The Road to Somewhere

THATmanMANNY

Well-Known Member
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xc62701

Well-Known Member
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Today was the Glen Park Enduro. I was interested in making an attempt at this race if the stars align and as of Thursday I was in for the race. I went out Friday to preride the course and get acquainted with the trails but there is only so much you can learn with one ride of the trails. Today I went out to see what the whole enduro scene was all about. I had no idea how this whole thing ran and I had to learn on the go. First off I can't say how more chill these events are than the whole xc scene. It's partly because you are racing for a much shorter portion, but it's designed to be like a group ride with your buddies. Chat on the climbs and then rip the downhills and repeat. I knew only a couple people there and of course wasn't racing anywhere near them so I just chatted it up with people as I could. It was a pretty cool experience. I know I can ride down most of the downhills we have on the xc trails but some of these trails were a bit over my head. I just wanted to ride them smart and not make any big mistakes.

They called my age group and we easily pedaled to the top of the hill only to sit in line for what had to be 30+ minutes. It was a bit annoying as I wanted to ride right away but I was there for the experience. So I sat in line and chatted and just enjoyed my time out there. I saw the riders ahead were policing their own gaps and giving 30 sec - 1 min gaps in order to not chase up on the back of someone. I generally gave a minute and I'm sure the guys behind me gave me more as I was one of the only hosers out there wearing a full spandex kit. I wasn't going to hide my colors and hopefully represent the xc riders well. I chipped in for the first segment and went out hot. It was good for a few turns until I came unclipped and had a bit of a battle getting it clipped back in. I stayed on the gas and rode smart. I went around the double jumps and took safe lines on the drops and rode hard to the finish and chipped out. 1 run done.

A bunch of the riders stopped at the bottom to regroup and I just started pedaling back to the top for run #2. This run was good and a bit loose and had a couple of large rocks to roll over which I didn't. Again I took the safe lines and rode pretty quickly. I even got a lot more comfortable with my dropper post. I'm fully convinced that it is not needed for 99% of cross country riding, but for trails like the Glen has it was a nice benefit. So with #2 done I again pedaled straight to the top to start run 3.

For run 3 I chipped in and took off. It has a few tricky sections that I rode well and the rock garden which I got through cleanly although I would have like to have ridden it faster. I hit the bottom and chipped out and rolled to the transition to start pedaling back up. As I rode over I saw 3 guys miss the chip exit and have to run/pedal back up to stop the timing of the run. At least this made me feel better that I haven't made that mistake. At least not yet... I was happy with finishing each run and getting right back up for the next one. I could see riding with a social group that there could be more stopping and chatting but I just wanted to keep riding. Up I went.

For run 4 I was getting more confident so I let loose a little more and tried to brake less. It had a few steep chutes that I rode ok but towards the bottom there was a double jump that was fairly safe(if you came up short it wasn't a bad landing) and I hit it and of course came up short but kept on cranking downhill. I was looking forward to stage 5. That one I knew was fast and you could keep the speed more wide open.

For stage 5 I knew I was close to the end and wanted to hit it pretty hard. I enjoyed it Friday when I was there and was hoping to rip it a bit better today. I did just that. Up top there are a couple of jumps and I was flying. One of them almost send me into the woods but somehow I saved it and kept going. Next up was a series of rocks and ledges and I was hitting them pretty hot. One of them I launched off of and almost landed into a rather large rock and somehow the bike stayed straight and kept ripping. After that I toned it back a little wanting to preserve my body. I hit the last few turns and flatter section at the bottom pretty hard and was satisfied with a solid consistent effort.

For my first enduro I was pleasantly surprised. It was fun, not too sketchy, and really fun trails. I definitely surprised myself on some sections and am totally impressed with how well a trail bike can handle those trails. My xc bike would have been shredded but the stumpjumper handled it all very well and was super comfortable on that terrain. It was probably only the 7th ride on the bike and I felt right at home on it. I finished 15th of 29 in my age group and hoped to be mid pack. I nailed it and I'm happy knowing I did this well with riders coming from all over the area for this one. I'll be back for more of these.
 

xc62701

Well-Known Member
It's now July 11th and I've been doing the 31 days of July Challenge and it's been good so far. The best part is that I get bored early so I'm forced to go to other parks than I'm used to. So far the new parks are Chimney and Sterling, and on the list is to get back to Six Mile/Sourlands and Lippman Park. I'll be putting a bunch of other miles in Mooch but that's a normal park for me. I have a plan coming up that may get me to Kingdom, Millstone, and a few of the Boston area trails, but we'll have to see what comes of that.

So far this month, here's the stats:
Hours - 20:41
Miles - 242.9
Vert - 17,134 ft
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RNG1

Well-Known Member
I’ll be more than happy to give you a tour of Alpine/Rockleigh if you’re up this way...
 

xc62701

Well-Known Member
Yesterday was the wilderness 101. I can’t remember the exact number but this is the 8th or 9th time doing this. I’ve always enjoyed this race no matter how hard it was. My first year (2007) I did this race in 10:36 and I was amazed how challenging it was. It always kept me coming back year after year. Each year I progressed and got quicker and quicker to the point where my PR was 7:36. I was on fire that year. This was not that year.

So reality sets in and I’m the heaviest I’ve ever raced this and with a young family I have definitely transitioned from racing this to just riding and finishing this race. To that point I was one of the last few riders out of the park where it starts as compared to trying to stay up front for position on the first climb. To tell you the truth I’m glad I wasn’t there to actually race this. It’s so painful to go flat out the whole day and I was happy to ride hard when I wanted and take it easy when not. Especially when the temps got over 90 I was ok with taking more time at the rest stops and also stopping to soak myself in streams when I could. Keeping the core temp down was key.

I rode ok from the start to aid station 3. After aid 3 was the long singletrack and I just enjoyed it. The sequence of trails this year was great and even though I wasn’t riding fast I had a lot of fun. I was dreading the climb after aid 4 and it was just as hard as I remember. Once that climb was over it was into the hottest part of the day. Sand mountain was exposed and hot. I just wanted to keep the miles ticking. I finally got to aid 5 where I knew it was 12 easy-ish miles to the finish and one climb left. I was fine with walking it if I had to but there was too much pride involved. I rode the climb and actually hit the top hard as I knew the worst was done. I kept thinking that I don’t want this to be my slowest finish there ever so I kept pedaling hard to the finish.

I crossed the line in 10:29, which I thought tied my slowest effort, but that was actually 10:36 now that I look back. It was close. I was 28th in the open men and 50 something overall. I’ll take it as all I wanted to do was finish. I know many weren’t so fortunate. All I could think of was how badly my buddy Lucky ? would have loved to be there racing, even if it took all day. He kept me going when I started crawling and getting down. In hindsight it wasn’t fast but it was a great day on the bike and he was with me the entire way.

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xc62701

Well-Known Member
The last 2 days I rode Ringwood, Sterling, Lippman, and Stewart. Lots of good miles and lots of vert. I’m sick of rocks and I gashed my shin open on a soft corner where my front wheel washed out. It’s good to explore news trails and survive the familiar overgrown ones. Now for a day off before Port Jervis. Im not wanting to race at this point but I do want to have a great endurance race that we’re hosting.

Reg here: https://www.bikereg.com/lucky-revenge
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xc62701

Well-Known Member
Since my last post it's been crazy. I raced Port Jervis, put on Lucky's Revenge, and dealt with some fun family issues. So on to port Jervis first. After doing lots of planning and trimming for Lucky's Revenge I went up to Port Jervis not wanting to race at all. Top it off with the 4 parks I visited in the few days before I was tired and would have been fine with skipping PJ. The only thing that got me up there is that I do love those trails and with some luck I could lock in the H2H series and the State Championship. I got up there and immediately knew I would need a whole lot more luck. Jack Parke was there and he has been ripping this year. If he didn't show then the race would have been a lot less stressful. I knew the goal was to stay close to him and maaaaybe he would fall apart and I could beat him. It was evident early on that was not the case. We took off and not long into the race it was Jack and me. We had a nice gap and we rode together for the first few miles of the course. Jack even said if you want to trade pulls we could keep on going but I knew I wouldn't hold him if he got through. I pulled over and let him go. I didn't want the pressure of riding with someone and just wanted to race my race. Hell I didn't even want to be going that hard but I was. So Jack slowly pulled away and I just rode the best I could. The end of the first lap I saw him up ahead so he was only 20 seconds in front of me. Just before climbing back up the hill to the start/finish I bobbled and a stick jabbed me right in the gash on my leg that I opened up at stewart. Holy hell it was painful. I started lap two with tears in my eyes but kept on pedaling. I finally pedaled through the pain and picked up my pace again hoping to see Jack but I did not. He was gone. It wasn't too bad though as the results said I was 2 minutes behind him. Every other race I was 3.5 minutes behind. That was something. I was glad to be out there given I didn't want to race. I was just hoping to have a good ride at best and I accomplished that. Congrats to Jack on the series win and the state championship.

For Lucky's Revenge, it was a nice 1 day event for some but it was a solid 2.5 weeks for me. There's so much planning that goes into a race like this. That's not the hard part. The hard part, was physically going into the trails to trim overgrowth and prep the trails for the race. It's such slow going but it was necessary to have a clear course for race day. I don't know how many miles I put in the days leading up to the race but it was a lot. Plus I probably have malaria from all the mosquito bites. Anyway, on top of the prerace trimming I had a few guys with me each day to go in and mark the course. We marked the boyscout trails and the end 10 miles on the Thursday prior and that was 7 hours of fun. Let me just say that cardiac is so much more enjoyable with a 20lb pack...barf. The next day I went out with another crew and marked the beginning part of the course. That was another 6 hours of arrows and tape. The worst part was the fear of markings being taken down over night. At least being a Friday night I had hoped that markings would all stay up. So being super paranoid, I went out at 5 am the morning of the race with lights to ride the last loop of the course. Thankfully all the markings were up and I just had to add some more signage on a downed tree. If you think the course was humid and sweaty, it was probably twice as bad at 5am. Thankfully I had a another teammate that was there and rode the first part of the loop. Just before the start we got the word that the first markings were all good and off the race went! It went pretty smoothly although there were two confusing spots that we immediately fixed. This was the result of having too much going on and not enough hands. I just wanted things to go smoothly and for people to have a challenging race and enjoy as much of the course as they could. On a dry day this course is a beast and with the wet/humid conditions we had it was a whole different animal. Kudos for those that stuck it out! We billed this race as a hard race and it delivered. I think we have a pretty good niche with a hard endurance race and that's how we want to keep it. We are talking about making the race run smoother but we want to keep the rigor of the course. We will be making some changes next year like a few extra self feed water stations, and only one aid station at the camp that is accessible twice. I can't say enough how much the volunteers helped out. We had a small crew to setup and mark the course but day of it was all hands on deck. We relied on the amazing volunteers and we couldn't have done this race without them. When the race was over it was not done. We still had to go out on course and sweep to make sure no one was left. So thankfully another teammate went out to check because I had zero energy left. Zero. Nothing. The day after the race a teammate and I went out to take down the course. I took down the first 10 miles, and he did the last 10 miles. The remaining 5 I left for @Dave Taylor to take down. He went in Tuesday to take down the remaining markings. And with that the physical part of the race was done. I was happy to have a pretty successful event. Yes there are some points that we need to address but we have been working hard on them now so we are ready to go for 2020. Yes that's right I will start the permitting process soon to get this race ready to go. We are not one and done. This race needs to happen again!

On the homefront things have been crazy as well. If you count two sick kids and an ailing mother, things add up pretty quickly. My kids are doing better but I had on full night of zero sleep and a bunch of other bad nights of sleep. It's just a cold but tell them that when they are miserable. On the mom side she is not being able to take care of herself on her own, and keeps having health issues that are pretty much self inflicted. It's really hard to deal with someone that is making life complicated and has also not planned ahead at all for this stage of her life. I want to help her but it's making my life very complicated as we've had a turbulent relationship and there's no easy solution to some of her problems. At least all of these issues have some how been staggered around each other. It was a breath of fresh air to make sure the race went as smooth as possible so now I can tend to the other issues.

So that's the update. A lot has happened in a little amount of time. I have one last week of summer before I go back to work. Here comes year 17 of teaching with a new supervisor and a new crop of fresh minds to mold. I'm looking forward to it but I will enjoy the time off I have before returning. Here's to the rest of summer!
 

Patrick

Overthinking the draft from the basement already
Staff member
Who honestly uses pins? Middle schoolers and Bennigan’s waiters? Should we give out VHS tapes of the race highlights too? ?

my event is going to have pins.
they'll probably be handed out at my funeral, but whatevs.

gotta be cheaper than finisher medals. just thinking.....
 

xc62701

Well-Known Member
my event is going to have pins.
they'll probably be handed out at my funeral, but whatevs.

gotta be cheaper than finisher medals. just thinking.....
Lol yes it’s good to be changing things up. Finisher medals weren’t that expensive but still more per medal that I thought now that I think of it.
 

xc62701

Well-Known Member
2.5 weeks until our CX race! I'm psyched for promoting that. I'm not really psyched for racing cross though. I'm not sure what I'm going to do this fall. I think I feel this way every fall though. I want to keep riding mtb but the cx scene is typically a lot of fun. I'm debating heading out to Nittany this Sunday. I mean I could but when I look at the time I'll be away I could do a nice big MTB ride. That's tempting. Seriously - I would have to leave by 8 to arrive at 9. Go to reg, warmup, race at 10:30. Race is over by 11:15 and then cool down, change, chill and it's already 1. Then home by 2. So that's 6 hours of travel time for 1:30 of riding. That's getting harder and harder to justify to me. I think I'd rather be out the door and ready to roll by 7ish and get a 5 hour ride in. Anyway there's lots of possibilities for the fall. Hell I'm still behind on my fishing/golf time so maybe I'll catch up on that. I am looking into changing up some of my bike collection so there's that. I will probably have 2 or 3 bikes up for sale soon to make room for some new stuff next season. I'm not quite sure what direction I'm going to go in but I'll be buying at least one new rig before the 2020 season.
 

xc62701

Well-Known Member
Ok and now it's October. Time flies when you are up to your ass in race details. The storm has not yet settled but at least it seems like the event stress of 2019 is coming to a close. Between Lucky's Revenge and Lucky Charm Cross, it seems like both races were well received and in the next couple of months we will start planning for next year. For now it'll be nice to tie up loose ends, decompress, and not think about the details of putting on events. Maybe I'll even ride/race my bike and plan on doing so.

I did do the race at Lucky Charm and even though I designed the course, it was hard, a little tech, and fun! I found out early on that I'm not ready for that kind of effort. It doesn't help that I had zero sleep, tons of hours the day prior setting up, and zero food, but hey it was a race! With all that led to this race I'm psyched that I actually raced. I had full intentions that morning on backing out and just working the event. But I was going to be there all day and if I didn't race, I wasn't going to ride so it seemed like a great plan. I did what I could out there and finished gassed but somehow I stayed on the lead lap! That was a big win for me. It was nice to have that effort behind me so then I could help with the rest of the days events. Not many stayed for the shenanigans race at the end but a few of us went out there to play and had a good time. We pulled a barrier and made a ramp on the other one so we got some nice jumps in while cruising around a shortened course. I even ate shit coming around the pit when I tried to run over our signs and the fatbike slid out and I almost hit our mechanic's van...lol. I got up and then tried to get back to the NJCX Project kid that was the eventual winner. That was a blast. All in all a great day racing, promoting, and goofing off as usual.

Looking ahead I'm going to try a few more races. I don't have any delusions of doing well but I want to have fun riding my bike. I'm going to try and train more to have a better 2020 and this is the transition phase to get back in shape. I have been trying intermittent fasting with some small results so far but it seems to be a plan I can stick with and I've already dropped some weight. I'm experimenting with what I need to do to feel good on the bike and put out solid efforts with limiting my calories and hitting my eating windows. I did race Saturday without eating since 7 pm the night before so that was an interesting experience. But, it's all part of being healthier, fitter, and lighter for next season.

I'm looking at these races coming up:
Ringwood CX
Erie 80(25 mile)
Caffeinated CX
SCCX
Cathedral Pines

That will be a good wrap on the season and then it will be looking forward to the next. The only thing I know for sure with having two young kids is that everything can change in an instant. Most days it's trying to keep my head above water and take away any positives that are out there.
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xc62701

Well-Known Member
So now it's October 15th. This past week was fairly productive which lead into Saturday's race. I was really on the fence about racing since #1 I haven't really done any focused training, #2 I have zero top end, and #3 I just really wanted to ride my mountain bike. But in the end #4 I wanted to support the CX series and local racing so I said what the hell. I'll go race. My plan was to go do a lap of Sterling in the morning and then do the race in the afternoon. So Saturday morning I rode Sterling and had a blast. It was in great shape, with crunchy leaves that were nicely worn in and it was quiet out. Only two other riders that I passed on the trail. I cooled down and changed and headed over to the race. I had 3 hours between so I had some nice oatmeal while I was watching the morning races going on. I was chilling on a picnic table as the sun was beating down on a beautiful fall day. It was awesome. I chatted with some people and just got to relax for a bit before putting my number on and giving it a go.

There were 5 or 6 preregistered in my 40+ cat and sure enough there were 10 of us on the line. Top 10! I just hoped to have a good showing and maybe beat a few guys. I wasn't sure how the calorie cutting that I have been doing or the loop of Sterling would effect me, but I would find out shortly. As the siren went off I went right to the back of the group. I hadn't warmed up and really didn't want to get in anyone's way so I hung in 7th or 8th spot for a bit. On the first lap I was pretty to close to the guys ahead but the 1-3 guys were pulling away. Up the hill wasn't too bad and I hoped to make some time in the dirt sections. On lap 1 I came up on @seanrunnette and made a pass jumping over the rocks by the stump on the downhill(my favorite part of the race) but that pass only lasted a little while. The sand and the punchy hill was my undoing each lap. I do not like to get off my bike at this point in the season and running uphill in sand wasn't pleasant. Then trying to recover and punch the hill after the building pass through was just leg sucking. I kept on it and paced pretty well until lap 4 where my legs fell off. I was feeling it and was having trouble putting power down and getting any recovery. As I felt my energy dropping I saw @seanrunnette gaining with each pedal stroke. It was like a giraffe running from poachers tracking me down from behind. I couldn't contain the beast. I let him go and hoped to keep anyone else behind me. That didn't work as the Colavita guy came through right behind Sean. So now I was in 8th. I had hopes of getting back to him but my legs disagreed. I found some more mojo lap 6 and 7 but by then it was too late. I finished in 8th and was glad to be done.

I changed up and jumped in the car and headed to the Bear Mountain Oktoberfest. The vibe was great but the 30 minute beer line with one dood working each of the 2 beer trucks was completely asinine. Lines and crowds were too much. I was happy to get my one beer and get a nice knockwurst sandwich to fill my empty stomach and call it a day. I won't be back at that festival anytime soon. On to Erie this weekend. I'm doing the 25 on the fatty. I enjoy the trails at PJ but haven't been on more than the H2H course in a few years. I've heard they've got some good new stuff in store so I'm excited to check it out. I'll get a nice long ride on the MTB. That's all I want right now.
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