Soccer Time

Another good day...ST2's first soccer game. ST2 is a little taller and more athletic than most of the boys his age, and I have encouraged him to be physical. Despite the trips to the ER for stiches, and the banged-up limbs and bumps and bruises...I am still confident the way to parent him is to let him roll. So he is a bit independent, and he has a good amount of self confidence. Im not sure how he will mature as an athlete, but I let him try whatever he wants and we figure that he will eventually migrate to what he likes best. Its up to him.....I dont push him, he just goes! The details of the day arent important really...but is sure was fun. Our team is the Sharks! Today, the Sharks beat the Snakes about 5 to 3, although there is no scorekeeper or goalie or anything like that..its more of a fun thing, trying to teach the kids how to play together in a team format. It's a sort of swarm-ball thing..most of the boys dont really 'get it' in terms of defense/offense, etc. We are in U4 Boys..which are boys between about 3 1/2 and 4 1/2 years old. They dont age-up until next summer. But..they are surprisingly good..all of them! After the game, all the parents on both teams got together and made a big tunnel with our hands and all the boys on both teams (8 on each team) ran through the tunnel! Then, we thought they would run through once..like football players coming out of the locker room onto the field...but no!! They circled back around and went through again! And again!! At one point it occurred to the parents that WE had to stop the tunnel thing, or the boys would just run around for an hour! It was pretty funny. A good time was had by all. ST2 is the little guy on the right.

Thanks for reading.

Track Racing

OK, enough MTB stuff. Time for some blog from my real bike racing roots! The velodrome!

Track racing is my real bike racing passion. Track and crit racing both, really. I have raced on and off for years, but I always keep coming back to the 'drome. When I moved to Colorado I joined a cycling team here that has since disbanded. But during the two or three years I was active on that team, I became involved with the racing at the 7-Eleven Olympic Velodrome in Colorado Springs. I love the people that race the track, I love the high level of intensity, I love the simplicity, and most of all, I really love the track-specific training. Its something I am half-way good at and its just plain fun! Track is not as popular as road or MTB, so all tracks around the country have a sort of small, intimate social community, and Colorado has some great track racers. And in Colorado, we really do have the best track! ;)

I am fortunate enough to ride the Hammer/TVG Racing Team...the best Masters track team in the USA. I have been heading up the new rider development clinics and classes at the track now for a few years, and last year I was voted onto the Board of Directors of the Colorado Velodrome Association,which is the USACycling Local Association for Colorado. I really enjoy teaching the clinics, and as a longtime racer and coach, it is my own goal to attract as many good cyclists as I can to our track, so they can enjoy racing like I have for so long. In the three years I have taught the clinics, we have had much success - so many of the class participants have gone on to race at the higher skill levels now at our track and in fact, two of them have now won National Champion jerseys!

This year, one of the local road racers that came down to the track to try it out was Megan Hottman. Megan and her husband Rob were already very accomplished road racers here in Denver, and Rob had raced the track before. Megan came down about mid season and tried it out, and picked it up pretty fast, and then just began to crush the womens field. She has done so well, that she is off to Elite Natz in LA next week! I spoke with a couple of the sprint coaches at the 'drome recently who have been helping her with her training, and they feel that Megan has a terriffic chance of doing very well in LA.

Another friend of mine, also on Hammer, is Randy McLain...he is also going to Elit Natz for the second time, as well a several other local fast peeps! I wish them all the best of luck in LaLa Land.

My friend and track coach Rich Voss knows an absolute boatload about how to make a bike go fast on the track. Rich is a multi-time UCI World Champion in the Sprint and really really knows his stuff. I have learned a ton from working with Rich the last few years, and Im fortunate to have met him. Rich and I, and several of the other sprinters on the team all do our training with power meters. Training with Power has become the 'only' way to train for us, and as we all learn more about it, I cant imagine anyone NOT using a power meter! All of the roadies I coach are on power meters. It is critical in my opinion for the competitive bike racer. Kill your TV? Kill your HRM!!!

More later...its time for a Friday night beer. I get serious about 2008 in 12 hours!

Thanks for reading.

ST Jr. Solos

As I mentioned, I have a son-Steven Jr. He is now 3 years and 10 months old. Today after work, I picked up ST2 at the day school. On the way home, we usually discuss what we are going to do before dark. Usually we go practice soccer, or we go to a playground, go for a hike, or we go ride bikes. We had planned to get in one more day of soccer drills, before his first game on Saturday, but he changed his mind and wanted to ride instead. I'll write more about him later, because as I was writing this, I went off on a tangent about parenting, my relationship with my son, what we do together, etc. But..that stuff isnt the point of this post, so I've saved it for some other day.

I took the training wheels off his bike about 4 months ago and he didn't quite get it. Had I pushed him a bit more, he likely would have figured it out, but we put them back on. About one month ago, it occurred to me one day that he was ready to have them removed for good, and he had asked about removing them again and so I made a note to take them off next ride. For a variety of reasons we have ridden very little in the last month, but today he wanted to ride, and he asked me to take the training wheels off.

So when we got home, I unbolted the training wheels, he donned his helmet, and swung a leg over with his normal high level of confidence. He just up and started riding on his own, as if he had been doing it all summer. I only gave him a slight push down the driveway and that was it -he was gone. I remember clear as day my first day solo on a bike, with my dad. The scene was very much the same with ST2 today so it was a cool moment for me, and one I had looked forward to for a long time. Its a sort of milestone day for a dad I suppose.

Anyhow, he wanted to ride long today so he asked me to get my MTB and ride with him around. We rode up and down the street, over to the elementary school, and all around there and as it got dark we aimed back home. Much the same as so many other rides we have done together except today without help! He was jumping curbs, sprinting out of the saddle, skidding, making zoomy-zoom motorcycle sounds, all the normal kid stuff - and all with a huge smile. He picked it up so fast that I started to second-guess my earlier decision to put the training wheels back on after our first attempt at soloing, 4 months ago - and that maybe I gipped him out of an entire summer solo. But no...today was a good day for it. He needed the training wheels off, and he knew it...it was his idea today, not mine. When we got home he wanted to share it with his mom, so we called her and he explained what we did. He was very happy today and I hope he remembers it for a long long time. I took some pictures - I'll post one later on.

Definately the ride today with my son was the highlight of my week so far..it beats the crap out of a suck-ass stressful day at the firm. It is a day like today when I think more and more about bailing the corporate slave gig and turning MileHigh CycleSport into a viable supporting business. Thats another topic for another day.

Thanks for reading.

Wednesday MTB Ride Green Mountain

Another great ride tonight. The group was thin, but solid. So tonight it was Chris and Marni, Whiskey Dave, and myself. Dave and Chris were riding their big fat tire snow bikes! Crazy-looking rigs with large cool-factor scores. I had never seen them, and Chris explained them to me. Chris is an engineer and so I can understand his frequency. I like to know about details of things. Some folks dont explain them well. Chris does. Or at least he makes sense to me. The bikes Dave and Chris were riding were different...Dave goes fixie and Chris is geared, but they are the most odd-looking MTBs. I understand from Chris' explanation that they are sick in the snow - thus the point of the design in the first place. After getting set up, we rolled about 20 after 6 or so.

Dave had some mechanicals and turned around early, while the rest of us spun around at a fairly relaxed pace. Green Mountain is not super technical or difficult. There are a few short steepish sections, but nothing to cry about, really. When we got up to the top of the mountain where the radio tower is, there was an incredible moon rise over Denver. Full moon, or close to it. I really need to start bringing a camera with me. I checked my GPS, maybe 6700 feet up on top. Not a huge climb at all, but the view of Denver is well worth it.

A few minutes into the downhill come-back trail, we hit the lights, and then Chris and I promptly took diggers. Poor Chris...he reaches down to do some adjustment to his light or something and I was behind him, and just at the point he has only one hand on the bars, a large granitic cobble moves right in front of his big fat tractor tire and takes him out. Freakin cobbles, man! Always playing games!

I rolled up on Chris, and he was on his back, sort of contorted on the side of the trail, laughing......usually a good sign that all the body parts are intact. Chris eventually got up after I removed my headlamp beam from his face (sorry dude.....Im new to the night-riding thing, still working on light ettiquete), he did a quick check for limb activity, they all checked out in the 'functional' range, no large pools of blood had accumulated on the trail, so we mounted up and pressed on. Another header, another party. Right?

About 60-seconds later, I go down! A stupid endo, but..I have a really good excuse. Chris was behind me at this point and he has this freakin midnight sun monster zillion candlepower nuclear fusion bomb flood light that casts this insane shadow all over the zip code. So as he was slowly rolling up on me from behind, my own lights began to get flooded out by Chris' far more powerful fusion UFO photon beam. So as he got closer and closer, my light/shadow perception got more and more jacked up (thats a sort of undefined technical term I use often to describe situations that are..........not as they should be), and finally he was right on my wheel and there were these giant bizzaro-world exagerated geometry shadows all over that looked like some kind of freak scene out of Apocalypse Now, and I was watching them and not the trail and next thing I know, Im off the bike, curled up in the middle of the trail hoping Chris doesnt roll right over me with his monster bike! Thank God for disk brakes I guess.

Im all for crashing usually......crashing pretty much rocks (unless you jack up a bone or tendon or something, then crashing blows - see the link to the right to Mike Brevoorts blog regarding why crashing blows) But I dig stuff that rocks. And if the body stays intact, crashing is no biggie - as long as the kit doesnt get jacked up. Skin grows back, free of charge. Lycra is not free. I rolled the Hammer/TVG Racing Team kit tongiht, as I am proud to wear, and I need to keep my stuff intact for next season. I cant be buying new cycling clothes every week. Im not made of money. Note: Dirt endos are reletively safe on the kit - what with the lack of asphalt. The 'clothing success rate' for road endos sucks. Conclusion? Ride dirt more often.

Marni is a very good rider and did not crash! I should also add that she has the same light Chris has and between the two of them, it is quite the daylight out there.

Anyhow, we had a great ride. We saw some deer on the way down the hill, then we met Whiskey Dave back at the parking lot and saw some other folks about to head out for a night ride. Green Mountain is very much like so many SoCal ride areas - it is not pretty or fancy, but its dirt. And Im starting to really like dirt.

Thanks for reading.

Wednesday MTB Rides

That is a pic looking down on Clear Creek and US-6 from Centennial Cone - one of the Wednesday MTB Ride locations.

I mentioned the Wednesday MTB group that I have ridden with several times. Scott D maintains a web page with details (http://www.rideagainstthemachine.com/). As we get towards the end of summer now, and the available light after work becomes more limited, we have begun to use headlights now. Last week we rode Marshall Mesa up near Boulder, and finished off with about 60-minutes of total night-riding, out of a total two-hours. Erik, Chris, Chris' wife Marni, and I were the only ones that rode last Wednesday which was a smaller group than usual. Typically there are 7 to 8 or more people. Chris is probably the fastest guy in the Wednesday group....hi is a very good cyclist, knows all kinds of places and cool stuff. He races Expert, so he certainly is no slow-poke. He also has done Leadville, and is doing Moab 24-Hour solo, among other things. He also has a great blog about lots of cool junk -- http://slipangles.blogspot.com/

As much all-around cycling experiance as I have, and as much road and track racing as I've done over the last 25 years, I'm a basic rookie to real MTB riding and racing and the group pretty much crushes me each time. I've gotten better this summer no doubt, but MTBing has so many factors to it.....I still have a lot of work to do. I've ridden both road and offroad motorcycles all my life, and raced motocross a bit when I was younger, and have decent natural technical skills, but my downhilling is still suspect to say the least, and I can't clear most of the tech sections that some good riders have no trouble with. Erik and Chris are both very good technical riders and I watch them when I can. Most of the ride group members are better downhillers that I am and so I have much work to do there. I am working on it, and I am not afraid to push the envelope a bit...even though I have paid the blood price for my rookie skills a few times.

Plus, as I mentioned, I have a pathetic amount of aerobic power right now. Its embarrassing really. I peaked out last season at maybe only 225 watts at threshold. That should be over 250 in early season. That sad fact, coupled with my tremendous 190-pound fat ass slows me down a bit. In any case, MTBing with the Wednesday crowd is so fun, I pretty much could give a rats ass right now about getting shelled - its just about the fun.

So this week, today, we are meeting at Green Mountain, which is located on the very west side of Denver metro, in Lakewood. It's a sort of beginners area, and its not near as nice as the other parks we've ridden this summer. We start near the Zorro trailhead at the Rooney Road parking lot, ride up and over the C-470 bike path bridge, and then into Green Mountain park. We can ride there at night legally, unlike many of the other places we ride, and so as we get into fall we are limited to where we can ride mid-week.

Scott D is taking some time off the bike now to fully recover from some soft-tissue injuries so he won't be there. He has a great blog about all kinds of funny stuff...check it out. http://rideagainstthemachine.blogspot.com/

Mike Brevoort wont be there...he is still recovering from a nasty crash at Winter Park King of the Rockies and subsequent surgery to repair a shattered clav. He has some pics on his blog
http://mike.brevoort.com/ I was bummed when Mike crashed at KOTR. He was training well, he was consistent and I was hoping he would have a good race. But, he is a good athlete and in great shape, and I'm sure he'll recover soon enough.

Someone usually brings a camera...I need to post some pics.

Thanks for reading.

Mountain Biking

A good friend of mine, Scott DeLeeuw (http://www.rideagainstthemachine.com/) is a sort of all-around athlete a bit like myself. He is also a car enthusiast, drag racer, avid mountain biker, general outdoorsman, ice hockey player, roller hockey player, etc. I met him when I first moved to Colorado about 5 years ago on our former cycling team. This past year, I started riding MTBs with him and some of his other friends a bit. I've riddin' with him in the past, but never to seriously. This year, for a variety of reasons, I got hooked on the MTB side of the cycling world. I gave my circa 1990 MTB to a friend at work and bought a 2007 model Giant Anthem from another good friend and bike racer John Barvik at Adventure Cycles in Aurora (http://www.adventurecycle.net/). I rode with Scotts Wednesday night crew after work a few times this summer, and then Scott talked me into entering the final Winter Park Cross Country race in August. I got totally annialated, but it was so much fun, I will have to race the entire series again next year.

This is totally counter to the training I have been doing for the last two seasons..which is purely anaerobic capacity and neuro-muscular power work for track racing. My longest ever training rides now are on the order of 2 to 3 hours max...and thats slow...with the trackies. Any race longer than a kilo is 'long' to a track sprinter. A 25-mile MTB XC race is sick huge - never mind that up until 5 years ago I could knock off a 120-mile Saturday roll, followed up with a brick run effort in prep for an Ironman race as a matter of routine. I am WAY out of that kind of shape now. I've spent the better part of the last few years ignoring aerobic power and muscular endurance, and focusing only on extreme upper-end power, so while I can ride for a few hours, of course, I cant make much power after about 90 seconds. The last few months I am having to relearn how to make aerobic power. I pretty much suck, but from training this summer and fall, I am down to about 190 and change from over 200 at the beginning of the track season this year. I can see maybe leaning out to 180 or so between now and March..but I've never weighed less than the high 170's even at my absolute skinniest as an Ironman triathlete. It will take some time to get back to any kind of tolerable aerobic competitive shape, but by next Spring I can be there. So I have modified my normal annual training plan for 2oo8 to effect not only the high anaerobic wattage numbers I want, to be able to race well on the track next summer, but also the high threshold wattage numbers I'll need to race the MTB well. We'll see what happens.

It makes no rational sense at all at this point however, but I am now going to Moab in two weeks as part of a 24-Hour team. The people are cool, the sport rocks, and I need to race a bike for my own sanity - the format I've decided, isnt important. Its the misery and suffering that I desire. And MTB'ing provides that by the boatload.

More on the MTB stuff later.

Thanks for reading.

Who Am I

OK-the last few days I've spent some time thinking about the blog. Some friends have given me some good ideas about what to blog about, how to do it, what to do and what not to do. So....I'm ready to begin updating the blog regularly..but first, I thought I'd introduce myself to the blogosphere - without some background...the blog entries will likely be less meaningful.

I am Steven. I am 42. I live in a suburb of Denver Colorado. I love living here and I hope I never have to leave. I have a 'real job' but it is not important. I am a degreed, licensed, professional, middle manager at a Fortune-500 subsidiary firm. But I wont blog about that very much, if at all. It's not really important to me other than as a means to an end.

To wit - my passions and the other important stuff: I am a single parent, bike racer, former triathlete, finisher of over 200 triathlons including many Ironman triathlons, future triathlete, cycling and triathlon coach, roller hockey player, ski instructor, ski racer, big game hunter, small game hunter, martial artist, scuba diver, and a bunch of other things. I have many interests and passions, but most of them revolve around sports and/or the outdoors. I've done all kinds of things in many parts of the world, and I've been fortunate enough to learn about sports and the outdoors from some of the best athletes and sports enthusiasts in the world.

I grew up in San Diego and learned to swim in the ocean when I was very young. I learned to surf and dive there. I learned how to race a bike there, and I did my first triathlon there in the early 80's when that sport was young. I learned to ski at Mammoth Mountain in the Eastern Sierra in the 1970's when I was a young boy, and have been skiing ever since. I've spent many hundreds of nights out doors in very remote portions of the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains - often alone by design. I've solo'd the Sierra, the Mojave, the Tetons, the Tinajas Altas in the Sonora, and Montanas Bitterroot. I've spent many weeks in Baja Norte's Sierra San Pedro Martir totally self-contained. Ive SCUBA'd in Cali, Mexico, Hawaii, and the Marianas. I've hunted Mule Deer and Elk in some of the more remote portions of Colorado. And Ive been fortunate enough to have spent twice as much time in those and many more places with very close friends of mine doing all kinds of fun things. I feel very fortunate that I was born in the USA to some great parents, and have been able to live a very full healthy enjoyable comfortable life, literallly surrounded by incredible people from Day 1. There is no better place and no better time to live than right here in the United States, right now. My ultimate objective in my remaining years is to provide for my son all I can, so that he can enjoy what I have enjoyed in his adulthood.

Now...thats about all that you need to know for now. That will put into perspective the posts that are made here.

Thanks for reading!

My First Blog Post

This is my first post to my blog! I'm pretty stoked to have this up and running. Thanks to to my friend and training partner, Scott Deleeuw for getting it set up. I'm not to sure what to write about now, but in the future I'll post about my own training and racing, how I came to be associated with so many fine athletes in the Denver area, the efforts and successes of some of the athletes I coach and other friends of mine, my son Steven Jr. and other random musings of no specific nature.

Thanks for reading