Palisade Rim Trail

New trails are always fun, and I'd been meaning to check out the Palisade Rim Trail for a few years now. Last Tuesday I headed over with a friend to give it a look and I was very impressed. Not a ton of mileage there, but there is an upper and lower loop that could be repeated as much as you want.

Unfortunately, I have some bruised ribs from a minor crash the week before that I had stubbornly refused to rest and allow to heal. I was pretty sore from wrestling the bike around the trail so I was not up for multiple laps on this day.

The trail starts with a stiff climb through a canyon and up onto the mid-level of the rim. It is a reasonably technical trail, but its not as crazy as I'd heard it described in some places. I was riding pretty conservatively because I couldn't afford to crash on my ribs again, but I still was able to climb over most obstacles.

After the initial mile of relentless climbing it levels off for a second and gives you a little break before resuming a second climb to the higher rim level on the upper loop. We took a left away from the rim because it looked like the best way to get to the high point as soon as possible.

We topped out after about 4.5 miles and about 1600' climb.

Going clockwise on the upper loop means you get to do a high speed descent along the rim with some extreme exposure. I don't really get freaked out by exposure, but it was intense. It was a bit more difficult because we had some serious wind gusts pushing us around as well.

The descent was a blast... good mix of fast & flowy with some chunky tech bits thrown in to keep you on your toes.

A very nice ride even though my ribs are pretty screwed from the whole deal. Forcing myself to back off and let the damn things heal now.

Here's some GPS:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/486183491

Oh yeah... don't miss the petroglyphs!

Propinquity!

Yesterday was the 3rd Annual Propinquity Employee Uphill Skinning Race at Loveland and I was pleased to be able to pull out the victory over a really solid field.

The course is about 1.3 miles and climbed 1150' vertical feet to Ptarmigan cabin at the top of chair 2.

I also won this race two years ago and was third last year after being injured and not able to train for most of January, February, and about half of March.

This year I was surprised to open a little gap on the field right on the flat areas near the start. I was able to keep that gap for the remainder of the race, but I really didn't open it up too much more. I was hurting bad towards the end and looking over my shoulder a little bit. Thankfully, I could tell I had a pretty safe margin so I even let off the gas a little towards the end.

Mainly I'm just happy to know that my fitness is at a good level. My time of 30:42 is the fastest verified time I have ever done on that route.

Last year's winner was a little late to the start and he still managed to pull up into 3rd place, so he might have put some serious heat on if he had made it on time. I had about 3 minutes on him at the finish so I am pretty sure I was a minute or two faster.

Here is the GPS:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/482366591

One Million Feet!

I don't think I've ever looked at my "profile" on my Garmin Connect site where I upload my GPS tracks, but after returning from a good solid ride in the Fruita desert yesterday, I just happened to look at it today.

Yesterday's ride pushed me over 1 million vertical feet of climbing! That is over 189 miles into the air. I'm pretty sure that would be considered "Space" had I logged it all into one push, but alas, it has taken me several years and three different Garmin devices to reach that total.

Lifetime Totals

Activities

• Activities459
• Distance6,038.35 mi
• Time1133:10:14 hrs
• Calories479,102 C
• Elev Gain1,000,197 ft

Kinda cool milestone though.

Been doing pretty good so far in April. Have knocked out rides in Vernal and Fruita to get some MTB miles done. Also, lots of skinning at Loveland in preparation for tomorrow's employee race. I'm feeling pretty good, but as usual there will be some very formidable competition, so I expect to push deep into the pain cave for the roughly 30 minutes it will take to climb to Ptarmigan cabin.

The race tomorrow will be a good intermediate fitness check as we wrap up the ski season here at Loveland.

Getting Fast???

Yesterday after work I put in an all-out effort skinning to the top of Chair 2 and reached the top in 32:50!

That is my fastest training time ever by almost 2 full minutes... also 1:30 faster than the Propinquity race time last year. Its definitely my lowest confirmed time, as the only other one that was supposedly faster was the 2012 Propinquity race where Doug and I broke 30 minutes. I did not see the watch myself on that one though, but that is what I was told my the timers. Sometimes I am skeptical that we went that fast because my fastest training time before that race was 35:30.

Last year my best training time got down to 34:45 and then I did the race in 33:30.

So regardless, I know that I am faster than last year right now, perhaps by a significant margin.

Its not like my legs were very fresh yesterday either since I had put in 6600' feet of skinning in the prior two days, plus woke up with a slight hangover after some beer and tequila.

So yeah, I think I'm getting pretty fast again.... hoping to give them hell in the race this year.

GPS Proof:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/473506592

Two Laps at Keystone

Worked myself over pretty well this morning with my first ever 2-lapper skinning to the top of Dercum Mountain at Keystone. I went up River Run the first lap on the shortest route, but skied down to Mountain House base area and took Schoolmarm back up on lap 2.

Lap 1 was 1.75 miles up in 1hr06min.
Lap 2 was 2.5 miles in 1hr30min.

Total vertical climbed of 4600' is most ever skinning.

Good day, but my legs are feeling it.

March 2014 Training Wrap

Hell yeah, had a great month.

Weighed in at 171.6 this morning and I've weighed as little as 170.5 in the last couple days, so I think I lost 10+ pounds during the month. This is a full 10 pounds less than this date last year.

Also hit most of my workout goals.

Worked out on 25 of the 31 days:
20 days skinning, 2 days on the mountain bike (White Rim and Fruita), 2 days jogging, but I did not get into the gym and hit the weights even once.

53.25 total miles on the feet, either skinning (44.25) or jogging (9).
139.0 total miles on the mountain bike.
51,000 total feet of vertical climbing via feet (41,300) and bike (9,700)
45 hours and 15 minutes of training time.

Eight multiple lap efforts skinning and five other days knocking out the 2300' climb at Keystone.

So then, what about some challenging April goals....

I have an employee uphill skinning race on April 17th, so I'd like to have a fresh legs for that. So for the first 10 days of April I will keep the mileage, climbing, and general intensity of the workouts pretty high before backing off in the week before the race. Similarly, I'd like to keep strict attention on my diet for these first 10 days so I can lose several pounds during that time. I want to eat more and feel stronger during the week of the race so I won't try to lose much weight during that week. After the race is over I'll try to close out the rest of the month by losing a few more pounds.

So goal weight for the April 17th race = 168
April 30 goal weight = 164

Got to hit at least 50,000 feet climbing again via feet and bike.

Substitute more bike miles for skinning miles as well as some jogging and steep hiking to strengthen up my ankles and achilles.

And somehow find my way in to the gym to lift weights at least 2 times per week.

Fruita - 6 Laps at 18 Road

No powder day on Wednesday, so I left Summit County at 3:30am and headed for the North Fruita Desert to put some miles down on the super-fun trails there. A storm was moving into Colorado later in the day, but I started riding by 7:30am and got finished up right before the strong wind and rain showers moved in.

I had never ridden each and every downhill trail out there in one shot, so I figured I'd start with that and see how I felt.... ended up tacking on one more lap too.

Lap 1 - Climb Prime Cut to Chutes and Ladders
Lap 2 - Climb Prime Cut to PBR
Lap 3 - Climb Prime Cut to Kessel Run
Lap 4 - Climb Prime Cut to Joe's Ridge to MoJoe
Lap 5 - Zip-off to climb Western Zip to Zippety Do Dah
Lap 6 - Zip off to climb Western Zip to Frontside to Kessel Run.

Ended up at 36.0 miles in a total of 4 hours and 20 min.... probably had about 10 minutes of eating breaks in there.

Sweet ride... felt pretty good. I needed to get another decent one in before March ended so it was well worth the drive and $85 worth of gas I used up.

GPS:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/468429330