Skis and wheels: all in a weeks work.

With the kid brother in town, I had to ski with him. Especially since my 10-punch pass has gone virtually unused. After making him suffer through the road race on Sunday, Monday we packed up and headed to the cabin. A very relaxing (recovery for me) Monday, and Tuesday it was game on. We skied from almost open to close and met up with Kris and Brian. The snow was o.k., the weather chilly and it was winter all over again. Tuesday we did a half day with Todd & Melvin, then I had to go down and get to 'work'. Tre joined me for a ride and we spent 3 hours riding up and down and all around the valley. Then the kid brother left on Thursday. Life was back to 'normal'. I was pooped. I had to take Thursday off to recover.

Nik with his first glimpse of Hood.

Skiing Tuesday

Skiing Wednesday

Nik gives Mt. Hood 2 thumbs up.

Post skiing rice beers.

Tim and I spent a great day mountain biking on Saturday on Syncline/Hospital Hill. Patrick joined us and we managed to put in over 5000 feet of climbing. I knew that would feel good the next day out at Hagg Lake. It did. I played nice with the Master 1/2/3 men and then the weekend was over. Man, time flies. And now it is lighter longer. I think I am still missing that hour of sleep.

Patrick, Me & Tim

My spiffy new Pearl Izumi awesome carbon mtb shoes. Compliments of Tony Torrance at PI.

Not so new anymore.

Game on! 2010 racing season has begun! March 6-7, 2010

I completely missed posting a blog entry from last weekend, even though we had a great cabin weekend with a scenic Cherry Blossom recon ride on Saturday and a gorgeous day on Syncline and Coyote mountain biking on Sunday. I forgot the camera, and what is a blog entry without pictures?!?!

This weekend, Tim and I kicked off our racing season with our first races of 2010, both mountain biking and road. Saturday we checked out the Echo Red to Red mountain bike race. It was an awesome event. It was a great course, well organized and a heck of a lot of fun. I even debuted my "new" team for 2010. If you haven't heard by now, Cannondale discontinued their sponsorship from the very successful Monavie-Cannondale team as of January. That does not leave a lot of time to find new sponsors for a season almost underway. Therefore, I am back racing for the BEST bike shop in the country: River City Bicycles. I am always honored to don the kit of RCB. It is where I started and things always seem to go full circle. The bonus now is that Tim and I get to match!!!

Matchy-match

In our tried and true kits, we had a successful weekend of racing. I won the women's pro category and Tim took a close 2nd in the Cat 1 35-44. I think he came in 8th overall, however. Pretty impressive for the first race outing of the year.

And the best part of it was the Red to Red wine I received. Thanks to the sponsors for that!

Saturday night we celebrated with my kid brother, Nikolas, who arrived from MN while we were driving home from Echo. We went out to Deschutes in the Pearl and discovered why we spend all of our weeekends at the cabin when we aren't racing. It is crowded on Saturday nights!

Do we look like siblings? Nik, 25, Sue, 38. Yep, he is a bit younger.

Sunday we headed out to Banana Belt #2. I received permission to race with the master 1/2/3's, b/c I didn't want to get up early and wanted to race with Tim. It was good training. All was good until at the crest of the hill after the dam on the last lap when I heard that horrible noise, pssssst. I had a front flat. I was left to finish alone after a not very fast wheel change and Tim, even after sitting at the front of the race a majority of the time, finished 8th.

A great start to what I hope is a GREAT season!

Cactus Encounters: A week of singletrack in sunshine, February 13-21, 2010

Our annual backcountry trip turned into an adventure on two wheels down in Arizona. Friday after work on the 12th, Tim and I rushed to the airport in search of sunshine and 75 instead of fresh powder. We found what we were looking for in Fountain Hills and Sedona. 7 days of amazing riding, miles of awesome dry singletrack, hours and hours of sunshine, and one rainy day to get us ready to come home. Here is our adventure in pictures.

Day 1: Bell & Windy pass loop. 4 hours, 4100 feet of climbing and lots of smiles

Tim's new toy. The inaugural ride.

A different kind of riding than Oregon.

At the top of Windy pass, heading down for the last descent.

Day 2: An actual "training day". Valentine's day intervals. We headed over to the McDowell track from the backside. My first intervals out of the way for the season and they were actually fun. I love chasing Tim around!

Not a bit of mud in sight.

Nice new bike!

Day 3: Sunday night after our ride, we headed to Sedona to hook up with Kelly Benjamin (Pdx buddy), Ben Sonntag (teammate), his girlfriend Carmen Small and her dad. Starting the week out in a new place and lot's of singletrack! The ride Monday with Kelly & Ben left us all grinning ear to ear. Kelly is an amazing mountain biker. Not your typical 'roadie'. The views, the weather. It was amazing. We rode over 5 hours that day. We didn't want to stop.

Is life really this good?

Love the rock.

Not even streams could stop us. Although we didn't get across dry.

Lovely.

Fun riding.

Happiness is...

Our least favorite trail: Ridge.
We went up instead of down and the cactus were on full attack mode.

Tim on our bonus loop in Carol Canyon.

Day 4/Sedona day 2: Maps do lie. Or snow makes finding trails impossible. At any rate, Kelly wanted to go up Schnebly Hill Road. She had never done it. There was a singletrack right next to it, so we were game. The map showed a way for us to loop it. It was going to be epic. Oh, it was. 5.5 hours of epic. And only 22 miles. You do the math.

It started amazingly well. A really fun uphill trail.

Beautiful views.

Stream crossings you could ride.

Beautiful rock.

And then we hit snow. But it didn't stop us... yet.

At the point we thought was the end of the snow.

All smiles at the top, thinking of our fun descent.

The search for the trail continued, mostly on foot. This was the snow we ran/pushed our bikes through on the way up. And it turns out, on the way down too. That trail on the map was never found. And afterwards we did find out that it was a good thing. At least on xc bikes. Apparently it is a burly downhill, full pads kind of trail. And it was under snow.

Day 5: Rest day in Sedona. Kelly had to leave, we went out for breakfast and just hung out all day. It was hard not to ride, knowing there were more epic trails, but sometimes you just need a break. And it wasn't so bad hanging out with the views from the house.

Day 6/ Sedona riding day #3: We redeemed ourselves from the Schnebly Hill adventure and covered another 30+ miles of singletrack in the area. A totally different area, different trails and soil. It was a true adventure that began well and ended well.

Day 7: After our last ride in Sedona, we reluctantly packed up and headed back to Phoenix. What dumb luck that Kelly was in AZ and that her family had this amazing house in Sedona. We definitely got bonus days up there and we will be back. On Friday, we had another "training day" that was structured. So, we actually drove over to McDowell to ride that entire area, inside and outside of the 'competitive track'. We covered a lot of ground. Almost 40 miles in 3.5 hours. It was actually quite fun. But isn't riding your bike fast on singletrack always fun?

Tim aka "T-bone" in his earlier years has both a ridge...

...and a wash.

The "moonscape" in the outskirts of McDowell Park.

Day 8: Is this a cruel joke? It was 60 and sunny in Portland and 50 and rainy in Arizona. I guess the sun gods wanted to give the folks at home a little break. And it prepared us of our inevitable fate of riding in the rain again when we went home. We hadn't really brought rain gear, but did bring some warmer clothes for Sedona, just in case. It wasn't so bad. We did get muddy, but we kept smiling. And enjoyed our last miles of singletrack in Arizona sopping wet! Felt like home.

Rain? No problem. I had wool packed "just in case."

At the top of the first pass we climbed too. See our trail in the background. Fun, fun.

Tim loves when the clouds are hanging in the mountains.

Day 9: No time to ride. Just a morning of packing and heading out. Thanks to Paul Gundlach, our favorite resident snowbird in Arizona. He is a marvelous host and we look forward to returning the favor when he returns to Oregon for the summer.