bad baseball, rad riding...

a weekend of ups and downs!

saturday morning i was up early (4am) to head out to temecula for the first race in the Racer's and Chaser's summer shootout. the race was supposed to start at 730am to "beat the heat" but it was a cool, misty morning. i got in a longer than normal warm-up (1:10) because the start got delayed which was fine by me because i needed a little longer to get going and get into "race" mode that early.

before the race i met up with some of my new teammates from Celo Pacific. good people and i am really looking forward to racing with them over the summer... more on that later.

annette, mark, me, and grifith (won my category... mega fast!).


the race. 4 6.5 mile laps with 800+ ft of climbing per lap.

they started all the cat 1's and pros together so there were probably 20 of us and i actually had a good start and just sat in for the first 1/4 mile of fire road... and then i blew it. i was kind of trapped in the pack and couldn't get around before we hit a short section of single track and that's when the faster guys made a move. once out of the single track and back on another fire road i tried to bridge to the front group but they were gone. i missed the bus!

I continued to ride hard and caught some guys on the first lap and was caught by a guy from Team Cytomax... and then we battled all the way through the first 3 laps. so the riding wasn't easy, no time to relax. i couldn't get away from him until the end of the the 3rd lap and as i started the last lap i put in a solid 5+ min effort and was able to get away for good and hold on for 4th place in Cat1 30-39 and just in the top 10 overall. good day.

race: 1:54, 25.5 miles 3420 ft of climbing


leather is better. killer re-usable number plates. go green!


Saturday afternoon beth and i headed to huntington to Ryan's crib for a pre-game bbq. i brought a fresh growler of green flash hop head red and ryan made some killer tacos... perfect after a tough morning of racing! as for the padres vs. angels game... what an embarassment! the pads played like crapped all weekend and as much as it pains me to admit... the halos dominated them... BIG TIME. even though the result wasn't good the game was super fun... even if it did feel like i was at disneyland.


ryan loves his rally monkey!


as for sunday... I had 4 hours on the road on the schedule but had no plans. i knew we would be back late from the game and wasn't sure how i would feel after racing. beth and some sick ride plans and was meeting a group in El Cajon to ride the great western loop... twice, once in each direction. i woke up sunday morning feeling good and beth talked me into to joining her and was stoked I did. we had a solid crew and charged the first 40+ mile loop just after 8am and it was pretty cool and overcast... but the climbing right off the bat warmed things up.

couter clockwise great western loop:

we finished the first counter clockwise loop in exactly 2.5 hours and were back at our cars refilling bottles, grabbing food, and the ladies hit starbucks for esspresso. we headed out on the second loop and it was getting really warm and sunny. we hit the climb and i felt great and was able to put in solid effort. we ended up finishing the second at just about 2:30 as well... and i was shelled... but very stoked with how i rode and also how beth did... she killed it!

clockwise loop

totals for the ride:

time: 5:00:39
distance: 84 miles
elevation: 8000ft of climbing... i think.
normal power: 200 watts
kj's: 3008

the next 4 days are all about recovering from the last couple weeks of nailing it. then it's back at it on Friday. I took friday off of work and am taking Jaakko out to palomar for climbing. i am fully expecting him to rip my legs off!