Friday, May 22, 2009

Come play with me!!

If you check that MASS homepage much or have visited the Cadence site lately hopefully you've picked up on a fun few days of good endurance training I'm leading in mid-June. If not, check this out:

"The Mid-Atlantic Super Series is proud to announce as part of our sponsorship with Cadence Multisport The Cadence Endurance MTB Racing Camp. This camp will be lead by Mike Kuhn, the Director of Coaching at Cadence and major MASS race and event promoter. As a veteran road and mountain bike racer including the Ultra Endurance 100 milers Mike is an expert in the correct preparation for endurance events of any type. As a special offer the price of the camp includes your entrance fee into either the Wilderness 101 or the Shenendoah 100. Only 20 spots available so reserve now."

How sweet is that? You get three days of great training, entry into either the W101 or Shenandoah and to hear me babble on endlessly about how to prepare and ride an endurance mtb race, which happens to be my passion in this sport (even if I don't get to do many of them these days...I know pitty party). The plan is for one or two of my visitPA.com buds to join us for some of camp too so at least that will give you some respite from hearing my voice as the boys chime in on the best lines and best endurance race prep.

The camp goes the three days following the Stoopid 50. Yes, that will increase the difficulty of the three days. Camps are supposed to be hard. The idea is that you go into it with a little rest - which you should be planning if you're coming out for Stoopid anyway - and then spend a few days really pushing yourself. You push yourself much more than you would regularly because the only things you need to do are ride, eat, sleep, and recover --- and have fun! It's like being a pro for a few days - only you don't have the pressure of knowing that if you don't win your next race its ramen instead of steak again this week!

My plan is to ride the Stoopid as hard as I can on Sunday and then hang out in State College overnight. Monday mid-day we'll meet in Coburn, the start of the Wilderness 101, and do an easier ride on dirt roads to check out the early parts and late parts of the race - these are key in figuring out how to ride this thing. Tue and Wed will see us start the rides in other locations in the Rothrock State Forest that will allow us to access different parts of the 101 and over the three days ride almost all, if not completely all, of the 101 course. It will be stellar training and a course preview all in one!

I promise that you are going to come out of the camp far better prepared and far more confident in your ability in endurance mtb events and you'll be ready for your best ever race!

Catch up with me through work - Cadence Cycling and Multisport - 215-508-4300 - if you have any questions or to sign up for this great new camp!

Monday, May 18, 2009

Yummy Yum Yums Ladies Man & RB's Gremlins

So RB was fun this past weekend until a little mechanical put paid to my ride on Sat with some tough guys who showed up to take on the course I'd laid out for the race. I made sure they all kept going so my little snafu didn't take away from their fun, but combined with everything else it sure seemed like there we evil forces at work trying to keep me from riding RB this year! That will not be the end of the story though so stay tuned here for more...

In an effort to be a slightly less chauvinistic piggy I listened to some ladies - and not like I "listen" to Kris either - and we're going to have a little ladies only competition at the festival this year too. With a little Tweist to it, we're gonna do a Women's Duo/Trio competition with teams of two or three women entered into the same race. The goal is to allow us a big enough field for women to do some good racing and allow women who are more experienced to double up while those with a little less experience or need to destroy themselves over the course of the day to go three person. Look for that to go live soon on the race site.

Lastly, you're getting food this year with the Festival entry fee too - yep dinner Friday night, breakfast Sat morning and dinner Sat evening are all part of the deal. You're on your own Sat through the day and on Sunday, but all the good grub you've come to expect will be there courtesy of The Hammakers again this year. Bonnie and Mark and the rest of the family will be manning the stoves and Kyle will be banging together pots and pans for you.

Spaghetti Dindin on Friday evening - as much as you can stuff in your face
Pancakes and Sausage Breakfast on Saturday morning- all you can eat again!!
Picnic dinner face stuffing post race on Saturday - BBQ, mac and cheese, baked beans, and whatever else Bonnie whips up.

Thursday, May 07, 2009

What's goin' on? What's goin' on? What's goin' on? What's goin' on?

Well, since you asked...

Braden is doing well. Teeth poppin' through in all the right spots. Threatening to crawl. Baby proofin' is high on the list.

Getting ready for Rocktober. Trying to get the word out and get some more folks signed up before this weekend so I'm sure it's worth doing. I burn a lot of human capital to pull this thing off with course marshals and motos and trail work and reg volunteers and results and checkpoint workers and gophers and racoons and deers and other small woodland creatures and it needs to be worth it to put all those folks to work especially since its not right next door.

Of course, the fact that its not right next door is part of what makes the place as good a place as it is for mountain biking since it isn't overused and beat to death but with some absolutely unbelievable trails. There isn't much else going on that weekend and nothing else is going to have the riding this place does so even if you're not racing you ought to come out and ride since the trails will be marked. It doesn't cost you anything to just ride, just don't go eating racer food! All the latest info is up on BikeReg since my Dreamweavin' computer ate poopy a few weeks and I can't keep up with all this media stuff anyway.

Gotta pull the Festival Weekend together too. That's almost ready to go on BikeReg, but I keep refining and I probably just need to put it out there so yinzers can get your teams together and get signed up.

If you didn't hear yet, the Festival is changing from the stage race format. We're moving to a 12 hour relay/9 hour solo on Sat and bookending it with a Night Team Time Trial Friday evening and an STXC on Sunday morning. Of course we'll be doing up all the fun stuff too just trying to get some more folks to come out and find out how freakin' cool the place is for the weekend. A little different this year is that everything is included in the entry fee - all the races and the camping and all the fun stuff - the only thing you don't get included is food, but the Hammakers will be cooking up a storm all weekend long.

Lupine is coming back as the lead sponsor for the Night Team Time Trial on Friday and will have some demo lights available for those that do not own lights and need one to take part in the festivities. We'll have a sign up on BikeReg for 'em or maybe on Lupine's site.

So, look for that stuff soon and check back for shots of Braden. He's just so damn cute, how can you resist?

Okay, off to FaceBook this stuff then back to BikeReg to update the Festival then I'll email it to some people and blog it here and on the Team blog and maybe make a video of me Twittering it to put on YouTube before finally LinkedIning though no one pays attention to that anyway...or perhaps I'm just not professional enough to get that one.

Actually, off to ride first since I've done that 4 times in three weeks...at least this weekend is the Allegripis Trails opening at Raystown where I'm leading some rides so I'll get in a little something!!