly wait.

Good luck to Doug, AT and Mindi on the Tour DA Park City.  They will need it with 170 miles and heat on tap.

He's a winner

Pictures compliments of the Staffells.

Tanner pulled off an unexpected win at Snowbird yesterday. After pre-riding the course on Thursday evening with AJ, Tanner said "this is about the worse course you could design for me." It is technical, steep, rocky, loose and it's hot. However, on race day Tanner delivered the goods for his 4th win of the year. He put big gaps on the climbs and hung in on the descents. I'm really proud of him and he's improving each week.

I had a decent race to finish 4th. Like all the ski resort courses, Snowbird is a challenge for me. I can't climb with the really fast guys, so I try to ride hard, steady laps and see if I can real guys in late in the race. I managed to bring back a couple for a good result. Chris B smoked our group again. He's going really good right now. Michelle also won the women's expert to give the team three wins on the day.

I just about didn't make the race due to mechanical issues. I committed the Cardinal Sin of bike work by switching all my parts from my hard tail frame to my FS Epic the night before the race. Of course at 10 pm, the binder bolt on my Rear D. stripped out so I was done. However, Eric lent me a Rear D. on Saturday morning and I finished the build exactly 2 hours before the race. Good thing it was only a 30 minute drive to Snowbird. Someday, I'll learn.

Robbie Parker Short but Sweet Ride

Brady sent me an invite to be able to post on the blog, and so I thought that I would give it a try. I finally got hooked up with a guy from my ward that likes to ride and was willing to show me some cool areas to check out. Since I usually only have time to ride my bike to and from school, which isn't actually that far or scenic, I was excited when I had a morning off so that we could check out the hills around Hillsboro. My buddy Kasey (who is a Lance Armstrong look alike, no joke), and works as a shoe designer for Nike rides his bike to work everyday, so I just tagged along with him. We had a pretty good climb up the top of this ridge that overlooks the whole Tualitan Valley. It was a gorgeous ride, and I just hope that I will be able to take more advantage of the good weather before the rains come.

Attack please

The crit tonight was different. Now that the A group is basically gone (big crash a month or so ago) most of the top B guys moved up. Which left about half the B group from earlier in the year and a handful of eager C's. The only problem was everybody in our group except me and one other rider were playing D. They sat on our wheels the whole time. If either of us attacked they would all jump, if we slowed down they made sure to stay behind us. at one point I was on the yellow line and he was on the white and none of them would roll past. We looked at each other and just laughed. After our three attempts to break away failed I just decided to pulled hard and see what happened. Unfortunately not much. After about 20 min of this I decided to at least get a workout in. So I literally pulled about 85% of the last 20 min by myself. I was second in the first prim, won a gift card that I'll never use in the second, and after pulling the group around all night came up 4th at the finish. Good workout, but not mush excitement. Next week is the last Ogden crit of the summer and it's Noah's birthday (24th of July). So I'll have to check with the boss to see if get to race it. In more exciting news, I only have one more week of class to attend this summer. Too bad I still have a few more papers to type.

OLD NEWS IS STILL GOOD NEWS?

Well I hope this finds you all well and enjoying life. We just can't seem to get together to ride much this year. Kim will be back next year so it should be great. We are leaving for the Shakesperion Festial tomorrow and then to Laramie for some high altitude training before the sutt's and I do the Park City Tour. This is a warm up for Lotoja? Oh well you only go around once and I'm running out of segments. I did do a toughy today, over the Col de North Ogden divide and down around the dam an up Monte Cristo road and back for a hot 70 miler and 5 hours in the saddle The divide coming back was brutal. Well with Daren and T racing the intermountain trails and the rest of us putting in solo miles, we need to get together soon. Ride safe.

Doug




The weekly Ogden Crit, I'm having fun?


This is Brady's commute to work. It is beautiful if there is no rain.






Alissa leaving their new old apartment as we moved them to another place. One should be the limit

What a place for a track meet!

This is Lindsey Anderson going over the barrier on the last lap of the Semi's.

Cooking the the hot Oregon sun, tough life

Haywood field, 3000 steeple chase, Weber's on Lindsey Anderson, the Olympian!

Brady eating something or someone? Olympic trials dining.

The orginal GC Connectors. Notice the golf tee below Dad's name. We miss you!!!!

I haven't been to good at posting lately, to many travels. I have some older pictures you are going to get to see anyway.

Tanner's 16th birthday

Yesterday was my 16th birthday. I got some really cool gifts from my o so loving parents. I got a new pair of Specialized sunglasses, a watch, and a new camera. The new camera will alow me to take countless pictures of my exciting life so that I can share them with you. Take this as a warning to prepare yourself because this blog is going to raise about 5 places on the cool charts as soon as my epic ride pics start coming in. Entill then make do with the random pictures I took yesterday and today. Enjoy!

Climbing day

On Sat Mindy and me climbed up the mirror lake highway on the tandem. We were camping about 16 miles from the top at the soapstone campground. It wasn't to bad climbing up to bald mountain and the downhill descent was a blast. It's always fun to coast in the mid to high 40's. As soon as we arrived back at camp we changed into hiking clothes and drove back to the base of bald mountain to go hiking. Noah hiked the 2 mile climb up in less than an hour. I had a day pack on my back and Brooklyn on my shoulders and struggled to keep up with him. We started calling him our little mountain goat. He has the making of a good climber. For pics click on our family blog.

Big Day

Pretty cool ride today with the team crazies. Jeremy Ranch up Great Western to the top of Big Mountain, Mormon trail to the road back to Jeremy Ranch, up 24/7 and Flying Dog, down to Glenwilde, back to Jeremy. 40 miles, 4+ hours and 5,000+ vertical. Had as many as 10 in the group at one point. Not bad and Tanner's biggest MTB ride to date.

However, it pales to Chris P, Chris B and Glen. They continued on to Round Valley, Deer Valley, PC, the Crest, the Canyons and Pinebrook. Truly epic at 8+ hours and 10,000 + vertical. I'm not worthy.

Good company and good times.

Lotoja

We just got a new (actually used) car. I have entered the realm of minivan hood. But it wouldn't be complete without the sticker. It was the first thing I put on. Two more months.

Tour picks?

I am pretty busy with school, actually it is pretty intense. I just realized we didn't do a tour pick? Day late - dollar short. Anyone want to do a late round pick?

GC:1. Cadel Evans
2. Denis Menchov
3. Jens Voigt

Green: Kim Kirchen

Polka dots: Björn SchrÖder

White: Andy Schleck

Road the twilight crit last night. It was extremely windy, the most I have seen out there. two guys pulled off pretty quick and nobody wanted to try and catch them. I ended up pulling a lot! I pulled some (mostly a lot) in each lap for 12 laps. My average heart rate was 178. I would pull, then no one would follow and we would slow down. It was pretty frustrating. With my time constraints with school I have been doing a power hour for training. So I have been killing myself for an hour, so I felt really strong. I finally caught them with six laps to go. I sat in for a few laps to try and recover. With two laps to go it slowed way down. With one lap to go I decided to take a chance. I knew I didn't have enough to out sprint everyone, so I took off. I got caught before the last corner and was passed by 3 riders. All three would NOT pull through earlier, baggers. But that is racing. I ended up with a well worked 4th. Was adding up my points from the last year and found out that I have enough points to upgrade, but I am not going to say anything to them about it. Hopefully, they don't catch it. I still want to win a crit.

Solitude

While Doug and Bubba and families were enjoying the track trails, Tanner and I were racing the State Championships at Solitude.

The good:

• Tanner was 2nd in the Expert 16 - 18 and improved his last year's time by more than 15 minutes.
• Tanner only crashed once and I kept it off the ground the entire race.
• I managed to stay fed and hydrated so that when I finished I felt somewhat human. This is a first for me at this race.
• Chris Bingham and Michelle Hollingsed from our team are new State Champions. Chris put it to us old guys and had the fastest Expert time overall. The 40+ is becoming the fastest group.
• I was 5 minutes faster than last year and nearly 3 minutes faster than the year before.
• The hard-tail was not too bad. I had some arm-pump and soreness by the end, but it was better than I thought it would be and definitely faster on the climb.
• Solitude is a cool place to ride.
• Chirs Fox hit me with a snowball during the climb on the first lap. It felt kind of good.
• BK didn't throw his bike off a cliff and walk in. He managed a solid 4th, way ahead of me.

The not so good:

• I confirmed yet again I'm not a climber.
• EVERYONE that shows up in the 40+ Expert is fast so I can have a good race and battle for last. Last year, my 5 minutes slower race got me 4th. This year, I improve a bunch and finish 6th. The "young" old guys are raising the bar.
• I was 0 for 3 on the tricky section at the top of the climb. I've been able to ride it in the past and this year I was an oxygen deprived spaz. The first attempt was particularly entertaining. I lifted my front wheel to go over the rocky ledge at the top of the steep bank and managed to set it down on the near side of the ledge. The result was a cool front wheel stand with a few pedal strokes before I saved myself from an ugly endo. The forward momentum caused my wrists to rotate forward shifting my grip-shifters all the way forward. So when I got back on the bike, the chain was all jammed up. Smooth. I'm sure I could hear the guy behind me laughing out loud.
• The opening paved climb is absolutely no fun. 10 minutes of hell for me as I slowly get dropped. There should be a rule against starting a race with a climb with sections over 20%.

I'm on a serious recovery week now until Saturday. It's time to re-charge, do a couple more MTB races in the coming weeks, then focus on cross. I just spent more money on cross tires the last couple of weeks than tires for a car. Crazy.

Olympic Trials, crash sites, and wrong move

It was fun to go to the Olympic Trials this last week. We have really enjoyed following them and watching them. Eugene is definitely Track Town U.S.A. The place is covered with people from all over. Doug and I went on opening day and really got into the women's heptathlon. Doug, Betty, Brooke, and I went the next day and saw some great qualifying races. The whole experience is pretty amazing.

Doug has been wanting to go see his crash site forever, so here is a pic of where Doug fell off the cliff while going to the bathroom.




Did the Firecracker crit today. It was pretty uneventful, few attacks here and there, but a pretty face field overall. Last lap someone takes off and I stick on him. We get a thirty - forty foot lead. The guy dies quickly. The choice: punch it and try to hold them off for a lap or sit at the front for the sprint. I decide to sit at the front. Right as I pull up someone takes off and I end of pulling to get close, leaving me with nothing for the sprint. I finished 4th. Oh well, next time I won't wait around.

Epic Battle #2

So Tanner and I made our way up to Solitude for the mid-week race series. I was not particularly motivated but we were able to move to the Expert B group and that helped get me going. When we lined up, there were 21 in our group and I started to get excited. I had a good start and hit the single track in 2nd before blowing up a little. From there, it was a close battle with about 6 of us the rest of the race.

Tanner got a little stuck in traffic for a while, but blew by me on the paved climb section the first lap. I was able to get by him on the downhill and we repeated this process all three laps. I ended up 4th and Tanner was 6th about 25 seconds behind me. We were never more than 30 seconds apart the entire race and it was a blast. Tanner was nearly 5 minutes faster than the week before and battling with some really good adult racers. Good time with a great turn out. Eric, Chris B and Michelle represented well for the team.

We'll be back at it Saturday for the State Championships. Oh yeah, I'm still hanging in there on the hardtail. We'll see how I feel after 2+ hours of rough riding Saturday. At least I have more suspension than BK.