MTB to Lumato Falls:

Despite the fact that I was coming to Bend to do a Half Ironman, Stan insisted that I bring my mountain bike to get in a ride with him. We are doing a 100 mile MTB race in August and he wanted to get in some training together, and also to show me the great trails here in Bend.

We headed out to one of his favorite trail heads and he promised to keep the ride relatively flat and easy for me. I of course knew this was a lie. Despite my legs being dead from the half I worked to keep up on the great single track trail. In honesty, he did keep the ride as flat as possible for a MTB ride, that just isn't always very flat.

As we stopped at 10 miles to have a gel, he said there was a waterfall a few miles up the road. I was told there were three options. Option 1 was to drive to it once we were done with our ride, option 2 was 2 ride up the paved road to the falls, and option 3 was a 3 1/2 mile trail up to the falls. He knew I would cave to the pressure and do the extra miles on the trail. The falls were about 125 feet high and beautiful, and we saw them from below, above and even hike down underneath them.

We ended up riding almost 30 miles, which was tough 2 days after the half, but the trails were totally worth it.

Kayaking Hosmer Lake:

Today Stan and Sue took us to one of their beautiful local lakes for some paddling. They have a canoe they take out weekly during the summer, and we rented a tandem kayak so that we all could join the fun. We paddled up Hosmer Lake to Quinn Creek and stopped at a small waterfall for lunch before paddling back.
The water in this lake is so clear it almost looked like a tropical lake, except for snow covered Mt. Bachelor in the background.

Road Trip 2009-2

I saw a Half Ironman in Sunrive, Oregon that looked beautiful and challenging. Then last year Stan Kiefer moved to Bend, which is only 15 minutes from this race, I smelled a road trip on the horizon.

I convinced Gary and Carla to come along and we headed up Thursday morning. The drive was 850 miles and we managed it in just under 14 hours. The second half of the drive was beautiful.

The Half Ironman was a point to point race that stgarted in Wickiup Reservoir. Race morning was clear and calm, the race however was held up as some of the shuttle buses hadn't arrived for the 9 AM start. The race finally started at 9:30, with Carla and me starting at 9:45 and Gary at 9:55. Water temp was reported at 62 degrees and was a little shocking when you got in, but not bad by half way. The bike course was on lightly traveled roads that went past several lakes on the way up to Mt. Bachelor, then a long decent into T2. The run headed out through the Sunriver Vacation homes, and was on a tree lined path for the first half. The second half came out by the airport and by this time the temps were up to 90 degrees and there was no shade on this part of the course. Nice finsih line and a long sleeve shirt for the race with a colorful medal made for a nice day.

Heading to Sedona, 6-9

Packed up in Flagstaff and headed out towards Sedona this morning. Decided to head up the highway a few miles and check out some cliff dwellings in Walnut Creek Canyon. It was down 246 steps according to the parks department and then you could walk around the Island and check out some Indian cliff dwellings. Pretty cool to see this, though the climb back up the steps was tough. How is it that you can be fit enough to ride and run at altitude, but stairs take your breath away?

As I rolled into Sedona I was once again taken by the beauty of this area. I parked next to the Oaxaca Restaurant that we ate at when we road tripped out here a few years back and walked down main street. I picked the wrong time as the tour buses had just arrived and everything was packed. I grabbed a little BBQ and headed out for another little hike. I decided to do a short hike up to Devil's Sinkhole and the Sacred Pools. Quite the scenery, but I was itching to get in a bike ride and it was already 1 o'clock, so I headed back to get checked into my hotel.

Really dragging my feet on getting out for a ride today as I am still a bit sore from yesterday's ride and today's hiking. I finally got off my butt at 4 and headed out. Changed my mind at the last second and decided to do some trails from the hotel to save some time as sunset was getting awful close.

I chose the Dry Creek Area near the hotel and headed out. Comic Ray listed this ride as intermediate with a pucker factor of 5, on a scale to 10. Sounded a bit challenging as I get my skills back up after a few years without much time on the MTB. As usual I had a hard time finding the trail head. Once I found it to be a nice red rock single track with some rocky sections. As I made my way down into Dry Creek, I had another contest with gravity. Cosmic Ray called Dry Creek drier than a popcorn fart and I have to agree. I got my weight a little forward and buried my front wheel in the sand and went down. I gotta say, that was the softest sand I have ever crashed in, it didn't even hurt. I continued up and down the hill and into the creek a few more times and got a little concerned about the time and whether I could make it home before dark. Guess I shouldn't have left so late.
I finally found a sign post to match up with my map and reassure me that I was still going the right way. A few more tough climbs, but I was beginning to find a rhythm when I came upon another little drop with a rise on the other side. I shot down into the gully and as I started back up I plowed into a rock with the front wheel, and boom time for gravity check number 2. This time I didn't have any soft sand to land in, it was all rocks and the bike was coming over on top of me.
I must confess my weakness during this fall. When you are going up something that steep and fall over, you are gonna roll back down the hill and the bike is coming with you. I couldn't get unclipped and as I went over, I saw my beautiful new bike coming down on top of me. The right thing to do would have been to sacrifice my body to save the bike, but I couldn't save her from crashing to the ground. I may be haunted my the thought that I may have actually pushed her away to save myself. I just hope she forgives me.
Not too bad on the injuries, a little blood from the elbow, a nice chainring gash on my calf, and I bruised my bad left hand up again. Shouldn't stop me from riding tomorrow, just be a little tougher to hold the bars.
Looking at doing a ride tomorrow with a pucker factor of 9, hope she doesn't buck me off for failing to save her from the fall. I am trying to make up by letting her sleep inside with me tonight.

Lava River Cave Bike and Hike, 6-8

Today I went back into the forest north of Flagstaff for a little impromptu duathlon. I have been using a guide book called "Cosmic Ray's Mountain Bike Guide." They listed a lava tube cave off the trails near where I ran yesterday. The cave is the remnants of past volcanic activity and the map showed it being just over 3000 feet long and just above freezing inside. I rode about 9 miles out some nice fire roads to get to the parking lot that marked the trail head.

There were two families just heading down into the cave in front of me and it was three adults and about 6 kids. One set of parents got spooked right off the bat and decided to head back up after only 50 feet, leaving just one dad to keep an eye on all the kids. You quickly left all ambient light and were totally dependent on your flashlights, luckily I am totally a geek for high power lights and I had one in my hand and another on my head. The footing was a bit rough with all the loose lava rock and a bit of ice here and there, so you spent most of your time looking down at your feet. I moved past the kids after about 10 minutes as the dad was telling them that they needed to turn around. Ever the bad influence, I intentionally pushed ahead a little further to draw the kids behind me for company. Dad totally lost on this fight as the kids followed me over his protests. This happened 3 times before he finally won out and they turned around leaving me about 1/4 mile undergound and all alone. I continued on about 10 minutes by myself till I reached the low crawl point in the tunnel, after crawling through I found another high cavern and from my memory of the map I knew I was about half way.
It was about this time that I got a little spooked, being in the cold and dark by myself started to mess with my already screwy mind. I decided that I could live with not going all the way to the other end, and headed back hoping my bike would still be leaning against the rock wall when I got there. 2-3 times along the way I got weird feelings that I was going the wrong way. Lots of doubt creeps into your mind in weird situations. About 3/4 of the way out I finally ran into a few college students heading in. I ended up hiking in the tunnel for about an hour and it was really pretty cool, though I probably wouldn't do it again alone.
Turns out my bike was still there and I continued on the loop from my guide book. The loop was listed as about 30 miles of easy fire road. The return trip on east side of the highway turned out to be a decent climb taking me to 8500 feet of elevation through a mix of Ponderosa Pines and Aspens and was really beautiful. That lung busting climb lead to a nice fire road decent back to my car. Turned out to be a nice mellow 28 mile MTB ride with a cool hike in the middle.
I did the Duathlon, but didn't get a shirt.

Wing Mountain Loop:

Another 300+ miles of driving today to get back to Flagstaff. Gonna stay here for 2-3 days and explore some trails. Was feeling pretty lazy when I got to the hotel, felt like taking a nap. Started looking at the trail guide I bought for some MTB trails for the next two days and decided to get off my butt and go for a trail run.

I drove out north of town and headed down a dirt road to where the trail was. I was going to run the Wing Mountain Loop, which the guide listed as 6 miles of easy mountain biking. How tough would it be to run, and could I follow the trail easily.

Some people might think it is un-wise to do a trail run in an unknown area off of a hand drawn map from a guide book. You would probably be ok if you remembered to at least take your cell phone or Road I.D. I have never been accused of being the brightest Crayon in the box, and I forgot both of those things along with my jacket in the car. But luckily I had my fantastic sense of direction and the GPS in my Garmin 305.

The loop was a beautiful trip around Wing Mountain, in the forest North of Flagstaff. This loop is used as a cross country ski loop in the winter, so the markings were pretty good and aside from a nice climb from miles 4-6 it wasn't too tough. What did make it a little tough was the altitude. Can anyone good with math help me with this equation, 182 pounds divided by 7600 feet of altitude equals how muck extra suffering?

Did the Xterra Four Corners Race in Farmington, New Mexico Saturday. I was really not too sure about racing as I was exhausted from the drive out here and doubting my fitness. Driving 750 miles solo to a race is a tiring endeavor.

The race was a 1500 meter swim, 6 mile trail run, and 20 mile mountain back ride. That's right it was a swim, run, bike race. The bike course that they were using for the race was 6 miles from the lake, so it worked out well for them. It was a little bit of practice for the Surf Monkey in August.

The race was very well run and the course was spectacular. Well worth the trip.