U.S. Skimo. Nationals coming up!

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Mount Moran Trip Report

Having abandoned the single-sport focus for the off-season, I've been bagging a few peaks in the last several weeks. Mostly this has been in the role of a guide, using old skills to get friends on top of objectives. Guiding for free is hard work but the reward of facilitating friends' goals makes it worthwhile. I started out getting three friends up Teewinot. Basically, 5,500 vertical feet straight up out of the parking lot. Good thing they were not paying me for my services as I made the all-too-common route finding error near the top, taking us 30 minutes out of the way. In spite of having been to the summit five or six times, I've nailed the route only half the time. It's always a relief to hear similar tales of misdirection from equally-experienced friends. Still frustrating.

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One Last Dig

So, about a week after hitting the deck twice in two different races less than 300 meters from the line, my wounds were healing and my form still felt alright on the bike. Immediately after the aforementioned events I pledged retirement from bike racing for the season. What a difference a week makes. Now, I developed no aspirations of taking on something as burly as Tour of Park City but perhaps something a bit more modest would be a fitting undertaking to cap my season rather than a no-fault-but-my-own crash. I had penciled in the Utah State Masters Road Race at Chalk Creek as a possibility earlier this year. With its rolling-style course and an uphill finish it would suit my abilities at this point in the season.  So, with only minor reservations, I signed up.

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Down and Out

After last week's performance at the Hailey 4th of July criterium, I was hopeful for this week's two crits, the Alan Butler Memorial in Idaho Falls and the Jackson Downtown crit here at home. Since we had our one local event and I wanted to perform well in front of friends and all, I decided to only do the Master's event at Alan Butler. We had a nice size field with some good fire power. I noted to one friend from Boise who was a favorite for the win that in the two previous years there was not a breakaway in the Master's race. We hoped to change that this year.

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Search complete, form found!

Ahhhh…what a difference a week makes. Well, a week and a boat load of carbohydrate, anyway. Yeah, as you know, last week's stage race effort sucked hugely and thoughts of hanging up the bike to do something else briefly plagued my thoughts. If you've been following this then you know some of my theories about why the implosion happened. Further discussion with Mark Twight at Gym Jones reinforced my feeling that diet was the culprit. His experience with athletes playing with gluten-free or gluten-reducing diets reveals that these experiments can insidiously devolve into low-carbohydrate diets. For an endurance athlete, this usually yields competitive suicide.

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