Manhattan (not the island)

The weather forecast for today was 60% of rain...to be closer to the 60% in the p.m. Being that the weather was going to be temperamental in the afternoon, it was in our best interest to get an early start to the day. I woke up still feeling the effects of the prior day's ride (and most likely the accumulation of saddle time this week which hit 18 hrs).

I rallied though and was out the door by 7:30 a.m. The truth is that this is probably the best time of day (if not earlier) to get out for a road ride. The drunks are not on the road yet and the bible thumpers are still busy putting on their Sunday finest. This was sure to be a banner day with the hope of limiting the 1 finger salute as much as possible (peeps don't take kindly to funny lookin' fellas in tights around here)

The plan was to go for a long'ish' ride. Erin was heading over to Bozeman in the afternoon so it made some sense to try and rendezvous somewhere close to Bozeman.
As it turns out, I was definitely feeling the effects of a long ride and light dinner from yesterday. I stopped 60 miles into the ride and inhaled a Red Bull and a fine pre-maid Tuna sammy....mmmmm..mmmm....good. At about mile 80 I decided to stop and see whereabout Erin was en route to Bozeman. It turns out she was only 5 minutes away so I figured it would be a good time to call it a day. It ended up being a 80 mile ride & 4 1/2 hrs of saddle time.

The scenery was amazing - I took Highway 2 over Pipestone Pass over to Whitehall where I had amazing views of the Highlands and the Tobacco Root Ranges. Once I pushed through Three Forks, the Bridgiers were in grand view and it felt like they were helping me ride by pulling me in (or so I tried to tell myself in order to minimize the dull aches everywhere - ohhh the games we play to keep forward motion going).

It turns out it was a good thing that I stopped at mile 80 because about 30 minutes later the hypoglycemia and dehydration spanked me and made me want to howl like a scalded monkey! Fortunately the wifer was there to nurse me back to my usual ornery self and prevented a potentially awkward social faux pas with me toppling over like a good midday drunk.

Speaking of the wifer, she is now a Butte Weekly contributor (no link available)! Her first article came out and she will be sending in articles once every couple of weeks. Now if only all the mcfatties would heed her article and get out there and exercise a little. OK OK, so I am taking some liberties in translation but so be it.
just for giggles (and because people might be more inclined to read if they see a pic), I am attaching a pic from last week's mountain bike excursion when we were reconning for what kind of shape the CD trail was in from Highlands to Basin Creek - looks like it's a GO!

SingleSpeed mileage and training

Data points for the ride:
Bike - Single speed
Distance 33.56 miles
Ride Time 4:40 hrs
Elevation Gain: 6,700ft

It was a beautimous day in Butte today! It is the first day we have had in the past several weeks where the sky is mostly blue and there is no rain forecasted. We quickly rallied to get out and play - the fat tire was calling my name and I needed to get out and put in a longer effort in prep for the Cream Puff. We got out at around 11:00 and managed to leave the house around 11:00. We took a different way to access the CDT trails via Thompson Park and an old railroad. We went through a couple of tunnels (first one was ankle deep mud and the second was iced over). After going through the second tunnel we came upon a plastic squirrel perched atop a rock in the middle of the railroad bed. Once we made it past plastic squirrel (I offered him some Hammer Gel but apparently he was not hungry), we rode across a railroad tressel that was pretty high up and about ten feet wide - it made a lot of sense to try and stay focused on riding down the middle so as not to go over the edge and freefall about 200 ft!



We hooked into the Continental Divide Trail and started our first grunter climb of the day up Toll Canyon. As we approached the top of the climb, Sean told us to hold up...we pulled a quickie U-Turn to see what was up. It turns out Sean's egg-beater pedal came loose. We tried tightening the spindle on the pedal but did not have the small socket wrench required for this particular trailside maintenance. Sean pointed his bike downhill and we made plans to keep riding while he coasted back to the house and got fixed. Hamilton and I ended up riding and reconning the Fish Creek Loop but turned around fairly quickly as snow prevented us from making further progress. The idea was we wanted to ride as much of the Butte 100 course as possible. We doubled back and headed out the infamous 8 miles of hell....aptly named due to the rather rocky and unenjoyable singletrack...after about a 1/2 mile we were again forced to retreat due to snow (elevation was around 8,000 ft).

We started to head back and ended up meeting Sean (after his fix of the pedal on Toll Canyon). We quickly pointed our bikes downhill and dropped about 1000 ft in 3 miles. At that bottom we decided we should ride back up (that is the way the Butte 100 course will be flowing) in order to get a feel for the climb. We again grunted up the climb...Hamilton crushed the climb, I lumbered in after him and then we waited for a while....and saw Sean walking his bike up the trailhead.... UH OH....he had his broken chain in hand. We went about trying to remove the broken link but because we were riding single speeds, removing 1 link was enough to shorten the chain to the point where it would no longer fit on the bike...so Sean once again had to point his bike downhill and head home...The plan was for Hamilton and I to keep riding and we would link up with Sean on the other side of the Continental Divide Trail on the Homestake side. Poor Sean went back home, swapped out bikes and un-retired his old retired Independent bike (a geared bike no less!). Hamilton and I both gave Sean some grief about how his chain looked very clean and he should think about lubing it!! The irony is that the chain was lubed and was relatively new with about 150 miles on it. Apparently it was just his turn in the barrel today.

On the way downhill we ran into the wifer who was walking the dogs - the dogs seemed not to notice me at first (weird critter with a funny looking head shaped liked a helmet going on a weird 2 wheeled contraption - that would probably scare me too)

Sean headed back home and we headed up the next grunter climb over the Continental Divide to Homestake Pass. We found our happy spot and zoned out enough to get up the hill. On the way down, Sean called us and mentioned he was heading up our way in the opposite direction. Soon enough we crossed paths we Sean and we all pointed our bikes downhill again. We rolled downhill to the trail-head and then lost our way for a few minutes trying to find Blacktail Road that would get us back to town. While descending the doubletrack I quickly remembered why this was my least favorite section of the Butte 50 the year prior. It is steap and loose which makes for a lot of hike a bike if you are going up t. Fortunately for us, we were going downhill. We quickly traversed a couple of streets and made it back to Sean's house.

Now it is time for some dinner and some live bluegrass (not a big fan but it is always good to get out)...time to recover and prep for a ride tomorrow (weather permitting).

Initial Blog Entry

So I decided to join the Blog world in order to try and keep ourselves organized. Without getting too philosophical, life seems to be in warp speed mode and this might be the vehicle to at least keep track of all things zooming by us.

Our summer is quickly approaching (despite all the liquid sunshine we have received and continue to get). I mowed our lawn the other day for the first time this year and noticed we had mushrooms growing! I am not sure that is commonplace for Montana...but it might explain why the dogs were acting funny the other day.

Erin and I both signed up for long epic suffer-fest events this year. Erin is signed up to do the 1/2 Iron Man in Boise on June 12th (http://www.ironmanboise.com/ )and has been diligently training in preparation. This is no small feat considering the temperate spring we have had. While Erin is doing her 1/2 Iron Man, I signed up for the http://www.knobbytireseries.com/925poster.pdf

It will be a good training day for the upcoming: http://www.cascadecreampuff.com/

The Cream Puff is going to be a long day in the saddle. The 100 miles with a TON of elevation gain (have heard it is around 19,000 ft) is enough to scare me into taking some diapers with me so I have some fresh linens to switch out of during the grinder climbs. The open question / challenge (aside from the obvious of trying to finish) will be whether to attempt this on a single speed bike, or on the geared bike. The smart move would be to go out and ride it on the geared bike this year and do some recon for single-speeding it next year - then again, no one ever accused me of being smart...which brings me to the next blog entry...