Getting stuff ready...

This post is going to be mostly pictures because at this point I am just getting my stuff ready to go.

Lights are labeled	Bottles are labeled

My have the gear that I think I will be running on my bike.
32x21.  I think I can turn this for 12 hours.  LOL!

The girls even decorated some signs for me!

One Fucking Speed!

About a year and a half ago (Jan 2014) the shock on my Specialized Epic died and I had to send it back to Specialized to be serviced.  That meant I was forced to ride my single speed bike which had been bought years before, rode for a little while, and pretty much ignored.  It was ignored because a single speed is not a lazy persons bike.  It takes effort to swap gears and maintain and takes effort to ride.  Well with no other option, I started to ride it again and pretty much fell in love my my single speed.  Over the next months I rode it exclusively, even after I got my Epic back.

One this day over a year ago I raced my Single Speed for the first time and GOT MY ASS KICKED by my single speed and by everyone else in the SS Open class.

I wish I could point you to the race report from that race but it accidentally was deleted when I killed my MFP account a while back.  But I can give you an idea of what happened.

The race was 4 short laps at Erwin park with a nice start on the hilly paved road in the park.  The SS group did the same distance as the Advanced Group (CAT2) and I had never raced in the CAT2 group ever!  Since it was my first race I didn't gear my bike correctly and went out way to hard.  By the end of the 3rd lap I was toast and my back was killing me.  The 4th lap was a sufferfest and I am pretty sure only ONE racer (out of all the categories) finished behind me.  My back was cramping so bad I could not bend over.  It was beyond humbling and humiliating.  I had never done that badly in a race EVER.

You can check out the race here on Stava:
MTB - Lone Star XC Erwin Park Race (SS Open)

AND here I am a year later getting ready for a 12 hour race on my SS.  I am pretty sure I am about to get another dose of humility, pain, and suffering.  You know what, I like to dive in and test my limits.  I want to know if something is possible and it doesn't kill me to fail.  I learn from my failures and push forward.  I know people that would tell me not to do this race because I have only been racing my SS for a year and other that would tell me I haven't trained enough.  And they are probably right but I am still going to do it.

Man down!!!

Warning:  I like to take pictures of my injuries.  

The goal for this morning was to get out and get 2 hours of easy saddle time in.  I am going to start tapering and just wanted to get a decent but not hard ride in today.  So I jumped on my single speed and took off.  Within 10 minutes of starting my ride it started to rain.  I almost went back to the house but pushed on because I really needed the ride.  There was a south wind so I went south so I could have the wind at my back on the way home.  The bike/hike path that I was on had several wooden bridges that get slick when they are wet but what I didn't see was the 6 inch metal plate at the end of the bridge.  That thing was as slick as ice and I went down so quick there wasn't anything I could have done.  

I left a little skin and blood on the pavement.  As I sat there on the side of the trail assessing my injuries a nice runner stopped to ask if I was okay.  It cracked me up when he said "It's never good when you see a cyclist sitting down."  Pretty much.  

My injuries were pretty superficial so i got up and finished my ride.  I ended up with 28+ easy miles today.  Other than the rain and going down it was a good ride. 

The best part was getting home and jumping in the shower and cleaning out the road rash.  It felt AWESOME!!!

After the accident:

After getting cleaned up:

Let the preping begin!!!

So I went to a race clinic last nigth that was hosted at  new local microbrewery.  I'm not a beer guy but it was a pretty cool place.  The topic of the clinic was how to survive a 24 hour race.  Even though I am not doing the 24 hour race next week end, I am doing the 12 hour and a lot of the advice we very helpful.  

My biggest take-aways from the clinic were:

1. Endurance racing is 90% mental
2. Everyone there was complaining about not riding enough and being 10lbs over weight.  Glag I wasn't the only one.
3. Once you enter the pain cave it's almost impossible to get out so do everything you can to delay, delay, delay your entry.
4. Consume solid food early while you can.
5. Don't change anything that touches the 3 points of contact. Hands, Feet, Ass!
6. You will meet 3 wizards on your journey that you will have to punch in the nuts:
1. Wizard of humility
2. Wizard of self doubt
3. Wizard of physical limitation

After listening to the speaker for over an hour I was both super excited and super terrified. Everyone at the clinic seemed pretty confident that that race would happen!

So now begins all the prep work to get ready for the race. Prepping for a MTB race is a pain in the ass, especially one you have to travel too, and double for a long endurance race.  This is one thing I really liked about running races, shoes, shorts, shirt, and run!!! 

So I have started to put together the list of stuff that I need to bring.  I am sure there will be another dozen things added to the list over the next week but I have a good start.

Bike -- this is probably the most important thing to bring. 

• Single Speed Bike
• Under Saddle Bag - tube, multi-tool, pump, quicklinks, levers
• Extra tire (saguaro)
• Extra chain
• Extra tubes
• Chain lube
• Stan's NoTube
• Chamois Buttr -- Dear sweet baby jesus don't let me forget this!!!

Lights  -- since 12 hour guys will be starting at midnight these are important.  And they require a small red rear taillight.  You will be pulled from the course if you don't have one.

• Trail LED XXX (charger, 2 batteries, mounts)
• Lumina 650
• Lumina 760
• Red rear light

Tech -- If it's not on strava it didn't happen!!!

• 920xt
• Charger for 920
• Heart rate strap with HR monitor
• All the USB chargers!!!

Tools -- this is the stuff that I hope I don't need but have to take just in case.

• Chainwhip
• Cassette tool
• Chain tool
• 1" box wrench
• 4mm extended Allen (socket)
• socket wrench
• hex set (sockets)
• star set (sockets)
• Floor pump
• Zipties with tool

Nutrition -- a growing boy has got to eat!!!  This is pretty much a self-supported race.  I believe there will be one neutral water/food station but there is no clue what will be there.

• 8 bottles
• GUs
• Roctane
• Gatorade
• Salt tabs
• PB & Pickle sandwiches
• Pretzels
• Mountain Dew

Clothes -- since we will be pre-riding the course on Friday I have to bring extra riding clothes and the temps at night will be chilly so I have to also bring some cold weather riding gear.  

• Helmet (1)
• Shoes (1)
• Glasses (2)
• Road ID (1)
• Baggies (3)
• Jerseys (3) including Cookie Monster
• Heavy socks (1)
• Light socks (2)
• Fingerless gloves (2)
• Full gloves light (1)
• Light jacket (1)
• Med jacket (1)
• Halo (2)
• Ear warmers (1)
• Toe warmers (1)
• Towels (3)

Other Stuff -- just assorted stuff to make things easier

• Garbage bags
• Large ziplock bags
• Sprayer
• First Aid Kit
• Folding chair
• Blanket

Rain, rain go away!!! I want to race next Saturday (actually Sunday but Saturday rhymes better)!!!

So I don't know if I have mentioned it or not but I have a race coming up on the 30/31st out at Palo Duro Canyon.  I have been worried that with all the rain that it might get canceled like most of the other races so far this year. Especially with people posting pictures like this from Palo Duro.

However, the race director sent out a little ray of hope yesterday.  I'll just post some snippets because rest is about the road portion of the race and no one really cares about roadie races. LOL!

• Palo Duro Canyon State Park is NOT closed at this time
• We were at the park on Monday morning surveying & going over numerous contingency plans. In fact, if the event were on Monday we would have only had one spot that was muddy enough to divert around it.
•  We have a crew, including some of the best trial stewards, assembled to go to the park Monday morning to assess the trail situation & work on them.

So of course I have been watching the weather like a hawk and things look promising.  Even on Saturday it shows a 50% chance of rain but the expected accumulation is around 0.05 inches.  

So there is hope!!!

Watch out duckies!

So I got my replacement in Garmin in the mail yesterday. But due to some server errors tonight was the first time I could check it out. So I rushed out trying to beat the incoming storms to get a ride in.

The Garmin seem to work as it should but still had some Bluetooth issues.  I think those issues are because I keep my phone in my jersey pocket in a plastic bag.

I really enjoy the night rides on my bikes. Even when riding the paved bike trails you see a different type of wildlife out at night.  Unfortunately that wildlife seemed to want to be run over tonight. 

My first almost victim was a nice toad. I stopped to shoo him off the trail and tried to get a selfie with the toad.  He hopped away and had no interest in my social media aspirations.

I would have felt bad if I had run over the toad, but if I had hit my second almost victims I would have been devastated. I was coming around a turn in a very dark portion of the trail and as my light turned I saw a mama duck with 7 baby ducklings in the middle of the trail. I locked up my brakes and stopped a foot short of all the ducks. I was moving pretty quick and left a 12ft skidmark on the trail.  The ducks were stunned by my light and never moved out of the trail. It would have really upset me if I had plowed through all those ducks. By  the time I got my phone out to take a picture they had moved off the trail and started looking for food in a little stream next to the trail.

Outside of almost running over some local wildlife, it was a pretty uneventful ride.  I wrapped it up at 18 miles because the storms had moved in on me and straddling a large piece of steel in a lighting storm isn't appealing to me.

Note:  I did this blog on my phone in the blogger app so I have no clue what it will look

Edited:  This looked like garbage and had to clean it up.  No more posts from my phone.

How do you feel about the rain?

A friend of mine asked a question in her blog:  How do you feel about the rain? I feel like she was baiting me into writing this blog.  
You can read her blog about her 50 marathons before 50 here: http://www.accidentalrunner.com/  It's pretty cool, she actually has writing skills and stuff. 

Let me start this off with a little history.  This time last year Texas was in a pretty severe drought.  As lake levels were dropping rapidly many cities setup watering bans and even some cities started to drink their own toilet water.  Wichita Falls setup a full sewer recycling system so ALL waste water was recycled back into the public water system.  As the year went on the drought got worse and worse.  But at the start of this year it started to rain, thanks to the mysterious El Nino and it hasn't stopped raining for 4 months.  

All the rain has been great for the drought since most of Texas is no longer in a drought.  I'm not sure if Wichita Falls is still drinking toilet water but you never know with those people up there.  

However, all the rain has been horrible for mountain biking. Yes, the trails desperately needed rain but we are beyond that need and all the rain is actually destroying the trails at this point.  Several of my "home" trails will need months worth of work to get them back to a ridable state.  There have been very few races able to go off because trails don't open long enough for any race to happen.  

Speaking of races, I have a 12hr race in Palo Duro Canyon on the 30-31st that I desperately hope isn't going to get canceled.   But it doesn't look good when you look at the total rainfall forecast for next week.  Yes, that middle section says 8.4 inches.

I am not sure if this is a rain or shine event, but I do know that the entire State Park was closed a couple of days ago because the roads were impassable.  So if we can't get into the park then I am pretty sure there won't be a race.  That would really, really suck.  This is the one race that I am really looking forward too.

At this point, I think I would just be happy to be able to ride my bike on dirt.  The majority of my miles/time has been on pavement and that just sucks.  I ride the roads for base/volume, I ride dirt and single track because I love it.  I've been struggling lately to get out on my bikes.  Too much pavement....

So to answer the question, how do I feel about the rain?  
ENOUGH WITH THE FUCKING RAIN ALREADY!!!

Time is flying

Somehow I now have a little girl that will be going to kindergarten next year.  How did that happen???

It was just yesterday when she so quickly came into this world before anyone was ready to catch her.

It was just yesterday when we were celebrating her first birthday!

It was just yesterday when she turned 2...

I am pretty sure I have only blinked twice since she turned 3...

Seriously I think I am still cleaning up from her 4th birthday party...

And now I have an almost 5 year old that will be going to kindergarten next year.  Karie and I took Samantha over to the neighborhood elementary school last night to introduce her to her teachers and to see her new school.  Samantha was so excited and just kept saying "I'm going to make so many new friends next year."  She is such a happy and outgoing little girl.  I hope that never changes.

Jacked up Garmin and aching knee

So where to start on this one.  

On one of my rides the other day I noticed my Garmin 920xt was not picking up my HR from my HR strap.  I just assumed the batteries were dead so when I got home I put a new battery in it.  However, during my next ride it lost the HR signal about 15-20 minutes into my ride.  So then I just assumed the HR transmitter was going bad.  I have had this one for over 2 years so it wouldn't surprise me if it was going bad.  So, I ordered a new one.  It worked just fine when I was on the eBike (GPS turned off) but as soon as I went out for a ride it dead again.  Well this lead me to check to see if the watch was losing connect to my other sensors (Cadence and Speed sensors).  Turns out it wasn't the HR Strap.  It was the watch.  

You can see that the HR and Cadence data is dropping off.  The watch still records the activity and I still get speed from the GPS but I am assuming that my speed sensor is also getting dropped.  

So after some googling and cussing, I found a lot of people complaining about the same issue.  It seems the ANT+ support for the Garmin 920 is pretty shitty and the solution to issues always seemed to be replacement.

I contacted Garmin and here is the response I got:

Thank you for contacting Garmin International, I'll be glad to further assist you.

I am sorry to hear that you are having trouble with your Forerunner 920xt. To help resolve this issue I would suggest updating the software on your device. You can update the software using our Garmin Express program.

If you continue to have trouble with your device I would suggest returning it to Garmin for service. To set up an RMA (Return Material Authorization) please verify the shipping information provided below.

They sure jumped to "Send us the watch" pretty quickly.  That leads me to believe there really is an issue with the watch.  Unfortunately I have a race in a couple weeks that I need my Garmin for.  So I responded asking for a timeline and haven't gotten anything back yet.  This is going to be a pain in the ass, I know it!!!

Ok, now to my knee, which was pretty pissed last night.  It is feeling a little bit better this morning but it's still aching.  I am pretty sure that the run I did last Saturday is the culprit.  That run caused my knee to get inflamed and it's just going to take some time for it get back to normal.  I saw a ortho several years ago while running and he told me nothing is wrong with the knee but the bottom side of the knee cap is really rough and there are spurs on the front and back.  So the knee is pretty much pre-arthritic.  He told me running or cycling while it's aching won't hurt it but will cause the recovery to last longer.  So basically he told me that if I keep running/cycling then to STFU.   Since I have a race coming up, I am just going to have to suck it up and there will be NO MORE RUNNING until after my race at the end of the month.  I see a lot of ince on my knee in the near future.  

So running again, maybe not.

So a couple of years ago, I used to run.  I ran enough to finish 4 half marathons and a couple of 15Ks in a year.  I was never fast, just a middle of the pack runner.  My running form sucked and I knew it. All my efforts to improve my form failed miserably.  I couldn't get my cadence up to what is considered acceptable.  My feet landed too far in front of me and I heel strike.  All of that took it's toll on an arthritic knee and an ankle that has more scar tissue than cartilage in it.  So when my knee started to hurt all the time (not just when running), I started to transition back to the bike.  But every once and a while I get it into my stupid head that I should go out for a run.

I went out for a run last Saturday and a lot of my online running buddies cheered!


Just a 2 mile run with an average pace of 11:28 min/mi.  Way slower than what my easy pace used to be.  And it sucked.  My cadence was low like before (average 155 spm).  I was heel striking and wasn't landing right.  My knee and ankle ached for 2 days afterward.

I would really like to try to do the half marathon in Houston next January but I'm really not sure what the training is going to do to me.  Do I risk putting myself off the bike, which I love way more than running.  I don't know.  I am still trying to decide if I am being really stupid right now.

29.4

This morning I weighed in at 224.4.  That means I have 29.4 pounds to lose to get down to race weight (195lbs).  Around 200 lbs is a good day to day weight for me but I really need to be below 200 for the races in the fall.  Those races are 15-20 mile sprint races and not like the 4 to 12 hour endurance races I am doing right now.  

Today is mother's day.  I did most of the mother's day stuff for Karie yesterday because we spend mother's day at my parent's house celebrating birthdays for my sister, sister-in-law, aunt, and mother's day for my mom.  There will be lots of food and goodies.  I will try to control myself.  

I was hoping to sleep in a little this morning because of the extremely loud thunder storms running through last night.  Nope!  Samantha came into our room early this morning because she heard another storm.  UGH.  All the local MTB trails are under water right now.  Erwin park has been closed pretty all year.  It closed after the 6 hour race in January and hasn't been open since.  At the current rate, it probably won't be open until July.  Sucks!!!

I think we have received 5-6 inches of rain in the last 24-48 hours here.  Some parts of North Texas have received 10-12 inches of rain.  There are some pretty bad flooding issues going on in some areas.

I am starting to worry that my 12 hour race will be canceled West Texas hasn't received the same amount of rain but they are having some flooding issue also.  A rider posted this picture of Palo Duro yesterday.  The dirt in Palo Duro Canyon is not friendly when it's wet or damp.  It turns into this red mucky mess that just destroys bike components and when it dries it's impossible to get off.  



I feel like Mother Nature woke up in January and realized "Holy Shit, I forgot to water Texas of the last 2 years" and has decided to make up for it.

In a funk...

This will be a quickie.

I have been in an a funk since my long ride a couple of Saturdays ago.  I ended up getting some sort of chest cold that took me out for a couple of days but I still seem to be recovering.  All my rides since then have SUCKED.  It feels like I am dragging a lead weight behind my bike.  I need to get over this shit.  I've had two very easy weeks.  I need to hit the next two weeks hard and then taper for my race.

See told ya, a quickie!

Now here is a picture of a mother duck with her ducklings I saw on my ride today.

Back at it...

It's been a long while since I have updated my blog.  I had actually been using the blog on MFP but lost all of those blog entries when I deactivated my account.  That really sucked.  I had some nice race reports out there.  Oh well.

I am stuck!  My weight has creeped back up to 225 lbs and no matter what I try I can't seem to get it to come down.  Actually let me change that statement, I can't seem to control my eating.  I am doing more than enough exercise to lose the weight, but I am just out eating my calorie burn.  I will start every day with the best intentions and then at some point I get derailed.  I am hoping that putting some of this out there will help me to get my head on straight.  

Ever since Henry was born I have been struggling with getting into a good routine.  The amount of sleep I get changes from night to night depending on which kiddo decides to get up because they are thirsty, scared, lonely, etc.  The ridiculous rainy spring has put me on the road way more than I would like and there have been very few actual mountain bike rides this year.  And I have actually been sick way more this year than ever.  That is probably tied to the sleep.  

I have been letting all of these things get to me way more than they should.  I know, I know.  It sounds like I am making excuses and I should just HTFU and get it done.  I'm trying.   But I am failing.

But I haven't given up yet!  I still get up and tell myself today is the day I get my shit together.

So my goal is to get down to race weight by the time the North Texas XC Race series rolls around this fall.  That will give me roughly 4 - 4.5 months to drop 25-30 lbs.  

I really need to get some weight off if I expect to be able to hang in the single speed category this fall.  

AND GO!