The Home of Most Excellent Dudes

I can’t tell you how many times I have seen Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Too many. The telephone booth falling out of the sky into the small town of San Dimas California is an image tattooed on my brain forever. It was a strange coincidence that Julie and I wound up moving there more than ten years ago for a short stay. No telephone booths to speak of, but there was a Circle K right off of Bonita Avenue that deserved a photo or two.

This past weekend, Julie and I embarked on a most excellent adventure to the homeland of Bill and Ted Esq. to do the San Dimas Stage Race. Touted as one of the most challenging and well organized stage races in So Cal, we were full of anticipation as to what the weekend would bring.

The weekend kicked off with a 4 mile uphill TT with over 1,200 feet of climbing. I was feeling good about myself as I rode past numerous other riders. That was until I got passed by the guy who took off after I did. The effort at the top put me in 14th overall, well out of GC contention. Julie and the other MCS girls gave it their all as well. A tough group of women out there though, and the results put them in the bottom third of GC.

Saturday’s road race was an 8 mile circuit race with a considerable hill to climb thrown into the middle. It was enough to break up the field, but not enough to promote huge time gaps. I pushed hard on the ride and did some work for an SDBC guy in GC contention. I led out the finishing sprint for him, and gave him enough to take second on the day. I wound up finishing 9th which I was pretty happy with. All of the girls got dropped in their race, but no one finished last, and they all made the time cut to compete in Stage 3.

I am finally over the fear of crit racing, and I am actually starting to enjoy the speed of these races. We revisited the site of the infamous Circle K to race in Sunday’s crit. I worked my butt off to stay in the front group. Unfortunately I had a bad line on the run into the finish and finished 13th instead of up top where I should have been. Still finished 12th in the overall which was fine by me. Julie and the girls had a tough go at it, but finished the race mid pack overall. No crashes.

This was my last race as a Cat 5. Time for a whole new challenge now as I move up into the 4s. Until then, “Be excellent to each other, and …party on dudes!”

Comments

An Excited Heart

It’s no big secret that I was not feeling super great heading into my last race. It was the perfect storm in many ways. I had a stressful week at work two weeks prior working on a massive deadline followed by a heavy training volume week where I nearly doubled my weekly mileage and then fell behind in sleep the week leading into Quad Rock. I was super stressed out heading into Quad Rock due to the distance and vertical gain. I felt comfortably trained up to the 35 mile distance, but I had failed to put in the back-to-back days in training that would have given me confidence to make the jump to 50. The night leading into my race I had some significant arrhythmia while I was lying in bed. The feeling was not new to me. 10-years ago I was diagnosed with benign PVC’s. The condition takes place when nodes in the ventricles fire off signals that interfere with the main SA pace-making node in the heart. The result is a feeling of a skipped heartbeat followed by a hard thud in your chest ...

Tall Trees and Tough Trails. The 2024 Cascade Crest 100

Welcome to Easton! The welcome sign that we stopped to take a picture of just about summed up our experience here. On the hour or so drive up from Seattle, Julie and I couldn't stop taking about the amazing trees and dense forest that lined the highway. The trees were so tall that you couldn't even catch a view of the entire towns that laid just behind them. Definitely a contrast to Colorado where the main attraction are the 14ers that line our skylines. I'm so happy that Cascade Crest 100 found me. The idea to travel to Washington for a 100 mile race started when I looked into doing a race close to a good college friend of mine that moved to Washington several years ago. I hadn't seen him or his family in years, and it would be an excuse to both see them and have an epic adventure at the same time. I had heard about the Cascade Crest 100 from a couple of friends that had raced it previously. As a Hard Rock 100 Qualifier, the race had a reputation of both difficul...

100 Miles Across the Sky

The Starting Line I was laying in bed with my eyes wide open when the alarm went off at 2:50AM. For the past six hours, I had been mentally running through every segment of the run between a few short sleep breaks. It was going to be a long day and I was ready to finally race. I had a pit in my stomach knowing the event was finally here. I ate a Clif Bar and went downstairs to heat up some water for coffee. My crew and pacers were still sleeping and it looked like a college slumber party downstairs as I stepped over bags and sheets making my way to the kitchen. Sipping on my coffee I went back upstairs and put on the rest of my clothes. This included my standard run gear, arm warmers, wind shell, gloves, beanie and headlamp. The rest of my crew would be waking up shortly, so I sat on the bed for a few moments, closed my eyes and did some deep breathing. Julie came over to me and put her arm around me and laid her head on my shoulder. “ You will do great baby .” She whispered in my...

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