Back On The Bike, sorta

Dylan Stucki 2nd at 9.86 miles.

So in mid December I decided I was going to start my base training for the 2009 season. I got in a 13 hour week, then the next three days later I rode another 7 hours. It looked like I was off to a great start, well a three week trip back to Alaska for Christmas with my family ruined anything gained by the week and a half of previous training. Only on 6 days the daily high temperature was above 0 degrees F. I think I cross-country skied three times, downhill skied twice, went to the gym once. Then, as soon as I got back to Durango, I put in a 15 hour week, then a 12 hour week, with at least one good hard run a week.
To really see whether the lack of training did much damage, I competed in the Annual Snowdown Roller Races event. Its a fun race where two people at a time ride on rollers as hard as possible for 15 minutes. The winner is the one who goes the farthest distance while staying in place. I ended up riding 9.08 miles and that put me in 4th place.
Now I'm Sick!

Look at the speed!
Top(Alex Howard 3rd at 9.76 miles, Trevor Downing 1st at 9.98 miles)
Bottom(me suffering after 4th at 9.08)

Back to the Blog.

It has been a while since i have updated this thing. Since the last post, i have been to XTERRA USA Nationals and XTERRA World Championships.

Im not sure what to think about XTERRA Nationals, I got 3rd place in the age group after getting 2nd the year before, but my time was 20 minutes faster. I just didn't race a smart race. Once I got to ride my bike, I got all excited and went way too hard. I had made my way into about 30th place or so overall by the end of the bike. Then I started running, and things went from pretty good, to miserable. I lost 8 minutes just in the run to the 2nd place guy in my age group. The run dropped me all the way down to 47th place. A little dissapointing, but a good learning experience.

At XTERRA Worlds I decided I would use my new knowlege of pacing myself, well it was too hot for the little Alaska boy and pacing didn't matter. I had a few little panic attacks, that I was too hot, too thirsty, too dizzy and I couldn't breath. Later on the clouds came out and I was able to regain myself. I ended the bike towards the front of my age group and I felt great. I had a fast first mile of running and then we had to run uphill, and that turned to walking uphill. I would run till I got dizzy, then walk till I could walk strait, then run till I got dizzy again. Arount mile 4 I got to an aid station where they had ice water, I poored the ice cubes down the front and back of my skin suit. That helped me enough to run the final 3 miles, although any abnormal movement would cause every muscle in my body to cramp. I finished in 11th in my 15-19 age group. Congrats to Julian Langer and Joshua Olmstead, who finished 1st and 2nd in the age group, and beat a handful of pros.

And one little extra note, I got my first sponsor. Serfas. They make great sunglasses and lots of nice bike parts, im very excited to try their tires.

finally have internet

Ok, finally have internet! So the whole airport situation got figured out. Because my plane left 2 hours late from anchorage, i lost my flight to phoenix. the next flight was the next day. so alaska airlines gave me a hotel room. then i showed up the next day to see if i could get on a flight stand-by. well they choose who gets on the plane alphebetically, so of course, of the two flights i tried for i was always the person not to get on. o well, i only woke up at 4 in the morning for nothing. sat in the airport for a long time, until noon, kinda sucked but i finally got to phoenix. then i drove all night all the way to moab and slept in my car in the apache in hotel parking lot. woke up and drove to ogden.
OGDEN!
the race in ogden didnt start too well, i happened to hop on the race shuttle with the bus driver that had no clue where she needed to go, so i show up at the race with 10 minutes to go. i had a very slow swim, didnt feel that good, and was about 2 minutes slower than i would normally be. then in the bike, i felt super good. the course was mostly uphill, and was the best possible course for me. the goodness followed me onto the run and i was able to finish much stronger than i usually do. that was the best race of my life, i finished 27th overall, 9th amature and the race got me a #1 ranking in the nation for XTERRA Triathlons. It also qualified me for worlds in Maui. YAY! Vacation! well i got to catch the bus, so ill update later about the collegiate mountain biking.

Airport! TAKE 2

So 3 nights ago a volcano erupted in the Elution Islands sending ash straight into the flight pattern that Alaska Airlines uses for all its flights. So 3 nights of flight passengers were being forced into the airport at the same time, making everything much longer than expected. I got to the airport with an hour and a half till my flight, spend 45 minutes in line only to have the lady at the counter tell me that I'm too late for the flight. So she schedules me for a flight at 2 in the afternoon today, 14 hours after my scheduled flight. So on this rescheduled flight, the plane hit some ash and was damaged. The plane mechanics have been working on the plane for 2 hours now and im still stuck in the airport. I am sitting here with a guy who i am almost positive is in drugs. as a very happy little kid ran by, he said he wanted to make a serum that would make fully mature adults think they are little kids because of the innocence and playfulness. 10 minutes later a crying little girl walked by with her mom yelling at her, he said that that mood needed to be extracted from the serum. very odd. well ill update in seattle in however many hours it takes to get there.

Rain Rain Go Away

So in the last week and a half, there has been one sunny day, every other day it has rained all day and just been miserable. When it rains in Alaska it is not a warm rain, it is a 50 degree rain. Anyway I decided to buy myself some mud tires out of Chain Reaction Cycles sale bin. I chose the Michelin Wildgripper in the tubeless version. This tire is the best tire I have ever used in wet conditions, it rolls really fast, it rolls smooth, corners even in even greasiest sharp bends, but best of all, it didn't clog up when I climbed the steepest and wettest climb on the ride(that climb is hard to ride when dry, not to mention when its wet and slippery). The Wildgrippers are 670 grams and 1.95 inches wide. The only downside is that Michelin doesn't make the Wildgrippers anymore. So here are some pics of them.

Hammerman pictures.

Hammerman, almost.

So yesterday was the one triathlon in Alaska that I really look forward to. It is called the Hammerman Triathlon. I came into it with a lot of pressure having won last year, and it didn't help that Matt Novakovich was telling me that people are betting on whether myself or my teammate Adam Miller would win. I couldn't play his mind games so I biked off before the start to get into my own zone, and that helped, being in a forest all alone calmed me down for sure.
45 minutes later I hop in the water to warm up for the swim, and the nervousness went away. Then we start, im swimming within my limit, which is normally not super fast, but at halfway, I realize that im only 25 meters behind the leaders and with Shannon Donnelly, Alaska's most dominant female triathlete. I get out of the water with Shannon but got very dizzy in transition and had to sit down to even get my bike shoes on. So at the point of leaving transition, the big competitors are Jens Beck who was 2 minutes ahead, Andy Duenow and Adam Miller 35 seconds ahead, Luke Kiskaddon and Jason Lameroux 1 minute back and Matt Navokovich 8 minutes back.
Within minutes on the mountian bike leg, I pass Adam and Andy. Andy keeps up with me for quite a while till the most technical singletrack of the course. The uphill of death is what blew the gap, it turns out I was the only one in the race to ride the hill. Once up that hill I finally see Jens up in the distance, and I chase after him for the majority of the bike course until another singletrack section where I pass and get 25 seconds on him. I come into transition in first with a huge crowd cheering only to hear the crowd start cheering again much sooner than I had hoped. Jens was on the way and he is quite a runner. He catches me which was to be expected but I hung with him which was not to be expected. Eventually he pulls away.
In the end, Jens was the winner with me 55 seconds back, Andy 6 minutes back, Jason and Luke 7 minutes back, Matt 9 minutes back and Adam 10 back. A great race for me and a much better run than normal. Even though I won last year, I think I raced better this year.