Sumter

It feels like we've finally made the transition to winter. Last weekend we ended up biking both Saturday and Sunday. This weekend we have plans for one day of backcountry skiing and one day skiing at whistler. It's amazing how fast the switch can happen. Although some people are apparently still undecided:

Definitely a tough call.

Week -48

11 months to go now.

We spent some time looking around this past week and found both a track and a pool on the way home from our works.  This is fantastic news, since it means that we can fit in our daily workout(s) on the way home - instead of going home, wasting some time procrastinating, finally going out for the workout, getting home again, cooking, and then going straight to bed.  Now we should hopefully be home and ready for the rest of the night by 6:30 or 7, which is a huge difference mentally.  I guess we'll see in the stats:

(T-48 weeks and counting until New Zealand)

	Matt	Caroline
Swim
Sessions	0	0
Distance (m)	0	0
Bike
Distance (km)	167	112
Elevation (m)	600	400
Run
Sessions	2	3
Distance (km)	12.1	30
Backcountry
Distance (km)	0	0
Elevation (m)	0	0

Week -49

Bit of a busy week trying to sort ourselves out from Moab, and get back into the whole training thing.  I'm pretty satisfied with the week that we put in, and very satisfied with how my exploded muscle is doing - I was able to do 3/4 of the track workout on Wednesday, so that's fantastic.  The best part of the week was getting in a solid two swim sessions, which is a first this year.

And here are the stats:

(T-49 weeks and counting until New Zealand)

	Matt	Caroline
Swim
Sessions	2	2
Distance (m)	2200	3200
Bike
Distance (km)	98	108
Elevation (m)	0	250
Run
Sessions	1	1
Distance (km)	3	8
Backcountry
Distance (km)	0	0
Elevation (m)	0	0

Back on Track

Almost back on track. Getting back on track, anyways.  By Monday, my exploded leg muscle had stitched itself together enough for me to ride to work, and limp around the office (interesting that riding is easier on it than walking, but I'm not complaining). Tuesday I was walking pretty much normally, and by Wednesday it felt great, so long as I didn't push on where the impact was.  So off to the track we went:

I apologize for the crappy pictures. It was pouring rain, and I took them with my phone. 

Disappointingly, my IT band kicked up at about 3km into the workout.  This is extremely frustrating, since the injury has been on and off since February of 2010. We are getting close to the 2 year mark, and while there seems to be progress, it is still way more of an issue than acceptable.

Anyways.  Hopefully some rest this weekend and being able to really finish healing from my "dismount" will fix the problem by next week.  

We didn't put up any of our totals while we were in Moab. So, for consistencies sake, below are the totals for the last few weeks.  It seems that while we were away, we went from having over a year to prepare, to suddenly being in Week -49. Scary. Very Scary. Scary enough that we had a talk last night about switching up our strategy to get more, better, workouts in every week. It just always seems like you could be doing more at the end of the week, but during the week you feel like you're uncomfortably stretched.

(T-52 weeks and counting until New Zealand)

	Matt	Caroline
Swim
Sessions	0	0
Distance (m)	0	0
Bike
Distance (km)	93	62
Elevation (m)	0	0
Run
Sessions	1	1
Distance (km)	5.4	7
Backcountry
Distance (km)	0	0
Elevation (m)	0	0

(T-51 weeks and counting until New Zealand)

	Matt	Caroline
Swim
Sessions	0	0
Distance (m)	0	0
Bike
Distance (km)	95	95
Elevation (m)	1220	1220
Run
Sessions	0	0
Distance (km)	0	0
Backcountry
Distance (km)	8	8
Elevation (m)	200	200

(T-50 weeks and counting until New Zealand)

	Matt	Caroline
Swim
Sessions	1	1
Distance (m)	1000	1500
Bike
Distance (km)	70	68
Elevation (m)	1344	1344
Run
Sessions	1	1
Distance (km)	6.5	8
Backcountry
Distance (km)	0	0
Elevation (m)	0	0

Moab Bike Trip: Snowstorms at 1am

Day 14: The Drive Home

Back before this trip began, our plan had been four days of sightseeing down to Moab, maybe six or seven days down there, then drive home through the Grand Canyon or Las Vegas.  Then we fell in love with the place and didn't want to leave, shortening the drive home to just Friday/Saturday, 1000km a day.

Then sitting at Arby's at lunch on Friday in Ogden, Utah, I happened to make this ingenious comment that if it was up to me I'd drive straight through instead of spending money on a hotel and basically sitting at said hotel waiting to leave again the next morning.  Why not skip the waiting and get home faster? Richer?

I'll tell you why.  Because Matt was injured and I single-handedly signed myself up for a 20 hour, 2000km drive.  Go me.

Oh ya, and at 1 o'clock in the morning, the traffic advisory sign 100 miles East of Seattle was flashing.  In my unfocused, scrambled egg brain, I thought to myself, "must not be working properly, who has a traffic jam at 1am?".   Ya, no, that was because there was a severe weather advisory.  Go me.

Thank you Mr. Snowplow for clearing the road to Snoqualmie Pass.

But hey, we made it.  And having the whole weekend at home to rest and recuperate and unpack before heading back to work *almost* made it worth it.

Moab Bike Trip: Best Day Ever / Unscheduled Dismount

Day 13: Mega Steps and Baby Steps and EKG and Little Salty and Oh It Was Awesome.  For me...

Have you figured out yet that I had an awesome day?

It was perfect.  Except one thing, but I'll get to that...

Beautiful blue skys, fantastic swoopy, technical, sticky singletrack.  Sections of slickrock.

Sorry, getting distracted.

We started the day not really sure where the trailhead for Mega Steps was.  We knew it was down the road from the Klondike Bluffs trailhead (the trails connect as you can see below), but they are all new in the last few years and we didn't have a map.

Finally I saw a small Jeep trail veer off the highway.  Turns out it was the correct road and also led to a collection of dinosaur tracks!  There were five different sets of tracks, although we were only able to find three of them.  The coolest thing was that the exhibit was completely open and you were able to do whatever you wanted except make plaster casts of the prints.  I was astunded at how big the tracks were.  I mean, I know dinosaurs were big, but this was surreal...

I am standing in an Sauropod footprint - he or she would have weighed in at eighteen tons so said the signs.

We then headed to the trailhead for Mega Steps.  I was a little bit apprehensive about what the trails would be like.  We had been very happy with the technical level of Baby Steps - was Mega Steps a mega jump in difficulty?

Turns out no... it was fantastic, better than Baby Steps singletrack!  For more than five miles we wound our way around various rock formations and up slickrock.

We finished up the loop down our favourite downhill section, Baby Steps North.  It is perfect downhill for me.  Just difficult enough that it keeps me on edge, but easy enough that I don't have to walk my bike constantly.  The first time we were here I walked about a half a dozen sections.  Today I only walked one!  Success!

At this point, we had only been riding for about an hour and a half and still had tons of daylight left.  We decided to make another loop around EKG, back up Little Salty, and around Mega Steps in the other direction.  EKG turned out to be a little bit difficult and not as flowy as the other sections, but I was still having a fantastic time and enjoying the challenges. 

Then it happened.

Matt managed to bury his front tire in a foot and a half ledge.  His bike washed out front under him and he performed an unscheduled dismount to the tune of a slickrock ledge to the mid thigh.  It all happened so fast I almost ran right into him.  At first I though he had landed on his elbow (and dislocated it again), but it turned out to be a grapefruit sized contusion on his thigh.  I managed to take a picture:

I promise I am a loving, caring person - the first words out of his mouth were "I'll live", so I had established everything was at least somewhat OK.  

The only problem was that he could only ride with one leg, and walking was worse, and we were 7km from the car.  And single-legged pedaling is slow, difficult, and not conducive to mountain biking.  Thankfully, the end of the singletrack section of EKG was quite close and then it was just across the jeep road towards the car.  But it was definitely the end of the day.  

A fantastic day for me.  And thankfully the last day.  Lucky in a way I guess...

Moab Bike Trip: Worst

Day 12: Worst Ride Ever. Ever.

I guess the title is a little bit overdramatic. It's not like we were attacked by mutant wild pigs. Or rode over a canyon edge. Or got stuck in the rain.  Or were even really uncomfortable at all.

But. We chose today's ride because it is the course for the 24 hours of Moab.  If I were to set up an event like this, I would have two ideas at the forefront of my course choice:

1. This race will be attracting national and international racers, and will serve as the representative ride of the area to all of them.
2. A 24 hour race means that these racers will be riding the course again and again and again for, you guessed it, 24 hours straight.

I can only conclude that Moab locals are sick of all the bike bums hanging around town.  I can't think of a better course to ensure that every racer spends the next few years convincing every person s/he knows to never go to Moab to ride bikes.

The ride started going up a prolonged, sandy, bumpy, jeep track.  Finally, it turned down an extremely sandy hill. In retrospect, this was the best part of the ride. The climb back up the other side was even sandier. Then we had to make a choice on how we would approach an impassable river bed.

After successfully not dying during the crossing, the trail got sandy.  At least, sandy in comparison to how the trail had been before this point.

Then we met a bull in the middle of the road / sandpit, who gave off a very nasty vibe and would not move. We waited for twenty minutes until deciding to go cross country.

After carrying our bikes across the desert to avoid the bull, we ended up in a wash. I carried my bike up and over two separate sand dunes. Seriously. Sand dunes. In a race course.

Escaping the sand dunes proved to be the last hurdle. Except that if I were racing the 24 hours of Moab, I would be 1 lap in, of around 20.  I can't imagine.

Moab Bike Trip: Best

Day 11: Bartlett Wash and the M & M Trail

It is hard to argue with a day that starts like this:

And ends like this:

We started in the Bartlett Wash.  The trail itself turned out to be a little too exposed to ride more than a few kilometers in, but we turned around and found ourselves in an enormous slickrock playground. I think we probably spent half an hour with me riding circles over the same ledge until we got a picture that I thought sufficiently mis-represented my prowess at jumping big ledges.

On the drive out from that area, we saw a sign for the "M&M" trail, and on a whim figured we would give it a go. The screenshot below is the what the route turned out to be.  If I can ever figure out how to put a file up on this blog for people to download, I will do that.  For now I can only leave a screenshot, but you can see that we were in for a nice surprise.  The straight section you see in the middle was the only section of the trail that wasn't completely amazing - a sandy, hilly road is a lot of work on the way up, but pays for itself on the way down.

Safe to say: best day yet.

Moab Bike Trip: Swimming in the Rain

Day 10: The day we try to remember what it is like to be triathletes... Aka "rest" day

We woke up this morning to a steady pounding of rain on the fly of the tent. Knowing that the forecast called for rain the rest of the day, we decided we would spend it trying to act like triathletes, fitting in a run and some laps at the Moab Aquatic Centre.

We headed out Route 128 for our run after breakfast. There was a dirt jeep trail along the North side of the Colorado River we followed until in narrowed into a path, then into a deer trail. Upon this realization, we headed back the way we'd come, then out onto the bike path on the side of Route 191 heading towards Arches National Park. All told we ran about 8 km. By the time we made it back to the car it was time to head to the pool. The building was almost new and the pool was very nice. I still, however, hate 25m pools. You just get going and it's time to turn around again and who likes counting laps that high!!! I usually get lost before I've even swam a kilometer. All told I swam about 1500m. Add in a bike ride this afternoon and I'd have myself a whole triathlon! (Note that as of yet, the rain in this desert hasn't let up so we have yet to go biking today).

The other plus side of the down time is we have had a chance to plan out of last three/four days of riding. There are too many things to do, and not enough time to do them all! We'll just have to come back...

Moab Bike Trip: I Love My Bike!

Day 9: Baby Steps Loop at Klondike Bluffs

So far Matt has been keeping everyone up to date about our trip... I figured it was about time to throw in my own two cents. Sorry if I repeat anything...

I came into this trip a little apprehensive. I am not exactly the world's best mountain biker. It would be fairly safe to say that at times a mouse would be less timid. Alas, I really enjoy the combination of mountains and biking - so I try hard. And tend to prefer easy trails... I'd read a couple of things about Moab and although it seemed to pale in comparison to BC's drops and four alarm fire descents (none of which I ride), it still sounded extremely technical.

Our trip down went fairly smoothly and I fell in love with the Salt Lake City area. Fat Cyclist really chose right when he moved to Alpine! We were hoping to drive the American Fork Canyon on our way through but thanks to the early snow storm the road was closed and we were left contemplating whether or not we were going to make it over the Wasatch mountains as we climbed higher and higher out of Salt Lake.

Fast forward to our first ride. We decided to start at the Moab Brand Trails because they were listed in the guide book as the "family" area in Moab. We met up with a nice guy, Richard, at the trailhead. He was out alone and asked if we wanted to ride together. Talk about pressure! He said he wasn't fast... Ya he was fast, and very skilled, and would have outridden me any day of the week (after our two'ish hour ride he went back out to ride it the other way round!). But I did make it, and only walked about half of "Rockin' A" and a quarter of "Circle O". Further more, I LOVED it, and couldn't wait to get back out for more!

The next day, on the Klondike Bluffs trails, I made the biggest gains in my mountain biking yet. I finally learned to ride lifts and to ride off ledges landing on my back wheel. These two things may seem small, but they open up a HUGE amount of technical terrain. Once I figured it out, I was suddenly seeking out harder lines, riding tons more and actually enjoying the ledges on the down hill! And the harder I ride, the more and more I love, love, love my new bike!

That brings up to Day 9. We decided to go back to the Klondike Bluffs area because there are several trails and we had had so much fun the first time. We thought it would be a good test of how much our skills had improved since the first day. This time we followed the same uphill single track, but skipped out on the hike to the Bluffs and the descent down the Klondike Trail and instead continued down the "Baby Steps" trail.

I am definitely less fearful and rode much more, including the scary section under the big boulder. Last time I walked the whole section, while this time I only touched down once!

At first, the new section of trail wasn't that great - it followed a rough, gnarly Jeep trail up to the top of the hill, and then dropped straight back down the other side. Even Matt walked some of the downhill. We then traversed up the valley before turning back onto single track.

I don't know why, but for some reason, I'm very tired this trip. I feel like I've come off sitting on the couch for two months. My legs never hurt but my lungs just don't get going. I'm finally over my quad injury, but now my lungs don't seem to want to cooperate.

Anyways, starting into the single track again, I was cold, tired and feeling pretty miserable about life. Finally, we stopped to take a break in a sheltered area. Several handfuls of gummy bears later, I feeling much better. Funny how such little things can change your whole outlook. We quickly reached the top of the final climb and turned down a section of absolutely fantastic mellow, ledgy downhill. We got to the bottom with huge grins and a plot to come back and ride it again.

Oh, and I LOVE LOVE LOVE my bike!

Moab Bike Trip: Mudphobia

Day 8: Arches National Park

Moab mud is legen - wait for it - just keep waiting till it dries, cause you're not going anywhere until then...

So we have heard, anyways. And experienced a little on the first day, when we rode over some slightly damp ground. Even that was an experience I would rather not repeat. So when we woke up to pounding rain and a forecast calling for more of the same all morning, we decided to give biking a miss.

After a morning of sorting out random junk, we headed to Arches National Park. The original idea was to scope out locations for a star shot I had in mind. I'm picturing the north star framed by the "delicate arch" (see below), with the stars swirling around, and the arch lit up in an interesting way by flashlight... I'm sure you can imagine it. Amazing. Unfortunately, you're going to have to keep imagining it, because there is a long list of reasons why it won't work. Chief among them being a bright full moon all night right now. And the delicate arch having a cliff to its immediate south.

So next trip, maybe.

Not a bad way to spend an afternoon though.

Moab Bike Trip: Acrophobia

Day 7: Canyon Overlook

So far I have gotten the impression that Moab rides are split fairly evenly between one of two distinct categories: "Moab" rides, and "Jeep trails".

It's hard to describe what a "Moab" ride is, but you know it when you're on one. That's beside the point though, since today was a Jeep Trail.

Sounds sort of disappointing, or boring, right? That was my initial thought as well. But then we rode up to this:

And suddenly I found it hard to complain.

It ended up being about 10km each way, on fairly fast dirt Jeep Track. Some sandy bits, but they didn't last long and were for the most part ridable. The canyon lookouts at the end were amazing. We also saw the roads that form RAWROD, or Ride Around White Rim in One Day - it is just over 100 miles to complete the full circuit of basically everything we could see. That has been put on the tentative list for this trip. A century is definitely doable on road bikes. A dirt century...maybe. We'll see how we're feeling in a few days.

We also accidentally took a "green circle" jeep road on the way back to the highway in the car. Yes. Off roading is so popular around here that they rate the roads like ski hills. Our bike route was a blue square, and there were some parts that I couldn't ride at all. I'd love to see what a black diamond road looked like. From a bike, though.

Moab Bike Trip: Everything I Know is Wrong

Day 5: Bar M Trails
Day 6: Klondike Bluffs Area

The title pretty much sums up the last two days riding.

That, and:

"Wow."

Examples:

- "Use a low gear to climb". Wrong. In Moab, especially on the slickrock, mid to high gears are best. The slickrock is so sticky you don't have to apply even pressure, and high gears make getting up ledges easier.
- "Stay seated when climbing". Wrong. Same as above, stand up and drive a big gear.
- "The best biking is fast, swoopy singletrack". Not entirely correct. We spent 3 or 4 hours out today on every surface type imaginable and totaled about 20 km. And it was amazing.
- "Mountain biking is hard work. You have to earn your descents." Totally wrong. 3 or 4 hours today. Not a single minute where I felt like I was working. Pure fun the whole way.
- "Riding a bike through deep sand is really tough". Actually, that one is still true. We are discovering that the Moab sand is legendary.

Wednesday - we woke up to snow on the hills this morning.  In the desert.  I hope this is not a trend. Wednesday morning was spent orienting ourselves to Moab, setting up our camp, and all that boring stuff.  We were able to get out in the afternoon for our first real Moab ride.  And it lived up to it's name.  The "Bar M" area trails are a set of trails that increase in difficulty (the "M" trail being easiest, and the "B" trail being named "Killer B"). We had planned on riding them in M-O-A-B order, but ended up meeting another solo rider who had just arrived in town and wanted some people to ride with.  He had been here a few times before, so led the way.  His route of choice turned out to be skipping Killer B entirely, and riding the rest of the trails backward.  Starting with the third hardest sounds stupid, but wasn't too bad in the end. Instead of getting slowly more and more intimidated, we were intimidated right off the start.  After walking a few sections, suddenly the trail keeps getting easier and easier.  After about two hours, we were both cooked.  I think we will try and head back to these trails as one of our last rides, to see if we've made any improvements over our time here.

Thursday was a ride and hike combined.  Both were amazing. About four hours total, although only a little over 20 kilometers on the bikes.  I think it will take some time getting used to that - I am so used to looking at the odometer, comparing that to how tired I am, and using that as a judge of how my fitness is doing.  Doing that on a mountain bike in Moab is depressing.  So I'll have to switch to an hour count.

Moab Bike Trip: Snowstorms and Tumble Weeds

Day 4: Salt Lake City, UT to Moab, UT

I have two regrets for today, both missed opportunities:

1. Taking a picture of one of the enormous tumbleweeds that tumbled across the highway as we crossed the highlands on the east side of the Wasatch mountains

2. Hitting one with the car.

I tried pretty hard for number 2, but the things just come out of nowhere. You'd think you would be able to see them coming, but they seem to sneak through the brush and then make a sudden run for it across the road. Harder to hit than a deer.

I did not expect to have either of those regrets this morning. The day started bright and early at about 2am when I woke up to the wind tearing our tent pegs out of the ground. That's always a fun sound. After we finally got the tent back up and secured with boulders, the rain started. At one point the wind was strong enough that it was actually driving some rain through the fly.

By 8am it had quieted down enough to break camp and get the  off of Antelope Island. The snow line was only about 50m higher than our camp, so our plans to spend the day checking out the bike trails, stalking bison, and climbing one of the mountains will have to wait till next trip.

We then drove through what felt like four climate zones and weather systems, which seemed to get worse and worse until we hit Moab. Rainy and windy across Salt Lake City, turning to a full blown snowstorm up the pass (complete with upside-down-truck-in-a-ditch), even colder on the other side of the pass, ridiculously windy across the tumbleweed flats... Still windy and rainy here, but it supposedly will clear up by morning.

Moab Bike Trip: Bonneville Salt Flats

Day 3: Wendover, NV to Salt Lake City, UT
Featuring the Bonneville Salt Flats and Antelope Island

What can I say. The Bonneville salt flats. Amazing. Surreal. Gigantorific.

Not actually very fast this time of year though. I guess we're a month or so too late, but we missed the super dry season when the Bonneville speedway is not under the water. So we ended up biking the "salty" flats, and missed the full on "salt" flats. Anyways. Tons of fun. And tons of extremely climbable looking mountains in the distance, too. I am seeing a climbing trip that starts with a 75km bike odyssey across the salt flats. Epic. Anyone interested?

After we had our fill of the salt flats we headed to Antelope Island, which is the largest Island in the Great Salt Lake. Turns out that there are herds of bison on the island. We saw our first on our drive in to our campsite. I jumped out of the car and got into full "MuskOx stalking" mode. Made an elaborate circle to get downwind, took care to stay behind bushes and never walk directly towards it, slowly getting closer and closer...they're basically domesticated. I ended up getting spooked first at how close I was.

Anyways. It looks like there is tons to do on this island. Biking included. We may delay our arrival in Moab to give ourselves at least another day here to explore.

Moab Bike Trip: First Impressions

Quick Note: There seems to be an abundance of free internet across the USA.  This means that we will probably put up some posts about how the trip is going when we have some spare time, but the posts will almost definitely be a few days outdated by the time they appear.  So here we go:

Day One: Vancouver, BC to Pendleton, OR
Day Two: Pendleton, OR to Wendover, NV

I believe that one of the best parts about traveling is the combination of being in a new place with a lot of time to think. I find that in addition to learning things about that place, you tend to analyze yourself and what you have back home, and I find that the important things become more clear. You learn about yourself, too.

For example, I had always thought of the great U.S. of A. as a place where the environment went to die. A place whose inhabitants spent most of their time drinking diluted beer, eating too much, and shooting anything that wandered into view. To put it mildly.

However. Within the first three hours of entering the country I had seen more wind farms and more solar power installations then I have ever seen in Canada. They have wildlife crossings. The rest stops on their highway systems are amazing. (and this isn't even California, this is Washington state) So I have been forced to admit: some of the ideas above aren't entirely accurate.

Some of them, however, are dead on.

This was within two hours of the border. I'm not sure how to interpret this. Are there gas station hoodlums I should be concerned about? Are there roving highway gangs? Is this an important fashion accessory? Are the Russians coming?

Of course, the next sign we passed read "Miracle Hot Springs - Next Two Exits...Danger, Alligators"

Oh. Alligators. Should have known.

Other things I have learned, although not nearly as mind blowing:

- Oregon looks a lot like I pictured Nevada would look like.
- Idaho is not covered in Potatoes. There is a potato farm at the border. I think maybe people see that, think "yup. Potatoes." and then turn around. Because we drove right down through to the opposite border, and I didn't see another potato. In fact, it looked a lot like how I had pictured Nevada.
- I had a pretty accurate picture of Nevada.

And finally: when traveling through Casino country, do not go online and book campsites ahead. I'm typing this out from my tent in a crappy trailer park next to the highway for $25 a night. $14 more and I could be sitting in a casino hotel room, with unlimited free drinks downstairs. Fail.