Brecktobercross - CX #1 for 2007

Finally back to racing on something other than pavement, what a relief. Spent the weekend in Summit at Kat's sister's place in Keystone. Saturday evening we headed to the DAM for their dam good beer and dam good food. Watched The Departed later that night, what a dam good movie. Off to the venue Sunday morning, the race was held at the dam Breckenridge Nordic Center. Each lap took 5-6 minutes and consisted of three dam runs, about 20 seconds of pavement, and some relatively lively singletrack, no resting on this dam one. Finished 14th out of 36 racers (small field), it was fun and dam good to be out there. Many of the familiar mountain bike clan were on hand too, good to see them since I missed most everyone this dam summer. A couple picks are included, one of me running, and another of my hind quarters highlighting some blood on my left shin from a dam crash. Great weekend, looking forward to racing CX through December since I missed the summer mountain bike season. Off to Chicago later this week for some holiday, going to Wrigley on Saturday to see the Cubs. Dam - peace, B

Lola and the Family

Back in Des Moines last week, finally met Lola! All the brothers were in town to celebrate Lola and Colin/Gina's engagement. Long drive out there but well worth it, my back and ribs seem to have taken attention away from the shoulder, anywho, more to follow - awesome time with the family and Chief of course.

Angel Fire, N.M., MSC #2

Very fun/demanding course as always, approximately 3800' elevation gain. Last lap, really the last descent as you appear from the trees and bomb for the finish...I endoed, rag dolled too as it was told and ended up cracking my helmet and top tube of my new carbon Giant, egads. My outcome: bruised ribs, bruised back, black eye with facial abrasions, separated clavicle (2/3), separated shoulder (2/3), potentially torn rotater (MRI next weeks), and various leg/arm/back abrasions...all pointed out well by the friendly folks at the Taos ER. RMR'r Tony gashed his leg well enough that we could see a bone, at least we got to go to the ER together, thanks Jeremy, for driving and waiting! P.S. typing one handed stinks! A pic of me in the start shoot, pre-race. UPDATE - Drove to DSM two days after the wreck, zoinks, my back truly hates me, my shoulder and clavical seem at peace minus the fact that they HATE the touch of the seat belt. MRI tomorrow, hooray, so far it's the clavicle and shoulder seperation, hoping for no issues with the rotator. Peace, B

Battle Das' Bear: Semi-pro Race Du'

New course this year with two new climbs, great. 22 semi-pros lined up at the start, I finished 10th, oh well, at least I didn't cramp, which is nice as I've never raced Das' Bear without cramping. More to follow...

First Race as a Semi-pro

First mountain bike race of the season is under the belt, and I'm glad. Our field included 33 finishers, one of them being non-other than Georgia Gould (she's fast!) and likely to be representing the stars/stripes in Beijing. The race was held in Nathop, Colo., roughly two hours west of Denver, just north of Salida. The gun (or loud voice, I wasn't paying attention) goes off and the vicious pedaling began. Once things settled I found myself in the company of friends - teammate Derek and all-around racing pal Alan. Hopefully it was the warm weather or training week prior, but I felt terribly flat. Somewhere on the third lap Derek and Alan decided to start resting for Angel Fire so I ended up a few seconds in front of each of them. In the end I ended up 17th, the only saving grace is that my time would have 'won' my old Expert division and I would have managed to finish in front of seven/eight 'pros'. Post race a bunch of us hit up Amica's Pizza & Microbrews in Salida. I must plug their fine fair and even finer micros, their IPA is uber bueno. Full bellies and growlers in hand, we headed to Doody's A-frame at the base of Monarch. Sunday morning we headed back to the venue to ready ourselves for the STXC battle which looked to be on a super-fun course. Unfortunately there was a scheduling snafu and our race was moved from around noon, to nearly 6:00 p.m., putting us home around 9:00 p.m. That didn't work for most of us so we loaded up and headed to Buffalo Creek to ride those sweet trails. All-in-all it was a great way to start the season off. Next up is Battle the Bear then Angel Fire over Memorial Day weekend, hooray. In Floyd We Trust - Lemond is a Tool. Peace, B

Uncle/Niece! Lola is here!

More to follow, quickly though I'm proud to annouce I'm now an uncle to my new niece, little Lola Costello. Lola arrived to Tim and Kera on May 3! Everyone is doing great, perfect health! Lola weighs 7 lbs 12 ounces and is already smiling. Can't wait to get back to see her!!!

RMR Training Camp - Fruita, Colo.

Pics - in no particular order - breakfast at camp, going Euro' for coffee, and good times at Saturday's dinner. I'll start this off with a few quotes - "Oh my god, I think I just killed something organic" - "They probably stopped so Blake could buy a gun" - "I'm not taking my chamois off until Sunday" - "I figured you guys paid enough for a helicopter, you'd have one come pick Dean up". Onto the story. Thursday - Took the entire day off and headed to Fruita early. Got in around noon, set up camp and relaxed enjoying some quiet and not being in the office. Went for a two hour spin on my new Giant hard tail, must say that I dig the new rig. Friday - More of the RMR crew rolls in and we head to town on our road bikes for some coffee. Took about an hour to get there as we were dragging without the coffee we were in search of. After a few cups of the good stuff we head back to camp. Unbeknownst to me, my left rear brake pad was fully engaged on my rim, I felt horrible on the ride back and was happy learn my brake pad was the culprit and not my fitness. Friday afternoon we take the mountain bikes to the Bookcliffs where the trails are super fine. Friday evening we start the campfire and cook our vittles. A little trick I like to play while camping is to stick some food under someone's tent as to lure animals and scare the crap out of that person. Well I decided to pick on the other Bryan and Jordan who were sharing a tent cuz Jordan forgot his. When no one was looking, and I still haven't told anyone about this, I stuck a big hunk of salmon under their tent. The next morning all the other Bryan could talk about was the "giant deer" that paid him a visit, to get a visual of his story, he held his hands in the air to describe the size of the rack on said salmon eating deer…I crack myself up sometimes. Saturday - We were all dragging due to a late night of story telling around the fire and "giant deer" visits so we drive into town to get coffee and meet up with the rest of the crew which now totaled 17. We all headed out for the Mack exit to ride the gnarly goods down there. Roughly two hours into the ride one of our stronger guys, Dean, wrecked hard. He was in absolute pain and couldn't talk, move, nothing. After staying with him for 15-minutes the other Bryan and I figured that this was not a good situation so we rode back to the trucks to get our cells and call rescue. Rescue shows up 20-minutes later with a gurney. There were only three of them so I volunteered to help carry in the gurney and their supplies. They gave Dean some morphine and we started carrying him out. Luckily the entire crew was there so everyone helped. About half way out a big ol' six wheeler met us and we loaded Dean onto that. Dean made it to the emergency room and they found his bottom two right ribs to broken and the right kidney to be lacerated, luckily no internal bleeding or lung punctures. Dean is still in Grand Junction fixing to head back later this week. He is one tough dude and will be back to riding in a month or so, bummer is no mountain bike for at least three months, he's going to be back to 100% soon which is great news. At this point Dean is in the hospital and there's nothing more we can do so we hit up the best and only Mexican restaurant in town for libation, food, and more libation. Sunday - We once again head up to the Bookcliffs for some fat tire madness. The drive home was miserable as we encountered massive ski traffic turning a four drive into six, oh well, what are you going to do. So that's about all I can write about Fruita this year. We're certainly doing it again next year. Peace, B