Clean Blog, Yoga for Cyclists

Cleaned out my blog, and set up a new, even more earthtoned color scheme in honor of my new love of playing in the dirt. For anyone who doesn't know, I pretty much now love any kind of bike riding that happens not on pavement. (I am amazingly excited to try out some cross racing, I'm hopeful it'll give me a chance to enjoy dirt and mud all throught the winter, and also reconnect with teammates I've neglected for too long.) Lately when I'm not resting or on trails, I've been doing 40 mile road rides on my steel fixed ss. It's beautiful, and very simple. No shifting, braking, no anything except the wind and the Kansas prarie and farmland around me, which is btw filled right now with wildflowers.

I've raced a little bit lately, doing a nice quick xc race at a local trail called Camp Alexander, and a 5 hour endurance mountain bike race, which I did solo. The Endurance race was called Cruise the Blues. It was an excellent event, well put together, and on some amazing trails. I showed up the night before with my rigid ss, girlfriend Gabi, and a tent, ready for a good time. I was NOT disapointed. Being new to endurance off road racing, I figured the worst that could happen was that I would suck, and still get to enjoy some sweet trails for 5 hours while getting constantly lapped.

I won't bore you with ALL the details of a 5 hour race, but I will sum it up. The race got off to a slow start on the first lap, as everyone was getting sorted out. I was racing Men's Solo, which is kind of like open in cx. Other categories might have included teams, so that either member of the team might be out on course, allowing them to take turns over the 5 hour race. This made for a ton of riders on the 13 mile course, around 170 to be a little more precise. So anyways, there was a whole lot of sorting the first lap, but the pace wasn't so slow that I didn't get to witness some spectacular crashes. The second lap went great, except that my water bottle cage broke right at the beginning from getting jarred in a rocky section. I didn't notice right away though, and so the bottle was lost to me. 13 miles without fluid = pretty sucky.

I pulled in to the pit area at the end of my second lap and immediately downed as much water and gatorade as I could. The third lap kind of sucked, I had actually put in a really good time on that second one, and now the lack of fluids really hit hard. At the end of that lap, I had to lay down in our tent for 10 minutes. After the rest, I felt a whole lot better, and decided to start my 4th lap.

It was feeling fun and fast, and I thought maybe it would be another lap like #2, but then about 4 miles from the lap finish, disaster struck in the form of one more flat than I was equipped to handle. Earlier flats had left me out of tubes, so I started walking...and walking. At the time of my flat I was in 6th (I think). After a really nice guy loaned me a tube, and I switched it out, I rolled through the finish in 16th out of about 50. All in all, a great race, and I'm not disapointed at all.

A few pics from CTB 5 hour (Photo credit Gabi):






Gabi and I, before the race, our tent in the background.




My category at the start. I'm at the back, lol.

Nice.

A little muddy, and a lot happy, coming in for a pit stop.

And finally: an interesting link to an article about yoga for cyclists. I can't decode about half of the anatomical terms, but I might give a few of the positions a try, see if they can loosen me up some. http://www.yogajournal.com/lifestyle/196