As part of the Rough Riders AdventureCORPS event we rode from the
Mission in SF to Mill Valley and then to the summit of Mt. Tamalpais
on dirt. Well, you have to hike the last 0.3 miles.
Team Swarm! and others made up the late group each day but we still
rode with some great folks. At the Saturday night bike show Megan Dean
of Moth Attack! bikes won second best bike. Rad.
More info with links and photos later in the week, hopefully.
“People should learn endurance; they should learn to endure the
discomforts of heat and cold, hunger and thirst: they should learn to
be patient when receiving abuse and scorn; for it is the practice of
endurance that quenches the fire of worldly passion which is burning
up their bodies.” -Buddha
I love mountain biking. Most non-cyclists fixate on time and/or
distance with these events, but really, Im just stoked to be out there
jumping off rocks, railing turns and bombing hills. Sure, the
endurance athletic stuff comes into play and I do enjoy that as well,
but man o man riding bikes is fun.
So. It was hot as shit. 100+.
The dude who won single speed (and overall!) lapped me when I was on
my 5th lap. Wtf?
I rested at 130am, changed kits and rubbed my feet. Did a few laps
then chilled at sun up. Some stomach weirdness! Maybe from the old gel
flask I took from the fridge.
I ate bananas, apples, clif bars, lara bars and peanut chews. Plus
MaxoMax, the Swarm! homemade electrolyte drink courtesy of Max.
New bike is nimble, fast and responsive. Rode the whole course, no
pushing, on my last 2 laps.
Lap times and other numbers below.
Now heading to the Bay area for Rough Riders Multi-surface Cycling
Festival. Vineman next weekend! Shit, I’ve only swam 4 times this
year. Should I be nervous?
17 laps, 2nd/4 in SS, 6th/22 overall.
0:54:45
0:58:04
1:04:39
1:06:56
1:04:35
1:04:26
1:13:28
1:02:45
1:08:40
1:28:49
1:09:24
1:26:51
2:01:32
1:37:20
2:26:47
1:31:29
1:21:47
I've come to look fwd to this place as much as the races I go to
Sonoma County for! This bin was empty; hopefully next week they've
some. They also have a taqueria and I ate possibly the largest burrito
in my life. And I've eaten thousands of large burritos! Next time I'll
weigh it and take photos. It may approach two pounds.
The 24hr race went well! Fell short of the 200 mile mark, did 17 laps
on a tough, hour-long-ish 9.3-mile course. Second in single-speed, but
there were only four of us. This fireman dude from Santa Rosa has won
every race I've been to up there and this one he won overall! Beat
pros on geared bikes. I'll have to check my overall. Bike is DOPE. And
now I have 100 packets of Hammer Espresso gel.
24 hours of Boggs today! 11am to 11am. With new bike, awesome. Without
any crew or friends racing, less awesome. It was a great course last
year and suuposedly there's even more single track. As my first 24hr
race last year I got 4th out of 8 single speed, but something like 9th
out of 45 overall. I like the time and the looped course rarely feels
repetitive, but it's hard mentally to push when there's no 'end'. It
got me at Cool 24 this year when I stopped cause I was cold (haha) and
fell asleep…
Maybe I'll shoot for a distance to keep me going? 200 miles? A double
century on my mountain bike would be a first.
I'll try to update the Swarm! Twitter occasionally. Also, a prize if
you can name the album the title of this post is from. Hint: I had the
t-shirt in high school.
Yes, I’m posting more often! Very stoked too. Now that it’s summer I’m still busy, but in ways that are more interesting to post. After I finish up here with Badwater, I’m home for 36 hours or so before heading up to 24 hours of Boggs. Can I get a road ride and mountain bike ride in before? Then back to LA for a few days of work before the Rough Riders Multisurface Cycling Festival in Marin County. The week after? Vineman (The People’s Ironman!) in Sonoma County. Getting nervous! I really need to swim a few times. What a month.
See you out there on the trail, on the road, in the water or on foot.
I’m here helping with the Badwater 135-mile Ultra-marathon and the top runners are finishing- just over 24 hours after they started. I’m updating regularly on the Swarm! twittersphere and there’s always the AdventureCORPS webcast (run from where I’m sitting right now).
The distances these runners cover and the landscape they cross…there really are few words to describe it. Driving the course at 4am and seeing folks running up hill, so touching! I get all choked up seeing people look confident and smiling after running 100 plus miles. In Death Valley. In the summer.
Yep, a pink tutu. He rules. Pennsylvania native and past finisher!
Los Angeles native and past champion Jorge Pacheco running up Townes Pass
Last years champion Farinazzo getting the full pit crew treatment on Townes Pass
Jorge descending Townes pass
A top five racer gets an ice bath before taking on the last 13 miles to Whitney PortalI can’t remember the last time I did a running event! At least two years. When I was mapping out my training for Vineman I thought it’d be a good idea to run a half marathon in late June or early July. And what better place than near Portland, Oregon? The Foot Traffic Flat takes place on Sauvie Island (Sauvie means delicious berries) 15 miles north of Portland.
So we, as in famous artist Lacy J. Davis and I, decided to ride our bikes there, duh. Yes, I love to ride bikes and I’m an environmentalist blah blah blah…but there’s only one bridge onto the island. Lots of cars. It just made sense to ride! The last 3 miles we rolled past bumper to bumper traffic. AND it was a great ride and a good way to warm up. I suggested this to the race organizer but he didn’t think it likely anyone else would ride…
The blue behind us is part of the un-ironic background but the blue behind that is real sky blue.After locking our bikes to a barn and eating some fruit, the half was ready to start. I started with my friend Eben, who works at the 7th Friendliest Store in Portland, who just ran a fast half the weekend before. Needless to say I let him go after the first mile. By mile two I realized that the majority of my running races have been the LA marathon and this race is the exact opposite, in a good way! Since I don’t have a watch and only recently began pacing at a track I was nervous about my time. Was I going too fast? Too slow? I set the timer on my iPhone and checked it at mile 3 and mile 6. Turns out I was running just about 7.5 minute miles, as I hoped.
St. John’s bridge, looking south.
After some lounging and watching the fast marathoners come in we headed back toward Portland, but took a detour over the St. John’s bridge to eat at Proper Eats, which is basically a restaurant in a health food store. The service and smell are like you’d expect from a restaurant inside a health food store, but the food was terrific. Tempeh breakfast scramble!
Inagural ride on the new mountain bike! Shocks. Something else. Also amazing? Four pounds lighter. A smooth, fast bike that fits. Wow!
Aidan is still in town post-Tour Divide, all 4th place finish, 1st single-speed (10 hours off the course record?!), 1st rookie. Took him for a spin in the Verdugos. June gloom (still) in effect on this side, but the climb up from La Tuna was HOT. The opposite of his next adventure, which is the 1100-mile Alaska Iditarod Invitational early next year. Nothing like perspective on what is possible.
Post-ride Indian buffet. Duh. A spot I had heard about in Pasadena near Lake and Colorado. The food was good, weren’t a ton of vegan options, but there was this:
We thought maybe it was compost. Delicious compost. Beans, curried broccoli and…..french fry….salad? Whaaa? We asked what was up with it and our server just told us it was a mixed-vegetable salad. Okay. I’m down no matter what you call it.
Recently I was in Powell’s ‘City of Books’ in Portland and while perusing the Food/Sustainability section I finally got to see in person, my good friend Temra Costa’s book about women in the sustainable food movement. Temra rules. We met, obviously enough, at a conference on food justice. She lived in Davis at the time I was traveling for work to Sacramento every few months or so and we’d hang out. She’s a super hard worker and very busy, so that often meant I was tagging along in what she was already doing- like scavengering the city for figs. Have you ever ate a fresh fig straight from the tree? She’d climb the tree, pick one and eat it, pass one down, which I would eat and then every third one would actually make it into the bike basket.
Also in this section was my friend Erik Knutzen’s book that he co-wrote with his wife, The Urban Homestead.
I ran into him last at the Echo Park Farmers Market (duh, right?) and they are working on a new book right now. I’ve been on a tour of his house during the 2009 Big Parade Staircase Walk and it is super amazing. A small farm right in the city!
Now any of you vegans out there know that the sustainable food movement not only includes animal products, but actively promotes them and are often anti-vegetarian. It’s very frustrating. Sustainability aside, it is still an ethical issue. As if eating local makes a difference to the animals raised and killed! I don’t want to be the militant vegan that no doubt has fueled the fire for localvores, in fact, I want to do the opposite. Vegans need to be more in touch with these folks and understand this movement, because it is a very important part of the puzzle.
The book I was looking for was On A Dollar A Day. I knew about the blog and hadn’t realized it was a book until a friend in Portland recommended it. Turns out that the authors are not only vegan, but old hardcore kids! (Out of context ‘hardcore’ kids sounds funny, it’s a sub-genre of punk rock that was very influential to me as a youth, and today).
Can someone eat on a dollar a day? What about on Food Stamp allocations? I love books where the authors are actively figuring something out as they write. You feel their struggle in trying to not only create meals from the resources they are limited to, but also to vegan-ize them. I’m most of the way through it and I highly recommend it.
The next day I was in the Powell’s that’s in the airport (Portland, I love you!) and what do I see? My friend Kalee Thompson’s book Deadliest Sea. Full circle, as she’s the partner of the guy who organizes the Big Parade Staircase Walk! On last year’s walk I had just started the book I am working on and I bugged her with a million questions about the process. I haven’t read this yet, but she’s a former editor of National Geographic Adventure (RIP!) and an awesome person so I know it’ll be good.
So stoked on my friends! And I can’t write a post about books and not mention Born To Run. I could not put this book down, except to go running. It’s about more than running and ultra-running, it’s anthropological in his look at the Tarahumara, but also about us, Western Culture. The author looks at the shoe industry and is not afraid to name names. It all comes together when a mysterious desert dweller organizes an ultra-run in Copper Canyon. So rad.
This book takes running out of the athletic realm. I see it now like back-packing or bike touring. We are born to run and to move, so get out and do it. I can’t wait to run an ultra-marathon, which I guess is obvious to anyone who knows me…