February 2012 Archives

A Bike Up Mount Morrison

By Justin on February 22, 2012 12:52 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Packing along a bike, just in case...

The Arizona Trail Race 750 is a race across Arizona, from the Mexican/Arizona border to the Arizona/Utah border, with a portage, down, across and back up the Grand Canyon. Being a Nation Park, no bike riding is allowed on the trail, so you need to somehow carry your bike. So, how do you do that,

for 24 miles?

The AZT 750 is a challenge I desperately want to do, but I may have to simply, "play along" this year, as funds are simply not around to high-tail it to AZ for a week or so. But, there's always a small chance I can get something together and be at the start line.

So Monday, I started playing along with my pack and attaching a bike to it and hiking up a short trail to the summit of Mt. Morrison - a small foothill directly west of Red Rocks Amphitheater. Doing so is easy enough - my 38L Osprey pack has enough attachment points to haul most anything, including a bike. One option is to actually do just that - already have the pack and no real modifications need to be done. But, do I really want to lug this type of pack 3/4 across Arizona to use it exactly 24 miles? Maybe, maybe not.

The alternative may be to find a smaller pack, but larger than a Camelback-type pack, that has enough attachment points. You're going to suffer more with a smaller pack though, while hiking. Bicycles are unwieldy beasts when lashed to a pack like this - the frame juts out from the sides and getting everything balanced out is just impossible.

The smaller the pack, the more unweildy it's going to be. Perhaps one could take a larger frame, cut the bag part clear off - you're not going to need such carrying capacity for a ultra-enduro race, leaving just the frame and then retrofit different attachments on (big fat velcro straps from the top and bottom tube of the bike frame?) and perhaps fashion a smaller, simple pack onto the larger frame. It would keep the bike frame itself as close to your body as possible, alleiving some of the awkwardness of the setup. The finished product would be Frankenstein's Monster ugly, but it may be the best ticket in town. A largish, but ripped-ta-hell pack could be salvaged and used this way. Who knows?

Some hastily shot photos of Mt. Morrison, right before sunset,

Some 46-odd miles, + the hike up Mt. Morrison (can't be more than a few miles) in 6 hours. Fun had by all (well, me).

It is sort of magically interesting to unlash a parted-out bike, put a few things together and roll away from the trailhead, oddly enough. Not sure if I'd call the actually hiking part, "fun", as the bike frame loved to cling to whatever branches were close by and make scrambling a little more death-defying and tight squeezes needing an alternative route, but it's pretty doable. I may look and see what sort of lifts I can do during gym-time to help support this sort of awkward weight. I'm thinking dead lifts and even more core work.

Weeks of 2/12 - 2/18 + 2/5 - 2/11

By Justin on February 20, 2012 12:55 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

This is Tom Danielson, a pro road cyclist, height: 5'10", weight: 130lbs:

In this photo (found here), he's breaking the Lookout Mountain Hill Climb record at an incredible 16 minutes, 3 seconds. Super light bike, skin suit, shoe covers.

That's really fast. Lookout Mountain Road is the closest hill to climb as the crow flies. ~4.3 miles, 5 to 6 percent grade, 1300+ feet of elevation gain. As Colorado hills goes, it's small, but the grade is about what you find around here.

One of the problems of being inherently lazy and not really very focused on winning things, or really competing, is that it's hard to stay motivated and focused. Sometimes, this coalesces into taking large rides at a put-put speed, which is fine, but if this lazy hunk of bones, also strangely has the interest in getting faster, I find I hit a performance wall. What to do about it?

So I purchased a watch, that has a stopwatch (sorry, a chronometer) and I've been doing research on some of established races and routes around town, to get a feel on how fast the courses can be done. The Lookout Mountain hill climb is an easy one to find, as there's a race every year, from the bottom pillars, to the turnoff to Buffalo Bill's grave (supposedly). Usually clear enough to safely go up and down it during the winter, it's a lazy haunt to do.

(If you start your climb from downtown Golden and end it near the Nature Center (like moi), you can give yourself a few hundred more feet of elevation gain and a mile or two more road. Some people start at the pillars and end at the turnoff, never to go further. It's strange to me!)

One day last week, I attempted to break Mt. Danielson's record.

Well, not really, but I wanted to see how I stacked up. My bike probably weighs twice Tom's - I'm sure his was 6.8kg (the UCI limit) - mine is twice that. He's got gears, and I don't - just a 2:1 fixed wheel. And my clothing is so Bad News Bears grungy right now. And my goals are different. But I can't think of time I've ever, (after literally 100+ - hundreds?) times up, timed myself going up this thing, so this week, I wanted to establish a baseline to work from.

Knowing I will never reach a time of 16:03, I can at least use it to establish the Fastest Known Time and work out some sort of Rate of Improvement (if I do improve). Or at least a countdown to Doctor D up there. There's math involved and pretty graphs I could make, that will (probably) elude my attempts at creating them.

So out with a slow bike I went. I did the climb and timed from the historical start and stops:

#1 - 28:21

#2 - 27:11

#3 - 31:20

(Repeat #3 was slowed down by getting waved down to stop by a flagger, in a construction zone!)

A little less than half as fast! A good place to start! Minutes could be removed from this time with a better bike, but better bikes aren't what I'm going to get. We're going to upgrade the rider, and then eventually the bike, come summer. I have 55 lbs (and one inch in height) on Tom, which is incredible - we don't even a similar body type.

Sobering. Gives you a feeling of how fast the pros go. I also knew where I was on the road at 16:03 in my little time trial, and I know if I'm improving, if I can get past that spot in the road, before Tom's time is reached. Something like a nice halfway point split or something.

In general though, these past two weeks I've been riding my bike and going to the gym and doing a terrible job keeping tracks of mileage or even specific rides. But, hazily:

Did around 80 miles in one cold Saturday, with tons of moisture in the air, given one epic Beard-cicles,

Did those hill repeats (Lookout Mountain x3) and the next day, rode around Cherry Creek Res from REI in 1:56:56, which isn't too far from my own personal best, oddly enough. It's terribly difficult to understand if one's legs are actually wasted from the previous day's efforts, or merely a little stiff, shall we say. I thought I'd be much slower than I was, as I set out to do a, "recovery ride".

Gym time(s) were a mix - one day I spent over 3 hours - half off that aerobic, bench press is getting better, pullups are getting better -

Getting better. Still having trouble getting up in the morning. I'm sincerely a night owl. Now that the ice is off the roads, may just take some rides in night time.

Bike got a minor upgrade of a new back wheel. Managed to crack my second Salsa Delgado Cross wheel, so Salvagetti re-laced it to a Mavic A-719, which they defend that I'll have a much harder time destroying. Time will tell. Damn hard enough to get the track cog off,

Nick, Scott and Justin showing good use of extra leverage.

The last bummer was finding my rear tire's sidewall getting a cracked in places - enough to give you that rhythmic BUMP, of the tire being deformed from the pressure of the inner tube and looking for a way out. And four flats on Friday in my front wheel, which is never good. On the fifth inspection and finally coming to terms that there's nothing sharp in the tire, I found instead that the tire's sidewall is slit - almost as if someone took a knife to it. Two inner tube patches holding it at the moment, but I'll have to replace that soon, too. Damnit.

1/29 - 2/4 Week Summary

By Justin on February 6, 2012 10:27 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

This past week, I rode a paltry 104 miles in total, went to the gym once and, uh, snowshoed for 11 1/2 hours. Plus the usual bicycle commuting. And I'm a masked vigilante in the wee hours. Ok, the last part isn't true.

The only ride I did was around Cherry Creek. Made it from and back to REI in 1:52, which is only 10 minutes less than my personal best on the route, even though my the bike I'm riding is heavier, with slower tires, handlebars that aren't very comfortable and the course is slightly longer, with two new streets that must be crossed on a light because of construction - and I wasn't doing a, "I'm throwing up" pace, although I was trying to give it a good go. So that's nice.

Gym was good, upped (again) my bench press by 10lbs, now getting to the amazing limit of 145lbs. What's funny is this really is my limit - I've lost that much strength. Bench press is my worst list of anything, so I'm not surprised. I've found my style in lifting has changed, as I lift much more up and down, instead of having my arms go out to the side - much as if you were doing flys or something. That sort of position seems to make my shoulder tinge a little too much. Incidentally, I'll be starting chest dips this week without any assist, as it seems to be one of my strongest, uh, "lifts" (now riddle me that). Didn't have time to try for my 5,000 meters in 20 rowing-athon, but I guess I'll try that soon enough.

Not sure what the weather will come to this week. As I type it's snowing again - just a flurry, but it'll make riding a little dicey for another day. I'm apprehensive about buying some rollers to ride indoors, as that just sounds so so so silly and I don't want to really buy anything new at the moment to try to fit into my life. If the weather isn't behooving of cycling, perhaps another day in the gym, doing something boring, or go, I dunno, road running. The avy danger in the mountains has been a little hectic, but I haven't been able to get much luck getting a ride out into the mountains, anyways. I'm certainly not about to buy a car just to do that.

A little weirded out at my mileage, but I feel pretty comfortable of my endurance just the same. March saw me do 1200 miles+ and that doesn't sound too far off to do again, or better it, if conditions allowed. Maybe that's me just blowing smoke.

Maybe this week, I'll try some bicycling to trail runs, as long as the paths are pretty clear. Riding long distances on the road isn't too good of an idea. Just today, I was riding from the house and encountered a car that was pretty much blowing through a stop sign and about to blow through me. They finally did stop, after the sign. I yelled at them and pointed at the sign, where in they yelled that they didn't stop, as I was in their blind spot. I didn't know what that meant, but if their blind spot is right in front of them, they may want to retire from driving altogether.

Sobo/Green/Bear Counter Clockwise

By Justin on February 6, 2012 8:53 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

On topless of Green Mountain. Relax, people can summit this thing in 30 minutes.

This week's of bicycle riding was interrupted by some snow falling in the Front Range, much to the chagrin of the rest of the thirsty state, which hasn't seen as much snowfall as is anticipated. Snow didn't let up until around Saturday, so I got out of bed as early as possible, waited for the late bus and got to the Chautauqua trailhead at around 9:30 am.

My plan was sort of wait-and-see what the conditions were going to be in the trails, as I was guessing that Boulder would have much more of a dumping than Denver and that turned out right. In the back of my mind, I wanted to bag Bear, South Boulder and Green Mountain again, but didn't know if I had enough time to do so. Energy usually isn't a problem.

To make things a little more in my favor, I decided to go for Green first, to get an easy summit, right away, before the long walk to Bear Peak. If Green is a good, it would give me time to break any trail needed for Bear and if Bear is summitted, South Boulder is so very close, so hell, why not? The only other question mark in the air is how to get down from South Boulder. The Shadow Canyon Trail would not be fun to break, as it's steep and with failing light could be a fairly long, slow slog all the way back to Chautauqua. So whatever, not like I had anything else planned for the day.

Green was easy enough, ton of people at Chautauqua, wearing snow shoes where snowshoes are not required. Toys. I brought mine along, not knowing if trails would be trenched yet. Green was an easy hike and took maybe 2 hours in soft snow. It didn't take long to almost immediately strip down to nothing but a polypro top and bottom + running pants and enormous gaitors. Passed a snowboarded on the trail that remarked that there was too much powder. You meet strange people on trails. Take myself, for example.

Up Green and down the West side - now wearing snowshoes, a little concerned that this area was closed for the annual raptor breeding. Ranger wasn't trenched out at all, so I sort of, well, lost the trail immediately and just made my own damn way down. Quite pretty. Got diverted into following a creek and was worried I was going to get my feet drenched if I stepped in the wrong place. It was getting pretty obvious that not having waterproof pants on was drenching my feet anyways. The gaitors seemingly not being able to affect the moisture coming down from the pants, itself.

Green's West side, with Bear and South Boulder Peaks in the background.

But fun in tons of snow going down gets a little frustrating when the terrain levels and I found myself at the bottom of Bear Canyon, after bushwhacking my own path down. The question now was - do I go North, or South to make it to the intersection of Bear Peak West Ridge Trail? I took a few steps North, but going was-a-slow and it seemed peculiar that I'd be the first to break trail on something pretty accessible, so I hit it South and was greeted with the intersection sign up to West Ridge. Word.

And happily, it looked like just one other person took the initiative, so my luck panned out that I had a trail, however wrong or correct, to follow. The trench-digger did a damn good job, up until the steep approach to Bear Peak and it sort of went all-ta-hell. Well, maybe just not my style, I didn't have to follow it, or anything. Nice work taking the long way to Bear though, unknown trench-hero!

Getting to the top at around 3:00pm and with a small crowd at the summit, I began the process of taking off most of my clothes in waves, to get as much wet stuff off and put more dry stuff on. Thankfully, I brought a change of almost everything - including socks. I'm pretty sure I got one younger dude a little huffy at my apparent lack of summit manners. And I mean it was a funny sight with them dressed in all sorts of technical gear to the nines and me trying to get a polyester top with a screen print of, "PUT THE FUN BETWEEN YOUR LEGS" over some triathlon logo to play nice with a 15 year old Helly Hanson (stinky!) poly pro top. And then, the boots and socks come off.

My boots. Damn wet enough that water pooled at the bottom and trickled down, if I tipped the boot. My double pair of socks were wrung out as best as possible and this made things a bit more comfortable, as hiking in them for the past few hours was a practice of enjoying the sloshing feeling. Thought about changing socks as well, but decided to use this instead for insurance later that day. Amazing, no blisters. Amazing feet, I say.

Chatting with one of the people on top, the inevitable happened, as he asked where I had come from.

"Uh, well started at 9:30am and came up from on top of Green!"

"Ooooooh, you're one of THOSE ultra people"

I decidedly (really!) am not and explained it was my Beard: the Beard wants what the Beard wants and I am helpless to do anything, except follow what its desires. He seemed to understand Beard logic.

Taking time to put things into perspective, it seemed not a bad gamble to try for at least the saddle between Bear and South Boulder, as the going is relatively easy, even if the trail isn't broken. If it is, I could think about gaining South Boulder and if Shadow isn't broken, I can just retreat back to Bear and go down Fern Canyon. Not exactly what I wanted, but not a bad consolation.

Easy going to the saddle and to my delight, Shadow was trenched and a nice path trenched to South Boulder,

Which ended inexplicably, not too far afterwards.

A little confused as why someone would stop trying for the peak, so close to it, I started to carry on, until I realized how hard the going was a gettin'.

And then, I just kept going. It was slow going - the snow was up to the tops of my poles, but it was safe going: Retreat just meant retracing my steps in an already-trenched trail, so what the hell. And you know, the allure of being the only one up on South Boulder, on a Saturday sounded good to me.

Happily, I got out of the snow drifts of the trees and into the rock garden near the summit and traded mounds of snow for hidden leg breaking rock crevaces, which I navigated just fine. Now around 5:00pm, my near sunset views were subdued by angry-looking clouds from the west, but the view was nice enough, regardless.

And I was a little more subdued after six more hours of breaking trails

Nothing comes for free and by this time, the light was failing and I had a long way to walk to repay safe passage to the three peaks. 6 or 7 miles back to Chautauqua, in the dark, in the snow? Had a fine time of it, jumped on the bike and rolled down Baseline to the first restaurant I found, which happened to be a Taco Bell. Grabbed a noisy bus back to Denver and home.

About 11 1/2 hours of fairly brisk walking. It's amazing that the Fastest Known Time is more around two hours, thirty minutes and that includes a few extra miles to the lower peaks of Flagstaff and Sanitas. It took three hours, thirty minutes less last time I did this same walk, with half the snow on the ground. I'm am unapologetically not a runner, but it's fairly humbling to think of how much time it takes to do something, while thinking your keeping a brisk pace.

Pano from the top - here's it is, much larger.

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February 2012 Archives

A Bike Up Mount Morrison

Weeks of 2/12 - 2/18 + 2/5 - 2/11

1/29 - 2/4 Week Summary

Sobo/Green/Bear Counter Clockwise

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