haven't you ever heard of skis?

Last year I packed on the winter miles and ended up with tendonitis. That wasn't too fun. So for the past month or so, I've been following a training schedule that allows a bit more room for improvisation. My running mileage has taken a big dip--most of my runs have been on snowy trails (which is actually about thirty times harder than normal trail running), and I've been doing a good bit of cross training. Since I don't own a pair of cross country skis, I've been getting creative with my snow activities.

For instance, this was my last hill workout.

Montana has been spending less time on the bike and more time perfecting his unicycle skills. He's actually been getting pretty good at it. Check out this expert filmage. And this one if you'd like a morning giggle. 

We spent our New Year's Eve riding bikes on snowmobile trails Laurel Mountain with our friends Rob and Chrissy. They just got a couple of Salsa's fatbikes, which are basically dirtbikes without motors. 

Montana and I just had our 29ers, which worked pretty well on the trails that were packed down. 

But Montana's singlespeed was geared a little too high to sit and spin up the hills. 

That might the first time he's ever uttered the phrase "Colleen is dropping me." He considered going back to get the unicycle after that. 

The riding was sketchy and slippery. My descents were painfully slow, and the climbs were exhausting. Especially the last one, which everyone but Rob had to hike. We passed a few snowshoers who laughed at us as they floated above the snow like elves. 

We managed to cover 15 miles in 3 hours, but it felt like we'd been out all day. When we finally got around to eating, I tried to crush a plate of cheesy egg scramble at a family restaurant off the highway, but I was too sleepy to finish it. 

Needless to say, our New Year's celebrations weren't too rowdy.  

Happy winter, people!

busy, wonderful fall

This time of year is absolutely brilliant. Here are four great things lately:

1. Little kittens on quilts (and the process of slowly turning into a crazy cat lady).

2. Animal waffles on Sunday mornings.

3. Hair-braiding parties (otherwise known as cross country meets).

4. Beautiful afternoon light.

5. Sunday night bluegrass jams in the arch.

I hope everyone's having a lovely October.

P.S. Montana's hatred for all things Ohio has derailed my fall break plans. He started whining when he read my last blog post. Instead, we'll be going to Davis, WV to find coonskin hats.

fall break

School is inching towards the unbearable yet again, and I'm getting burnt out on reading poetry and running the same traffic-y strips of concrete over and over again. I also might be turning into a vampire from spending so much time in the darkroom for photography class. (Totally worth the lack of Vitamin D, by the way. I'll share some sweet black and whites later on.)

My huge and imposing Senior Independent Study project (it's so important it gets a capitalized name) is coming along nicely. I'll be spending this year producing a magazine about the outdoors in Ohio. Hopefully people will read it and enjoy it so I can feel justified in getting shitfaced with the rest of the senior class in March.

So for fall break (those blessed four days off from school) I'm planning dusting off my mountain bike for a tiny vacation. I'm trying to hit all the best singletrack in Ohio and write some trail reviews along the way.

While it's not quite as grand as a trip to Colorado, it'll be nice to get out of Wooster for a while. I need some more trees in my life.

Any other suggestions are welcome.

Breck Epic.

People kept asking me if I raced in the Breck Epic this year. The answer is no, thanks. I wasn't feeling too enthusiastic about breaking my neck this year.

If you want to read about it from a rider's perspective, you can check out the Little Elf Man, his enormous friend, the Birdman of Charleston, or Montana's blog. Or if you're into the official journalism-type thing, head on over to Dirt Rag - also conveniently written by Montana.

But like I said, I wasn't racing. I was in for a week of high-altitude CamelBak refilling, taking pictures of people with Clif Bar crumbs in their beards, and watching my boyfriend flirt with other men in the hot tub.

One of the lady racers heard that I was staying in a condo with twelve dudes. Her eyes got wide. "Wow," she said. "You must be really patient."

Overall it was a pretty cool week. While everyone was out riding, I wheezed through a run. Then I rode my bike to the aid stations where I could heckle my friends and throw things at them. After each stage was over, they'd get back and start eating absurd amounts of ridiculous foods.

Bacon and pickles - post-race fuel of champions?

A bike-fixing party started after that and everyone complained for the next 6 hours about broken seat posts and backwards chains and water bottles that had been filled with powdered donuts. Then we'd go to the daily podium announcement, eat more food, and bedtime was promptly at 9:30 each night.

From what I gathered, stages 1 through 5 were really hard. But the podiums were nowhere in sight for those sea-level oxygen-breathers (besides Peter and Dicky, who got last-place out of two teams every day), so they spent the last day riding around the trails and drinking beer. There wasn't nearly as much bitching after that one.

To cap off the week, there was more food and beer at the awards ceremony.

Unfortunately, we had to peace out right away the next morning for another 28-hour drive. I needed to make it back to Wooster in time for the first week of cross country season (woop woop!).

It was a wonderful road trip and a nice week in Breck, but I'm glad to be back on a training schedule and eating free food daily at the dining hall with people who don't make disgusted faces when I talk about running. Hopefully next year I'll be in good enough bike-riding shape to do the 3-day mini Epic. Till then I'll stick to my running shoes.

things we do in Colorado

This year I only took one picture in Boulder. I really had a fancy for this bicycle covered in plastic flowers. I'd ride one like this if the stems wouldn't get stuck in the spokes and make the cranks seize up. Some things are more whimsical than functional, I guess. Among other things we saw in Boulder: contortionists, trustafarians, pro cyclists, and thunderstorms. Apparently it storms every afternoon on the front range in August - which we found out when we got trapped in a monsoon under a bathroom awning at the bike park.

After a couple days we decided to get out of Boulder to suffocate ourselves at higher altitudes. We drove away from Winter Park wheezing and then found this terrific mountain pass.

It dropped us out somewhere in San Isabel National Forest, which seemed like a perfect place to get a flat tire before we carried on to Salida.

Salida was neat. Lots of fun desertish riding, a random classic car show in the center of town, and surprisingly good thai food.

After fiddling about with the flat tire for 24 more hours, Montana finally relented and got it fixed at an actual tire shop - for free. It seems that common sense takes a long time to break through the male ego. Then we drove back up to the mountains to ride a few miles of the Monarch Crest trail.

A ride at 12,000 feet was a little scary - mainly because I couldn't breathe. Otherwise, it was totally awesome. The trail was mostly super-buff and basically flat along the ridgeline. Surprisingly easy riding for someone who's only been riding a bike for a week. And the new bike's pretty terrific. I can't believe I wasted 2 years of my life dragging my boat-anchor Karate Monkey up hills and trying to tell myself it was fun.

Then on to Crested Butte. Scenic views abound and I struggled up those hills on an 8-mile run.

And this guy from Alabama who camped next to us.

We left Butte, drove about 30,000 miles of gravel road to Redstone (a tiny town with no cell phone service and only one public payphone), miscommunicated with our boss who had offered us a place to stay for the night, and ended up camping in the red cliffs outside of town. Then on to Fruita.

I love Fruita, and I love the riding there. But apparently 1:30 in the afternoon is too late to go for a bike ride if you're not into becoming a bleached animal carcass on the side of the Kokopelli Trail.

My friend Anna and me, in the very hot shade underneath a 500-year-old tree that's probably sick of being in the sun for so long.

Out of the hot desert and finally up and over Independence Pass to Breckenridge, because Montana had to do that race and stuff. We're staying in a condo with 11 other middle-aged mountain bikers who are also in the race. One of them thought it would be brilliant to trudge up a mountain two days before it started. We got really tired and saw a family of mountain goats. Boyfriend's report about it here.

Good stuff. Everyone was really sore and bitchy for the next two days. 

Then the race started, and good times were had by all, especially on the second day.

Watch more video of 2012 Breck Epic Stage Race on cyclingdirt.org

I've been running around the trails in Breck and attempting to help out at aid stations, but on the hypothermia day I stood in the rain at the finish line with coffee and a warm sweater for Montana so he wouldn't die. That hot tub is a quite literally a life saver.

In a few days the race will be over and we'll have to leave Colorado and drive all the way back to Ohio. I'm a little sad about that. But I'm drowning in testosterone here, and I can't wait to be reunited with my lovely cross country ladies.

weekend: mountain bikes and Mt. Victoria

My camera was hibernating in my desk drawer all weekend. All these photos are poached from friends.


Nobody felt like summiting a windy mountain or camping out in the rain this weekend. So I took my friends Kate and Eliza on a bike ride.

They'd never been mountain biking before, but Eliza has a roadie sister in Maine who takes her on rides sometimes. Kate had been mountain biking in Arizona once, but they had to stop a lot to check for snakes along the trail.

The day was bright and sunny. We went to Dirt Merchants, a bike shop down the street from my flat. It's my favorite kind of shop: a tiny one-room deal crammed with bikes and old bike magazines and a couple pieces of merchandise. There's cool music piping through the speakers, and it's right across the street from two great cafés.

The shop manager's a really cool guy named James. He gave Eliza a free upgrade to a full suspension, adjusted my sideways stem, gave us trail advice (brakes in NZ are set up moto-style), made sure we'd packed plenty of snacks and water, and sent us off with a friendly Kiwi wave and a map.

We rode around in the field at the bottom of the trail head. Then we headed up the first hill. After three seconds, I heard hysterical screaming behind me. I turned around.

Kate was deep in a hole. Oh dear.

It got better after that. The trails were smooth, clean, and tight - unlike the craggy, slippery Pennsylvania and Ohio trails I usually ride. It was like riding in Colorado with greenery. Eliza and Kate's badassery started to show through in a mile or so. They cranked out the rest of the ride like champs and made it all the way to the top of the trail at the base of a windmill.

We'd been riding uphill for over an hour. Everyone was happy to be done.

I had a rough time posing for the triumphant bike picture, since Montana insists on selling the light wheels I used last summer.

And we got to enjoy one of the best views of Wellington in the universe.

Then the brake cables started popping off my bike, so we had to go back down on the road for safety reasons. There weren't any resounding complaints. It took five minutes to fly back down to the shop, where James was waiting to applaud our accomplishment and replace my brake cable.

I spent the rest of the day wandering downtown Wellington. I took a hike up to Mt. Victoria, the site where Peter Jackson filmed this scene:

It turns out those tree roots weren't quite real. 

Still, it was a nice enough hike without any freezing alpine blasts or Nazgul. 

Then one of the girls had a flatwarming party. Some people experienced beer-related culture shock.

Besides that picture, it was a lovely time.