Last year, I rode the 17 mile version of the Snake Creek Gap Time Trial (and wrote about it here) on a full suspension bike in January at 50F. This year, I rode the 34 mile version on a hard-tail bike at 25F. I've written about not enjoying mass start, short, XC races, and SCGTT is definitely a different sort of beast. Spaced individual starts so there is no constant battle to stay out in front, and completion time instead of crossing the line first is what counts so passing is generally pretty spread out and done safely at good places. Additionally, the section of the Pinhoti that this race takes place on is extremely brutal with lots of climbing (6000+ feet on the 34 mile) and miles and miles of technical rocky sections that had most people walking. The 34 mile version had the special treat of a knee high stream crossing:

Photo taken one mile into the course (and at 22F) by mtbepic61.

Some people did what I did and had a dry rest of the day. Other people attempted to put bags over their shoes or ride it and many of them were wet and miserable for the rest of the day, experiencing fun things like frozen solid rear derailleurs. The only thing that froze up on me was my camel-bak hose, which was new and surprising, but made a lot of sense, and was fixed by re-routing the hose under my jersey. My ride started at around 22F at around 10am and finished up over five hours later at around 28F and I finished 14th of 21 people in the male 30-and-under 34-mile category, including 3 or 4 people that didn't finish.

As awful as this race sounds, I actually had a lot of fun! I took this event as a "pre-ride" of the 34 mile course because the first half was new to me and I'll have two more chances to push for a better time, so I pretty much took it easy riding the entire time and even stopped to give a guy a tube and let him use my pump to fix a flat. This was the longest time I've been in the saddle on a mountain bike which was fine, and the coldest weather I've ridden in which was great. Smartwool socks, neoprene toe covers and keeping my feet dry kept them nice and warm, Smartwool glove liners under my usual cold-weather bike gloves kept all my fingers happy, and by the end of the race I was down to (and plenty warm in) a longsleeve Smartwool base layer under a short-sleeve wool jersey on the top and insulated tights on the bottom. I've heard stories from other people about feeling horribly cold and getting frostbite on fingers and toes, but I think it mostly comes down to clothing and a tiny bit of luck. The only uncomfortable part of my ride was lower back pain from an extra liter of water or so in my camel-bak that I didn't need and the extra clothing I packed and removed while riding. These things would have saved me from freezing if I had a nasty mechanical and had to walk out, but my back just wasn't use to carrying them.

Unlike last year, I remembered to eat enough and felt pretty good energy-wise until the end, but it does make sense to be kind of worn out after 5 hours of riding. I was pretty tired afterwards and slept like a rock, but got up Sunday morning feeling pretty good and had the energy and the legs for a 5K run.

I'm looking forward to riding this course again in February and March, and I'm trying to figure out what my next mountain biking adventure will be that can outdo the Snake.

Mountain biking really is pretty great. I forget this sometimes, but every time I go, I'm reminded of how much fun I have. Last year I was going to race mountain bikes and began the year by slowly increasing mileage with my friend Ben almost every weekend until I broke my collarbone and that prevented me from mountain biking for the rest of the year. 2009 signaled getting back on that bike a bit more and I squeezed in 10 mountain bike races over the season. (results) Great? No. Terrible? Almost. I did not enjoy mountain bike racing, specifically beginner level cross country racing. Short races of an hour or less, full of 19-21 year old kids with ridiculous cardio abilities that would fall over if a tree looked at them the wrong way. They'd fly by me pedaling, and when technical things showed up on the trails, they would fall right in front of me. My rule of thumb, as many people I ride with know, is to spend more time in the saddle than in the car getting to/from the ride, and these races horribly broke that rule every time, even for the people in the pro category racing the longest distances. I'm glad I tried out that kind of racing, but I won't be doing it again! (This year I also did a full season of track racing, and plan to focus on that next year)

My birthday present to myself this year (in July) was a new hardtail mountain bike, my 2009 Independent Fabrication Steel Deluxe. It replaced my full suspension bike that was a little bit too big (which has now been sold), and it's been picking up the miles. Most Tuesday evenings I'm somewhere in Atlanta on a mountain bike with bright lights, riding secret singletrack throughout the city (example), and if the weather plays nice, I squeeze in a trip somewhere to the mountains on weekends. Jim is always up for something ridiculous if I find a trail with crazy amounts of climbing and long miles and Bob is up for riding whenever he is in town. Jason does a great job keeping up on his very old bike that he turned into a single speed, and he's still very new to mountain biking so every place we go is new to him. So far this year I've ridden a lot, including 17 places that I've never ridden before, and there are still 3 weeks left! Here's a few examples (the ones where I took pictures):

Stonewall Falls

"Discovered" by just wanting to find a place to ride close to my grandparents lakehouse, I've ridden here a few times and the last time dragged along Ben and my brother. It never disappoints!

Santa Fe

A fantastic 4 days of riding in New Mexico that I wrote a lot about here. All new places, lots of miles, lots of elevation, and great views.

Bull Mountain

Jim, Jason, and I descended on North Georgia to ride part of an "awesome" trail network that I'd heard about but never ridden. It certainly wasn't the "best mountain biking in Georgia" but we had a good time, crossed a lot of streams, and rode up some very technical climbs.

Mountaintown Creek

Jim and I returned to the scene of my broken collarbone, this time riding down the singletrack instead of me getting taken to the ER in a car from the top of the mountain. Unfortunately, the singletrack wasn't much more fun than getting X-Rays so we won't be returning here. Lots of down trees, unrideable stream crossings, and white-knuckle descents that were a little too technical. Read Jim's account

Raccoon Mountain

Jason and I skipped out on the cyclocross season finale hosted by Faster Mustache and went to Tennessee instead. This place lived up to our expectations and we'll definitely go back. Perhaps the most fun was riding trails that snaked through snow accumulation from the day before.

All of these were great, and I'll be doing more things like them next year instead of doing the race thing. I will be racing the Snake Creek Gap 34-mile timetrial in Jan/Feb/March because it's very different from the short XC racing and terrible/awesome in it's own special way. Who want's to get in some epic riding next year? 50mile+ days, 10k+ ft of climbing days, etc!

Another year, another Gallery Developers Conference. Chad (The lead Gallery UX guy) took care of organizing things this year, so we ended up in his current hometown: Santa Fe, NM. I took off the Thursday and Friday from work, but figured I might as well make a bigger trip of it so I took off the whole week and flew out last Saturday so I could squeeze in 4 full days of mountain biking before Gallery work began. I spent the first few days staying with Chad and biking on trails around Santa Fe on a sweet rental mountain bike from Mellow Velo: a Commencal Skin 2. All the photos are at: http://ckdake.com/gallery/2009/santafe-mtb/ and some highlights are below. Chad was kind enough to let me stay at his house, and his fridge was always full of beer!

Sunday - 21.7 miles, 4:25, 4427ft

Not knowing what I was getting myself into, Chad dropped me off at a parking lot at St. John's College, and I headed up Atalaya Mountain. I don't think the base altitude slowed me down that much, but the climbing was pretty nuts and I did quite a bit of hike-a-bike. Near the top, there were places I had to carry the bike on my shoulder because it wasn't even really possible to push it up hill. It took a while to get up, but the view was worth it. I cruised on past the top and headed north into Dale Ball South, which I now know is the "expert" part of Dale Ball, and I now know the longest and steepest way to the top of Dale Ball South. Another great view:

and all things considered, my first day of mountain biking was pretty crazy and pretty successful. My GPS showed me the way back to Chad's house, and the elevation profile shows the cumulative ridiculousness:

This is the most climbing I've ever done in one day on a mountain bike, and more than I've ever done in one day on a road bike since I started keeping track a few years ago!

Monday - 29.1 miles, 3:37, 2810 ft

On day 2, I biked from Chad's house to Mellow Velo for a new rear tire and rode from there to Dale Ball Central. Central was a lot more rideable and fun than South, and Dale Ball North turned out to be the most fun. Nothing super epic about the day, but lots of good riding on fun trails and almost no walking the bike.

Tuesday - 33.1 miles, 2:52, 2875 ft

Sunday's ride finally caught up to me on Tuesday, so I took it a bit easy and biked south of town on the Santa Fe Rail Trail which is a relatively flat dirt bike path following an old rail line south of town. It was pretty overcast for the whole ride, and was a relaxing change of pace from Sunday and Monday, so I obviously had to do something a little crazy on Wednesday.

Wednesday - 35.1 miles, 4:33, 3932 ft

I piled into the car with Chad and he took a big detour on his commute to drop me off at the Aspen Vista trailhead up near the Santa Fe Ski Resort. Even with arm warmers and leg warmers on, it will still pretty chilly as I started up the service road climb to the top. For over 5 miles, the grade was a steady 6.5% and it took a while to make it to the top, but the views were even more worth it than Atalaya and Dale Ball South, and the whole way up was rideable! After some photos, I continued past the antenna cluster at the top of the ski resort and climbed another few hundred feet to the top of Deception Peak at 12,357 (which did require a little walking):

This is the highest altitude that I've ever been on a bike at. Originally, I was going to try and make it up to Lake Peak which is a little higher, but after some reading around online the night before it didn't sound too bikeable and I took a picture of Lake Peak from the top of Deception Peak to show how crazy getting to the top of it would have been:

I turned around and went back down the way I came (going down a whole lot faster than I came up!), and at the parking lot, turned up the road to the Windsor trailhead. Windsor turned out to be the most fun mountain biking of the trip: 5 miles of super fast downhill that was just easy enough to be rideable on a hard tail. I took a left on Chamisa for a few miles, headed through Dale Ball Central again, and rode back along the railroad tracks to Chad's house. Wednesday was a great day, the longest time I've spent on a mountain bike, and perhaps the most enjoyable day of mountain biking I've had. The elevation for the day shows a bit of the story:

In Summary

I'm very glad I decided to get some mountain biking in, and managed to climb over 14,000ft over 119 miles which is plenty of riding for a week. This trip meets my goal for 2009 of taking a week long mountain biking trip somewhere, and the 15h26min in the saddle is even enough to meet my "spend more time in the saddle than it took to get there and get home" rule of thumb for biking in Atlanta! Here's the full map of the week:

If you're going to be in Santa Fe and ride mountain bikes, it's definitely fitting in some of these things, and the Santa Fe area might actually be a good destination for a mountain biking specific trip. Get this map, take a GPS, and stay somewhere in town! From what Chad tells me, there is more great mountain biking around Los Alamos which is very doable if you have a car, and there is more mountain biking around the Windsor trail that I didn't have time to do. Check out the rest of the photos at http://ckdake.com/gallery/2009/santafe-mtb/.

It's halfway through both mountain and track racing season, and things continue to work out as well as I could expect for trying to race two full seasons at the same time! All the details are here but the short version is I'm in 5th place out of 41 people in the XC-3/19-29 category in the Georgia Championship Series, and I continue to slowly move up through the rankings in the Cs at the track each time I race. Maybe I'll be 3rd in GSC by the end of the season and in the top 5 in the Cs?

As an accidental season mid-point, last night I went to a great event put on by Ergon at Sweetwater. I'd planned to enjoy a free beer or two and watch Seth run Goldsprints but Namrita (who organized the event) basically told me I had to participate, so I did, and it was a blast! Goldsprints are 200m time trials on fixed gear bikes on rollers, with software on a laptop figuring out who is quicker. I won my first 2 rounds and got eliminated in the semifinals by the guy that ended up winning the finals in his next round, which was not bad against a bunch of really fast people like Eddie O (won solo FM.24.08), Travis Turner (won the pro category at The Snake this year), and plenty of others. I'm not sure if my place was official 3rd or 4th, but it got me a $20 REI giftcard, a pair of Ergon GR2 Grips, and some very sore leg muscles that have been noticeable all day today! Here's a video of Eddie and Marc Hirsch in round-2:

Ergon Goldsprints from Chris Kelly on Vimeo.

This was my first time doing goldsprints, and I think it's something I might need to do again, and perhaps next time I'll wear something other than sandals. The new grips will be going on my new mountain bike when it shows up, and I'll report back how well they work with the rest of things.

This past weekend I was part of the Faster Mustache Race Team's contingent to #3 of the South-Eastern Regional Championship series. We drove up Saturday morning, set up camp, and pre-rode the full race course:

I'd ridden at Tsali before, but only on the Western half, and while similar, the Eastern side seems to cover a lot more distance. 18.6 miles later, we had a good idea of what we were in store for on Sunday, but for some reason Adrian and I kept on riding and did a loop on Thompson Loop:

This added in another 7.7 miles for the day and the 26.3 miles at 9.3mph turned out to be a bit much for a pre-ride. I downed my OJ+Protein recovery drink (quite foul tasting) and some PowerBar Recovery (delicious!) and we drove back to the campsite. The 20 or so of us were quite the crowd with mtb racers, little kids, and dogs running around everywhere, but there was plenty of food and everyone seemed to have a blast. I squeezed a ~30 minute nap in and felt a lot better, and we all sat around the fire passing around a guitar and making smores as the sun went down.

I rolled out pretty early Sunday morning to catch my 9:30am start time (Most people didn't start until 11:30), and rode my race. The first mile or two felt great, but on the first big climb the mileage from Saturday quickly caught up with me. I was 5.5% faster during the race than on the pre-ride and my heart rate was up from 159 to 166, so I was working harder and going faster, but not as fast as I could have been without the Saturday riding. Official results aren't up yet, but I know I stayed in front of at least 2 other people in my category and passed at least 2 people. Here's a map with all 3 loops from the weekend on it:

After a little cooling off, I set out to take photos, not just of Faster Mustache (Faster Mustache SERC#3 photos), but of everyone in the yellow wave. Hopefully some people will want to buy some of these SERC#3 Photos this go around. Below is Eric and Alex at the start of their single speed category, which they won 1st and 3rd place in:

And a closing shot of FM:Race's temporary world headquarters next to the start line, where we waited on everyone to finish up and for awards to be given out:

I had a pretty good time, but it's definitely a lot of trouble "just" for an hour long race. Plenty more races to go this summer, and in theory my first race at the velodrome will be tomorrow evening.

Yesterday, I took the morning off from work to get a bike fitting at 55Nine Performance. For a little over 2 hours, Eddie took skeletal measurements and bike measurements, adjusted things on my bike, looked at my posture and pedal stroke, and gave me a lot of advice on things I could do to improve my technique to get faster and experience less fatigue on body parts that shouldn't be working as hard as they were. My seatpost is higher, the cleats on my shoes are closer to my heel, there are new insoles in my shoes, my handlebar is closer to my seat (with a shorter stem), and I have a list of things to pay attention to when riding including heel position in the top of my pedal stroke, shoulder and elbow tension, and lower back muscles.

Some people think that bike fitting is a silly and expensive thing to do, but this fit will help me get the perfect bike for my next bike (more on this later), and should make me faster and hurt less. Given the amount of riding that I do and how much equipment I have, it's almost a no-brainer to do. As soon as I got home I adjusted seatpost height and seat position on the 3 other bikes and adjusted the cleats my other 2 pairs of shoes, and later in the day, Roger and I went to Conyers so I could see how things felt and record some video.

The difference was noticeable: less upper body fatigue and some different muscles getting used to push the pedals. Also, due to the shorter distance from seat to handlebars, I felt like I was able to corner a lot better and faster. Cool! My feet are going to take a little while to get used to the way weight is distributed on them now, but everything else felt very natural and I'm looking forward to do a run of all the loops at Blankets Creek and see how much faster it's made me. I also recorded video of both sides at Conyers and edited them down to be a bit more manageable than usual:

Conyers - The Easy Side from Chris Kelly on Vimeo.

Conyers - The Hard Side from Chris Kelly on Vimeo.

FM:Race is off to a great start this year. Our kits finally came in and we think they look pretty awesome. Here's a group shot from a casual road ride we did on Saturday:

The rest of the photos from that set are available here: Faster Mustache Race Team Spring Leisure Ride. Interested in buying something? Find out how to do this here.

Though they weren't here in time for the Snake Creek Gap races, they are here before track racing season begins, and came in just in time for the first race of the Georgia State Championship series of cross country mountain bike races. GSC#1 was on Sunday at East Macon Park, and FM:Race had a crew of 6 racing everything from full suspension to single speeds, in beginner to expert classes. Eric N was the 2nd fastest person on a single speed bike there, and Aaron managed to get 8th place in the expert category averaging 11.86mph over 30 miles:

This was my first ever XC mountain bike race. I did The 2005 24 Hours of Adrenalin at Conyers (pictures), as well as #1 and #3 of the Snake Creek Gap time trial this year (blog on #1, video from #2); but XC is a little different: Mass start pretty fast loops around a small XC course (instead of ultra-endurance or crazy hill climbing and descending), easy enough for the kids group to do a lap, but the fastest people still win.

I was 9th in a field of 17 in the Beginners 19-29 group, which isn't a bad start! (Full results - I was in the "white wave") My average speed was 10.31mph which is my fastest on record for mountain biking since I started keeping track a year or so ago, and this was my first mountain bike ride not carrying my backpack which meant no water. I may look into a smaller bag or a water bottle for future XC races. For the entire race, Bob was never more than a minute or so behind me, and the trail looped back and forth on itself so constantly seeing eachother was probably helpful motivation for both of us. I took some pictures during the yellow wave but no photos of me riding have surfaced yet. This was definitely a great first XC race, and I'll be doing a lot more of these as the season continues! Up next is SERC#3 at Tsali, and something tells me FM:Race will be there in full force again:

Here's another bike video post, and I have most of the generes covered now so the rate at which these are produced should slow down a bit. First is an 11 minute video from the third round of the Snake Creek Gap Time Trial Series. You can read more about the series here. I missed the second race due to work travel, and for the third one I didn't improve my time much (just a minute or so) because I started too strongly on Adrian's tail, stopped a few times to tinker with the camera, and got leg cramps 200 feet from the top of the last uphill which was a new experience for me. Here's the video:

2009 Snake Creek Gap Time Trial #3 from Chris Kelly on Vimeo.

A few days later I went to the velodrome with Gregory and David to do my first round of training there for the season, and put together a brief teaser video for that:

Track Season 2009 from Chris Kelly on Vimeo.

Wednesday night was the first of the season for Aaron's Cycling's Wednesday night ride which was very fast (though I somehow avoided getting dropped), and tonight was FM:Race's first weekly Thursday night ride. It's been a very fast paced week on bikes and I'm beat, so it's a good thing that I'm not riding tomorrow. The training plan probably needs some adjustments, as trying to race both track and mountain bikes this year is going to be quite a mess.