out for a walk

Chris Peters looking nostalgic at the top of Lambs

Poked around in the mountains this morning and found some low angled turns in the trees. Suprisingly good considering the conservative terrain. It's been a week now without a significant bike ride and nearly every day on some kind of ski.

Mon: skate
Tues: skate
Wed: tour
Thurs: no ski due to travel
Fri: lift served
Sat: lift served and skate
Sun: skate
Mon: tour

Hope I can keep that streak going....

If your still looking for some cyclocross coverage check out monavie-cannondale.com for a behind the scenes look at racing World Cups with Sue Butler. The site remains a work in progress but the euro updates should be good.

on the day before winter

more of this

some of this






equals santa when it's 5F

magic carpet

The first time up the lift Eva's eyes got real big and she said "daddy were flying high like a bird"

I was a bit older than Eva when my brothers and I all got skis for Christmas. We immediately started hiking for the steep slope at the top of Peay's horse pasture for our first turns. At first we just straight lined until we crashed and then got up and straight lined again. This slowly evolved into crash free GS turns around the Metal sprinkler pipes and dropping pillows of sagebrush on the upper slopes. I was already proficient at getting down the mountain when I first rode a chair lift at Sundance and bored silly in the beginner class without any metal posts to dodge. The progression continued when we started making skins out of directional astro turf and used skinny skis to carve tele turns above the peach orchard.


In Sun Valley they have a magic carpet.

continously reminded

http://outdoors.fanhouse.com/2008/12/17/cyclocross-nationals-go-off/

cyclocross nationals goes mainstream

It's dumping in Sun Valley right now. We just got from dinner and rallying the AWD minivan on the snow packed roads. SLC needs snow packed roads!
Eva can't wait to ski tomorrow.

sun rise

KC

I am now looking out my back window at old man winter while playing with my girls, the disappointment of Nationals slowly fades into the background. Not the way I wanted my cross season to end but the best I could do on the day.

The bummer is I had a good opportunity. My start was clean and I dangled off the front group for a couple laps in about 10th place. I was comfortable but could feel my low back starting to fold. A group behind came up and I rode with Tonkin and a couple others for another couple laps until my low back and sciatic nerve gave up the ghost, lights out, I could only cruise around after that. Because I could not ride that hard I got really cold and was just happy to finish.

I knew my back would be the deciding factor in my effort as it had been bugging me for a couple days. With race time temps barely a 20F and a stiff wind it was hard to get loosened up. On such a difficult climbing track with mush soil you either have it or you don't and I didn't have it. Today I feel pretty fresh as I was not able to dig deep and use my fitness like I wanted and with zero technical challenge on course that's all you have is your fitness.

Overall it was a good cross season with the highlight being the growth of the Utah Cross Series. Nearly 300 riders/race and 40% growth over last year.
Big plans for 2009.

Now for some winter sports!

the playoffs

Now I am ready for the Stanley Cup!

1 to go

Although our snow pack is suffering, staying on the bike until cross nationals has been much easier than past years. After a couple weeks of training I was a little tired at the last UTCX on Saturday but I was able to ride a fairly mistake free ride. Now for some rest and hopefully I am going good next weekend. But if not at least it will be time to ski upon return from KC.

Check out the BHDP: Now just got to get the District/Dynafit combo mounted up.