Baton Rouge race weekend...

unfortunately i was unable to attend this race. I have missed my nieces last 2 birthday parties because of races, so I promised everyone that no matter what, I would be there this year...and I was! It was fun and a good visit with my sister kristie and her family. Plus the huge bonus about anytime I go to visit with her is the fact that she lives in Birmingham, about 10 minutes away from Oak Mtn State Park....which has the best 17 mile point to point trail around, at least in my opinion.


I was gathering up my stuff the day before the weekend and realized that my bottom bracket had frozen up on mt fuel...WTF...! thank god my training buddy, max has a plethora of mtbs that I was able to borrow one from...I properly choose the Santa Cruz...it's a older proven ride that max has used in several 24 hr solos and xc races, it has been retired for about 3 years...and I had to make several adjustments to it for it to fit.


I made one major mistake on Saturday...since I had to do several make shift fixes to the SC, used up both of my tubes that I keep handy...see, I run tubeless with a splash of Stan's and it's been tried and trued!..anyway, I got to the trail head, got suited up, watered up, and tightened up then realized my Big Air is on my fuel and my back up tubes are in the tires I'm riding...dilemma fo sho...being the gambler I am, I rolled the dice and set off...



















this is Mike from Chicago, I met him just at the end of the bump trail...just after I lost my bet. this very generous dude stopped and gave me his tube and let me use his co2...i would have been walking out otherwise...very cool!..needless to say, I cut the workout in half and that I took it to the bike shop after that...scored a few tubes and stuff that would get me thru Sundays ride.

saturday night brought some good rain, just enough, but not too much...what it did was cool everything off about 15 degrees and create the perfect topsoil...almost like snowboarding...I was the first on the trail and it just worked...tires hooked up, corners were fast, gears felt easy. I few pics from the first lap, I was going too fast on the second...kaheekahee






















a little blood rock action






















the front section























towards the end

Easter Ride 2008

Well...this is the first year in a long time that I didn't go to church on Easter. My wife and I just had our 3rd child...Charlie...so she wasn't going and the in laws wanted to take the other two...Carter and Caroline...I decided that I would get my church ride on and be home after the kids were back. I headed towards Purvis with a nice 15 mph tailwind so it made for a nice start.

Got to see the FEMA trailers that were never put to any use...

this pic doesn't even do the size of this field justice, it's FULL of trailers...they have been there since about a month after Katrina.

I decided to roll thru my local state park...Paul B Johnson...only to find a dick a the gate wanting to charge me .50 cents to ride the 3 miles of road to the other side. At first I decided I would just ride back out and around but then I thought again...I went back asked to talk with the ranger. I explained that I had been riding thru this park for years and have never been asked for money to ride thru...he let me go but gave me a list of fees so I would be educated on what they charge for next time...don't think I will be making the trip that way any time soon. Hope this was worth it...

You know as many times as I ride certain roads...because there fast, or have good climbs, good pavement, whatever...I always have my favs...

This little stretch of road is one of those. It's only about a mile long but I love it, maybe it's cause I use to ride it daily when I lived on Prince George.

Today was a good workout...50 miles, 2400 ft of climbing, 19 avg speed, avg hr 159...but something ain't right about that. My Garmin 305 that I love has been going haywire...my max hr today was 240...uh, no! I have to send it back this week.

Back To The Bouge SCRCS #1

The weekend started off with some killer breakfast at WH that doubled as the meeting place for half the team. We rolled down to the Mobile and arrived a little before lunch. We decided to eat a lite lunch, chill for a bit then turn the pre lap as the warm up for the short track...which was around 3:30...the warm up lap was good, about 54 minutes at about 65%...but the first section of the loop was nasty. Just so happens that the short track runs right through this...fun!

The race organizers decided to combined the expert and sport fields in the short track since there were only 3 expert racers...it was fun! Twenty five minutes + 3 laps...started out a good train thru the woods for the first few laps, things spread out over laps 3 and 5...I managed to slip away at the half way mark and built on that...ended up 1st with about :45 sec on seconds on 2nd place.

Most of the fellas camped out but Max ans I crashed out in a hotel...much warmer and comfortable. I was really cold the morning of the race and during the warm up...I was not in my routine like I should have...more on that in a bit...the start time was about 10a so by go time the temps had warmed up slightly, so I shed more jacket and headed to the start. On the line we had about 10 experts...all ages...we started off together and I went third into the woods. I felt the effort from Saturday immediately. Second place went down on the in the muddy section, so I slid into 2nd position...just before the single track started back up, the semi pro flew by me dragging along a new expert racer, so I jumped on the train and into the woods we went. I wanted to hang on and stay steady...well, these dudes put a solid pace down and i trailed them by about :20 seconds after lap 1. Lap two was a struggle to keep the power up, I stayed fluid but could tell I was running low on power, I guess I dropped about 3 minutes on that lap. It was the dreaded 3rd lap that got me good. The first little incline, the one I hammered up 12 times during the short track with easy, felt huge. I knew I had to just survive. I pushed but had no power...by the end of the lap, I was basically soft peddling. Ended up 4th overall and 1st in my age.

Some other Indian Cycling podiums...

Our BIG jr racer pulling down a 2nd place...

My boy Max...first race in a year and snags a 2nd place in 40+ sport

Clare finished 2nd in her first expert race.

And JoeJoe ended his sport career with a solid 3rd place...better enjoy, expert should be a eye opener laddy.

Now for the wrap up...

The weekend was a blast. The first race of the season is always one to be easy on yourself about...don't get to high or too low...it's long season.

For me...just a training weekend. I felt great on Saturday...not so much on Sunday. I would like to think I am in good enough shape to race two days in a row so I am not going to use that as on excuses as to why Sunday was so rough...but it is an easy scapegoat...I have some more training to do. Loner rides with tempo/intervals towards the end of the ride and shorter rider with all out effort...

I am going to keep training rides posted...coming soon!

Indian Cycling Racing and a little background for ya

We are Indian Cycle Racing , an amateur mountain biking team that races and promotes grass roots cycling through XC and endurance races. We have been around for 3 years but are just now getting the team organized like it should be. We started with lots of riders/racers but have narrowed the team down to 12 dedicated racers. Out team breaks down like this: 8 dudes and 3 ladies we have representation in expert, sport, ss and the jr categories and we range in age from 10 to 42 yrs young.

We organize a regional and a state series. The South Central Regional Championship Series is a series that has races in LA, AL, and MS. It is our second year running and our first race drew 95 racers which is the 3rd most racers to date...only missed 2nd by 3 riders,so we are pumped about this year.

This is my first blog...and it's going to dedicated to the race season and the weeks between. I might be setting myself to highlight how big of a slacker I am but we'll see.