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.

kind of a long drive...

So it turns out that Vermont isn't exactly on the way to Colorado. Still, the extra few hours of driving were definitely worth it. Vermont was lovely. We spent two days exploring the trails around Stowe and eating Ben & Jerry's. Montana even got a chance to wear his banana suit and get rowdy at the Single Speed USA ride. I was a little sad that I sold my single speed, but I don't really think I'm up for a 25-mile ride on steep, rooty Vermont trails with beer at the aid stations instead of water.

The next morning we headed out to Burlington, up to the Canadian border, down through the Adirondacks, and across the Midwest. I'd never been further north than Lake Erie, so I hardly knew those mountains existed. New England was lovely and cool, with rivers and mountains on par with New Zealand scenery. 

But in a few hours the mountains were over, and the Midwest reared its ugly, flat head. We drove through the night to Ohio and stopped for a couple hours at another friend's house. When we hit the road again we managed to get outside of St. Louis before crawling back into our sleeping bags for the night in an empty parking lot.

In the morning we found out that the air conditioning in the truck wasn't doing too well. That is, it wasn't working at all. We were in for 12 hours of flat, dusty hell. Halfway through blazing Kansas we had to stop and soak ourselves with an emergency water pump at a rest stop. 

Finally a storm rolled over the plains as we crossed the Colorado border. The air cooled off and the wind funneled into the cab, sluffing off the Kansas dust and drying the sweat beading on our foreheads. We turned a corner as the front ranges spike up in front of the setting sun.

Sam's haven of pro mountain biking was only half an hour away in Boulder. Thank God. I really needed a shower.

that time of year.

Time for long rides in the car and long runs in the woods. For bikes and big mountains. For dehydrating in the desert and getting flat tires. For camping under stars and eating pancakes with a spork. Bathing in creeks and sneaking showers in public ice skating rinks. Going broke and forgetting to care.

That's right, friends. It's Colorado time again.

The truck's all packed, the camera's charged, and my new bike's dialed in. I relinquished the 30-pound Karate Monkey and ended my brief affair with riding a big gear on a single speed - it's got a happy new home in New Zealand now. Instead I decided on an uber-tiny EMD from Niner. I've never had such a nice bike in my life. Hopefully I won't break it.

In a couple hours Montana and I are off to Vermont, where he'll be riding in the Single Speed USA race and I'll be eating chocolate and heckling him on foot since I no longer own a single speed. Then we'll head out to Colorado for some sweet trail riding/running and the Breck Epic (where I'll work on my aid station Hammer Gel refilling skillz), and then we've got to roll back across the country to dear old Wooster, Ohio so I can start real life and cross country training again.

It's going to be pretty great.

colorado, synopsis

"Man, I feel pretty gross. I seriously need a shower."

"I just got one in the locker room at the ice rink. The guy working at the desk looked like he wanted to make me leave, but I don't think he had the heart."


"Oh.."


"Just make sure you dress really preppy. They won't say anything to you because you're cute. I just look like a dirty hippie."

"Okay. I think I'll eat some canned soup for lunch today."

That exchange pretty much sums up our trip. We found out that we could go for about 2 days without showering, since the humidity level in Colorado is so low. But then we'd start feeling kind of grimy and dusty, so we had to steal cleanliness from places like the community ice arena in Breckenridge.

Since I've been home, I've been working every day to try to earn back all the money I blew on gas and burgers in the Great American West. My attention span for blogging is incredibly low.

So I'm copping out on writing. For your enternatainment, I put together some of my favorite pictures, hopefully in chronological order.

Here's our route:

For the record, we didn't go to New Mexico or Utah. It turns out that those places are really damn hot in July (we learned this when we got a flat on the side of the road outside of Grand Junction).

So we mostly stuck to the mountains, ran around on fun trails, and drank a whole lot of coffee.

It begins: