AREA MAN DIGGING THE SINGLE-SPEED

Feels odd not to be doing Sunday’s Mount Baker Hill Climb, but I think my racing itch has been scratched for 2009. This past year, my first as a full-on MTBer, I did nine mountain bike races—six of the Indie Series, an 8-Hour down in California, Test of Metal (aka, Test of Numbskullery), and Ski to Sea—and that feels like enough.

Then there’s the money thing that played into my decision not to do the hill climb. Indie series races are $30; Ride 542 is more than twice that. Feel bad pointing that out that b/c I do like the Charlie Heggem a lot and all that he does, but hmm, $75 is a lot of scratch.

In other news, I’m having a blast riding this rigid-fork single-speed. (Oh, did I mention that it’s a 29er too? See below post.) The simplicity is really cool and it forces you to rely on momentum and muscle to make it up hills. That's probably not something I want to do every time I ride, but for a strength workout, it’s pretty killer. I’ve got one Galbraith ride under my belt including a trip to the top of the Towers; that one had my legs shaking.

Finally, a shout-out to Beau Whitehead (http://paddlesurfnorthwest.blogspot.com/ ) who's heading to San Diego this weekend to compete in the Naish SUP (stand-up paddlesurfing) championships. Beau won four races in Seattle a couple weeks ago. Go Beau!

TEST OF METAL VIDEO II; PHOTOS TOO

My helmet cam can only shoot for 56 minutes and since my race would last about four hours, I knew I couldn't shoot the whole thing. So I waited until I'd made it to the top of the biggest hill--an 8-mile killer that started at about the 20-mile mark and which featured several sections (Bonk Hill, Rock Bluff Hill, Lava Flow Hill, etc.). When I reached the top, I hit Record.

So what you've got in this four-minute excerpt are the upper reaches of Lava Flow Hill, the Ring Creek Rip and the Powerhouse Plunge, all of it known to me as the Cramp Inducing Descent from Hell. (Note abandoned car on the side of the trail and a part where I bash into another rider at a tricky corner.) After an hour of climbing you've got about 40 minutes of downhill, much of it of the tense-up and hold-on-for-dear-life variety, so when it comes time to pedal again one's legs (as in mine and just about every rider I talked to) seize up rigor mortis style. (See yesterday's video blog entry which shows me being knocked down for the count.)

On the open dirt road feed station section, you'll see I meet up with son Baker and wife Jen who run alongside for a while, a real morale boost. Then it's into Crumpit Woods where I rolled off a bridge into a puddle (camera had unfortunately run out of power by then) and later bashed my shin into a rock. Please enjoy!

Below are some photos:

Sweet rig. Me (left) and Bellingham's Steve Noble before the start.

Above, bikes lined up before the start. Below, riders rarin' to go.

TEST OF METAL VIDEO

Here's a quick video of today's Test of Metal 40-mile mountain bike race in Squamish, British Columbia. Beautiful setting for what is a hellatiously tough race. Quick impression is that what makes it so hard is that the course gets tougher the farther you go and the more and more tired you're becoming. I'll write more later but here're a few things that happened to me, all in the last 10 miles: I suffered some of the worst leg cramps I've ever had (and I've done two Ironmans and run the Chuckanut 50K five times), I rode off a 5-foot high bridge into a puddle of goo, I bashed and bloodied my shin on one of the course's six million frickin' rocks but ... I finished. In about 4:13. Pretty pleased with that time actually. The aforementioned cramps caused me to take about 10 minutes to sit on a log and ingest a salty as hell chicken sandwich (which helped immeasurably) and had me considering calling wife Jen to pick me up with the car. So I was happy to finish.

The video shows the Powerhouse Plunge, a crazy-steep rocky section, and my cramping episode which is hilarious. I topple over like I've been shot with a blowdart. Oh, the pain! First my left hamstring, then my right quad. Eventually, it subsided but there was always something there to remind me.