Table Rock and Tour Of Georgia

The last couple of weeks I have been spending some more time in the mountains riding. First we went to Table Rock state park in South Carolina where we based ourselves out of. From there we were able to ride a lot of good roads with climbs up to 40min long and multiple ones throughout the day! The descents were also super fast and all the roads were nice with lots of corners.

While there we did a mtb ride in the Pisgah National forest which was fun and hard! It was basically either riding straight up or or down so we climbed for 1hr then descended for 10min and did it over again.

After Table Rock we went to Dahlonega Georgia to train there for a couple of days and also watch the Tour of Georgia as it made its way through the mtns. LOts of fun watching that and on the Brasstown Bald day we finished our training ride with climbing up to the top of Brasstown. A climb that is just over 5km long with an average grade of 15% and maximum of 25%.

Now its continue the training with more climbing for the next few weeks until the start of the Canada Cups Series on May 17th in Bromont Quebec. Looking forward to it!

FlatRock

Yesterday I raced in a Georgia State Championship held at Flatrock park in Columbus GA. The course was super fast with lots of corners and fast accelarations. I was actually pretty tired this weekend from training, so went into the race knowing it was for training and the goal was to ride hard. It ended up that I would chase Matt Hadley for the entire time and never actually catch him but we did finish 1st and 2nd with a pretty good gap over the rest of the field.

Fury Of the Yukon

Now have the website up and running for "Fury of the Yukon" a 3 day mtb stage race in the Yukon this August. Its going to be a great race with tons of singletrack and spectacular views. Still need to have some work done on the site but check it out at www.furyoftheyukon.com

Diggin ditches

Today I helped Chance with his yard. Pretty much his back lawn is so saturated with water that it's turning into a swamp. To fix this we put in 300 ft of ditch filled with 17 tons of crushed rock and slotted pipe. Of course we had to shovel all the rock into wheel barrows to move around the yard but we did rent a little excavator to do the digging, which was a huge help!

In the photos you can see the first two of seven ditches that we dug. Plus a lot of mud.

Some sights around Phoenix

Phoenix NMBS #2

This weekend was a stage race just outside Phoenix consisting of a a Super D, Short Track and Cross-country. A Super D has no real set guidelines its seems and this weekend could just as easily have been a Time trial. The course was a gradual downhill which took me 17min 50 seconds to complete not a stellar time putting me in the 55th position 1min 50 seconds back. The Next evening we had the short track which is 20min plus three laps and this week I did a little better then last completing 18.5min before being pulled and having a position of 37th. This left just the XC to complete today. Three laps on a 10mile course. I had an excellent start and was able to race well through the entire race fading with about 6km to go to finish 22nd. The course was super fast more like riding a roller coaster where you left it in the big ring and just shifted around the gears in the back depending on whether it was an uphill or downhill.

Tomorrow I fly back to Atlanta to continue training there until the Canada Cups start.

While packing up the bikes today I also shook out my wheel bag and a little scorpion fell out! it was pretty cool and my first time ever seeing one! (We caught it in a box to take a photo of it)

A guy with his cruiser in Phoenix

Sunday was the Short track race and it was an entirely new type of racing for me. First of all the dust is so bad you can't see for the entire time and going all out into a corner with 70 other guys when no one can see can be a little sketchy. But we all put our heads down and pedalled harder. I ended up being pulled with three minutes to go which was unfortunate but I learnt a lot from that one race so it was worth it!

Yesterday we travelled from LA to Phoenix and only had slight trouble at the car rental place. Basically the place where we had booked the rental - Payless Car rentals- wouldn't help us and although we are all covered through our credit cards for insurance on rentals for vehicles worth up to $50,000 they didn't want us to rent. Fortunately the E-zee Car rentals was right next to them and the woman behind the desk overheard as well as her boss and they not only rented to us but gave us a better deal then we had originally booked online. So next time you're in Phoenix go to E-zee!

The next few days I will be training, some on the course for the weekend and some on the road. The place where we are staying is super nice and it will be good to be able to relax after rides and get some good recovery.