don't think i've ever made it to all four races of the wednesdays @ wakefield series... there was nothing scheduled against the series this year, so i thought there was a chance, but it was not to be as i got stuck at work with a little mini-crisis (now averted) yesterday afternoon. oh well, another goal for next year i guess.

wakefield #2

results are up for race 2 of wednesdays at wakefield. there are some questions about the accuracy of the times, but i hope the expert times are good between the two races. i was 4 minutes faster between race 1 & race 2 and that jives with how i felt i did. i still ended up 2 places lower (21st) but it was an even bigger field, so i'm not two concerned about that.

since i've been thinking lately that my attitude was holding me back in races the only real change i made (other than switching from a camelbak to bottles) was a mental one. i kept a simple mantra running through my head the whole race.

i won't share the exact wording to keep this blog family friendly but basically i just kept asking myself if i was working as hard as i could right now and if i wasn't i told myself to work harder. strangely enough it worked and not only was i faster, but i felt better all the way to the finish. attitude is everything i guess...

retired

no, not me, but my trusty shoes. 2 pairs of specialized pro carbons...

3 or 4 years ago i picked up a pair of specialized pro carbon mountain bike shoes. a couple months later i bought a 2nd pair so that i'd have a backup for 24 hour races, or to just make sure i always had a dry pair if i got caught out in the rain. they've served me well over the last few years...

after starting with a pair of performance brand shoes, and then working my way through some northwaves (i was riding a gary fisher at the time and they sponsored the gary fisher subaru team) and a sucession of fairly cheap pearl izumis and never finding anything that was really comfortable i upgraded to specialized's top-of-the-line shoe, the "pro carbon".

they were a revelation and took me through all types of races, from wednesdays at wakefield to 24 hour races around the country, and rides from a quick spin at schaeffer to epics in the GW national forest, but the mud a this year's 24 hours of big bear was too much for them, and they've been replaced with...

a new pair of specialized pro carbons.

this is not a picture of a bike race

sorry, no pictures from this weekend, so here's one from the garden

saturday i raced the 12 hours of cranky monkey with my brother and Alistair - a new dcmtb'r who's just moved here from australia - in 3-man expert. we were up against a fast bike lane team (Bruce Buckley, Ryan Bannon, and Steve Dotigny) and a team of adventure racers. the forecast was for very hot weather and lots of sun, with a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. with the race running from 8 am to 8 pm (or 7 depending on how you look at it) we'd be racing through the hottest part of a very hot day.

to get down to Quantico in time to check in an set up before the 8am start we were on the road from silver spring at 5, which meant being up around 4 and i didn't get a very good night's sleep the night before. we had a good representation of city bikes teams... 2 co-ed teams, our expert team, and a masters team and had a nice little camp set up under the new team ez-up and the whole foods ez-up i borrowed from heather. Alistair volunteered to take the first lap for us, i took the number 2 slot, and JJ rounded out our rotation. Alistair got us off to a good start, but i was the last of the 4 city bikes teams to get out for our 2nd lap -- Tom, Lynne, and Klasmeier had all gotten great starts.

i hadn't raced at Quantico for a couple of years -- i did the cranky monkey xc series race there the first time it was held on the base 2 or 3 years ago -- but i'd forgotten just how much fun the trails were. the loop was a nice mix of twisty singletrack, rutted fireroads with a "singletrack" line in them, and a good amount of gravel/fire road. there was also a good mix of techy singletrack climbing and some steep grunts up powerline easements and the fireroads to keep things interesting. i pushed as hard as i could on the flowy stuff and kept pushing but dropped the gears low to spin up the climbs to preserve my legs. the first lap felt great. i passed plenty of riders and came in sub 1 hour (ok, only by 2 seconds, but i was pretty happy with that).

after i handed off to JJ the next 2 hours were spent trying to re-hydrate and cool down and mother nature wasn't helping out at all. the heat & humidity was already building and meant that you just kept sweating all of the time. but those two hours passed and it was time for lap two. lap two felt a lot like lap one. no cramping, a few aches from my lower back, maybe a little slower on the climbs, but now the downhills were faster knowing what was coming and how to pace myself. 1:01 for lap 2. one minute slower than the first time around. had to make a more conscious effort to re-hydrate and refuel after lap 2 as i'd realized i hadn't had to take a nature break since before the first lap -- not a good sign when it comes to dehyrdation.

at this point we were solidly in 2nd place in expert, and somewhere near the top 10 overall. the bike lane were solidly ahead of us and continuing to build their lead, pulling laps that were a minute or two faster than us, and the 3rd place team was dropping further and further behind us. and we'd passed the 2 co-ed teams so we were the 2nd best placed dcmtb/city bikes team in the race.

lap three was the hardest for me. this lap was right around 3pm and the sun was out at full strength. there were some rumbles of thunder off in the distance as i waited for Alistair in the transition area, but they never got close enough to cancel the race. lap three just didn't quite feel right. i felt less flow, more stop & go, more near misses on techy stuff and had an "unplanned landing" when i didn't see a sapling of the left of the trail and hooked the end of my bars on it. lap 3 ended up coming in at just over 1:05.

lap four started at 6:50... 10 minutes before the cutoff for starting your last lap. i'd been worried that this would be my completely-blow-to-ruin-an-otherwise-great-day lap but that was not to be. i was able to keep riding strong. i felt like i was riding the downhills faster than any previous lap. the flow that was gone on lap 3 was back on lap 4. the air had cooled just enough to make the climbs more comfortable and the course was feeling more and more familiar, and as a result, shorter. for a while i was thinking that i might be on pace to ride my fastest lap, but in the end i was just over 1:02. i did manage to pick off a couple of the sport teams who'd snuck ahead of us on the overall. in the end we were 2nd expert, 9th overall... 11 laps in 11 hours 52 minutes (and 14 seconds).

given the weather, and my results in team endurance races so far this year, you'd think i wouldn't have great expectations for this race. but from the start, something just felt different this time around. my attitude going in was better than it'd been in a while, and maybe that was what made the difference in the end. i think i did a better job of racing smart than i have in a while: taking the climbs easy, not pushing too hard to early, but at the same time keeping a solid pace.

when all was said and done it was a day of great trails and great teammates, and that leads to a great race.

wakefield race recap...

first race of the wednesdays at wakefield series last night... great weather, decent traffic on the way out. had to fix a loose star nut with a big rock so i could tighten my headset before heading out to preride. the course was pretty much the same as usual. lined up near the back of the experts and the group was a little shaky at the start... a bobble on the first creek crossing and some squirrely riding (got away from that guy fairly quickly on the first lap). rode 4 laps, painful from the start, but progressively harder. passed a couple of people, got passed by a couple of people. finished somewhere near the back of the pack... fun as usual.

too much?

perhaps it's time to start leaving the house with blinders on in the morning... i spent 15 or 20 minutes on this blossom this morning, but didn't get anything that i liked as much as the last couple of trips. it's a similar bloom one to one i shot on sunday afernoon, but with fatter petals with a more wrinkled edge and a pinkish color.

edit: maybe i should stop this whole low depth of field macro thing and just work on some more traditional macrophotography...

black & white flowers...

trying hard to get some more tonality from digital black & whites. this was from the d200's in-camera black and white setting. the flowers in the garden are beckoning again, as are the leaves heather wants me to tidy up while i'm waiting for the plumber.

watershed...

after getting shut out of riding saturday (the electrician was late and then storms blew through once he was done) my brother and i went up to the watershed sunday morning. i'm surprised there weren't more folks out on the trails, as it was a beautiful day up there... the mountain laurels were in full bloom, the sky was clear, and the air was cool. we did a big loop out blue to sandflats then salamander to the overlook. we started back on blue but were running a little late so we ducked out onto the roads to hurry back to the cars. other than a couple of mechanicals (a flat & a broken chain) it was a great day to be out on the trails.

vote...

...for arleigh in the santa cruz hellride.

To all my friends, family and fellow bloggers:

Hellride 5... This is at least a 70 mile mountain bike ride in Downieville, California this august. 12,000 feet of climbing, crazy terrain and life will be rough. The top 4 females get to goto the event, and currently I'm in the top 12.. I need your help. Please vote, blog, post, forward along to everyone you know.

http://www.santacruzbicycles.com/hellridefive/voteforpedro.php?hellrider=1&userid=0233

Thank you!
Arleigh

space...

...the final frontier

i've just crossed the line i said i'd never cross and registered for my first road race. matty's done the cat 5 race at the giro di coppi for the last couple of years and came close last year. had it not been for an ill timed lead-out he might have had the W so this year he's calling in all the favors he's owed and it looks like we'll have respectable squad in the 5's. matty as team captain, backed up by klasmeier, biggles, jj, and myself... a motley crew indeed.

dammit, i've just realized i did one of the tradezone training races last spring, so the line was crossed over a year ago... what a shame, such a good literary device wasted.

last chance for artomatic...

this photograph isn't in artomatic, since it was shot since the show opened, but i wanted to put it here anyway

if you haven't made it down to artomatic yet, you've only got until this sunday to do so. the show closes june 15th. i've got a volunteer shift this friday so i'll be somewhere inside capital plaza I from 5 to 10. i normally try to get one of the bar spots, so check in "the bar" on 11 or one of the performance spaces/bars on the first floor.

If you're interested, my space is on the 6th floor

these and others are though; and they're all available - mounted and framed - for purchase

Location:
Capital Plaza I
1200 First St NE, Washington, DC 20002
corner of First & M streets NE

Best way to get there:
Take the Red Line to the NY Ave stop then walk a block -- you'll see where it is from the station.

Hours:
Wed, Thu: 5pm-10pm
Fri, Sat: noon-2am
Sun: noon-10pm

the one where the wheels come off...

last year we had a great run at these 24 hour events. yeah, maybe the small fields at some of the races inflated our results, but even at big bear where the field was big we were still 5th overall and 4th expert. last year we rode strong every lap, rode smart, rode consistently, had great luck, and maybe most of all had season long goal to keep us going... this year that just wasn't to be: dead batteries, a broken frame, legs just not feeling up to snuff, what else can we say?

in some ways a very disappointing weekend, but we still got out into the fresh air for the weekend, rode our bikes, and had some fun.

congrats to our fellow city bikes teams for scoring 1st in just for fun (tom, lynne, jonathan, and JJ) and 2nd in vet (marc, joel, chris, and kent). the c3 boys were rocking all weekend in expert giving the locals a run for their money.

big bear...

getting ready to roll to big bear... waiting for the plumber to show up and then i hit the road to pick up matty and then out to west virginia. the weather will be a big player this weekend. with the combination of heat & storms it could be bigger competition than any of the other teams. you can follow the realtime results here. i'm racing on dcmtb/city bikes in men's expert, but there will be another couple of city bikes teams out there this weekend.

tick, tick, tick...

time keeps on ticking by... big bear is this weekend, so prep work for that is underway. got up to fairland on friday for a quick spin and i've got to say that austin's made a nice little trail system up there -- nothing too technical, but it flows well and you and push hard through most of it -- and having it 10 minutes from home is making it a more frequent destination.

tried to get a gambrill/shed ride in on saturday with mike, darren, and mark, but we only got the gambrill half done. near the far point of the yellow loop we started hearing ominous rumbles and figured that the best place to be in a storm wasn't on top of a ridge so we decided to bail. the rain started as we hit the road, but luckily we made it back to the cars before the heavens really opened. the rain was so hard that i could barely see the road until we got to Gaithersburg.

i got a couple of hours on the road in on sunday, but the rest of the weekend was spent getting a lot of little odds and ends tied up around the house. you know, all of those little finishing details that just get put off right at the end of the project... one last knob on the wardrobe upstairs, the light in the beer room, hanging pictures, silly little stuff like that. things that just needed to be collected up and done.

we're just about at 3 months to heather's due date and we've started on the nursery. we happened across some great furniture that was on sale last week while we were out at one of the everything baby type stores so we figure we've got to get the room painted before it arrives. luckily we've got lots of help with projects like that so it hasn't been too bad.

tonight i've got my sister and (future) brother-in-law coming over to brew some beer to give away as a favor for their wedding. last summer's brewing (and bottling) marathon for our wedding favor beer was what made me finally decide to start kegging my homebrew, but i can't escape the bottling. hopefully he'll be able to rope some friends into helping him with the bottling so i can just "supervise".