Bikes. And, uh, Bikes.

It is cycling season. Ski season officially ended when I put the thick summer coat of unscraped wax on the planks, put the cheat sheets on the skins, and stowed them all in the reasonably temperate closet. It is cycling season.

Alas, I'm fat and out of shape. Well, just out of shape. But I'm getting back into shape! With the new house, a whole new area to ride in has opened up to me, at least on road (so has mountain, but I'll get into that later). I discovered that it's only 2 miles from my house to the LA River Bikeway, which takes me directly to Griffith Park. In Griffith Park, I can ride big hills, medium hills, or little hills to my heart's content, all without dealing with cars. It's funny how fun road biking can actually be when you have the pavement to yourself. It's reasonably scenic there, too, as I get to ride by the observatory, the LA Zoo, the Hollywood sign, and just around a bunch of isolated nice hills. It's an incredible park. The only problem is that the equestrians have managed to get mountain bikes banned on all the dirt trails.

On its northerly "shores", the LA river has rebelled against its concrete enclosure and it's actually kinda nice. I see at least one heron every single time I ride by here.

On that note, however, there are plenty of other places I've found to ride that are close. Wilson Canyon with Carie was nice, but it turns out that Placerita Canyon on the north side of the ridge is way better. Sure, it's an exposed steep fire road climb in searing heat (that's just riding in SoCal, you get used to it, and if you're insane like me you learn to love it), but the descent is marvelous. It's not really technical at all, it's just fast, flowing, nicely maintained singletrack. Great berms for railing the turns. Amazing ride, only a half hour drive from home. In all it's a 12 mile loop, so I will probably be doing some 5-7 lap days out there in preparation for the Tahoe Sierra 100. I'm hoping to break 11 hours this year, we'll see.

Even closer is Descanso Gardens, a city park that features a lot more singletrack than it should (and mountain bikes are allowed!). While the loops are pretty short (~3-4 miles, 600ft vert), there are some great technical descents to be had there. There are some hilarious warnings in front of some of these trails; I'll get pictures of them next time I'm out. Even had a kit fox run across the trail in front of me at one point.

On the subject of mountain biking, I am loving the new bike. I am loving it even more since I converted my tires to tubeless. My riding buddy recommended this method to me and I followed it, though I was able to use a floor pump just fine despite their warning. 29er wheels are easier to do this with because you just use 26" tubes, which are plentiful and I already had laying around. All in all it only cost $15 for the sealant. With this, I dropped my tire pressure from 28/30 F/R to 24/26 F/R, and the difference is amazing. I'm riding a fairly low profile, low rolling resistance tire ideal for hardpack, but the things they grip stupefy me. While climbing up 20% inclines through moon dust, I just look down and am in disbelief at the terrain because they grip like they're on pavement. The traction on the way down is allowing my to ride descents without a second thought that not long ago would have made me walk. Cornering is amazing. Part of this is because they're 29er tires and the big footprint helps, but it was a noticeable difference after converting to tubeless. I'm not going back. Plus, with the super low pressure in the front, the ride is very smooth. Not just smooth for a rigid fork, but actually smooth by regular standards. As in 100mm travel fork on a 26" bike smooth. 29er plus tubeless = awesome.

Sorry for the lack of pictures, I've been exploring new trails so I've been paying more attention to where I've been going than trying to get the camera out. I'll get some more as I continue to ride through the summer. In good news, I won't have to spend August in Ohio after all, so my training for the fall mountain biking season will actually happen after all! As it turns out, there is a substantial amount of mountain biking in Ohio, though, which will come in handy next May-July, which I will be spending there.

Angeles Crest Ride

I learned several things on my road ride today. In no particular order:

• It is only about 14 miles and 2000ft of gain from my house to the Angeles Crest Highway (ACH).
• After being closed at its midpoint due to slides for several years, the ACH is open in its entirety again, meaning we have access to the inner San Gabriels without driving all the way out to the Mojave!
• I'm in better shape than I realize. The constant 5% grade on the ACH felt like a false flat to me; I rode comfortably up it at 12-13mph.
• Yuccas are blooming! This is a rare event and I've never managed to catch it before:

Happy yuccas! It doesn't seem so great until you realize that thing is 15ft tall.

Rose Bowl Ride, Collegiate Nats

Part of the problem with road biking is traffic (the rest of the problem being the lack of dirt, but that can't be helped). Dealing with stoplights, stop signs, cars, and traffic controls designed for cars sucks. Stopping and going is no fun. That's why it's important to have routes that are relatively free of traffic controls. Getting to these routes can often be a pain, but luckily there's one a mere 7.2mi from my house via bike path and back roads: the 3.2mi Rose Bowl loop. It's quiet, nearly free of cars, free of traffic controls of any kind, and reasonably scenic. All in all, a very nice road ride when you're looking for an easy flat ride.

The Rose Bowl flanked by the foothills of the San Gabriels: not a bad sight

Of course, why would anyone want to do a flat road ride, especially when there are so many great epic road climbs to be had (or better yet, why would anyone want to ride on the road when they can mtb)? Well, to train your aerobic system it's important to be able to have easy rides where you can plug away for long times/distances without working very hard, which is difficult to do on climbs and impossible to do while mtbing (at least the way I mtb). Since when do I care about training?

Since they announced they're holding collegiate mountain bike nationals at Northstar, that's when. I want to qualify for nats, and to do that, I have to increase my past average race speed by nearly 50%. That's no small order, especially taking into account that I'll be racing longer courses, double or triple the distances of my races from last year. Thus, in addition to mountain biking like a crazy man this summer to improve my descending skills, I'm going to be doing a full road regimen too for the benefit of my climbing. My first goal is to kick ass in the Tahoe-Sierra 100 so I can upgrade my category before the season starts. We're definitely coming, Jeannie. You know, there's a 50 mile course too, if you or anyone else wants to do it.

As an addendum, this is also the first picture I've uploaded from my new camera phone. It's convenient to have; I don't have room for a camera when I'm biking, but I do have room for a phone. It also has a built in mp3 player, which I also enjoyed very much. Nothing like music to take your mind off a long ride.

Team Photo Shoot

The USC Cycling Team needed a team photo for our webpage and for our sponsors. As it would happen, a staff member at USC is a fan and supporter of our team and her husband is a professional photographer. Thus, a couple weekends ago we got together in our new kits (cyclists call their uniforms "kits" for some reason) and took a team photo. They also took individual photos and gave them to us, which was super nice:

Man, Roadies are so dorky. I also realized I'm an albino, since they made us take our sunglasses off for this picture and even though it was an overcast day, I was squinting like crazy and my eyes were tearing up from the bright light. No one else seemed to have this problem.

My mountain bike is so sexy. Hard to believe that was once Carie's dad's mountain bike; only thing left from those days (literally!) is the frame.

I won't be wearing that kit again until next MTBing season, since I don't want to wear it except for races. It's pretty much superstition, but that's the way it is. Speaking of which, the season opener is usually the course at UNR, so how about another visit up to you, Jeannie?

Epic Bike Ride

Carie and I rode up Mt. Wilson (5700ft) on Saturday and are still sore from it. It's 18 miles one way and 5,000ft of climbing. It's a burly road ride even when one is training a lot, which neither of us are. It's also very scenic, and at this time of the year, really cold at the top. The descent is a nice long downgrade with well-banked turns that you can ride without touching your brakes (provided you're willing to go 40mph). Sadly, we have no pictures since we don't have a camera small enough to take with us on bike rides. I'm thinking of getting one of those really cheap small cameras that I can just throw in my pocket for such a purpose. We'll have to ride it again and get pictures.

AToC

Today Carie and I rode over to the Rose Bowl and watched stage 7 of the Amgen Tour of California. It was pretty cool; the field was on par with the top races in Europe and we got to see some major names in pro cycling tear it up in our own backyard. It was sad that a French team outfoxed some top American riders to deliver their Italian rider to the stage win, as I was really hoping that George Hincapie would repeat (the guy is so nice and humble and goofy looking you can't help but root for him), but it was good fun nonetheless. Also, I got to try out Shimano's new electronic shifting system, which works pretty well but is still completely and utterly ridiculous.

Also, one of my cycling team buddies was watching on the climb when the riders were going slow and chatting with each other, and distinctly overheard Lance Armstrong tell a European rider, "Oh yeah, they play football there...", in what can only be a reference to the Rose Bowl. Hilarious.

Snow!!!

It is raining like crazy in L.A. and snowing like crazy in the mountains.  Due to the rain we decided to bug out of the bike race, meaning my road racing season has officially ended before it even began, but who cares?  I'm particularly awful at road racing, so it's really no loss to me or the team.  I'll rack up points again next fall in mountain biking.  And besides, there's snow about!

This weekend I will be going hiking/sledding, and on Monday Carie and I are going to skip out of work and go skiing.  Stay tuned for updates!