Brian Abraham

Merry Xmas...

2009-12-24T11:06:00.002-06:00

Does anyone even read this anymore? Who knows, just thought I'd post a quick message to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Heather continues to post pictures of lil Annabelle growing up on her blog (which is why there are no pics in this update...she steals all the good ones). :)
That year went by really quickly, it's crazy to see how grown up our girl is now. She's the cutest, funniest, happiest little thing in the world, and we love her to pieces.
Not much else going on, just work and livin.
Hockey is going well, I'm having a really good season stats-wise...so much so that I was traded from the first place team to the last place team in the league because our team was too dominant (undefeated). Hopefully we can move up in the standings now.
In bike-related news, I mentioned in my last blog update that I was going to be on a new team for next season. The new team is the Fisher Midwest Regional Road Team. It's comprised of about half Trek employees. The newly formed blog for the team can be found HERE. We'll be riding this bike and the blog has pics of our kit (which will be modified slightly with sponsor info). Should be exciting! :)

Talk to you all later, and Happy Holidays.

Holy Bloggie, Batman!

2009-10-31T11:28:00.009-06:00

Yes, yes, long time since my last post. I have no excuse. I've been doing Facebook more now...easier to update, quicker to upload pics, and takes less time. There, that's my excuse. :)

Lots has happened since my last post. Annabelle is getting bigger and more human like...Heather has been doing a great job on her blog with Annie updates. She's pretty darn cute and fun. I've been doing some bike racing, adult hockey league started last week, we did the Vermont trip, etc, etc. All good times. Here are some pics from VT.

The pool table in the ghetto basement of our 2nd B&B.

Heather risking limb to pet a horse.

Pic with a waterfall.More waterfall fun.

Trent, Jeff, and I acting tough (really just staying warm).

Tonia and I cresting a climb.

We toured the B&J's factory.

Tonia ready for another day of cycling.

Vermont countryside is similar to WI, just with mountains.

All of the buildings at this college were yellow.

There are more pictures from our trip posted here. The password is madone. It is all the pics taken by our tour guides...11 pages worth.

Halloween time. Annabelle's 1st Halloween, and she was excited. She picked out a ladybug costume.

That's about it for now. Maybe I'll post again in a month or so. :)
Some sad/good news...I may be departing Team Brown Bear for next season. There is a new regional team forming next year that I was asked to be on...I'll post more details as those come about.

Start them young...

2009-09-13T17:56:00.004-06:00

With hockey season right around the corner, I figured it was time to outfit Annie with the right equipment. So I bought her a little Sioux jersey so she has something to wear while we watch UND games this winter.
It's way too big for her right now...we have to roll the sleeves about halfway up, so she'll probably be wearing it until she's 5 years old.
She's officially mobile now, crawling all over the place. I think she digs the independence...she can go where she wants and investigate whatever she wants. It's kind of scary at the same time though...she can now get into mischief. :)
Fall is approaching fast, but the weather has been glorious for the last couple weeks here. Perfect days. We're getting excited...our big trip to Vermont is coming up soon, and then cross racing and adult hockey season starts the weekend that we get back. Fun times!

Try, Try Again

2009-08-05T17:46:00.004-06:00

Tomorrow, August 6th, is a big day here. It combines Heather's birthday along with Annabelle turning 8 months old. Good times.

To celebrate her upcoming 8th month, Annie decided that she wanted to pull herself up in her crib.

Her first effort "fell" a little short:

But, like the little trooper she is, she tried again. And her 2nd attempt was much better:

Nice job Binky. Her first two teeth are coming in nicely...right on the bottom front. She'll be eating meatballs with mashed potatoes and gravy in no time.

On the new job front - it sounds like I have a good chance at getting the job...as long as the budget gets approved. With our dealer show, Trek World, being next week, I probably won't hear back until after that.

Busy, busy...

2009-07-26T16:52:00.004-06:00

Another busy month, and I just kind of forget about the blog. Oops.
It seems that we've been driving all over the place lately. This weekend it was nice to just sit at home and relax.

A few races since my last post. I did a crit in Waukesha...my first crit in over 2 years. The last few corners were pretty sketchy, so I just rolled it in with the main pack. Then I did a road race in Whitewater. Felt really good, I was in the leading group of 13 riders with a half mile to go in the race when two riders right in front of me tangled bars and went down. I ran right over them and hit the pavement. Luckily my bike escaped relatively unharmed...the wheels trued back up, just a couple small scratches on the frame, few marks on the shifter...some new hbar tape and it was rolling again. I had some good road rash on my arm, hip, and palms though.

The next weekend Annabelle and I headed to ND to visit the grandparents and do the Prairie Rose road and mtb races.
Here she is at one of the pit stops, enjoying herself.
The road race was on Saturday. Once again, I was feeling really good and was in the leading group of 7 riders on the last lap of the 50 mile race. About a mile past the start/finish line, my rear tire flatted. Crap. My sealant didn't work, so I had to walk it back a mile. Turned out I had a nice chunk of glass in my rear tire.
The mtb race was on Sunday, and that went better. Vino, Greg, and Sears were there, so it was good seeing them. Jay Richards, a semi-pro from MN, was also there. He and I got away on the first lap and rode the rest of the 6 laps together, taking turns pulling through the horse trails. Some new sections of singletrack out at Turtle River...great loop. He got me on the uphill paved sprint finish, so I got 2nd place overall. Jay's take on the race can be found here.

Annabelle and I arrived home on Monday, and then on Wednesday we were on the road again to our annual lake retreat with the Josef parents, this time near Phillips, WI. That was a nice, relaxing time. It was pretty cold for July...didn't go swimming or anything, but I managed to read some books, do some puzzles, play some board games, and watch the Tour.

This past Tuesday after work we headed back to ND. RIP Jack. Our thoughts are with the entire Leedahl family.

Random notes...I may be getting a new job at Trek. I have a 2nd interview on Monday morning, so I'll keep you informed of what happens with that. Also, a group of players from my league hockey team signed up for the 2010 Pond Hockey Champs in Eagle River, WI in February. That should be a really fun time. And that's all for now.

Catching up...

2009-06-12T23:17:00.011-06:00

Back at it again. Let's get it started...the last few months in pictures:

Auntie Alane visited us for a weekend. We went for a nice bike ride.

Then Tonia, Dad, and Danette all visited over Memorial Day weekend.
Tonia said the cows smelled just like Trent.

Annabelle loves swinging at the park.

Sometimes I want to partake in the fun as well.

This week we started Annabelle on some "solid" foods. She liked that.

Within two days, she already figured out how to work the spoon. Now I just put the food on the spoon and hand it to her. She takes care of the rest.

I got a new bike as well. It's fast and light.

Last weekend was the WI State Champ road race. I got 5th overall and 2nd for WI riders...I missed being the state champ by about 2 inches. So close...so that's both cool and annoying at the same time. The winner soloed for the last two laps and second place was none other than Robbie Ventura (ex-pro rider for USPS and ex-coach for Floyd Landis)...he wore a helmet cam and taped the whole race. There was a hill about 200 ft before the finish line and another rider attacked on that...only me and one other rider went with him. Here's the sprint developing, a little closer, closer still, and then me being disgusted that I lost the sprint. The first three places were all IL riders, so if I would have beaten that one dude at the end, I would have been state champ. Such is life sometimes... :)

Fun stuff coming up...first mtb race of the season for me next weekend. Road race on July 4th weekend. Then July 11-12 I am planning on heading back to GF to visit and to race the Prairie Rose road/mtb races. Annabelle has been all over the US with her mom (Michigan, Maryland, and soon Kentucky), so it's about time that her and I went roadtriping together.

Over and out.

First and Last

2009-05-04T19:13:00.002-06:00

Long time no post. My apologies. Not too much new going on.
Annie's getting bigger, and becoming much more alert. Her new favorite game is now "Is Daddy Looking At Me?" when she's sitting in her chair at the table. She'll hide behind her toy, move to the side to see if I'm watching her, and then laugh and smile before quickly looking away. Then she does it again. Pretty darn cute.

Outdoor naked time.

Wearing her summer tank top.

On Saturday was my first race of the season, a road race near Baraboo. We did 3 laps of a 15mile course with two decent climbs on it. I felt crappy on the first lap and didn't make the lead group of around 15 riders that got away on the big climb. I got in a chase group of around 6 riders and we stayed pretty close to the leaders for the rest of the 1st and 2nd laps. We kept picking up riders that had gotten dropped by the leaders, and with only a few miles to go our group had around 15 people in it, with the leading group having 9. We brought the gap down to around a minute, but never got closer. In the last mile, a team from Chicago that had three riders in the group started to do a leadout for one of their guys. They were all lined up on the left waiting to start their sprint, but as we got closer to the line I decided to take off on the right. I took the field sprint by about a wheel length and got 10th place. Not too shabby for my first race of the season. After I got past the first lap, I felt good.

On Sunday was the last league hockey game of the season. Team Blue had a pretty bad playoff run...only winning one of the 5 playoff games. We were playing Team Red in the 5th place game, and we ended up losing 4-3 in the shootout. I've played three seasons now, and so far my team has ended up like this in the playoffs: Lost the Champ game (2 years ago), Lost the 3rd place game (last year), Lost the 5th place game (this year). I think that streak means that we'll win the Champ game next season. Either way, I still had a blast playing and will do it again next year.

We are getting a visit from Aunt Alane this upcoming weekend. Having some fun in the yard and hanging out is on the agenda. The weekend after that I am hoping to do a race double weekend...road race on Saturday, mtb race on Sunday. We'll see.

New Things.

2009-04-12T16:33:00.005-06:00

Fun new things at the Abraham household. We got our Burley on Friday and took Annie on her first bike ride on Easter Sunday. It was really nice out, so we rode the 10mile loop around town.

Getting loaded up!

Heading out.
On the bike path.

She was comfy.

She did really well...didn't make a sound for the entire ride, just alternated between sleeping and looking out the windows.

I also got the receiver hitch installed on the Subie a few weeks ago:

No more Yakima rack! I got the Saris Thelma 2 rear mount rack, so that should work well.

The Eddy got some changes this past winter as well. New wheels and a new group:

Got the carbon Aeolus 5.0 wheels with the new Shimano 7900 group. Nice! The 7900 brakes are amazing...might take me a few rides to get used to the new lever shape on the shifters though.

In other news...my first race of the season will probably be sometime in the next three weeks. I haven't decided on the exact race yet though. Still have 3 more weeks of hockey, that's always a fun time. Heather's parents are visiting us this upcoming weekend, and then maybe Brandon and Gillian the following weekend.

Talk to you all later! :)

Taxes...

2009-04-04T21:55:00.002-06:00

We did our taxes this week. Another benefit of having a kid = increased refund. I like it. We are going to buy a Burley and a shed. And then we are flying to Vegas and putting the rest down on RED. We'll be set after that.

Speaking of lil Annabelle, she turns four months old on Monday. Even at that young age, she has already figured out what she wants to be when she gets older...
That's right, she wants to be Elton John.

Updates...

2009-03-18T20:11:00.004-06:00

I've determined that Heather is a much better blogger than me. You should probably visit her blog if you want to see better pictures and read a better tale. :)

Things are going well here. We are entering spring here in Madison, and I am loving it. Not that it was a particularly bad winter, I was just ready to start being outdoors again. All of our snow is gone, and we even had a 70 degree day here this week. With the warmer weather arriving, that means that the lunch rides at work have started in earnest, so I can get myself in shape for the upcoming race season. The Eddy road bike is getting some updates this year...I'll post some pics once I complete that.

Annie B is doing awesome. She's super cute and loves to smile. I'm ordering up the Burley next week, so soon we will be able to go on rides around town with her as a passenger.

Tomorrow I take off for the Cities for the Final Five hockey tourney. Heather and Annabelle are driving up on Fri for the day to visit with Auntie Alane, Dick, Dad, and Danette. Should be a good time!

I'm getting a receiver hitch installed on the Subaru next week. I just got a Saris Thelma bike rack...I'm done with Yakima racks. No more taking off wheels, hoisting it on top, bugs, bad gas mileage, etc. Should be much better.

Talk to you all later... :)

A Break...

2009-03-01T15:29:00.004-06:00

Been awhile since my last bloggie post. Not too much has happened since my last update...we had a visit from my mom from Arizona, Heather's mom stayed with us last week, and that's about it. Here are some pictures.

Closeup!

(Almost) naked baby!
All bundled up.

With mom on the Capitol Square.

Heather and Annabelle with the Capitol.

London Trip

2009-02-05T21:44:00.001-06:00

Hello all. Made it back from London yesterday. The flights there and back were both fine, pretty empty planes so I sat by myself and watched movies/played video games/read. The training for the European Trek employees went well...it sounds like they will be launching P1 over there in a couple weeks now.

While we were there, London had it's worst snowfall in 18 years, which shutdown the airports, buses, subways, etc. It was humorous, as it didn't seem like more than 1-2 inches fell in most parts of the city. Here are a bunch of crappy pictures:

The "epic" snowfall.

The Trek UK office.
A naked rugby player advertisement.

London Bridge being guarded by a battleship.

St. Paul's Cathedral.

The road crossing into Buckingham.

Phallic monument of Winston Churchill.

Some sort of massive building.

Far away shot of Big Ben.

A castle equipped with a ferris wheel.

Park/river/island.

Front of Buckingham Palace.

And that's it.

Then I came back home because I missed Heathrow and little Annie B. Sounds like Heather will be doing a 2-month old Annie tribute blog post tomorrow, so be sure to check that out.

Also, the weather is warming up here in WI (30's and 40's), which means one thing: Lunch rides at work are starting. :)

Ramblings

2009-01-16T00:45:00.003-06:00

Life continues on here in the Abraham household. Little Annie B is now almost 6 weeks old...crazy! She's starting to sleep pretty well at night, only getting up once or twice. I'm sure Heather appreciates that. :)
Lots of fun stuff coming up soon. Next weekend we might be getting a visit from the Abraham grandparents, the following weekend I will be in London for 3 days training the Euro Trek people all about Project One, two weeks later Mom will be visiting from AZ, the weekend after that Heather is flying home to MI, etc. Before you know it, summer will be here. Which would be welcome right now with the temps we are currently experiencing...

Another New Arrival

2008-12-23T19:17:00.005-06:00

It hardly seems like it's already been two weeks since lil Annie B came into our lives. She's doing great...starting to sleep a bit longer in between feedings, which I'm sure Heather appreciates. We've had plenty of visitors already...a couple sets of grandparents, Auntie Alane, and of course Auntie Tonia. Heather posted some new pics up on her blog.

I got a new toy as well last week. They're projecting another record year of snowfall here in WI, and I was getting really sick of shoveling. So after our first big snowstorm, I went and bought myself a new snowblower.

It's pretty small compared to the old Ariens that I remember growing up with at home, but I am impressed with its throwing power. It has a really good power-to-weight ratio, and it greatly reduces my driveway clearing time. :)

I hope everyone has a great Xmas!

Welcome!

2008-12-12T17:03:00.007-06:00

Welcome to little Annabelle Sage Abraham! She was born on Saturday. Heather updated her blog with pics as well. :)

Auntie Tonia was in town as well...it was nice having her around the house as we got used to Annabelle living with us. Plus, she helped us finish up the baby's room. :)

Visits

2008-12-06T11:10:00.006-06:00

Our visit to MI last weekend was fun. Had a big Tday meal at the Josef family farm and got lots of goodies at the baby shower. We even had some nice snow coming back home...it wasn't nearly as bad as last year though, just some delays going through Chicago.

This past week has been busy at work and home. The house is starting to come together...continuing the prep work for LBA (little baby Abraham). We brought in reinforcements for this week, as Tonia is paying us a visit from AZ. I picked her up at the airport yesterday, and she is here until next Friday. We already put her to work. :)

Here are some pics that Auntie Alane took a few weeks ago while she was here:

Pass it to me, I'm open!

A three picture sequence...

Take a look at this kid...he's sick! Parts 1 and 2 are on there too.

Birthing Class and Swollen Doggie

2008-11-24T22:34:00.001-06:00

We had a fun, short visit with Auntie Alane last weekend. She helped us put plastic on our windows and came to watch my hockey game. During the week Heather and I worked on the baby room. Finally finished moving the office downstairs into the sunroom.

On Saturday we went to an all-day birthing class at the hospital. It was very informative and nice to work on all the breathing techniques, etc. It was crazy, but we were easily the oldest couple in there...it looked like half of them were still in HS. Insane.

On Sunday I skipped the last cross race of the season. I had been neglecting my riding since it got cold, and I wasn't in the mood to bust out the bike again. So I called it a season. I see that I still finished up 3rd in the Cat 3 standings despite missing the last two races though, so that's pretty cool. :)

We are going to the Josef house in MI for a combo T-Day celebration and baby shower this weekend. Should be fun, we just have to hope for nice driving weather on the way there and back...unlike last year!

We had a bit of a scare from Vontoux tonight. This morning he had to get his distemper shot since we are kenneling Willa and Vontoux during our trip to MI. He was fine all day, but around 9pm he started vomiting and his face started swelling up. His right eyelid was so swollen he could barely see, and his lips were all huge and hard. Vet-tech Heather gave him some Benadryl and iced his face down. He appears to be doing better now, so hopefully he's back to normal in the morning.

I'll leave you with a picture of cute pregnant Heather, 8 months along.
Hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving!

Skipping Things

2008-11-15T12:16:00.000-06:00

Hello everyone. So I skipped work on Friday (vacation) and got some stuff done. The Suby got some love...oil change, tire rotation, and car wash. Work is almost complete on the guest bedroom, and then we can get that baby room ready to roll. I also skipped the cross race today. We had a late night last night...went to the new Bond movie with two of my co-workers, Bruce and Dave, and their significant others. So I just did stuff around the house instead. Auntie Alane is paying us a visit this weekend, so that will be most fun. She also said that she's coming to my hockey game tomorrow night! :) Here are some pics from last weekend's trip to the Dells:

Vontoux loves his new fox stretch toy.

But then he gets sad when we take it away.

We got a bit of snow while we were there, but it melted soon after.

This bridge is not safe for women or children.

Strange tourist attractions in the Dells...like an upside down White House.

Our cabin came equipped with an Atari game console. Yes, we played it.

Willa doing what she does best.

Heather with her three kids.

When we got back, I assembled a new desk for our sunroom. Vontoux and Willa are helping nicely.

Bad race / good race

2008-11-06T22:04:00.005-06:00

Another double cross weekend come and gone. And just like last time, I had one bad race and one good one. Saturday's race was at Kletsch Park in Milwaukee. I had hoped to do well here (it was my best race last year), but I didn't feel all that good right from the start. The big hill run-up kicked my butt each lap, and I ended up finishing in 11th place.

On Sunday it was back to Milwaukee for the race at Estabrook Park. I like this course with its mix of singletrack, long road sections to hammer/recover, and lots of switchbacks in the trees. I got a good start and settled into about 5th wheel for the first lap. Tim took off in that first lap and Dave gave chase (bunny-hopping the barrier for style points). I was in a group with Kevin and another rider for pretty much the rest of the race battling for 3rd. I think the long pavement sections took their toll on Kevin (on his singlespeed) and he dropped off with a few laps to go. I put in a big effort on the last lap and ended up crossing the line by myself for 3rd place.

I now sit in 3rd place in the standings with only two races remaining...7 points behind 2nd and 21 points in front of 4th. Tim in first place has more points than 2nd and 3rd place combined.

Team Blue got hosed on Sunday night. We ended up losing 10-8 to Team Red in a game that we should have won by multiple goals. Our goalie let in 4 goals from behind the blue line!! Pregnant Heather could have stopped those shots. Insane. Oh well, we'll get them next time. No goals for me, but I got two assists.

This weekend Heather and I are taking off for a relaxing weekend at a cabin near the Dells. We did that last year too in November. Should be a good time. It's on a lake, so little Vontoux can swim until he passes out.

Halloween CX and Puck Fun

2008-10-29T20:06:00.003-06:00

Hello all. Another weekend of cyclocross fun, but this time with only one race. This race at Washington Park in Milwaukee was the site of my very first cross race in 2005. Good times. I hitched a ride down there with Brooks, Mary, and one of Mary's co-workers, Kate. It was a bit chilly...not bad though, but super windy. We watched part of the Cat 4 race from the coffin bunnyhop barrier. It was the same as last year, except this year they used lighter fluid and had a fire going on the backside of it...made for a cool effect.

I got a good start and settled in behind 2 other riders for the first half lap. Toward the end of the first lap, Tim attacked from behind and opened up a gap that he continually extended throughout the race to easily take his 4th win a row. Another rider and Dave took off a lap later and also stayed away for the remainder of the race. I rode in 4th place for a bit until Kevin (on his sweet Vanilla Speedvagen) and another rider caught up to me. I rode with them for a couple laps but eventually couldn't hang onto their wheels any longer. I finished the race off in 6th place, with some good blood lung to boot. :)

Not my best result, but it's not really a course that suits me very well, so I'm satisfied with that.

Thanks to djonn for the pics once again. They got the standings updated on the WCA website, and I'm currently sitting in 2nd place! Very cool. Not much of a chance to move up, as Tim has a monster gap on the rest of us, but it should be a good battle for 2nd place with Greg and Dave right behind me.

A few hours after getting back from the cross race, I headed off to the SP Arena for the 1st hockey game of the season. Team Blue is going to be pretty good this year, I have a feeling. We have some solid dmen, and 3 or 4 guys that can put the puck in the net. We cruised over a good Team Gray, beating them 8-4. We had a 7-1 lead after 2 periods, and then let up a bit in the 3rd. I finished the game with 1 goal, 2 assists, and 2 shots that hit the post. I felt pretty good considering I hadn't skated since April. Good times, I'm excited that the season has started up again.

We also started painting the guest bedroom this past weekend. We have to get that finished up so that we can start converting the office into a baby room. Speaking of that, Heather and I went to her latest doctor appt on Monday, and mother/daughter are both doing well. Her little heart is chugging along nicely at 140 bpm. Heather will be completing the guest bedroom painting this week (while wearing her protective paint mask) and I am working on running cable internet to the sunroom so we can hook the computer up in there.

Busy weekend ahead: Two cross races, both in Milwaukee...Saturday at Kletsch Park and Sunday at Estabrook Park. I've done well in the past at both, so hopefully I can get some good results. Then Sunday night is another hockey game.

And I'm out. :)

A Tale of Two Races

2008-10-22T23:43:00.005-06:00

The Josef parents visited us this past weekend. More of a relaxing visit, just hanging out and they also brought us a desk to use in our sunroom.

They came with on Saturday to Badger Prairie Park to watch their first cross race. It was a really nice day out...the sun was shining and it was perfect cross weather. I got a good start and once again got the holeshot into the first corner. I led for the first half lap until a couple riders came around me, and I stayed with them. After the first lap was over I lost contact with the leading trio and started to fall back. I got caught by another group and couldn't stay on their wheels either. I just felt like crap. Riders would catch me and just go right by. I would try to stay with them, but it felt like I had no power left. With three laps to go, I called it a race. I was moving steadily backwards and was already out of the points anyway. I'm not sure what happened, but that might be the worst my legs have felt in a race all season.
On Sunday was the race in Gibbs Lake Park, which is a really cool course. They switched it up a bit from last year (ran it in reverse). I was a bit nervous about how I would feel after the crappy race the day before. Brooks and I drove there in the morning...it was another nice day, a little bit colder though. I didn't get that good of a start, as I slipped my pedal right away. I was still in the top 5-6 riders though through the first set of chicanes. Tim, who has won the last 4 races I think, took off halfway through the first lap and Dave chased after him. I settled into a chase group with 2 other riders. Eventually Dave faded off of Tim's pace, and I put in an effort to bridge up to him. I caught him the next lap and took off on my own in 2nd place, but there was a group of 3 riders maybe 10 sec back from me. I rode by myself for the next 3 laps, trying to catch Tim in front and hold off the group behind me. With one lap to go, Dave and Greg caught up to me and Greg immediately put in an attack. I managed to get on his wheel, but Dave got dropped. We came around the last set of corners and Greg had too much of a gap for me to close down in the sprint, so I ended up 3rd. I think that leaves me in 4th place in the Cat 3 standings right now (they haven't updated yet for this weekend, but I think I passed two riders and got passed by two others...so it ends up the same).

Much happier with the result on Sunday. Weird that your legs can feel so crappy one day and so good the next day. Strange. The Halloween Cross race is this Sunday in Milwaukee. That was my first ever cross race three years ago.

Also on Sunday is the first league hockey game of the season!! I am on Team Blue this year. I can't wait!

Pimpiness

2008-10-15T18:49:00.002-06:00

Two new things: So I guess I am in a bowling league. Trek has an employee bowling league every Wed night at Stubby's in Waterloo, and I am on a team with two of my co-workers. I suck at bowling, but it's a good time for a couple hours after work. Heather's parents are coming to visit us this weekend. I'm not sure what the plans are, but I'm sure we'll all find something fun to do.

Here are some pics of the completed P1 Sioux bike. It is an 09 Trek 6.9 Pro carbon frameset with most of the parts off the Eddy (7800 Dura-Ace) and Sarthe (hbar, pedals, stem). It did get a new (old) Flite, bottle cages, and wheels though. The Sarthe frameset will get sold (no more LeMond's at work anymore!) and the Eddy will be getting shiny new Dura-Ace 7900. Should be getting that shortly.

It rides nice and smooth! You can definitely feel the difference with the carbon soaking up alot of the road vibration, plus it is probably about a half pound lighter than the Eddy. There's absolutely no flex in that massive headtube. I do still think the Eddy has a stiffer BB (even with the 90mm BB width on the Trek), but some of that might be due to the carbon "dead" feeling when compared to the instant power transfer of aluminum. Regardless, the Eddy will still be my race bike, as it just feels fast all the time. The Trek, however, would be my choice if I ever happen to do a Grand Tour...which might happen when all the current pros are caught doping. :)

There are two more cross races this weekend...one in Verona (just out of Madison) and one of my favorite WCA courses at Gibbs Lake outside of Janesville.

Another Cross Double

2008-10-09T17:47:00.007-06:00

Had two more cross races this past weekend. So here is another cross-picture-packed blog post for your enjoyment.

On Saturday it was pleasant and sunny. The course in Cambridge is one of my favorites in the WCA...has a mtb feel to it with some fun singletrack, a couple short climbs, log barriers, and a hill runup. The start took you almost immediately into some singletrack, so I wanted to get a good start. I took off at the whistle and managed to get the holeshot once again. I led a group of about 8 for the first 1/2 lap until a couple other riders came to the front. Two riders broke away on the second lap and stayed away for the rest of the race. I was in a group of 4 riders racing for 3rd. Here we are on the hill runup:

Me hopping a barrier on the backside of the course.

Crossing the start/finish line in my group with one lap to go.

The pace picked up on the last lap, but we all stayed together to contest the sprint. One of the riders exited the last bit of singletrack first, and I wasn't able to come around him on the short finishing straight, so I got 4th place.

It was a bit cooler on Sunday, with rain starting to fall about 20min before my race. Made for a really slick, muddy course with a steady rain falling for the entire race. This course has some long, power sections, a steep hill runup, and some tight corners that were made more fun with the wet course conditions. The start of this race is really wide, and then narrows down significantly about 50 feet later, so a good start was also important here.

I was about fourth rider back after the start, and it wasn't long before we were in a leading group of about 7 riders. Halfway through the first lap, the pace slowed a bit, so I went to the front and sped it up. Only one rider went with me, and we got a gap.
We stayed away together for the first couple laps until he pushed it hard up the hill runup and dropped me. So I rode by myself for another two laps until a group of five caught up to me. One rider attacked and no one responded to stay with him, so now I was in a group racing for 3rd once again. Sound familiar? On the last lap, I attacked right before the hill runup to try to catch them off-guard.
I got caught by one rider, who proceeded to pass me for 3rd, while I held the other riders off for 4th place once again. Can't complain about two 4th place finishes on the weekend...good for points in the standings. Hopefully I can continue to move up as the series progresses.

Thanks to a couple fellow Trek employees Matt and Djonn for the pictures, and also to Matt for this video of the sprint on Saturday:

There aren't any races this weekend, so it will be spent sleeping in a bit, relaxing, and doing some caulking. Good times. I finished building up my Sioux P1 bike...I'll post some pics of that soon. Turned out nice and snazzy. Heather is doing well in her knocked-up state...she is now in her 30th week. Crazy! Won't be long now...we better get that room done. :)

Sun Prairie Cross Weekend

2008-10-03T17:47:00.003-06:00

Last weekend was the start of the cross season, and both races were right in Sun Prairie, which was nice and convenient. They were also UCI races, so lots of Pros traveled from afar to gather some valuable UCI points. Watching the pros tackle the same course (at MUCH higher speeds) was pretty cool.

Saturday's race I got a crappy start...maybe midpack in the 50+ rider field. I used a lot of energy on the first couple laps trying to get back up toward the front. I settled in with a group for the majority of the race until the last couple laps where I got my legs back and moved up a few spots. I ended up 12th on the day, which isn't fabulous, but better than what I'd done the last couple years at the SP course. One of my co-workers, Bruce, was there taking pics with his massive lens:

On Sunday there were plenty of TBB supporters out for the festivities with Heather, Brooks, Mary, Scott, and his wife Kayla out to spectate. They started us on the midget car race track:
I got a much better start than Saturday, got the holeshot and led for the first 3/4 of a lap. A group of five was right on my wheel and on the 2nd lap they went past me and got a gap. I rode with another couple guys for most of the race until we dropped one guy with two laps to go.
On the last two laps, I kept getting caught behind lapped traffic during the technical zig-zag section, and the other rider got a slight gap on me that he held to the line. So I ended up 7th.
A better result than the day before, but I was still hoping for more. I did manage to collect $25 in cash payout. James Lalonde, the younger bro of Marko and Jesse, won both races easily. What a fast family. Jesse works at Trek now, so maybe he can teach me how to be fast on the lunch rides. :)

This weekend there are two more cross races...one on Saturday in Cambridge and the other on Sunday in Delafield. I am planning on going to both. Hopefully I can manage to get into the top 5 for more points.

Also on tap for this weekend is odds and ends projects around the house. Have to finish up with some random stuff before winter hits!

Bday Post

2008-09-26T19:04:00.004-06:00

The week with Tonia just flew by. We got a buttload done around the house though -- she's a good little worker. :) ALL the moulding is up, painted, and finished...doors are painted...oven is clean...door thresholds are down...bathroom vanity is primed...got the colors all picked out for the guest bedroom...exterior doors are caulked and sealed, etc, etc. Like a whole new house. It feels great to have that damn moulding finally put down. Nice work Tonia!! Your help was greatly appreciated.

We also found time to take Tonia's new bike for a few spins, including a nice, longer ride on Thursday. We've all got to get ready for Vermont next year! On Wed night we moved all the living room furniture into the dining room to make way for the new carpet.
The doggies really like it, nice and soft evidently. They approve. Heather will be posting pics on her blog of the house stuff and, of course, her new car. :)

It was sad seeing Tonia go today though. Not sure when we will see her next, with them moving to AZ shortly. I miss her already!! You too, Trent.

This weekend the cyclocross season opens up with two races right here in Sun Prairie. We'll see how I feel...I'm not sure what to expect since they are also UCI races, so people will be coming from all over the place to race (including lots of pros!). I'm just hoping to get the feel of cross back and then hopefully do well in the overall series the rest of the way.

Racing, Bikes, and other Updates

2008-09-20T21:27:00.011-06:00

Hello all. Before I go into my Chequamegon recap, here are some pics from the Warrior of the North race a few weekends ago, courtesy of Rick Mangan.

The start. You can see my head.

Here we come for the finish!
Here's my sprint for the win.

Accepting my trophy. I like the guy with the bibs over his shirt. :D

So anyway, Chequamegon was last weekend, and TBB was out in force. Dave was an excellent Director Sportiff, as he did water bottle handups and put our bikes on the line at 5am. Thanks Dave! It was much warmer than last year, but wet and rainy, which was interesting with the massive puddles covering the trail. Just splash right through them! My legs felt a bit slow at the beginning of the race, but they came around by the last 15 miles or so. I think I started too hard on the paved start, which led to me feeling sluggish. I was able to power over Firetower climb and keep the pace high on the rolling hills in the last 10 miles, and I finished with a new personal best time...by a whopping 1 second! Not bad, considering the wet conditions. I ended up 207th out of the 1700 or so racers.

The rest of TBB: Greg crashed in the first 10 miles and suffered an AC separation, Trent started cramping after 25 miles and ran out of food, and Rick had to ride the last hour of his race in a downpour. Ouch. Heal up quickly, Greg!

Here's the only pic of myself that I could find online. More pictures of me from MarathonFoto can be found here.

Random news: Tonia is visiting for the week and helping out around the house with various projects. Will be fun to have her here for a few days! Heather got a new car today!! The Forester has over 140k miles, and we needed something bigger with a little one coming soon. We pick it up on Thurs, and she'll post pics on her blog shortly after. Cyclocross season starts next Saturday, right here in lovely Sun Prairie. Good times. We are getting new carpeting installed in our living room, also on Thurs. That will look much better.

For those that actually read the entire post, here is a bonus for you. A video that Dave "5 Ears" Sears took of the sprint finish from Warrior of the North. Better slow it down, we go by pretty quickly. :)

WotN RR & New P1 Bike

2008-09-11T17:43:00.006-06:00

I had a good time back in GF visiting everyone. As usual, the time went by quickly and before you know it, I was back in WI at work on Monday.

On Saturday morning, I decided to do the Warrior of the North road race just outside of GF. It's been three years since the last time I was in town to do it, so it was fun doing it again. Saw a bunch of the old gang...Pat, Sears, UND guys, etc. It is a 32mi, out and back course. It started out pretty mellow for the first 5 miles or so until John from Fargo started trying to attack to break it up a bit. Each time it was brought back and everyone regrouped. A couple UND/SBS guys, Andrew and Nathan, were at the front most of the time riding tempo. It wasn't until after the turnaround that more serious attacks were made...usually by Mario from the UND team. He attacked twice and got a gap. Both times I bridged up to him, thinking we might be able to make it stick, but the group would catch back on. The group made the turn for the last 5 miles and the pace slowed down...everyone was just waiting it out for the sprint I guess. With maybe 2 miles to go, Mark Harmon (blast from the past!) threw in an attack that was soon reeled in, but kicked the speed up nicely. The group was starting to break apart as we approached the finish, and I could see Mario and John just up the road trying to get away. I moved around a couple riders and caught on to them just as Mario started his sprint. I got on his wheel for a bit, looked back and saw that John was catching up, so I got around Mario and started to sprint. I ended up holding them both off and taking the win! Fun times. Evidently they are going to post pics of the race, so if I find some, I will post them.

A few weeks ago I mentioned getting another P1 frame painted up. Here are the results:

My very own UND Fighting Sioux bike! The arrow on the top tube is on both sides.

The all hand-painted headtube has both the standard UND logo and the Sioux logo. The headtube alone took 8 hours for the painter to complete.
The painter used a couple different metallic green colors...the bottom of each tube is really dark green, and as you turn the bike over, it gradually fades into a light green. He called it "bass boat metallic" because once the sun hits it, it just sparkles.

Profile shot.

It turned out really well! I'll post some pics after I get it built up as well.

Chequamegon is this weekend. We should have a good-sized TBB crew there with Rick, Greg, Trent, Vino, and myself making the journey to Hayward, WI for the race. Will be fun seeing everyone and riding that 40miles of rolling hills/gravel roads/sandy doubletrack/2500 racers once again.

2 Day Work Weeks

2008-09-03T23:47:00.002-06:00

Labor Day weekend was a busy one here at the Abraham household. The parentals came to visit and help us put in some new doors. Dad and I got three doors installed in 1.5 days...a new pimpy fiberglass front door, storm door for the front, and a new door in our sunroom (from the garage). Should be much better than the old ones that were in there. Now we just have to do the finish work on them, the caulking, painting, moulding, etc. Heather should be posting pics on her blog once all that is accomplished.

What a difference a day makes. Tuesday was the hottest day all summer here in Madison...it hit 94 degrees or something. Then today it was 72 degrees. Tomorrow 64 and rainy. Snow will be here before you know it.

As my title states, I worked Tues & Wed this week, but now I have off Thurs & Fri as I am heading back to ND to visit. Have to get in some Tonia/Trent time before they move down south. Maybe head to Union Lake for some fun there. Saturday is the Warrior of the North road race in Grand Forks, so I'll plan on bringing the road bike and maybe doing that for old-times sake.

Racin'

2008-08-26T10:38:00.007-06:00

Had a fun weekend in Minneapolis this past weekend. With Heather in Chicago with the Johnson family for their annual triathlon fun, we boarded the dogs up at a local kennel, and I took off Friday after work. Got to Brandon and Gillian's house late and looked at their newly finished remodeled kitchen. Looks good!

Saturday morning I made the hour drive to Avon, MN for the MN State Road Championships. The race was supposed to be 68 miles and start at 1:30pm, but there was an hour delay as the other races were still going on, and it turns out the race was actually 74 miles (the longest road race I've ever done). Double ouch. So I hung around for an hour in my lycra and waited. The course was pretty fun...an 18 mile loop on smooth roads with a couple decent climbs and descents. The race ended on a curvy 1km long climb. There were around 40-50 riders in the field, so I just wanted to stay out of the wind and conserve energy. On the first lap, 3 riders got away and the field let them escape. The pace for the first couple laps was consistent and not too fast. The last two laps people would try to attack, but the field would ramp up the speed a bit to bring them back each time. By the time the last lap started, we were told that the 3 leaders had over a 3min lead on us, so we knew that we were racing for 4th place. My legs still felt very good, which surprised me because of the distance. As we approached the final climb, the pace picked up, and I moved closer to the front to avoid the mayhem. When the climb started, one rider started to pull away, so I got on his wheel. We rode for about half the climb, when I looked back and saw that only one rider was with us...the rest of the pack was way off the back. The rider behind me attacked as we got close to the finish line, but me and the other guy both caught up to him and started our sprints. He nipped me at the line, so I got 2nd in the field sprint and 5th overall in the Cat 3 race, by far my best finish since I upgraded. Sweet. I was encouraged with how strong my legs felt. I wish we wouldn't have let the 3 riders get away...I could have been sprinting for the win instead. ;)

That night B&G broke in their new kitchen by preparing a glorious meal of a hunk of meat, grilled potatoes/carrots, and some corn. We then watched some Olympic action.

Sunday morning I took off for the WORS mtb race just across the MN/WI border in River Falls, WI. It was a 5 mile course...not much climbing and a few sections of really rutted doubletrack, but some fun singletrack and wooden bridges. We had to do 4 laps. I wasn't sure how I would feel after the long race the day before, but the first two laps went pretty well. I felt ok, despite not having a very good start after getting caught behind a bunch of riders on the opening climb. At the beginning of the 3rd lap, I could feel my legs start to fade. They didn't cramp or anything, just lost power. So I just went normal pace for the final two laps and didn't try to kill myself. I ended up in 6th place age group, about 4min behind the winner. Not bad, considering.

It's a bird, it's a plane...no, it's a flying Brown Bear!

I took off for home after the race, and enjoyed some Taco John's along the way. I got home and zonked out. Weekend of racing over. Thanks to B&G for letting me crash at their place and for feeding me.

This weekend we are getting a visit from the Abraham parents. They are dropping off a crib, and I believe we have plans for putting some new doors (front entry with screen door and garage entry) in. Should be a good time!

Travel plans

2008-08-21T09:33:00.002-06:00

Well, we made it through Trek World ok. Lots of hours, but thankfully they let preggers Heather out a bit early each night so she wasn't completely worn out. My typical day looked like this: head to Monona Terrace at 9am, work until midnight. Go home. Sleep for a few hours. Repeat. I did that Tuesday-Saturday, then on Sunday I worked 8am-4pm. Didn't help that I went out after work with co-workers a couple nights too. Makes for a really long week, but it's still a good time seeing all the new products and meeting the dealers.

Another fun thing from the show was that we booked our next Trek Travel trip! We have wanted to do that again ever since our France honeymoon trip, and when we heard that they were offering the big discount trips again, we jumped at the chance. So next September Heather and I will be traveling along with Tonia and Trent to lovely Vermont!
Here are the trip page details. Fall colors, riding over Appalachian Gap and the Green Mountains, Ben & Jerry's ice cream, bed and breakfast inns, and maple syrup. I can't wait!

If you didn't notice, Heather posted on her blog about the ultrasound results. Seems that we have a little girl on the way. :)
If anyone has any advice as to gun/weaponry choices for keeping teenage boys away from daughters, please let me know.

This weekend I am heading to the Cities to do a couple races. The MN State road race is on Sat, and then there is a WORS mtb race on Sun on the drive home. Should be fun.

Speaking of bikes...I got another painted frame done by P1, this one a "custom job" though. It turned out awesome. I'll post pics soon. :)

Happenings

2008-08-06T21:44:00.007-06:00

Just catching up on some past weekends here.

Two weekends ago, Tonia and Trent came to visit. We had a good time...just hung out for the most part. They both brought their bikes, so we went on some rides around town. Trent has a dream of owning a motorcycle with a sidecar one day, so he wanted to get the feel of it on my new motorbicycle (sans sidecar).

Me giving him a tutorial.

He's a quick learner...look at him go!
Taking meine schwester for a little spin around the court.

Last weekend was 24/9 in Wausau, WI. I met fellow TBB members Dave, Greg, and Rick there and we setup camp on Friday evening. Dave and Rick were doing the Solo race, while Greg and I teamed up to try our hand in the Duo category.

The campsite.

Right before the LeMans start.

Here come the runners!

That's all the pictures I have. The rest of the time I was too busy racing, talking, or sleeping. :)

It was a good time, the course was really fast and dry. And VERY dusty. Greg and I pretty much took it easy. Nice breaks in between laps so as not to kill ourselves, but we had some fast laps and only two mechanicals (flat tire for Greg on his first lap and a blown primary light bulb for me on one of my night laps). Fun race. We ended up 8th in the Duo category, with Dave and Rick finishing 28th and 32nd in the Solo category.

Today was Heather's bday. Once she got off work we went out to eat and then celebrated with a DQ Blizzard cake at home. Good times. On Friday we go in for the big ultrasound to determine the sex of the baby! Exciting! She'll probably update her blog with more details on that...

Next week is the craziness that is the Trek World dealer show. On Sunday I hope to do a WORS race about 1.5 hr from here depending on what we have to do for TW. But next week is both fun and crappy at the same time. It's like working two work weeks in one (and then being right back at work the following Monday), but it's cool seeing all the new product, eating free food, and meeting some of the dealers. Tired times await...

Bike Porn

2008-07-22T20:58:00.009-06:00

The last couple months I have been helping out the Project One department at work...mainly just customer service and placing orders. For those that don't know, Project One is Trek's custom painting program, where customers can select whatever paint scheme and crazy colors they want their bike to be.

They recently came out with some new paint schemes, and I was informed that they needed "sample" frames to test these new schemes on. So I graciously gave them one of mine to play around with. Here are the results.

XO-1 frame before (matte black)

XO-1 frame after (Cool Fire)

The pictures just don't do it justice. It's amazing in person. The crazy thing is that nothing on P1 paintjobs are decals or stickers ... everything is hand-painted. Those guys are super talented.

In other news, Tonia and Trent are paying us a visit this weekend. Should be good times, as usual. They take off Sunday morning, and then I am heading over to Franklin (just an hour away) for a WORS mtb race.

What should Dad do in his retirement?

2008-07-15T00:20:00.004-06:00

My dad recently retired after working 30+ (or was it 35+??) years at American Crystal Sugar in EGF. Now he is trying to decide what to do with his time. I thought I would setup a handy poll so that we could help him out with his decision. So cast your vote below.

Enjoy your retirement Dad!

View Poll View Results
Polls PoweredBy MicroPoll

All Hail the Return to Racing

2008-07-01T23:08:00.004-06:00

Hello everyone. Heather and I had a pretty relaxing weekend...got all the trim work done in the sunroom and dining room. Looks good. My finish nailer rules, speeds up the process nicely! Maybe Heather will update her blog with pics of that, and some more info about this whole baby thing. :)

On Saturday I went for a road ride and got caught in a crazy windy hailstorm. It sucked (and hurt). When I got home Heather took pics of my arms and legs...the hail made my skin look like I got stung by a bunch of bees or something. Not a pleasant experience.

Vontoux had some weird rash thing on his skin, so Heather put some stuff on it to help. But he would keep trying to lick it off, so she put one of my old t-shirts on him to prevent that. He looks pretty stylish in his classic Rock Shox shirt!

This weekend Eric, Katie, and Hayden are paying us a visit in WI. We have some fun stuff planned, and we are going to work on fixing up our basement stairs. I am also planning on heading over to Whitewater for a road race on Saturday. It feels like its been forever since I raced last...

My New Baby!

2008-06-25T22:39:00.005-06:00

I didn't do the WORS race last Sunday. I didn't feel like going, plus I was busy playing with my new toy:

That's right, I am now the proud owner of a 08 Honda Nighthawk. :)
I got it for commuting to work due to the 75mpg that it averages. And for fun, of course. It's just a little 250cc bike, so I won't ever take it on the interstate or anything, but it will be perfect for commuting and local errands.

This is what I do at all the stop lights.

I did my 20 mile TT loop for the first time this year a couple days ago. I shaved 2min 3sec off my previous PR! That's insane.

Speaking of babies, Heather is pregnant.

Lake Fun

2008-06-18T19:32:00.004-06:00

We made it back from North Dakota in one piece, despite lengthy detours around I-94 in WI due to the flooding. The interstate was closed for over 40 miles right out of Madison, so on the journey to ND on Friday we had to take a bunch of backroads before getting on I-90 through Rochester and then up to the Cities. It added about 2 hours to our already long trip. On the way back, the interstate was finally open again (even though the signs kept saying that it was closed...good thing we actually kept driving to find out the truth).

On Friday night we hung out with T&T (and Jordan & Mario) before embarking on the Garmin-led drive to Union Lake early Saturday morning. It was a nice day at the lake...we took a leisurely loop around the lake on dad's new pontoon, played some ladder golf, and had a delicious feast of steaks, burgers, and pasta. We took off for home on Sunday (with a quick stop in the Cities to visit A&D). It was a fun trip, but like always, felt much too short. I need to take a month off from work or something...I wonder if they would mind? :)

Enjoying myself on the lake.

Check out these happy campers! :D
Tonia and I both fit in the "changing room".

Trent, on the other hand, looks more suspicious...and naked.

This weekend I am planning on racing another WORS race in Suamico...it's a marathon mtb race, so it will be 36 miles or something like that. Hopefully it's dried up from all the recent rain and hopefully I don't bonk because of the race distance.

Return from (that) Dam Lake

2008-06-11T22:50:00.007-06:00

We had a relaxing trip to Dam Lake in northern WI with Heather's parents. The weather didn't cooperate as well as last year, with rain and wind, but the sun crept out occasionally each day. We didn't get to swim at all due to the weather, but I got a healthy amount of reading done and collected many ticks, so it was enjoyable.

I didn't do the State RR on Sunday. We didn't get home until past 3pm, so it wasn't meant to be. It was probably better anyway, because when we returned home it was super windy and pouring rain. Evidently they had to shorten all the races...plus racing in that monsoon would not have been fun.

The plus side of the buttload of rain that we got is that a bunch of roads got closed due to flooding, and we got some water in our basement. Fun fun. Nothing that the Shop Vac couldn't handle though. :) The slanted wall in our basement (for those that have seen it) pooled with water, and got all wet and gross. So I tore it out. No more wall!

We took a tour of a dam near our cabin.

Vontoux has a unique way of fishing.
He's going to hit that dock if he doesn't open his eyes!

Vontoux loves the water more than anything.

Holy crap! Carl the Apple Tree has mini apples!!

This weekend is another mini vacation for Heather and I, as we head back to ND to visit family. Good times. The plan is to drive to Fargo and stay with T&T on Friday night, drive to the lake cabin on Saturday to play with D&D, then stop in and visit A&D on our way thru Minneapolis on Sunday. Just a whirlwind vacation.

I will miss another race this weekend, as we will be gone for the WORS race on Sunday. No worries though, as the racing really picks up in July and August.

WORS #3 and Vacation

2008-06-03T16:48:00.008-06:00

Greetings all. This past weekend Heather and I did some yard work on Saturday...got some wood chips from the recycling center for the backyard. Then on Sunday we took off for Wausau with Willa (her first mtb race!) to do WORS #3.

That's alot of Comp and Expert riders at the start! (shown with night vision for "snow" effect)

Waiting for the race to start.

We had to do 3 laps of a 8 mile loop. Some good doubletrack, fast sections, but also lots of tight, rocky singletrack that caused many racers to flat. I had a decent start and sat near the front of my age group wave entering the first few fireroad climbs. The high pace started to take a toll and I eased off a bit. I just didn't feel as good as usual...my legs would start to feel good for a few minutes, so I would push it more, and then they would feel like crap again.

Looking fast right after the start.

Starting another lap...

I kept pushing though, not sure where I was for place. I ended up finishing 6th in my age group, and like 46th overall out of 150 Comp racers. I was 5min behind 1st, which isn't as bad as I thought it would be with how I felt. But still a bit disappointing considering how I did last race. Hopefully I feel better next race.

Willa enjoyed herself in the warm weather.

Tomorrow Heather and I head to northern WI to Dam Lake to hang out with Heather's parents for the rest of the week and weekend. We'll be staying here. Should be a fun, relaxing time. I plan on reading and getting some sun on my pale upper body if the weather permits.

I am not sure if I'll be able to do the State Road Race on Sunday. My race isn't until 4pm, but I'm not sure what time we'll be getting back from the lake so we'll have to see. My legs would probably feel like mush after taking five days off in a row, but it would be nice to get the racing miles in regardless. We'll see what happens.

It's like deja vu!

2008-05-29T17:01:00.009-06:00

Trent and I had an awesome time riding trails in Minneapolis last weekend. We ended up doing 40miles of sweet singletrack riding, hitting up both Lebanon and Murphy-Hanrehan. Trent's technical abilities have improved substantially since the last time that we rode Lebanon together...cool to see. We even met up with Foxy for a lap at Lebanon on Saturday evening. As always, the hospitality at Aunt Alane's was fantastic...thanks for putting us up and feeding us Alane and Dick!

Trent had recently purchased a Garmin GPS unit before this trip. It was most excellent. Search for where you want to go...and you're there. It got us to a Quizno's in no time.

Foxy had asked a few blog posts ago about my old, rusted out Trek 970 bike. Well, recently the flood-damaged rear wheel had been making some weird noises, so I decided that some upgrades were in order. Here is the updated 970 singlespeed, in all its glory:

New Bontrager SS cranks and ISIS BB. Bashguard included!
New Bontrager Race SS rear wheel.

I had an Easton carbon bar sitting around, so that replaced the solid aluminum bar that was on there. Also got the Salsa Pepperjack grips, bell, and headlight for those rides at night around town.

Rusty welds = scary.

This weekend Heather and I will probably be doing some more yard work or something. She did an excellent job last weekend planting the garden and some flowers. We'll have corn this year! On Sunday I have another WORS mtb race, this one in Wausau, the same course as 24-9 later this year. I haven't had the best luck in Wausau for WORS races (in 2006 I flatted out and last year I had to DNF due to extreme chainsuck), so hopefully things go better for me this year.

Road, Mountain, and Minneapolis

2008-05-20T21:47:00.005-06:00

Well, I didn't want to disappoint Vino, so I did both the road and mtb races this past weekend. Here are some race recaps for you to enjoy.

On Saturday morning Brooks and I traveled 40 miles north to Denzer for the road race. His race was in the morning, so we got there early. I watched his road race and registered. He conquered the big climb twice and finished his race...maybe he'll blog about the details. Then we went to Culvers. Then we traveled back to Denzer for my race. There were only 20 racers in the Cat 3 field...we had to do 4 laps of the 12 mile course. We started out with a nice crosswind section that led to the big, mile-long climb. After the first ascent of the climb, I looked back and there were only 10 of us left in the leading group. We finished the first lap and circled back around to start the climb again. This time up the climb a group of 6 riders got a small gap over me and 3 other riders. After the climb, my group was taking good pulls and staying close to the leaders (about 30sec or so). We kept them in our sights for the rest of that lap (I hit 51mph on the downhill section!), and then at the end of the lap, 2 of the riders quit. So then there were only 2 of us chasing down the group of 6 at the front. Needless to say, they started pulling away a bit more. The other guy and I pretty much took it easy for the 3rd lap...we just rode side by side and talked because we knew we weren't going to catch the leaders. At the end of that lap, he pulled off the course too. I decided that I didn't feel like riding the 4th lap by myself...and possibly killing my legs with the winds and another time up that big climb...so I DNF'd. My legs felt strong (no signs of cramping), but I wanted to keep them that way for the mtb race the next day. I would have gotten a decent result had I finished, but oh well. I'm a quitter. :) Then Brooks and I went to Culvers again.

Sunday brought my first mtb race of the season, a WORS race in Lake Geneva. I hadn't done this course before, and it was pretty fun...some good climbs, fun descents, tight singletrack sections, and a rock garden that caused many a crash. The Comp riders had to do 4 laps of the 5 mile course. I lined up in my age group wave near the back, but right after the start there was a decent climb that enabled me to move all the way into the top 5. I felt really good and kept with this group for most of the first lap until we started coming up on traffic from the previous age group wave. This separated us out a bit, but I kept pushing the pace for the next 2 laps, passing riders and not getting caught by any from behind. I was surprised at how good I felt despite it only being the 2nd time I had ridden my mtb all season. Toward the end of the 3rd lap, a rider in my age group caught me and we went back and forth for pretty much the entire last lap. I would gap him on the climbs and he would gap me on the singletrack sections. He ended up finishing just a few seconds ahead of me, but I wasn't sure what place that we were in.

Me on some rocky singletrack.

Just got done clearing the rock garden section.
This guy didn't fare quite as well.

The result:

2nd place in my age group, only 16 seconds behind the winner.

10th place overall out of 108 Comp racers.

This was by far my best overall finish in the Comp category. I hope that I feel that good during the rest of the WORS races...

In other news...Trent and I are meeting up in Minneapolis this weekend to do some mtb riding. We plan on hitting up some new trails and, of course, Lebanon. Should be fun. Then it's back here on Sunday to hang out with Heather for Memorial Day (our 2yr anniversary is on Tuesday!).

Speaking of Heather, she finally updated her blog with stuff on the garden, squirrels in our window flower box, pics of the bathrooms, and an update on Carl, our lovely apple tree.

I want a motorcycle. Just a small 250cc one to commute to work on and run errands with. It gets 75mpg!! I better start saving some $.

BTWW

2008-05-15T18:44:00.005-06:00

Hey all. Last weekend was a good time with Brandon and Gillian coming to visit. We hung out in downtown Madison for a bit, went to the Great Dane and State Street, and also brought them to Waterloo for a tour of the workplace. Fun times. Now Brandon just needs to apply for a sales rep position. :)

This week is Bike To Work Week. I hope everyone has been riding in. As expected, Trek goes pretty crazy for BTWW, and offers their employees triple commuter dollars and a gift card each morning for $2.50 at the cafe. So I am getting paid $14.50 for each day that I ride in to work. Sweet.

John from Milwaukee was taking some pics at the Baraboo race a couple weekends ago and was nice enough to post them in the comments section of the TBB blog. Here they are:

This weekend there are two races once again...a road race on Saturday and a mtb race on Sunday. Both of them are pretty close, so I would like to do both. The road race has a bitch of a long climb on it, and we have to do it four times, so that might hurt a bit. Hopefully I don't kill my legs completely for the mtb race.

See you all later.

Baraboo & Bathrooms

2008-05-08T20:50:00.001-06:00

Last Saturday I took off for Baraboo for my first road race of the season, and my first race since upgrading to a Cat 3. I've done this race the previous two years, so I knew what to expect with the course. It was a cloudy, cold day with a bit of rain that thankfully stopped before my race took off at 1pm. The weather must have kept the racers away, because there was probably only 20-25 racers starting. The course is 15mi long, with two decent climbs...one at the beginning of the lap and the other at the end. The first lap was pretty tame, but I think we still lost a couple riders in the climbs. The second lap was much of the same, but with a couple riders attacking to spice things up a bit. No one got away though, and we once again lost a few riders when the road turned upward. We started the third and final lap with probably around 13 riders in the leading group and when we hit the climb at the beginning of the lap I just didn't have the legs to keep with the leaders. Six riders got clear, with me in a chase group with another 6 riders only about 30 sec behind. We got a nice paceline going and kept the leaders in our sight for the entire lap, but they maintained that small gap all the way to the finish. I ended up rolling across the line for 11th place. Not bad for my first Cat 3 race, but it would have been nice to hang with the front on the climb since it looked like they went the same pace the rest of the lap as the group I was in.

I checked the results on the WCA webpage for this race, and they don't even have me (or any of the other riders in my group) listed. When they posted the results after the race, we all had question marks by our names, like they didn't know what order we finished in or something. I guess rather than figure it out they just instead dropped us from the results completely. Weird.

I was thinking of heading to the WORS mtb race on Sunday, but decided that I didn't feel like driving over 2hr each way to race, so instead I stayed home and painted bathrooms. Both the main level bathroom and the bathroom upstairs were painted in a hideous poop brown color by the previous owner. The main level bathroom also had wallpaper on one wall and not one, but two, layers of border thrown in for good measure. After much work and many evenings spent painting, they are both now complete and look MUCH better. I decided to go with white in both, since none of the other rooms in our house have white paint, and it looks nice and clean in a bathroom. Evidently Heather will be posting pics of the finished rooms in the near future.

How many coats of white paint does it take to cover poop brown walls? Four or five.

This weekend we are getting some visitors from Minneapolis, as Brandon and Gillian are coming down to pay us a visit in Mad-town. Should be fun!

Mother Nature

2008-04-30T19:02:00.002-06:00

So Brooks and I didn't do the road race last Saturday. The weather was 25 degrees with rain/snow and 30mph winds at the race site, so it wouldn't have been fun to drive 4 hours each way to race for 3 hours in that crap.

The hockey season ended on a good note for Team Green, as we beat Team White 5-3 in the "Toilet Bowl Game" for 5th place. I scored one goal and got two assists in the win. It was disappointing to finish in 5th place (out of 6 teams) after we led the league for so many weeks, but we'll be back next season. :)

I debated playing in the summer hockey league as well, but decided against it being that with biking, trips, etc that it would get to be too much.

Heather will be gone from Saturday to Tuesday visiting her family in MI, so it is just the kids and I. She found a pretty cheap roundtrip ticket from Madison, so that makes it easy.

There are two races this weekend...a road race in Baraboo, WI on Saturday and a mtb race in Iola, WI on Sunday. I plan on doing the road race for sure, and then possibly the mtb race as well if I'm not too tired out from the previous days race.

Since Heather won't do it...

2008-04-24T21:05:00.011-06:00

It appears that Heather is on a blogging sabbatical of some sort, as she has yet to post pics from CO. So I will post some. Enjoy.

Relaxing in our condo with the kids.

I expected the Rockies to be a heck of a lot more rocky than this. ;)
Vontoux and I doing some situps on a hiking trail right out of Red Rocks, CO.

The correct way to do a "side jump".

Heather and Willa's video version of the side jump.

In other news, Brooks and I are heading to Cannon Falls, MN for a road race on Saturday. It will be my first race of the season, and it will be a long one...63 miles for my first race since upgrading to Cat 3. My game plan: just hang on to the peloton and try to avoid getting my ass kicked too bad. :)

Speaking of ass-kickings, my last hockey game of the season is on Sunday night. Team Green really went downhill after dominating the early season. We were in first place for so long, and we ended up in 5th at the end. Not good. I still had fun though, and I think I ended up 8th or 9th in the league in scoring.

My New Mtb

2008-04-16T17:52:00.007-06:00

Heather and I got back from Denver on Sunday night. It was a fun, quick trip despite the Sioux getting their butts kicked in the first game. We went to the zoo, went hiking at some canyon place, and relaxed. Maybe Heather will update her blog with some pics from the trip. Of course it snow stormed on our drive out there, but the drive home was smooth sailing (as smooth as a 14.5hr drive can be).

I promised some pics of my new mtb, so without further ado, here they are. I was debating between the aluminum hardtail and the aluminum full suspension (same as Trent's), but in the end stuck with the hardtail. I got a stock Trek 8500 and then upgraded everything except for the frame, fork, and brakes.

The aluminum rocketship.
The new XTR drivetrain is so sweet looking and smooth.

Pretty cranks.

Nice and light rotational weight.

The new XT hydraulic brakes are amazing. You can adjust both the lever throw and modulation easily right on the lever.

Frame: Alpha Red aluminum

Fork: Fox F100 RL

Brakes: Shimano XT Hydraulic

Front/Rear Derailleur: Shimano XTR

Cassette: SRAM 980

Chain: SRAM PC991 Hollow

Cranks/BB: Shimano XTR

Wheelset: Bontrager Race X Lite Disc

Tires: Bontrager ACX 2.0

Tubes: Bontrager Race XXX Lite

Handlebar: Bontrager Race X Lite Carbon

Stem: Bontrager Race X Lite

Headset: Chris King

Pedals: Shimano 959

Seatpost: Bontrager Race X Lite ACC Carbon

Saddle: Selle Italia Flite Ti

Bottle Cage: Elite Gel

Computer: Trek Incite 9i Wireless

Total Weight: a svelte 21.8 lbs

This new bike is a good 1.5 lbs lighter than my old carbon 9.9, with most of the weight savings coming from the Race X Lite wheelset, which shaved almost 300 grams from my King/717 setup. I can't wait for the first WORS race on May 4th to see what it can do.

Greg will be happy to know that it sounds like the Klein lineup is going to be revamped following the dropping of LeMond. No word yet if that means going back to aluminum goodness, or just sticking some Klein decals on LeMond carbon frames. There is also talk of possibly bringing back Bontrager bikes to fill the void for steel road, mtn, and cross frames. That would rule!

Colorado, here we come!

2008-04-09T00:01:00.004-06:00

Heather and I take off tomorrow for Denver, CO to watch the Sioux in the Frozen Four. I've gone to the last two F4 in Milwaukee and St. Louis, so we said that if the Sioux made it that we would go and make a little vacation out of it. So we are loading up the car, kids and all, and making the trip out west to the mountains. Should be a great time. Go Sioux!

Congrats to both Dave and Robb on the births of Henry and McKenna!! How is this for a coincidence...

both of them live in Fargo, ND
Henry Simmons was born April 6th at 12:47am
McKenna Lunak was born April 6th at 2:45am

That's just crazy and creepy. Maybe their paths will cross again in the future...

I finally finished my mtb. I'll post some pics next week after we get back. Talk to you all later.

Going to Denver!

2008-04-03T09:05:00.001-06:00

Last year the Sioux beat Minnesota 3-2 in OT to advance to the Frozen Four. This year the Sioux beat Wisconsin 3-2 in OT to advance to the Frozen Four. Brandon and I were there, rocking out with the rest of the Sioux fans.

Go Sioux!

Busy Times and Afterthoughts

2008-03-28T23:04:00.002-06:00

Might as well do another post with no pictures. I don't have any new ones, plus Heather took the camera with her this weekend. Her and Mary went to visit Mary's parents in Indiana for a relaxing weekend. It will be a guy's weekend here in Madison, as Brandon is coming to visit and we are going to the NCAA hockey regional here. The Sioux got placed in Madison unexpectedly, but I won't complain since it means I get to watch more hockey.

Last weekend I traveled to Minneapolis for the WCHA Final Five and managed to watch 4 hockey games, visit Foxy, stop at Auntie Alane's for an excellent meal, and play in a Sioux/Gopher fan hockey game all in one weekend. Brandon, Gillian, and I went to the games and had awesome first row seats in the upper level. Naturally, I ran into a big snowstorm on my drive to the Cities. What the hell? It is in the 40s all week, almost all the snow is gone, and then we get 5 inches of snowy, icy crap the day I leave for a trip? I'm ready for summer.

Good news...Rick, Trent, and I got into Chequamegon again. I see that they cashed my check last week, so we're golden. Vino is coming to cheer us on and take pics instead of racing. Speaking of Vino, Jen should be birthing Lil Buddy Simmons sometime soon...that's awesome, congrats man! Also cool is that Trent finished his first novel. I would read it, but it doesn't have any advertisements or pictures of naked women to keep me focused, so my ADD would probably kick in and I wouldn't be able to finish it.

Team Green has lost its way. We have gone 1-2 in the last 3 games and are now in 4th place, which is disappointing since we were leading the league not long ago. Only one more regular season game left before the 4-week playoffs start. I need to pick up my scoring asap.

Brooks and I started to finalize our racing schedule for this year. It looks like our first road race will probably be in the 3rd or 4th week of April. Riding has been going well; feeling good in the lunch rides at work, now I just need to start getting some longer rides in to build up my endurance.

That's about all I have for now. I promise that my next post will have pics.
Go Sioux!

Not Even Any Pictures

2008-03-11T22:16:00.004-06:00

An über-quick update, with bullet points!

Heather's parents came to visit this past weekend. It was a good time, we did some stuff around the house, went to a movie, and got a new bench for the entryway.
Spring looks to be around the corner. The temperatures are creeping above 40 degrees, which means that the lunch rides at work have started up again. It feels good to be back outside on the bike, even if I can't feel my toes by the end.
College hockey playoffs start this weekend. Next weekend is the WCHA Final Five tourney in Minneapolis. I got tickets with Brandon and Gillian, so I'm excited for that. Did B&G remember to take Friday off from work? :)
I'm almost done building my mtb...I know, I know, I've been taking my sweet-ass time with it. I'll get it done shortly and post some pics.
Team Green has once again gone 1-1 in the last two weeks. We lost last weekend 5-0...embarassing...and then we won this weekend 9-5. I got a goal off a nice deflection and two assists. We're tied for 2nd place now, but only one point behind 1st.
What is the deal with gas prices?
In other bike news, one of my bikes is getting an unplanned "facelift". It should be done in a couple weeks. I'll definitely post pics of that when it's completed. It's gonna be sweet!

Two Weeks Gone

2008-02-25T15:57:00.003-06:00

Oops. Forgot to post for a couple weeks there. Had a fun trip back home to GF. Stayed at Fox's for a night then left for GF the next morning. Bummed around GF with Dad and Danette and went to the Sioux/Denver hockey game on Sat night. Of course on my drive home on Sunday it was blizzard conditions in WI. Seems to be how that works around here.

This past weekend Heather painted the kitchen while I replaced all the outlets, switches, and faceplates in the kitchen...they used to be a mixture of almond and white, now they are all white. Trent will be proud of me, as I didn't shock myself or burn down the house...yet.

Here is our winter wonderland:
Heather doesn't seem to think that a backyard hockey rink will fit back there; I disagree. :)

Speaking of hockey...the last 2 games Team Green has gone 1-1. We beat Team Blue 7-6 last week and I got a goal and an assist, but this week we lost to Team Orange 4-1; no points for me. Somehow Team Green is still in first place despite our inconsistent play lately.

Friendly Reminder: Vino, Trent, Rick, and anyone else that is interested in racing Chequamegon this year...you need to get me your registration form and $. We need those in by March 15th, or we miss out on the lottery. :)

Basement (with outlets!)

2008-02-13T10:03:00.009-06:00

This past weekend we had a fun time with Tonia and Trent. On Saturday we went to Body World's in Milwaukee. That was crazy. Plasticized real human bodies with each exhibit showing what the internal organs, muscles, brain, etc looks like while doing a particular activity. The fetal exhibit and the horse with rider were the most interesting to me.

After we returned from that, we started on the basement wiring project. Up until now, I had been running extension cords to power most things in the basement, so we needed to get some more outlets down there. Luckily for us, Trent not only has the skills to help with that, but also the discounts from working at a large electrical parts supplier.
Doing some custom modifications to the outlet boxes.
The girls were in charge of drilling the holes into the concrete. Put your back into it!
After a few hours of work, the project was complete. Six new outlets in the basement. Excellent. Thanks Trent and Tonia!

On Sunday night I had hockey again after a one week break due to the Super Bowl. We got our butts kicked 7-0. The game was alot closer than the score indicated though. Once again, we had the crappy goalie (the same one that let in 12 goals earlier this year). I hope that our team can play against him sometime this year. But either way, weren't not going to win a game if we don't score any goals.

Willa, Mario, and Vontoux got to play in the sunroom while we were working downstairs. This is like the medium, large, and huge of dog breeds. :) I hope Mario is feeling better!
No Alberto or Levi in this year's Tour? Nice job by the Tour de France organizers to exclude last year's 1st and 3rd place finishers...

I am heading home this weekend to GF to visit family. Looking forward to it!

Quick Trip to the Cities

2008-02-05T00:43:00.001-06:00

Heather and I had a fun, but really quick, trip to the Cities this past weekend. Drove there on Friday after work and hung out with Alane and Dick for a bit before heading over to Brandon and Gillian's to spend the night. In the morning, Heather raced in the Race Up the Place, where she ended up placing 53rd out of 335 participants (3rd in her age group). She ran up the 35 flights of stairs in 6min 46sec. Nice job Heathrow!!

After that we played with B&G some more and then drove over to Foxy and Sara's place to see them too. It was the first time that we've seen their new house. Definitely a nice place in a cool area...although we were sad that we didn't get to see Bear. The highlight of the visit was seeing Foxy in his boxers.

Greg's blog mysteriously disappears...and then Trent takes up that empty space on the web by starting his own blog! About time! :)

The Sioux played the Gophers in Minneapolis this weekend. For the 2nd straight year, that trip resulted in a SportsCenter #1 Play of the Day for the Sioux. Last year it was Robbie Bina's 170ft goal, and this year it was Evan Trupp diving to bat the puck out of midair for the overtime game-winning goal. This clip shows it even better in slo-mo.

Up this weekend: A visit from Tonia and Trent! :)

Teaser

2008-01-28T20:27:00.000-06:00

I got my new mtb for the upcoming season last week. When you combine the parts off my 9.9/8900 and my new bike, in addition to the new XTR stuff I bought, you get this mess:
I'll be building it up in the next few weeks and post some more pics of it then. :)

This past weekend was fun. On Sunday, Mary and I ditched the spouses and went to Devils Head for some fun skiing/snowboarding. It was a really good time, and we are planning on doing it again this winter. Later that night I got to test out my new hockey stick in a game against Team Grey. It was a back and forth game...we led 2-0 after the 1st, they led 4-2 after 2...but we came back with 4 goals in the 3rd period to win 6-4. I broke the stick in with style, getting a goal and an assist.

This weekend Heather and I are going to Minneapolis, as she is participating in the Race Up the Place, where she will race up 35 flights of stairs to help fight lung disease. Also this weekend is the Arrowhead 135. Good luck to Dave, Pat, Rick, and Chuck! Stay safe and warm!
P.S. - What happened to Greg's blog?

Trent's Real World

2008-01-18T00:29:00.000-06:00

Hello all. Long time no bloggie. And then Trent called me out via email. So here we go. This will just be a random post.

I don't think that my Lemond Sarthe has made an appearance on my blog yet:
I got it last summer to ride at work. I got sick of bringing my bike back and forth to work. So it sits in my cubicle and I ride it for the lunch rides. It has a buttery smooth ride...steel is real (as they say). I brought it home so that I could ride it on the trainer this winter and let the Eddy rest up for the upcoming season.

New tools are the coolest. The basement bike shop is slowly getting updated with new goodies. The latest additions - a vise, bench grinder, and air compressor.

I plan on getting a brad nailer sometime soon so that I can use my air compressor to put down baseboard. We'll have a lot of that to do once we finish painting everything.

The little TV that we had downstairs stopped working. So we moved the one from our bedroom downstairs and got a different one for the bedroom. Now we have a nice TV to watch while working out in the basement.

Also, check out the middle shelf in the tv stand. Heck yeah that's an original Nintendo system! I played some Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt last night. :)

Does something look different here:

I bet it had been many years since the last time I had broken a stick. And now I've broken two in the past month. My green stick got slashed in the last hockey game and it shattered instantly. Crazy. We won 6-5, so that made it better I guess. I got that CCM Vector as a replacement...it is a one-piece composite stick instead of the separate shaft & blade stick. I've never had one of those before; hopefully it lasts longer. It seems they don't make a decent wood or aluminum stick anymore.

Some closeups. Makes me scared to ride carbon bike components. :)

That's all. Hopefully everyone has a good weekend. We'll have to bundle up here, it's going to be cold.

Upgrade!

2007-12-27T12:27:00.001-06:00

We had a busy, fun weekend back in ND. Visited with the family, made a buttload of lefse, watched movies (Christmas Story!), played a bunch of card games, visited the gang at the bike shop and the Hub, etc. We got some really cool gifts as well. Tonia and Trent were excellent hosts, putting up with all of us and our dogs. As always, the trip seemed to go by much too quickly and before I knew it I was back at work on Wed. Only three days of work and then back on the road, heading to Michigan for our 2nd Xmas celebration. Craziness.

A few weeks ago I submitted my request to upgrade categories for road racing. I received an email a couple days ago saying that my request had been approved. So I am now a Cat 3 roadie! Yippee. I'm not sure how I'll do, but if anything the longer distance races will be good training for the mtb racing scene. Should be fun.
The Green Team had the week off for Xmas, and I will miss the game this upcoming Sunday since we will be out of town. I'll have hockey withdrawals by the time I play again. Stupid WI being too warm to have decent outdoor ice! :)

Random Notes

2007-12-20T10:24:00.000-06:00

Not much new to talk about. I was going to do a season recap this week...but that can wait until later. Heather and I take off for ND tomorrow after work to celebrate Xmas with the Abraham family. I'm looking forward to that! Then the following week we are traveling to MI to visit the Josef family over New Year's. Good times.

Dave posted a humorous elf-themed video of the Team Brown Bear group from 24-9 this year. If you haven't seen it yet, go HERE to enjoy it. Nice job, Vino!

Not a good game on Sunday for the Green Team. Or, I should rephrase that...not a good game for the goalie for the Green Team. Goalies rotate in our league...there are 6 goalies and 6 teams and the goalies rotate around so that no team has an advantage over the others. Well, we got stuck with the same goalie as last week, and he played even worse.
Of the 20-25 shots that he faced, he let in 12 goals. Yes, I said 12. So we ended up losing to the last-place Team Grey, 12-5. I seriously think that we could have strapped the goalie pads on Foxy and he would have only let in 3 or 4 goals. I chipped in with 2 goals (both on the same shift) and 1 assist. Hopefully we can snap our 2-game losing streak after the holiday break.

Has anyone ever tried Xango, a juice from the mangosteen fruit? It is a supplement beverage...you're supposed to drink 1 oz. of it a day. It is $40 for a 25oz bottle.
Evidently they sponsor a bike team, and they had the Project One guys here at work design their team bike, so they sent a case to us to sample. I'm a little scared to try it, but I guess it tastes pretty good. I'll have to give it a whirl.

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!

London

2007-12-12T09:35:00.000-06:00

Heather and I had a relaxing weekend at home. We got done with most of our Xmas shopping and just hung out. We also started cleaning out our basement. Just going through our pile of crap and throwing garbage out, donating some stuff to Goodwill, and organizing things on shelves. We've been getting a ton of snow in the last week or so...hopefully I can get out snowboarding sometime soon.

The Green Team took on Team White on Sunday and we lost 6-3. We battled back though after letting them get out to a 4-0 lead in the first period. Our goalie didn't have the best game and I didn't play that well either, getting no points. I think they passed us in the standings with that win, so we are now in 2nd place, but only one point behind them.

Led Zeppelin had a reunion concert in London on Monday night. Evidently 20 million people tried to get tickets for the 20k seat arena. That's insane. Here's some youtube highlights:

Whole Lotta Love
Stairway to Heaven
Kashmir
Good Times, Bad Times
The Song Remains the Same

Time for Rest

2007-12-04T20:29:00.000-06:00

Hello all. So the big WI State Champ cross race was this weekend...and I didn't go. I woke up on Sunday morning to 6 inches of new snow, a driveway to shovel, and a forecast of rain for the day. So I decided not to go, I really wasn't in the mood to drive to Milwaukee and get myself and my bike covered in grossness. So that's that, my bike racing season is over. Last year I posted a recap of my season at the end of the year, maybe I'll do that again in the next week sometime.

Heather's parents came to visit us this past weekend. We had a good time...put some plastic up on the windows and cut down a Xmas tree. Heather has a nice post, as well as a bunch of pics from the weekend, up on her blog.

Here is Joyce, Vontoux, and I playing some cards. Vontoux is quite good at picking the high card from a random set of 3...Joyce loved it.
The Green Team took on Team Orange on Sunday night. They are the only team to have beaten us so far, and we managed to avenge that loss by beating them 5-1. I got one assist on the night and clanged a nice shot off the post in the 2nd period. We are now in 1st place and we play the 2nd place Team White next.

Heather started her job at Trek on Monday, so she is now official. I just hope that she doesn't crimp my style too much with all my work girlfriends. :)

Shorty

2007-11-26T20:26:00.000-06:00

Just a short little update since I can't think of much to say. The Abraham family visited us this past weekend from lovely GF, ND. It was a fun, but short, visit. We hung out around town, got lost in the State Capitol, and watched some movies. Nice and relaxing.

On Sunday night Team Green took on Team Blue, who we were tied with in the standings going into the game. We ended up winning 3-2, and I got all 3 goals for the hat trick. That win puts us in first place in the league after 5 games. Crazy, I never would have expected that. Shame on me for being so pessimistic. Next week we take on Team Orange again...they are the only team to have beaten us so far.
This Sunday afternoon is the last cross race of the season for me, the WI State Champs. Hopefully I'll do better than last race!

Nail & Crash

2007-11-20T21:37:00.000-06:00

Every now and then you have one of those races that you just want to forget. Last cross season, it was the state champ race in Sun Prairie. This year, it was once again at the course in SP. I like the course; it's a good mix of tight off-camber turns, run-ups, and flat power sections...but I don't think the course likes me. :)

It was a pretty good size field, and I had a pretty good start sitting in 4th-5th for the first few laps. Around the 3rd lap a group with Casey, Chris, Lance, and another rider got off the front a bit and I hung out in a group of 4 a little behind them. It stayed that way for a couple laps.
Here's the grandstand run-up...you came off the speedway track and ran up the stairs. Notice the new hbar tape and saddle combo.

The hill run-up...this was steep and forced you to run up it with a barrier at the bottom.

My cheering section comprised of Heather, Trent, Mario, and Tonia.

I was halfway thru my lap with 4 laps remaining when I heard a noise coming from my rear wheel, like something was caught in it. It didn't take long before I could feel the air pressure coming out of my tire. I rode the rest of the lap on a flat tire to the wheel pit where I switched out my rear wheel. I probably lost around 12 places before I was back out on the course. After the race, I saw what caused it:

That's one rusty, gross nail! I was trying to make some ground back up and had passed a few riders on the next lap when I took a corner too fast and crashed. Now I have some nice road rash on my thigh and elbow. At this point, there was only one lap left and there wasn't anyone close behind or in front of me, so I just coasted for the rest of the race and finished in 17th place. It was frustrating to lose that many spots due to the flat, but there's nothing you can do about stuff like that. Hopefully things will go better in 2 weeks for the state champs.

We had a nice visit with Tonia, Trent, and Mario. It was too short though. We planned out the new electrical outlets for the basement and they got to experience their first ever cross race. This upcoming weekend we are getting a visit from the Abraham family. Can't wait!

PS - Brooks has to update his blog now. A guy after the race bribed him with a pumpkin cookie to update it. :)

Hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving!

Weekend Retreat

2007-11-13T23:39:00.000-06:00

The family had a good time on our little weekend retreat to Black River Falls, WI. We stayed in a cool little cabin in the woods and just relaxed. Felt good. Also did some hiking with the doggies in the nice county parks in that area. Here are some pics from the weekend ... Heather said that she would post more on her blog as well, maybe some of the cabin.

Vontoux loves obstacles. Going down slides at playgrounds...stuff like that. Here he is after a nice leap.

Little Heather and Little Slick Willa, both bundled up.
On a beach with Vontoux. Evidently the lake behind us is the deepest lake in WI.

Playing in a river.

Willa with her hood up, like Rocky (is that her in the link?).

All that fun makes the doggies very tired.

Team Green played Team Gray on Sunday night. We won 5-0. I didn't get a single point, no goals, no assists, but I did clang 2 shots off the post, both in the 2nd period. Sometimes those are the breaks...but the team didn't need the extra goals anyway. :)

This weekend it sounds like Trent and Tonia are coming for a short visit. That should be most fun. They are going to be spectating on Sunday for the cross race right here in Sun Prairie. I like those races that are 5min from your house. Hopefully I'm over my cold by then!

Milwaukee CX pics

2007-11-09T00:04:00.000-06:00

Here are some pics from this past weekend's races.

Leading the group over the barriers early in the race on Saturday

The leading group of four (Casey, Lyle, Lance, and myself)
The nice steep climb with the barrier (and the crowd) at the top
Pre-race chat at the start line on Sunday

The six leaders on the runup

Venga! Venga!

Here's Jesse making it look easy bunny-hopping the barriers on Sunday

Hope everyone has a good weekend.

Kletzsch and Estabrook Park CX

2007-11-06T12:49:00.000-06:00

Saturday:
This was a new course for this year in Kletzsch Park in Milwaukee. I really liked this course after doing a couple warmup laps, and I think it suited me well. It had a nice steep climb with a single barrier at the very top and some good singletrack sections. We need more cx courses with steep climbs on them. :)

I lined up on the front row for the start and got a decent start, sitting in about 7th or 8th for the first section. After the first lap there was still a good size group at the front, so I moved into the lead to try to shed some riders. About halfway thru that lap, I looked back and saw just Casey and Lyle with me, with another rider chasing close behind. The other rider, Lance, bridged up to us to make a group of 4, and after a couple laps we had a good size gap to the riders behind us. I felt really strong, especially on the climbs and singletrack (despite tripping over the barrier at the top of the steep climb on one lap). With 4 laps to go, Casey put in a hard effort and moved away from our group. I still felt good, but I didn't want to go with that many laps remaining. His time advantage kept growing, and we never saw him again. On the last lap, Lance and I got a small gap over Lyle before the last singletrack section. Lance went thru the last set of barriers faster than me and I couldn't catch him before the finish. So I finished 3rd.

Good result on a cool course. I really hope that this course is on the schedule next year as well.

Sunday:
This race was also in Milwaukee in Estabrook Park. Milwaukee really has some badass parks. It was setup similar to last year's course with a couple small changes. It rained a bit before the start, which made it just a little tacky.

My start was almost the same as the day before, and I was in about 8th place or so. After the first lap or two the lead was dwindled down to 6 riders, the usual suspects. The pace was very up and down for a few laps...riders would attack and the pace would get high until we caught them, and then the pace would slow down until someone attacked again. I could tell after a few laps that my legs didn't feel as strong as the day before. I was having to work just to stay in the group. With about 4 laps remaining I lost contact with the lead group and was riding by myself. I realized I wasn't going to catch back on to the 5 leading riders, so I was just going to try and stay ahead of 7th, which I managed to do, finishing in 6th place.

I was hoping for better, especially after Saturday's result, but my legs just didn't have it in them. Casey got the victory again, taking his 5th or 6th win in a row I think. With the results from this weekend, I am now in 5th place in the standings.

Sunday night:
Team Green had a late game on Sunday, playing at 9pm against Team White. We had a pretty good game, winning 4-2. I had 2 goals and 1 assist, with a nice deke around a dman on the 2nd goal.

Random:
It was a really busy weekend...it wore me out. Now I am battling a cold. I don't have any pics yet from the races. If any get posted on the Madcross website, maybe I'll post them here later this week. Brooks had a good weekend of racing, maybe you'll find out about it if he ever updates his blog. Only 2 more cross races left; one on Nov 18th in Sun Prairie and State Champs on Dec 2nd. Heather and I have a fun weekend planned. We rented a cabin a few hours north of here to play for the weekend with the doggies and just to relax.

Washington Park CX & Hockey

2007-10-31T09:50:00.000-06:00

The Washington Park CX race was this past Sunday in Milwaukee. This is a fun course in a cool park and the weather was nice and sunny. I did my very first cross race here two years ago right after Heather and I moved to WI. I got a front row start position again and ended up having a great start, getting the holeshot leading into the first turn. I led for the first lap, including over the little bunnyhop barrier.
At the start of the 2nd lap, Casey and Lyle came to the front and upped the pace a little more to dwindle the group down.

Check out the skinsuit on the guy behind me. Killer!

By the beginning of the 3rd lap, it was down to the same 5 guys as last week in the lead. When we hit the switchback section toward the end of that lap, we had such a big gap that I couldn't even see any riders behind us.

We pretty much stayed together for the rest of the race until there were 2 laps to go. Casey and the young Baraboo rider attacked the group and rode off. My lungs were dying at this point, so I couldn't hang with them.

I rode the last lap by myself in no-man's land and rolled across the finish for 5th place again. With that result, I think I am now in 6th place in the standings, but I'm not sure since the website hasn't been updated yet.

All pics are courtesy of Madcross.org.

Thanks to Brooks for doing water handups. He was feeling strong in the 1/2 race, but unfortunately had a mechanical issue with his bike early in the race.

Sunday was also my first league hockey game. I hate to say it Team Green supporters, but it might be a long season. We have some good players, but not as many as last year. Doesn't matter though, I'll still have fun! We lost to Team Orange 4-1...I got the assist on our only goal.

Also, last but certainly not least...congrats to Heather on her big news! :)

Gibbs Lake CX and some Visitors

2007-10-22T20:49:00.000-06:00

A fun weekend here. On Saturday morning, my aunt Alane and uncle Dick arrived in Madison for a quick little weekend visit. We wandered around a bit, played some card games, and enjoyed the nice day by heading over to the Olbrich Botanical Gardens.

On Sunday we all packed in the car and took off for the Gibbs Lake cross race. The course was fast and dry with a couple good climbs and some fun singletrack sections and switchbacks. I got a front row start position.

But that was screwed up when they played that Kentucky Derby song on a trombone to start the race instead of saying go. I didn't realize that and was back in midpack before I was even clipped in fully.

I starting catching riders around some of the first few switchbacks, and when we hit the first decent climb I put in a good effort to try to make it up to the leaders. I caught them right at the top of the climb and decided to just keep on riding past them. I saw that I had a gap, so I pushed a little harder to try to win the first lap prime. I ended up taking that (and winning some HEED energy drink for my efforts).
Soon after that, a group of 4 riders (Casey, Lyle, a young Baraboo Sharks rider, and a guy on a sweet IF Ti Planet Cross) caught up to me and we ended up riding together for the rest of the race. It wasn't long before we had a pretty big gap on the rest of the field.

On the last lap, Casey and Lyle upped the pace, and the rest of us couldn't match it. The last section of the lap was all switchbacks, making it difficult to pass or sprint for the finish, so I came across the line in 5th place, making it on the podium and winning some cash. That moved me up into 8th place in the standings, but only 6 points behind 5th place. Coming up this weekend is the Halloween cross race in Milwaukee on Sunday and then my first league hockey game of the season later that night. Exciting times.

Thanks to Heather and Alane for the great pics!

Making the Switch

2007-10-17T20:45:00.000-06:00

Hockey league starts in two weeks. The draft for teams was earlier this week.
Bye bye Team Gray.

Hello to the...
Our first game is Sunday Oct 28th at 7:30 pm. Be there. :)
There are a couple guys from Team Gray making the move over to the Green Team, but most of the guys I don't recognize. So it's hard to say how good we'll be. I guess we'll find out soon enough!

Double cross

2007-10-15T20:35:00.000-06:00

This weekend I had two cross races. I also didn't have a camera, as Heather took that to MI with her. So no pictures on this post, although Brooks has some from the weekend.

The first race was Saturday in Cambridge. This is a fun course, some fast singletrack on mtb trails and some good power sections with climbs. Gorgeous day out for a 45min cross race. I got off to a crappy start, probably sitting in 20th entering the first singletrack section. The whole first lap I was in pass mode, passing and bridging to riders in front of me. By the 2nd lap I had caught on to a group of 2 other riders only 20 sec behind the 4 leaders. I sat on for a lap getting my energy back when I saw a straggler from the front group. I went to the front and picked up the pace, which dropped one of the riders in my group. We soon caught the rider in front and we were a group of 3 once again, still 20 sec behind the leaders (now 3 of them). I stayed on the front for another lap and this time when we passed a crowd-filled run-up, they informed us that we were only 15 sec back. We wouldn't get any closer than that though. Entering the final sharp left turn onto the paved finish stretch, I went to start my sprint and my freehub body skipped half a pedal stroke. Fudge!! I soft pedaled it for a second then resumed my sprint, but I had already lost too much momentum. Had to settle for 6th place when my legs felt strong enough to win the sprint for 4th. I felt really good this race, it was frustrating to think that if I would have had a better start I could have been with the 3 leaders, as they were running the same lap times as my group.

On to Sunday's race in Verona. I switched the rear tire on my race wheel to my spare wheel for this race to avoid any further issues with my freehub body. It rained all morning, so this race was a slick and muddy mess. Unlike the Saturday race, I got off to a fantastic start, sitting in 3rd wheel behind Casey and Maciej entering the mucky singletrack. I entered the 2nd corner right on Maciej's wheel when he fell. I hit the brakes to avoid him and watched as 10 riders blew by us. I worked hard to try to close the gap, but it was hard to pass in the muddy conditions, and the course didn't have a big power section for me to make up time. On the 2nd lap, a rider blew by me on a short paved downhill and then had a terrific yardsale crash once he turned onto the singletrack. I was sitting in about 12th place with 2 laps to go when I saw a group of 3 riders a little bit up the course. I picked up the pace and managed to pass them on a gravel climb...but then I had too much speed coming out of a corner and wiped out in the mud and twisted my leg funny. As I hobbled back onto my bike, one of the riders passed me again. I took it easy on the last lap and rolled in for 10th place. Not my best race, but not horrible either.

Thanks to Brooks for doing water handups in both races, even though he couldn't race himself on Sunday since he had to work. He had a great race in the 1/2 race on Saturday, I'll let him tell you all about it.

I think that if I can manage to piece together a complete race, I should be able to snag a podium spot sometime this season. I certainly feel a lot stronger in cross than last season, which is a pleasant surprise since I wouldn't consider cross racing one of my strengths. We'll see what happens...still plenty of races to go.

Heather made it back from MI today. The kids and I missed her, so it's good to have her back. I think that Auntie Alane and Dick are coming to visit this weekend, that should be fun. There are two cross races again this weekend, but I think I am only doing one. I'm not sure yet.

Birthday Boy

2007-10-08T22:23:00.000-06:00

Hello all. I decided to skip out on the last WORS race of the season on Sunday. It was over a 2 hour drive oneway, and since I wasn't concerned about the overall standings this year, I decided to stay home. I mowed the lawn and helped Heather with the paver project instead. It looks awesome...so much better! Just have to put down the pea gravel and mulch, and it should be finally finished. So anyway, my mtb racing season is over with, just cross remains. Last year I did 3 WORS races, this year I did 6, so I think a reasonable goal for next year would be 9 (there are 12 in the series). Plus, that would put me in good contention for the overall standings.

Today was a special day, as our little son Vontoux turned 3 years old! We took him to the pet store so that he could pick out a new toy.
He ended up wanting a fire hydrant hose throwing toy, which is a toy that he has had before. He loved chasing that thing in the backyard.
Yesterday I went and paid my league fees for the upcoming adult hockey season. First game is Oct 28th...I can't wait! I should find out what team I'm on sometime in the next week or so.

I've been riding strong on the lunch rides at work, which is encouraging this late in the season. Plus, I've been doing some running training every Wed at lunch, as we have a big group from work that plays Ultimate Frisbee in the soccer field across the street from Trek. Hopefully all that riding/running pays off during the cross season.

I will be living the bachelor life this week, as Heather takes off Wed after work to go visit her family in MI. She won't get home until the following Monday evening. I'll try to get some stuff done around the house, remember to feed the kids, and race a couple cross races this weekend while she's gone. :)

Time for CX

2007-10-01T21:05:00.000-06:00

The blood lung, leg-burning fun of cyclocross has begun. Brooks and I headed over to Delafield on Sunday for the 2nd race of the WCA series. We both skipped out on the Sat race since it was a weird, non-cx time trial setup. This was the same course as last year, pretty much a rutted out mtb course with a couple barriers thrown in to make it more cross-like. In other words, a course that I could do well on because it's more like a mtb race than a cross race.

I did the Cat 3 race with Brooks as support/water handup guy since he was freshly upgraded to Cat 2. The start was a big cluster with a very wide "starting line" narrowing down to a doubletrack within a hundred feet or so. I was way back in the pack of 30 racers right away. The first lap I spent working my way thru the pack despite almost crashing after nailing a rut with my front tire. Even with the extra work, the legs felt fine and I felt comfortable passing and bridging. By the 2nd or 3rd lap, I got into a group of 5 riders that was chasing the 2 leaders. On the 2nd to last lap, the rider in front of me let a gap develop to the 2 riders in front and I didn't want to drag him back up with me, so I sat on. Probably a mistake. By the beginning of the last lap, I could tell he was dying, and there were riders coming up on us, so I attacked him and went off on my own. I stayed away for the rest of the lap, but never caught back on to the other 2 racers. They don't have results posted yet, but Brooks said that I finished 6th overall, which would be my best CX result ever. I'm happy about that, but I felt strong enough to where I know that I could have stayed with the other 2 and maybe gotten by them at the end. Live and learn.

I'm not going to get too excited about this cross result though, as it will probably be my best finish all year in cross due to the course making it so much like a short mtb race. We'll see though...it would be nice if the legs responded this well in the rest of the cross races.

Peanut Butter Jelly.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

2007-09-27T22:07:00.000-06:00

Most of the time when I go for road rides, I bring my ipod and sing along to my favorite songs. Eddy really likes the singing...it calms him. But sometimes Heather takes the ipod when she goes running, so Eddy and I tell stories to each other to pass the time. He tells me about his wonderful journey from Belgium to the USA to ND and then finally to WI. I tell him about my previous bikes; before he was born. He was particularly interested in my story about White Lightning, my Giant TCR from a few years ago.
Seems that Eddy is keen on the white accessories. Plus, he has been feeling a little bit neglected lately with all the attention the mountain bike has been getting. So, I decided to give him a makeover. New Race X Lite wheels (with white spokes), hbar tape, saddle, and then I finally upgraded the stem/hbar combo that I've had for many years and got the Bontrager Race X Lite stem with the Race Lite bar.

Notice how I also conveniently snuck the paver project progress (good use of alliteration right there) into the pics. Don't tell Heather! :)

Vontoux chillin with the lil speedster Willa.
We went to Birbigs tonight. It kicked butt, funny as hell. * Mike Birbiglia is skinny and his new CD is hilarious. * - glad I could help, Mike! :)
Also, a big congrats go out to Robb and Tracy!!

Some Pavers & WORS #11

2007-09-24T21:15:00.001-06:00

Another weekend blown by. On Saturday Heather and I worked on the paver project under the deck. It's starting to come together, hopefully we can finish up with that within the next week or so. I think it will look really cool when it's all said and done.

On Sunday Brooks came with me to Iola to watch me race the 2nd-to-last WORS race of the year. It was a beautiful day. The Iola course is fun...some good climbing, fast tight singletrack, and some sandy descents. We had to do 4 laps on the 5 mile course. The first lap I felt really good and stayed with the leading group as best as possible. The second lap I didn't have as good of a lap, in part because halfway thru it my number plate came loose and kept flapping into my front wheel. I had to either hold it while trying to hold the handlebar or constantly jam it into my housing. At the end of that lap, I stopped at the feed zone and took the plate off and kept going. For the 3rd and 4th laps, I felt fine again and was trying to catch back up. I ended up getting 5th in my age group, with only around 2min separating me from 2nd place. 1st place was way up there, over 4min ahead of 2nd. Disappointing to be so close to 2nd with the plate problems and all, but that's racing!

Pre-race adjustments.

Why is everyone taking the sandy line when the far line is nice and packed??
Flying down the hill with a rider in tow.
The Lalonde bros killing it as usual...they finished 1-2 once again on their rigid singlespeeds.
Sans number plate.

Thanks to Brooks for traveling with me, taking pics, and doing water bottle handups. Much appreciated!

This Thurs Heather and I are going to watch comedian Mike Birbiglia. We've seen him live once before, and he's a riot. That should be a great time. This weekend there are 2 WCA cross races on the calendar. I might end up skipping one though...doing both of them would take up the whole weekend, and if it's nice out, it would be good to work on the pavers. We'll see.

No goal

2007-09-17T00:06:00.000-06:00

I guess the "wait until next year" line is in effect. My 2nd Chequamegon is in the books, and although I didn't make my goal of finishing in the top 100, I still had a very fun weekend. Details, details...

I left work early on Friday and took off for the KOA campground in Hayward to meet up with Vino and Rick. This lovely cabin awaited us:
We unpacked everything and then took off to pick up our packets/numbers. Upon returning, we prepped the bikes and clothing for the next day.

This is what 3 layers of Brown Bear goodness looks like. That's a short sleeve under an insulated long sleeve under a windjacket.

We woke up at 4:30am to head to the start and snag 2nd row start positions (behind the preferred start group, of course). It was a brisk 26 degrees out, so it felt good to head back to the heated cabin and crawl back into bed, wondering how all the campers in tents were doing. A few hours later we were back up, eating and getting dressed, then heading to the start line.

The start seemed the same as last year...very fast with a couple of big crashes thrown in for good measure. I felt fine for the start, not cold despite the temps with the legs feeling ok; not great, but not crappy either. I went through the 17 mile checkpoint about a minute slower than last year, so I tried to pick it up a bit. Right around mile 30 I started to feel a little crampy in the legs and butt (?) area. They never fully locked up, but just twinged. As I neared the finish, I knew that my time would be slower than last year, but it's so hard to know your position in the race with all those riders out there. I crossed the line in 2:38, so 3 minutes slower than last year, and that put me in 235th place. Not what I was hoping for, but not bad either. I did beat Greg Lemond though. :) Looks like I would have to shave about 10min off of my time if I want to reach my goal of top 100...that's doable. Next year, next year.

Both Dave and Rick had good races, with Dave taking a full half hour off his previous best to finish in just over 3 hours, and Rick doing well in his first Cheq. I found a pic of Rick here. Nice job guys! I believe that Rick reserved the same cabin for next year, so we have plenty of room if any other TBB members care to join in...

After the race, I took off for Minneapolis to have some fun at the Renaissance with the family. I hadn't been there for many years. It was good to see everyone, even if it was just for a short time, and I delivered Danette her new bike (in aquamarine color) as well.

There's my weekend. On Sunday is another WORS race in Iola.

No Chainsuck!!

2007-09-10T09:40:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I raced the WORS race in Kewaskum, a quick 60min drive from home. It was a perfect day for racing, with a slight breeze and highs around 70. The course was fast and dry; lots of climbing, some rutted out sections in the grass, and some high speed descents with packed, banked corners. Not many extended sections of singletrack though. We had to do 4 laps on the 4.5 mile loop.
I started out relatively fast on the little "start loop" and entered the first singletrack in good position. Then the first climb hit, and it was decently steep and long, so I passed quite a few more riders there. The first 2 laps I kept a pretty strong pace going and got into my own rhythm. On the 3rd lap, my legs started to feel tired and I could feel myself slowing down. I hate those little mental ruts in the middle of races! Right after the big climb at the beginning of the last lap, I could see the Elite leaders (the Lalonde bros and Woodruff) coming up on me. I let them pass and then decided to see how long I could hang with them. I latched onto their wheels and we took off. I was surprised to see that the pace wasn't THAT much faster...but the fact that they can maintain it for the entire race is amazing. We passed a few people, and then I dropped off after about a mile and a half. I didn't want to blow up. I finished the rest of the race off as strongly as I could.

After cooling off and changing, I went and checked the results. I ended up getting 2nd place in my age group, and was only 1:24 behind the winner. Sweet! Another TBB podium. The freshly-built 8900 performed flawlessly. I think this was the first time in like 5 mtb races that I haven't experienced chainsuck. The 8900 felt stiff and fast...I like it.

Coming up this weekend is Chequamegon. I'm hoping to improve on my finish from last year and try to get into the top 100. We'll see what happens. It looks like it will be a cold one this year. Then I'll be heading to the Cities to meet up with Dad, Danette, Alane, and Dick. We're going to the Renaissance Festival on Sunday. Fun fun.

Labor Day weekend back home

2007-09-06T20:25:00.000-06:00

Heather and I had a fun, relaxing 4 day weekend back in ND. We drove to Fargo on Thurs after work and crashed at the Litchy house, which is looking good with all Tonia and Trent's renovations. They still need to finish that darn bathroom though. :)

On Friday we made a stop at the Ski and Bike Shop and visited with Pat and the gang, and went to the Red Pepper (did they get bought by Cub Foods or something?) to feast on some grinders, tacos, and cheese tostadas. Then we took off for Union Lake to play at the lake cabin. Dad and I got in some nice waterskiing and a bike ride around the lake. On Saturday night, after some appetizers at the Blue Moose, we traveled back to the Litchy's, where we hung out all day Sunday and Monday.

If there's one thing that Tonia loves, it's....

Mario is big. Willa is little.

We delivered Trent his shiny new road bike. They make quite the flashy pair, don't they? Trent and I went on a couple road rides so that he could get used to it. Fun times.
Yesterday I got the first electricity bill since we put the new furnace in. Despite having to run the A/C during the hot days, the bill was only $16, compared to over $40 last month. Awesome! High efficiency furnaces kick ass! I can't wait to see the savings in the winter.

I got a replacement frame today for my broken 9.9. Here it is, all pretty and new:

It's last year's 8900 Euro frame (only one water bottle mount...what's the deal with that?). I already have all the parts off the 9.9 frame, and I will be bringing that into the warranty dept tomorrow to check the frame alignment. They think the alignment might have been messed up, causing all that chainsuck. If that's the case, then I have a free, brand-new 9.9 frame coming my way as well. Sweet.

Now I just have to get the 8900 all built up and tested before the WORS race on Sunday. Hopefully it doesn't fall apart on me! :)

My Frame Didn't Break! (yet)

2007-08-28T23:19:00.000-06:00

Wow, Afton seemed actually fun this year. The 7 mile course didn't seem as hard and I think the entire TBB had a better experience than last year. That's good news.

Both Dave and Trent had great races. Vino nailed out 11 laps, and was hovering in the top 10 overall for a long time before he called it on Saturday afternoon. Trent bettered his previous Afton best by 2 whole laps, finishing with 7 laps. Great job guys. Tonia, once again, did awesome as a solo pit crew, and even found time to sleep in on Saturday morning.
Trent, wondering exactly was IS in Anti-Monkey Butt powder. The world may never know.
I stuck to my plan of taking it easy and gauging how the knee felt after each lap. I kept the chain in the granny ring up front for the entire race. The ENTIRE race...all my shifting was done with the rear derailleur. They said a high cadence should help with knee pain. I also took drugs after every 7-8 hours or so, and took a good break in between laps.

The first few laps went by pretty uneventful. Simmons and I finished the first lap in around 58 minutes, pretty quick for taking it easy. My knee kept feeling fine, so I kept plugging out the laps. I was done with my goal of 5 laps by 3am, and decided to sleep for a few hours in the back of my car. In the afternoon, my lap times kept getting progressively faster. My 2nd to last lap I rode a 54 min lap, and then my last lap I brought that down to a 52 min lap. Not bad for keeping it in the granny gear for the entire lap and just "taking it easy". I finished off the race with 8 laps and no knee pain at all. So I'm really happy with that. I'm sure that I only finished somewhere in the middle of the pack of the 77 solo starters (no results posted yet), but I got some great training for Chequamegon in, and at the same time realized that maybe my 24hr solo racing career isn't over yet. :)
Thanks to Tonia once again for the pit support, thanks to Auntie Alane and Dick for visiting and bringing deviled eggs, and thanks to Brandon and his dad and bro-in-law for dropping by for a bit. Also, thanks to the WI State Patrol for not pulling me over as I flew home trying to stay awake on Saturday after the race.

This weekend Heather and I head to ND for a nice long visit with the family and friends back home. Plus, we have to drop off Trent's new pimpy road bike!

More pics posted over on the TBB blog!

Pregame

2007-08-23T21:37:00.001-06:00

It's nice to wind down from the craziness that is Trek World. All those hours in one week, and then you still have to go back to work on Monday. It was good seeing Pat and Andrew from the SBS and catching up on all the latest shop info. Heather and I will be heading back to GF over Labor Day weekend...it's been awhile since I've been home, so I'm excited.

Non-stop rain (with some huge storms) has made things in WI very...wet. Lots of towns were completely flooded out, and almost everyone had water in their basement. We were no exception:

We can be thankful that we just had a bit of seepage though, as some people from work had a foot deep pool in their lower level. My bike shop carpet remnants got wet, so those are outside hanging on the deck until they dry out.

Afton is this weekend. I'm looking forward to taking it easy and keeping my knee fresh for the rest of the season. My goal is to do a whopping 3-5 laps, depending on how it feels...quite the change of pace being that my best is 15 laps there. Might be fun to just chill.

I didn't get a frame from the warranty dept in time, so I decided to take matters into my own hands for this weekend. My solution: 3 layers of electrical tape should do nicely. :)

Hopefully it holds up! I also put on my new Mythos tires. The difference it made in tire clearance was amazing:

Heather and Mary are going to the Chicago Triathlon this weekend, so hopefully both of them do well.

More mud

2007-08-20T22:53:00.000-06:00

I had another mtb race this past Saturday. It was muddy again. It was raining the entire day, so I knew it would be, but I wanted to do it regardless since it was a qualifier AMBC race for next year's nationals. I just needed to get top 10 in my age group, and that would qualify me.

It was a new course for this year, and would have been really cool if it wasn't pure mud. Lots of flowing singletrack and more climbing than most WORS races. I made the mistake in not switching my tires before this race. Really, I should have switched them out at the beginning of the season after the first muddy race, but I'm not smart evidently. Mental note: huge 2.25 semi-slick tires suck in the mud. I'm putting my new set of 1.95 Mythos on ASAP. A narrower, more knobby tire would have made a big difference.

The start went well, most sections were still rideable at that time, and I was sitting fine in the group. About halfway thru the first lap, most of the singletrack sections became completely unrideable, and everyone was forced to run their bikes for many parts of the course. It got even worse as the race (and the rain) continued. Every lap (we had to do 3) more and more sections had to be run. I bet I ran over 5 miles in my stiff carbon cycling shoes! I could feel it the next day too, with my feet and ankles all sore.

Unfortunately, once again, when the mud hit...so did the chain skipping. Heather, showing off her excellent photographer skills, actually caught the chain skippage in a pic (you can see the chain wrapped around the chainring and the rear derailleur jammed all the way forward):
The bike and chain in better times:
Check out all that mud packed into my rear tire/seatstay area!
Navigating down a sketchy muddy singletrack section.
Cruising thru an open, soggy field.
I ended up getting 6th in my age group, so I already qualified for nationals next year! My legs felt fine (no issues with my knee, so that was very good) even though I couldn't really push them too hard because of the muddy conditions. I think with a better tire selection I could have done better, but I accomplished my goal, so no worries. :)

There is some bad news though. Upon returning home and starting to clean up my bike for Afton this coming weekend, I took a look at my chainstay that takes all the abuse from the constant skipping. More carbon was chipped away, and you can now push with your finger on it and make it flex in and out. So essentially, my frame is destroyed. Stupid carbon mtb frames! I am bringing it into work tomorrow to see if I can get a warranty replacement or something. I doubt I could get one before Friday though, so I am weighing my options. Possibly switching a bunch of parts onto the 970 (and running disc front/v-brake rear), or just putting the chainstay protector back on the 9.9 with a lot of tape again and hoping it holds out for a few laps at Afton. We'll see what happens...

Trek World in Pics

2007-08-16T20:21:00.000-06:00

Some fun goodies from Trek World:

Alberto Contador's bike right from the Tour de France.

The Trek 8900...possibly the mtb to replace my 9.9, with some upgrades of course.
Pimpy new Aeolus 5.0 ACC wheels...carbon with aluminum rim. Lighter, stronger, and cheaper than my Cosmic Carbones. Might have to make the switch.

The redesigned Race X Lite wheels. Brand new hub body, white spokes, red nipples and freehub body. Lighter and stiffer than Ksyriums.
Top Fuel 9.9 SL, now with disc brakes instead of v-brakes. Evidently it remained the same weight despite that change.

The 69er line has been expanded to include a geared hardtail (pictured) and a Top Fuel model.
The Lemond Tete de Course with SRAM and Aeolus carbon clinchers.
Gary Fisher Superfly 29er...all carbon and very light.
This year's version of Trent's bike, and the official endurance race bike of TBB, the Top Fuel 8.

The Trek Travel area contains a 20-foot high banner that has this pic on the back:

There are a few familiar faces on the far right there. :) That's us at the top of Alpe d'Huez last year. I also recommend checking out the Trek Travel website and looking at the France classic climb trips' galleries. There are lots of pics from our trip there, including a funny one of Heather riding thru a pack of sheep.

Unfortunately my camera battery died, so I missed some other fun stuff (like the new cross bikes and the SRAM Red Project One bike painted with a bunch of frogs). Maybe I will post pics of that stuff later this week.

Trek World 07

2007-08-14T09:02:00.000-06:00

Well, it's here, the busiest week of the year for Trek employees. We've been going to seminars and things like that since Saturday, but the real fun begins tomorrow when the first dealer show begins. I've wandered thru the showroom floor with all the new bikes and products...there is some really cool new stuff coming out for 08. Lots of products got complete overhauls, including the new Madone, the cross bikes, and the Bontrager wheels. I'll try to get some pics posted of some of the new goodies later this week.

This past weekend Heather and Willa went to Michigan to visit Heather's family. Word on the street is that Heather's parents finally sold their house. Good to hear. So Vontoux and I had a bachelor's weekend.

We also got our new furnace installed last week, getting rid of the 30-year old, non-efficient piece of junk that was downstairs. Our new Goodman is 95% efficient (compared to our old one, which the furnace guy said was around 65-75%!). We will save between $1,000-$1,500 a year in just heating/cooling costs. That's crazy. Heather will post some pics of it on her blog shortly...

It's amazing to look back at how much our house has changed since we bought it six months ago. The new roof, furnace, ceramic tile, painting, cleaning up the backyard, etc. It looks so much better than when we first moved in. We have a couple more projects before summer ends...finishing the pavers underneath the deck and I would like to get the driveway re-asphalted. Then in the fall/winter we'll have lots more painting to do.

I got out of working Trek World for the afternoon this upcoming Saturday so I can go race the WORS race in Mt Morris. It happens to be an AMBC event, which means that it is a qualifying race for 2008 Nationals. Hopefully I will do well. :)

2008 Goal

2007-08-06T13:02:00.000-06:00

Hello all. I didn't race the WORS race this weekend. I decided to take the weekend off...rest my knees up a little more and to just relax with Heather. We don't get many weekends to just chill during the summer, so it was nice being able to hang out, especially being that it was rainy for most of the weekend. Speaking of my knees, Dr. Heather determined that I have Patellar Tendinitis. I compared the measurements on my road bike and mtb to see if they were off, and they were actually spot on with each other, so I doubt that is the problem. My guess is that I messed them up a little bit in France last year from riding so many miles up those climbs, and that makes them easier to aggravate when I do the long miles during 24hr races. It appears that the treatment for it consists of icing them for 15min a day, taking Aleve, stretching, and spinning an easier gear during those long races. So for Afton, I plan on icing them down beforehand (and maybe during), taking (legal) drugs, and spinning easy up the climbs. I hope that helps!

In other news, I have set my main goal for 2008. Looking at the USA Cycling website, I found out that with my results in the WORS races, I actually qualified for the Mountain Bike National Championship race (another familiar name appears 7 rows below mine)...which unfortunately was 3 weeks ago. NORBA doesn't recognize the Comp race category, so they just put those racers into the Sport category for National races. In this year's race, there were only 10 racers in the Sport 25-29 age group, which makes for good odds. So, next year I will try to qualify once again, and then travel to CA or VT or wherever it is held, and attempt to win myself one of these:

Next week is Trek World, our huge product show where all the new 08 bikes and parts are on display for the dealers to come and oogle over. It's a good time...alot of hours to work but fun seeing all the cool new stuff coming out. I hope to see a few SBS employees there... :)

Poor TBB

2007-07-30T17:23:00.000-06:00

24 Hours of Nine Mile has come and gone and, unfortunately, it kicked Team Brown Bear's ass. Trent and I got there decently early on Friday and picked out our campsite for the weekend. We also did a pre-ride of the course. It was the same distance as last year (14 miles), but featured a lot more singletrack and hand-numbing rock garden sections. Later on that day, Rick, Vino, and Jen arrived and then on Saturday morning the rest of our support crew, Tonia and Heather, arrived as well.

Here are the four wide-eyed Brown Bear's right before the LeMans start. Vino took off in a full sprint like we expected. :)
The first lap went well...a lot of congestion in the singletrack but eventually I caught back up to sprinter Vino and we finished the lap together. The second and third lap went by smoothly (I think it was the 3rd lap where Eatough lapped us for the first time and where Vino cracked his saddle rail).

Here's a pic of Vino and I before taking off on another lap. Notice the nice new EZ-Up canopy tent and Team Brown Bear banner that Tonia made.

On the next lap, Vino snapped his saddle completely off. Pretty humorous. Luckily Rick packed a spare seat, so Vino got to ride the rest of the race on a sweet Velo Plush saddle. Here's Trent gulping down a Starbuck's double shot while support crew member Tonia gazes lovingly.

On the sixth lap was where it went down the crapper for me. Just like last year at Afton, my knee started to flare up to the point of where it killed to push down on the pedal while standing on a climb or powering thru a rock section. Oddly enough, it was my right knee this time...last year it was my left knee. I really didn't want it to be like last year, when I pushed it to the point of not even being able to pedal at all, so I decided to end it there. 10 hours into the race after already completing 6 laps and 84 miles, and it was over for me. That sucked! The rest of me was feeling strong; legs, lungs, mentally, etc. Oh well I guess.

Vino did one more lap after I called it a race, and then cramped really hard in his leg. His race was done as well after 7 laps.

Rick went out for an early morning lap and was having cramp issues as well. He called it after 5 laps.

Trent was going strong for awhile but then hit a wall and needed a break. He went out for a lap in the morning after a good nap and ended with 6 laps.

Here I am after my sixth lap, icing down my knee and squinting at the bright ass camera flash.

The results on the 24-9 website for some reason don't list one of the laps that Trent, Vino, and I did, so the 3 of us all show up on the results page with one lap less than what we really did. So with that, it shows that I finished in 26th place.

That sucks that for the second time I had to end a 24hr race when I was otherwise feeling fine because of my knees. It feels better now, so I don't think it should affect any other races this season, but I'm not sure what to do with 24hr races now. I love the camping atmosphere and being able to meet up with friends and family. I don't know. Maybe I'll do more of them as a 4-man team instead of solo or something. We'll see I guess. We've already signed up for 24 hours of Afton for later this year, where the 3 of us will be taking it easy and having fun because that course is uber hard. Maybe we'll take a picture of us having a picnic on the course like we planned. :)

Big thanks go out to Heather, Tonia, and Jen for their great support! The best support crew out there!! Also, Sears and Kim made an appearance on Sunday morning, so it was good seeing them as well.

Up next is a WORS race near Milwaukee on Sunday.

Time for 24-9

2007-07-26T16:56:00.001-06:00

Trent and I take off for Nine Mile tomorrow morning. Race starts at 10am on Sat. I'll be back on Sun and post a full recap. Go TBB!

Here's a video to enjoy in the meantime...

Prep for National Champs

2007-07-22T22:38:00.000-06:00

Hello all. Just doing some prep work this week, getting ready for 24-9 this upcoming weekend. Got the 9.9 all ready to go, charging the lights, buying food, gathering all cycling clothing, etc. I was home alone with the kids this weekend while Heather was racing the Half Ironman triathlon in Racine for the 2nd year in a row. Her overall time was within 30 seconds of where she finished last year...that's amazing over the course of a 6 hour race! Both her swim and run were a little slower than last year, but she killed her bike time, averaging a full mph faster! Nice job Heathrow!!

I decided to switch up the look of the X0-1 a bit. Here it is before the changes:
And here it is after. Added new handlebar tape, new Flite saddle, and some new tires to replace those crappy Michelin's that were on there. Black, red, and gold. Beauty. :)

I've been watching a lot of the Tour. What is everyone's predictions? Will Rasmussen hold onto the yellow, or will Evans, Contador, Levi, or Kloden dethrone him in the mountains or TT?

Flower boxes?

2007-07-16T19:08:00.000-06:00

This weekend we had Eric, Katie, and Hayden come and pay us a visit. We had a good time, watching movies, playing with little Hayden, checking out downtown, etc. Eric fixed a section on our living room wall that was messed up from previous water damage and hung up Heather's beloved flower boxes. It's amazing to see how much Hayden has grown since the last time we saw him. Heather's aunt Linda and Phil also swung by on Friday evening to check out the house and eat chicken tacos. They are riding their motorcycle to Montana and then going thru Canada near Banff. Fun fun.

Here is little Hayden driving me around in a jeep at the Children's Museum in downtown Madison.
On Sunday I took off for a few hours to race the WORS marathon mountain bike race in Suamico. The course was an 11.5 mile lap that we did 4 times for 46 miles. It was a very fast course, probably about 9 miles of big ring doubletrack/fire roads and 2.5 miles of smooth, winding singletrack. The race started very fast, with pacelines forming like a road race on the big ring sections. I latched onto the leading group of around 20 or so riders and settled into that pace for the next 2 laps. On the 3rd lap, the front of the pack started to get separated during the singletrack sections and I ended up in a group of 5 chasing to get back to the leaders. About halfway thru that lap, we were lapping a Sport racer in the singletrack. She got completely off the trail to let us pass, but then started to get back on the trail right when I was going by her. My front wheel plowed into her rear wheel and I crashed on my driveside. My bike was ok, but when I went to stand back up, my right leg started to cramp. I continued on and took it easy for awhile so that my leg wouldn't fully lock up on me. But that meant that I also lost contact with the group. By the start of the last lap, my leg was feeling better and I was pushing to try to catch some more riders. I crossed the finish line very dusty (any exposed part of me was covered in a film of dust) and tired after a very fast 46 miles. I ended up in 4th place (only 22 seconds behind 3rd) in my age group and 26th overall out of 130 starters...my first podium appearance while flying the TBB colors. :)

When I went up to the podium, the announcer said that I was on Team Brown Beer, but then corrected himself. :)

LSD

2007-07-08T23:14:00.000-06:00

Dad and Danette paid us a visit this weekend, making a quick stop on their whirlwind vacation tour. On Saturday, Heather and Mary took off for a Danskin tri near Chicago (they did VERY well for TBB, with Mary getting 2nd age group, 14th overall and Heather getting 21st age group, 115th overall out of 3919 women). Great job ladies! With Heather off playing, we decided to get some work done around the house. My dad and I installed a new door in the garage (with Danette supervising) and also re-glazed some windows. It turned out quite nice...now it just needs to be painted. Thanks for all your help, Dad and Danette!

Today I wanted to get in a few miles on the road bike since I didn't have a race this weekend. I wanted to go a little further than normal with the 2nd WORS marathon race next Sunday and Nine Mile 24hr race a few weeks later. I had planned to do 50 miles or so...but that ended up not happening. I got lost not once, not twice, but three times...on the roads that comprise the Horribly Hilly Hundreds...ouch. Lots of climbing.

Some stats from the ride:

95 degree temps with lots o' humidity
6 water bottles gulped down (144 ounces)
5 hours of saddle time
82 miles covered

My arms and legs are the only parts of me that see the light of day. Yes, those are crab boxers.

Kwik Trip

2007-07-02T22:19:00.000-06:00

I had a fast-paced weekend. I left on Saturday morning for the Cities (leaving Heather all alone with 3 dogs...we were dog-sitting Sampson for the Leedahl's while they were in Missoula for Scotty's wedding). I hung out with Foxy for a bit, and we killed a chicken six-pack at Taco John's. It was good to see him...it had been far too long. I then proceeded to go to Aunt Alane and Uncle Dick's...had to drop off her Team Brown Bear wind jacket! After a fun visit with them, I went over to Brandon and Gillian's house to catch up with them and spend the night. Extra cheese pizza, indeed! In the morning we went to a diner for some good breakfast, but I was running a little late leaving for Eau Claire for the WORS race. I rolled onto the race site just after 1pm...my race was starting at 1:30 and they close registration 1/2 hour before race start. After some pleading with officials, they let me race. I had just enough time to change, pin my numbers on, and head to the start line before the Elite's started. Close call.

We had to do 3 laps on a 8 mile course. It was a fast course, no real climbs to speak of, just lots of sandy doubletrack mixed with fun singletrack. I had a great start, avoided a crash at the beginning that caused a split in the group, then hammered to catch onto the back of the leading group of around 10 riders. Once we entered the first set singletrack, I got caught behind some slower riders and lost contact with the leading group. I settled into a good pace for the 1st and 2nd laps...had some chain skipping issues in the 2nd lap (I think I bent my rear derailleur or hanger with all that chainsuck in the last race) that miraculously disappeared after a creek crossing. The legs felt very strong for the last lap and I was picking off riders until a big group of us got caught behind 1 slow rider in the singletrack for the last few miles. I ended up getting 5th in my age group...my best ever WORS result. I was only 25 seconds behind 4th (medal) and 2 min behind 3rd (podium). I feel encouraged with how good the legs felt.

Heather thinks that I have too many Flites. I think that one can never have too many of a classic saddle that is being fazed out of the Sella Italia lineup. Here is my current collection, not including the yellow all-Kevlar one on the Trek 970:

In other news, today was my first day at my new job. That's right. I moved from the Ascend dept to the E-Trek dept. I will be in charge of loading bike images onto Dexter (dealer ordering website), maintaining data on a geographic program that we have, and other such computer geek functions. The good news is that means no more customer service calls and no more on-call. Yippee.

I hope everyone has a good 4th of July.

The Opposite of Relaxation

2007-06-25T08:43:00.000-06:00

Non-stop running around this past weekend. Brooks and I donned the TBB gear for the first time in racing action, competing in the Whitewater Omnium and Heather went to Lake Geneva for an Olympic distance triathlon. Brooks has an excellent recap of the races (and the weekend in general) on his blog as well. Here's my take:

Things started off on Friday afternoon with the time trial. It's been years since I last did a TT. I slapped my Cosmic Carbones on my road bike and there was my TT bike. The course had rolling hills, lots of corners, and plenty of wind. I ended up 6th with a time of 32:04 for the 20k course, so just under a 24mph average.

On Saturday was the crit in a park...it was a short loop with a decent little climb, some fun, fast corners on a descent, and then a sketchy turn off of a driveway. This was not a course where the pack was going to remain together. I got with a group of 4 other riders (there were 2 packs of riders in front of us) after 4-5 laps and we stuck together until the end. I ended up 15th, which I'm fine with since I normally suck at crits anyway.

Sunday brought the road race and the sun/heat. 6 mile loop that we had to do 7 times for 42 miles. This was a fun course...no real big climb, just lots of rollers and twists and turns around a lake. The pace was pretty slow for the 1st lap, and then 2 riders broke away at the beginning of the 2nd lap. I was feeling good, so I decided to bridge up to them. Once I reached them, they didn't want to work anymore, and they waited for the field to catch them. I continued on and soon after another rider bridged up to me. We started working well together, taking 1-2 minute pulls, and we soon had a good gap on the field. We stayed away for almost 4 laps, getting caught toward the beginning of the 6th lap. It was probably destined not to succeed, being that there were only 2 of us, but it was fun nonetheless. If we could have had 2-3 more riders with us, then maybe it would have stuck. I didn't really contest the sprint for the finish since I was further back in the pack, and rolled across the line in 18th.

Other tidbits from the weekend:

Heather did well in her tri, getting 17th in her age group.
She surprised Brooks and I by showing up to watch our road race on her way home from her tri.
The new Brown Bear jerseys look fantastic on the road.
Brooks' Reynolds Stratus DV-UL carbon rear wheel, 2005-2007, RIP. Sometimes they die too young, unfortunately.
I forgot how good Taco John's is. We hit that up after the road race.
The Dr. Bakke's are making their move to OH. I saw Andy for a total of 10 min during a "rest stop" on his journey. He DOES NOT like parades.
On Saturday night I went with Mary and Brooks to watch Roller Derby. That freakin ruled. If you have the chance, I highly recommend going.
The weekend ended nicely by playing some disc golf in perfect conditions at a course in East Madison. Really cool 18 hole course.
All this action, and absolutely no pics from me. My apologies. :)

Relaxation

2007-06-19T14:14:00.000-06:00

Heather and I had a relaxing vacation in northern WI with Heather's parents. The lake cabin was very nice and secluded. It was built by former world champion lumberjacker Fred Sheer. His trophies were all over the place. We passed the days by canoeing, paddle-boating, swimming, and reading. Vontoux and Willa had a grand time as well, swimming their little hearts out and attracting ticks like there was no tomorrow. Jim went fishing each day and caught a couple of decent sized smallmouth bass that we fried up and ate on our last night there. It was a great time, and we hope to go back again next year.

Vontoux and I in the screened in porch.

Vontoux loves the water.
Heather leading Willa into the water for the first time.
Joyce summoning the fire gods.
Canoeing around the lake. Pale white skin alert.

The mother and daughter on the dock.
Jim taking a break from the paddle boat and fishing from the dock.
The doggies showing off their new bandanas.
Chillin on the shed porch.

Tomorrow night Heather and I are going to Little Amerricka, a somewhat scary amusement park in Marshall (in between Sun Prairie and Waterloo...smells like feces with all the cow/pig/slaughterhouse) for the Trek company summer picnic. Free rides, food, and good times. Possibly some death and/or dismemberment.

This weekend will be the road racing debut of the Team Brown Bear jerseys!

State Champs and a Vacation

2007-06-11T12:55:00.000-06:00

Brooks and I headed down to Burlington on Saturday for the WI State Road Champs. We had to do 6 laps on a 7 mile course. It is a fun course...no real flat, straight sections...just a bunch of rolling hills, twisty roads, fast descents, and a decent climb right before the start/finish line. About halfway thru the first lap, a solo rider got off the front and the field let him go. After that, the laps ticked by relatively quickly, with it breaking up a little on the climb each time, but (for the most part) getting back together shortly afterwards. We finally caught the solo rider with about 3 miles remaining, and then the field ticked along nicely at 35mph entering the corner before the last climb. There were still at least 40-50 riders in the peloton when we hit the base of the climb, and then it was every rider for themselves. The field was splintered pretty quickly, and I got to the top of the climb with the leading group of about 10 riders. Then there was around 1/4 mile flat before the finish line...and the 10 of us must have used all of our energy on the climb, because we proceeded to have the slowest sprint for the win that I have ever seen. It felt like it was slow motion. No one had the legs to blow by anyone. I ended up 6th (4th WI rider), but I was literally only about 10 feet behind the winner. That's frustrating. Oh well I guess. There are still a few road races left this year...time to start mixing things up with some attacks. :)

Heather and I have a nice vacation planned with her parents this week. We leave on Wednesday for Hayward, WI to stay at a lake cabin for a few days. Here's the link to the website for the cabin...some cool pics of it there. Should be a great time!
On the way back home on Sunday we are going to hit up the WORS mtb race in Phillips, since it is right along the way. How convenient.

Missing! Reward Offered!

2007-06-08T11:56:00.000-06:00

Missing Madison Blogger
The Ministry of Attorney-General and the Madison Police Board have authorized a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the unlawful confinement, kidnapping or murder of the blogger listed as missing in this reward poster; a reward will be decided by the Madison Police Board, in its sole discretion, and that decision is final, binding and not reviewable. Only those people who come forward and volunteer information which is received by the Madison Police Department on or before June 18, 2007, will be eligible to receive a reward.
The blogger was last seen on April 28th, as he was working in his freshly planted garden. His wife, who has been cooperative with local authorities, said that he had planned a trip to Ikea near Chicago the following weekend. An internet rumor was circulated that he may have been detained at an Illinois toll booth as he tried to smuggle Scandinavian particle board across the WI border. Our investigations have not been able to validate or discredit that rumor.

Chainsuck sucks

2007-06-04T21:12:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was my first mtb race of the season. It was a marathon race, 40 miles of fun on the dirt. Even though it poured on the drive up to Wausau, thankfully no rain had fallen at the race venue. The race began as a mass start for all 150+ Comp racers. The start was pretty uneventful, I didn't want to go too hard being that the race was so long. The first of four 10 mile laps went very smoothly...I was in the top 25-30 racers and still feeling strong. That's when it started to rain...nothing too hard, just enough to soak the course. The second lap was going fine until near the end when I was starting to experience some chainsuck in my middle chainring due to all the mud. For those that do not know, this is chainsuck:

By the start of the third lap, I could no longer use my middle chainring, so I was forced to keep it in the big ring. This was ok in the flat, fast sections, but not very fun at all in the technical parts of the course. Then, in the middle of that lap, I started getting chainsuck in the big ring as well. I couldn't pedal more than 5-10 strokes without it doing it. I would have to stop and pull the chain out each time. Sucky. So, after doing that for 5 miles, I decided to call it a race right after the start of the fourth lap. Thirty miles of muddy fun = messed up bike.

The end result after a quick cleaning...yes, that's bare carbon there.

Ouch. When I started the race, there was a metal protector in that spot, but that must have gotten ripped off at some point. I got a new protector from the warranty guys at work, but I'm not sure how much of that mess will get covered by it. Makes me want to get an aluminum mtb frame again. :)

I don't have good luck with that Wausau course at all. Last year I flatted there, then there was the monsoon at 24-9 that Vino got caught out in, and now this. I'm not too disappointed though, as I felt strong during the whole race; the legs/lungs felt good.

Heather and Mary had a tri yesterday as well. They both did very well from what I've heard, maybe Heather will post a recap with some pics on her blog...along with pics of our new roof and gutters. :)

Up next: The Wisconsin State Road Champs on Sat.

New Bike = Happy Dad

2007-05-30T17:19:00.000-06:00

I had a fun, but short, trip back home to ND this past weekend. Since I won't be able to be home for Father's Day in a few weeks, Tonia and I decided to give Dad his gift early. We gave him a Trek 7.2 FX hybrid. Here he is enjoying it:

We all hung out and played around Fargo on Saturday. Trent and Tonia's work on their house continues. It's looking good. I also got some new tires for REO Speedwagon while I was in town, as my stock tires were getting well worn. Vino comforted me while I was shelling out loads of money for my new tread.

Luxury ride and smooth performance. Sweetness.

I visited with Brandon and Gillian while passing thru the Cities as well. It's been a few years since I saw them last...much too long. Their new house is really nice with a kick ass master suite upstairs. On Memorial Day, Dr. Andy and Dr. Becca stopped by with Brooks and Mary. The pair of doctors are preparing to move to Ohio in a few weeks. Craziness.

Willa is an expert hunter of voles. She's caught three that we've seen. Today she killed one right in front of us. She's lightning quick when she spots one...they don't stand a chance. The other day she caught a squirrel.

Tomorrow after work Heather and I are going to a Milwaukee Brewers game with the Ascend UK bloke. Should be fun. This weekend I have a 40 mile mountain bike race and Heather has her first tri of the season. Time for her to put the Equinox thru its paces!

Charley Horse

2007-05-21T08:58:00.000-06:00

Brooks and I went to the Denzer RR on Sat. I had never ridden the course before; it was a 12 mile lap with one tough long climb (might be the longest climb I've seen here in WI so far) and some fast descents (my computer showed 48.4 mph as the max speed after the race). It was really nice out, already around 70 degrees and sunny at 9am for our race start. We started with a group of about 40 riders, but the big climb was only a few miles after the start and that blew apart the field nicely. I was in the lead group with about 20 racers or so at the top of the climb on the first lap, and we started working well once we realized that we had a gap on the rest of the racers. On the last lap we were still all together when we hit the big climb again and it succeeded in breaking it all up again. Eight riders got off the front and I didn't have the legs to bridge back up to them. At the top of the climb I was in a group of 3 riders...there were 2 groups in front of us, the 8 leaders and another group of 4 behind them. We pushed the pace to catch up to the group of 4, and we finally caught them with about 2 miles left in the race. Our group could see the leading group in front, but we didn't have enough time to connect back up with them. As my group was starting to sprint for the line, my left leg locked up in a cramp and I rolled across the line in 15th. Kind of disappointing, but I just didn't have the legs to stay with the leaders on the big climb. That's bike racing sometimes.
I was planning on doing the WORS race on Sunday, but I woke up with my left leg as stiff as a board, so I decided against it. It ended up being 50 degrees and raining, so maybe it was for the better. :)

This upcoming weekend I will be back in GFND for a few days of fun with family and friends. Should be a fun trip, it's been awhile since I was back home.

No more races this month, but June will be packed with racing. Two WORS races, the WI State road race, and a stage race in Whitewater. Throw in a 5-day excursion to a lake cabin near Hayward, WI with Heather's family, and you have one busy month. :)

A Glimpse of a Ride

2007-05-14T22:00:00.000-06:00

Hello all. We had a very productive weekend here getting stuff done in the backyard with Auntie Alane and Uncle Dick. Looks so much better. Heather will be posting pics of the "new-and-improved backyard" in a few days.

Here's some pics from a loop that I ride quite frequently. I use it as a 20 mile TT ride to gauge my progress thru the season. The change in pavement color is the start/finish.

I pass a nice little marsh along the way.
The ride features a lot of rolling hills, and two good climbs. Here is the first one, which is decently long for around here. This climb is good for hill repeats.
The best thing about riding in WI is the seemingly endless amount of backcountry roads that feature no center-line, no shoulders, and best of all, no cars.

The second climb. This one is much shorter, but also much steeper. It pitches up nicely once you get into the trees.

Turnaround at the cow farm. Halfway done!

My pasty white legs can't hide the beauty of the Merckx. :)

The worst thing about riding in WI? The humidity.

Two races coming up this weekend. A road race on Sat and a mtb race on Sun. Fun times.

Baraboo and Scandinavia

2007-05-07T08:10:00.000-06:00

First race of the season is in the books. A road race near Baraboo, about an hour north of Madison. Fun course, a couple decent climbs and some fun rolling hills/descents. Brooks and I drove there in the rain, but by the time the race started it was just sprinkling, and it stopped completely by the midpoint of the race. The wet roads still made for some sketchy sections on the downhills in the peloton. The pace was decently high for the first lap and prevented any riders from getting away on the climbs. Brooks wasn't feeling "the sensations" in his legs and called it a race after the first of two laps. The second lap started at a slow pace, and a rider got away on the first big climb. The speed picked up a bit after that, and some riders were getting dropped from the pack. We caught the breakaway rider with a few miles to go and entered the final sprint with probably 20-25 riders. I got boxed in when I tried to start my sprint, so I swung around those riders on the other side, but a group had already gotten a gap by that time. I ended the race in 8th. My legs and lungs felt alright for the first race of the year.

On Saturday evening after the race Heather and I did some work on the house. Heather got the entire sunroom painted...she's a little go-getter! It is now a nice shade of yellow...I'm sure she will post some pics on her blog once we get all the furniture moved back in there. I installed a wireless keypad opener for our garage door and started with the installation of a new door for our master bedroom.

On Sunday we spent the entire day in Chicago with Mary and Brooks. The purpose of our visit: to buy loads of new furniture and other house goodies at Ikea. Mission accomplished. Between the four of us we filled up our rented U-Haul trailer nicely. :)
Other fun news: This upcoming weekend we are getting a visit from Auntie Alane and Uncle Dick, and maybe Trent and Tonia as well. Trent has to pick up his new bike. Next Wednesday we are getting our new roof installed. Fun times.

One season ends...another begins

2007-05-01T22:48:00.000-06:00

Just like that, the hockey season comes to an end, and the following weekend the bike racing begins. The playoffs ended with Team Gray in the same position in which they finished the regular season...2nd place behind Team Blue. It was a good, back-and-forth championship game, but Team Gray came up on the short end, losing 2-0. It was a very fun season though, and I plan on joining the league again this fall.

This Saturday is the first bike race on my calendar for this season...a road race just north of Madison. Team Brown Bear will be there representin' (sans jerseys).

The Workbench/Bike Shop Progression

2007-04-26T22:47:00.000-06:00

The workbench is now complete, with the rest of the basement shop nearing completion as well. Here is the pictorial:

Step 1: Build the frame for the top and bottom.
Step 2: Bolt the legs onto the frames.

Step 3: Bolt on the side and back bracing and attach the countertop and bottom shelving.

Step 4: Attach the pegboard and truing stand.

Step 5: Apply a couple coats of polyurethane and then put all the tools on it.

Here's a side view.

A view of the whole shop. We got a dehumidifier too since it gets super humid here in the summers. Check it out, I can watch DVD's while working on bikes. :)

Really the only thing that I have left to do for the bike shop is to put some hooks above the black cabinet (storage for the power tools!) for all the wheels and tires on the ground there.

The view of the other side of the shop. Sadly, nothing has been done with the IF frame yet.

And that's that. :)

Off to the Championship Game

2007-04-22T23:55:00.000-06:00

Team Gray took on Team Orange tonight, with the winner getting the chance to advance to the championship game next Sunday. It was a back and forth game thru the first 2 periods, and we entered the 3rd period tied at 4. Heather was in the stands to witness a crazy finish to the game. Orange scored with only 5 min left to go up 5-4, and they were getting cocky thinking that they won the game. It only took us 30sec to tie it back up, but then they quickly scored again to regain the lead. That's when Team Gray took over, scoring 2 goals in less than a minute. Orange pulled their goalie with a minute and a half left, but they couldn't get the equalizer, so Team Gray took the win, 7-6. Five goals scored in around 3.5 minutes. Fun times. Team Gray is now headed to the championship game against Team Blue next Sunday. Be there. :)

It was a gorgeous weekend here, with highs in the upper 70s. Too bad these weekends always seem to go by so quickly. If you haven't heard yet, head on over to Heather's blog to read about a new addition to our household. :)

No more Snow

2007-04-16T11:25:00.000-06:00

Our latest snowfall only lasted a few days, and this weekend the temps were in the 50s/60s, so the snow all disappeared. The roads were clear as well, so Heather and I went out for a little ride and she rode her Equinox tri bike for the first time. We'll have to do a couple of minor adjustments, but other than that she liked it.

I'm finalizing my race calendar for the coming season now, and it looks like it will be a fun season. Lots of mountain and cross races, and as many road races as I can get in around here. Then there's Chequamegon (Simmons and I got our applications accepted again!), 24hr Afton team, and 24-9 National Champs. Fun fun.

Last night a short-handed Team Gray took to the ice once again, as only 9 skaters showed up. It worked out alright though, as that enabled us to have 2 forward lines and 3 defensemen rotate. In the end, the lack of players didn't hurt us, as we handed Team White a good old-fashioned ass kicking, 11-1.

I enjoyed all the extra playing time, and ended the night with 3 goals and 1 assist. That win means that if we beat Team Orange next week, we will advance to the championship game.

STL and My Wood

2007-04-10T19:51:00.000-06:00

The trip to St Louis was fun despite the Sioux losing to BC on Thurs. The Sioux didn't play their best game, but at least the hated BC Eagles didn't win the national title. That honor belonged to the MSU Spartans, their first title since 1986. I guess there's always next year for the Sioux.

I saw the Arch, took a look around Busch Stadium, played some hockey, went to the zoo, got lost in the ghetto of St Louis, and had a grand ole time. The weekend wasn't a complete loss for Sioux fans, as UND forward Ryan Duncan won the Hobey Baker for the best collegiate hockey player.

I was an idiot and forgot to bring my camera places, but I did remember to bring it with to the zoo. Here's some penguins.
Here's a pile of wood and galvanized bolts in my basement. They will soon be transformed into a bike workbench.

In other news, the weather forecast for the area says that we are going to get 6-10 inches of snow in the next 2 days. What the hell?