Gifts of Spring Showers

Campmor H2H Series #1 - Wawayanda

So here I am again, just one year later at my racing season opener. Once again, it is good to get out to the races and see all the familiar faces. I got there early to set up the Jorba/Paydirt tent next to the Campmor Neutral Support area, and to see Adrienne off for her Cat 3 start. It was a beautiful day, and it felt great to be at a race again. I had a chance to mingle with some of the first time racers and absorb all their excitement. During a time when many people are without jobs and complaining for what they think are very good reasons, it is really nice to be somewhere filled with happy people who feel they have a purpose that day. Mountain biking is awesome! Even after a week of emotional nonsense, I am 100% glad to be racing and part of all that I have pledged myself to in this sport.

My race: I lined by chance behind my class winner, which got me off to a great start. I had a lull of a few seconds when I hit the hill to the feed zone, and a few women passed me. During those few seconds I was wishing for a hard tail, but in a minute I will be very glad to have my FS. I hung in mentally and kept pushing over the hill. Things came together, and Ellen and I passed those few back up the next grade. I hung tight to Ellen into the single track in 4th place. I rode smooth, but when it started to push up hill, Ellen stood and rode away.

By the time I hit "the bowl" (rock garden by the cut in the log), I had caught up to the first man who was off walking. I rode right through the rocks perfectly and encouraged him as he got on his bike in front of me. He bobbled the top in the preferred line and I tried to ride around but got hung up on a rock. I did a quick run around and noticed Marianne coming up the hill behind me. My heart rate had been in the upper 170’s since the start, and I was feeling stomach cramps coming on. I knew I needed to back off a tad to hold them back, so I called Marianne by to pass. By the time I reached the end of the trail, I could see Dar was only a few hundred feet back.

I kept it rolling, but planned to keep my pace down until my stomach felt settled. Dar passed me by the end of the white dot trail and I was pretty sure that by the end of Mojo, I would be good to go again. I was hoping I could hold off any more women. I could see women behind me in the twisty sections of early Mojo, and my concentration was off a bit as I bobbled some really simple stuff in the beginning of the trail. Amazingly, all the hard stuff later down the trail I nailed. Just as predicted, I was good to boogie by the armored water crossing near the end of the trail. Big ring, and off I went. No more stomach issues.

I never saw another woman during the race, but passed a bunch of men, one man even twice. I ended up starting to get leg cramps on lap three, but rode steady for the last half and held them off to finish 6th in the elite pro/open of 13 women. It was a great first race of the season. I really love a bike handlers course, and this race was one for sure. As much as things were hurting at the end of my race, the course kept me engaged and racing until the end.


I kicked back on Saturday and made some Campmor skirts and took part in my pre-race ritual, painting toenails.

So Really, How Much is Enough?

If the title of this blog post sounds familiar, your “blink” impression has served you correctly. All you have to do is look to this time last year, and you will find my blog post titled “How Much is Enough”. You may wonder, why do I dwell on this? So, I looked back over my training log, and although I thought I had adjusted my overreaching and resting ratio this year to avoid any un timely needed rest, and I still seemed to be in the same place just days before the first race saying "Why am I sick with a cold and feeling like I am done racing altogether?"

As always, the biggest question is determining whether this feeling is physiological or psychological. This year with the help of Ken, my coach to guide me in the physiological department, I am looking much harder at the psychological part, and with me it almost always seems to be psychological. So I have decided that I might benefit more to take a good look at what I HAVE accomplished, and not what I think I may NOT be able to accomplish.



If I take a brief look back to seventeen years ago when I first swung my leg over a mountain bike, I was hardly a racer type. I got onto a bike only in hopes to get back in shape after having back surgery. I entered my first race merely to be with my friends. Competition was not a priority to me I thought, but quickly I found that it could serve as motivation for personal goals. Seventeen consecutive years of racing and 250 races later, I have gone from Cat 3 to Cat 1 and claimed 2 National Champion Titles and 2 World podium spots. I have only DNF’d one race in all that time, and managed to get out and race every year, even with injuries and having Lyme Disease. Consistency, keeping it fun and giving back have been the threads that have held me in this sport this long.

Racing can be very intense, and to be a pro, no doubt you need to make your training a top priority. But for the rest of us average middle age folks, we more often than not need to keep things real and keep balance in our lives. Making priorities, and then readjusting them periodically helps, but sometimes you just need to walk away from something with your mind if only for a bit. This is where I feel lucky. Any time I feel down on myself in my daily training, I can just walk away with my mind and go build a trail, or teach a woman to ride a rock garden, and I am instantly reminded why I love this sport, and I feel fulfilled in knowing that in some way I have passed that on to another person. This works both ways as well. If I put all my efforts into trying to open a new awesome trail, and then the proposal does not get approved by the park, I can put it away and go race hard on Sunday. Keeping a broad base in the sport and finding balance has been key.

The intertwining of my involvement in this sport has greatly been influenced by Paydirt founder, Sarah Frost. Although she was not much of a racer, she was onto something when she 1. held her first "All Girl Day". 2. Brainstormed the "Paydirt" concept with Wally Tunison. and 3. Held her first "Jorba" meeting. She always got involved where she could. These efforts played a huge role in the sustainability of mountain biking in the Garden State in the years to follow and still do today. Little did I know that I would be involved in carrying on some of these in my own small way. I can only hope that others will find value in these things and carry them on when my role is over.

So to get back to the question: “How much is enough?”, the answer could actually be: "All of It!"

My message to all: .... Get out and ride your bike. Ride for fun or ride hard. Look around and love what you see in that special place in the woods. Make an effort to get involved in protecting that special place, and try to share all of this with someone else.

Peace

Asheville

So now that I have had a week to digest, here is my recap of my trip south. First off, my trip had several purposes: 1. to accompany Art to The Sustainable Trails Conference in Asheville, and 2. to visit Art’s family only an hour or two out of Asheville. Not in my original plans, but I also got to visit Industry Nine, and pick up my wheels (see previous post). … and of course my master plan is to ride my bike as well, but you all know that.

The Conference in Asheville:
It was kind of cool pulling up to the hotel with a” Welcome Professional Trail Builders” sign. It appears that in these parts, mountain bikers are viewed as the good guys. The Conference: was presented by The Professional Trail Builders Association, and attracted people from many places including far off places like Alaska, Hawaii and Canada. Art and Mergs attended a two day “Road to Trail” workshop. They worked on the Jim Branch Trail in Dupont State Forest. The majority of the work was done by machine and they had a chance to learn machine design concepts.





The Riding:
My first few days of riding were at Bent Creek right outside of Asheville. This area is an Experimental Forest Research area with recreational use allowed. It was Saturday, and this place was jamming with all sorts of bikers and pedestrians. The trails were a mix of forest service roads and what they call single track: It is actually 4 to 6 feet wide and smooth. There was plenty of climbing, after all this is big mountain country, and the single track looked to be all machine bench cut across the hillside with berms and rollers. The trails were designed with flow in mind. They were way fast and fun. It was encouraging to see that mountain bikers had such a strong influence in trail design in recreational use planning. This is something that some of us in New Jersey are still working towards.

By recommendation of a bike shop, Art and I rode Black Mountain in Pisgah. Well, we did not 100% follow the shop instructions. They told us to do 13 miles of roads to get to 8 mile of single-track. We said “the heck with that, we will just ride the single-track out and back”. It was a beautiful area that followed along a rushing stream. Eventually, it got so steep and eroded that we ended up walking a bunch. I actually walked some down as well. Needless to say we were very disappointed in the trail design, but managed to have a good ride. However, the so called 8 miles of single-track got us back to the car in a little over an hour. We then loaded up the bikes and drove to Dupont for some more riding. Although I don't get paid, I love this job.

The riding at Dupont was really nice. The trails seemed to be very well designed, but maybe a little less technical. Perhaps that is why Pisgah gets the good reviews. I just get so many rocks at home, that I do not feel the need to ride a drainpipe to get them. I also got a chance to check out the work that Art and Mergs did a few days before, and it looked pretty cool. Once again we passed more mountain bikers on the trails and a few families as well. Perhaps the less technical trails attract more bikers. Either way it was nice to see so many mountain bikers out riding.





I was sitting in the car staring ahead and trying not to get sick while Art was driving to his sister’s house, and I realized that these roads are no different than our trails, just a bit bigger and paved. They all had the same berms, low angle climbs, and water shedding design. It took driving in a wet mountainous area to see this. To see more on this, check out my Ashevile video in my gallery: http://gallery.me.com/ellenandart#100478

All in all, it was a worthwhile trip. We all got a chance to speak with other trail builders and got a chance to sample some machine built trails. What impressed me the most was how mountain bikers had become professional trail builders and found a way to fund trail building projects through a seminar. It allowed mountain bikers to fund their own needs and not put that responsibilty on the forest service. As for trails in N.C., they seemed really nice, but not even close to some of what northern New Jersey has to offer. The more I travel, the more lucky I feel to live where I do. Oh, did I mention that I love my Job.










12 hours in a car makes me nuts!

Going Big .... Industry Nine Style

On my recent trip to North Carolina, I had the opportunity to stop in and take a tour of the Industry Nine factory. I am honored to be sponsored by a company that makes such outstanding US made products: hubs/spokes. When I drove up the factory, I saw the number on the mail box but noticed the building had another name on the front door. I wasn't sure that I was in the right place, until I saw a tree full of bicycle rims. ....and I thought the rims were made in china, but now I wonder (wink, wink) if they grow on trees right here in the USA.



Industry Nine is part of a larger Company that specializes in CNC machining and has a whole warehouse full of computer navigated machines. I got to see the whole process from....



a pile of raw aluminum stock....



to a hub shell.



even the spokes are made exactly to their proprietary design.



they are then run through several washes, charged in a special tank to accept anodization that makes many beautiful colors.



The hub is very well designed with stepped sets of pawls and ratchet.



All hand built in what I call the candy factory, making light, stiff instant engaging wheels in enough beautiful colors to satisfy any color craving biker and pixy.

Land of Sun

No doubt, it has been a long, cold and snow-filled winter in New Jersey and most of the northeast. So, when four mountain bikers boarded a plane destined for Arizona, there was much excitement and anticipation to ride our mountain bikes in sunshine. Once in my seat on the plane, I rolled up my puffy down coat and put it away for a week…. well, that was what I thought.

Destination: Wild Outdoor World of Arizona “WOW”, an amazing restored natural habitat oasis that draws butterflies, insects, birds and a plethora of wild animals, and coincidentally has 40 miles of mountain bike trails out the backyard.

http://blog.wowarizona.com/

We arrived late, when it was dark, and we went to sleep in anticipation of the week ahead. In the morning, the first sound I heard was a familiar “wheet, wheet” of the Curve-billed Thrasher. Nearly a year had passed since I heard that sound, and instantly, I was back home with it. We live in a world co-mingled with noise pollution, and being able to step outside of our man-made world, if only for a bit with our ears can be peaceful and rejuvenating. I draw back the blinds and see blue sky over beautiful mountains.






Six days of riding in sun.....


a sun so strong, that it bakes.




These may look friendly, but the desert has a harsh side.....


with a small price to pay.










Alcohol enhanced electrolyte elixer ...aka: "margarita"


Some surprise snow to ease us back to NJ weather






Puffy coat comes out for the ride to the airport.


Happy birthday MA!!

Feline and Frozen

It had been 7 or 8 weeks since I had ridden a mountain bike in the woods. Frozen snowmobile tracks made that possible today. I mounted my studded cheetah and off we went. Keeping in touch with your handling skills may not be something first on the list for some mountain bike racers, but it is a ritual I try to practice. Besides keeping you upright, uninjured and not broken down in a race, It can be sooo good for the spirit. Today was no exception.