Fighting the Winter Doldrums

Now that winter is officially here, we at PreRace have found it harder to get out and stay active. Minus a few lunchtime rides in November, we have pretty much kept our on the bike time to zero. Instead, substituting ride time with Hold Your Breath contest, That's What She Said jokes, and anything else that allows us to stay warm and inside. So it's with this mindset that I decided that this past weekend would be when I accepted Mother Nature's harsh reality, bundled up, and got outdoors.

Saturday morning I found myself grouped at a start line in Cherry Creek State Park shivering with about 200 other people. We were awaiting the whistle for the start of race number one of the Chilly Cheeks Duathlon series. The series will host one race in December, January, and February, regardless of the weather conditions. Race number one was a four mile run on park roads and gravel paths followed by a ten mile road bike.

Cherry Creek State Park

Being new to altitude I decided to start out easy and see how I felt. It was a good call because I felt stronger than I expected and was able to score a negative split on the run. The bike was flat but there was some wind. The road was a typical state park road with cracks and patches all over the place. It is really hard to get in to a rhythm when your nether-regions are bearing the brunt of bump after bump on a rough road. Regardless, the race was loads of fun and I would highly suggested it to anyone looking for a race in January.

The rest of the day was spent out in Louisville watching day one of the Colorado Cross State Championships. The depth and quality of racing in this state isn't really fathomable unless you come and see it yourself. I've raced bikes all over the Southeast and competed in triathlons across the country, but I've never seen a concentration of top athletes like there is on the Front Range here in Colorado. Tough man of the day award went to Ward Baker of Justin's Peanut Butter. After going down early in the race, Ward put in an inspiring ride in an attempt to defend his 2009 state championship. Ward came up just short, finishing second, but he definitely earned the respect of everyone in attendance.

Rachel Scott , who will be racing for PreRace.com sponsored team next year

Sunday's forecast was for even colder weather, but fortunately I had committed to ride with a group at 10:30am from REI's flagship store in Denver. (Accountability is not always fun.)The ride was lead by several women from a team PreRace.com has agreed to sponsor in 2011. While I won't divulge details yet, I can say that we are very excited to work with them and their title sponsor, which is a new shop opening in Denver this spring. Look for more details coming in January.

Enjoying White Ranch in December

The ride was just what the doc ordered. Low key and low intensity, leaving plenty of time to chat with everyone. After 3 hours we called it a day and headed home a relaxing Sunday afternoon. Hopefully this weekend will be a catalyst for a more regimented training schedule, but if not, you can probably find us at Mountain Sun or The Kitchen after work next week.

As a bit of background, my name is Lucas and I came on board with PreRace a month ago. My primary roles will be handling sales, marketing, and customer support for PreRace for the next 1,000 years.

Rocky Mountain PreRace.com Cup

In the name of some good clean competition with an incentive package, PreRace.com has created the Rocky Mountain PreRace.com Cup. This is a road bike competition and the first competition of its type for a few reasons.

1. It cost nothing for promoters to have their event included.
2. There is a solid individual prize.
3. Competition focuses on the Team.

The Cup includes events taking palace in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

Any event in the region stated above that is doing online registration through PreRace.com will be allowed to enter the Cup. Any participant that enters a race in the Cup is in the running for the competition.

Team placings go 5 riders deep. So even the 5th person on the team should try to gain maximum points.

Points go 75 deep, so as long as the participant finishes in the top 75 they are gaining points toward the overall competition.

The Prizes are as follows:

Individual

Men Pro/1/2 = $1,000

Women Pro/1/2 = $1,000

Men Masters 35+ = $500

Junior Men = Prizes

Junior Women = Prizes

Team

Men Pro/1/2 = 1st - $2,000, 2nd - $1,000, 3rd - $500, 4th - $300, 5th - $200

Women Pro/1/2 = 1st - $2,000, 2nd - $1,000, 3rd - $500, 4th - $300, 5th - $200

Men Masters 35+ = 1st - $1,500, 2nd - $800, 3rd - $200

Junior Men = Prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd

Junior Women = Prizesfor 1st, 2nd, and 3rd

The Calendar of events to be included in the Rocky Mountain PreRace.com Cup will be released on February 18th, 2011.

We will market the competition far and wide which will make team sponsors happy for the added exposure and riders happy for a little year end bonus.

Details will be posted under the Registration column in the footer of PreRace.com or click this link for the .pdf

Rocky Mountain PreRace.com Cup

Bike, Weather and Moose

I went on a 7.5 hour mtb ride this weekend in winter park. According to weather.com (the worst weather site in the world) it was going to be 50 degrees and sunny. Well...it was 30 degrees and snowing. But since the grandparents had the kids and my wife was taking a class and I had woken up at 6am to drive up to Winter Park, I figured I might as well go for the ride I had planned. I rode some really good trails I had never been on before, but the riding was really slow. There were a lot of roots on the climbs that were snowy and wet and my tire would spin so I had to get off an walk a lot. I also had to eat a lot because it was cold, fortunately I was prepared and ate 6 powerbars and a PB sandwich (no J). The snow kept falling off the trees and I ended up really wet, not to mention I was crossing a creek and I thought I was stepping on solid ground covered by snow only to find out otherwise when I was almost knee high in the water. I took a picture of a big bull moose and then it chased me scaring the crap out of me. I wasn't sure how to save myself from a moose, do I punch him in the nose, chuck my bike at him, climb a tree? I don't know when it stopped chasing me but I hammered for a long time before I realized I was probably safe. All told it was a fine ride. I had to cut it 20 miles short because I was traveling so much slower than I thought I would. I rode 50 of the 70 miles I had wanted to travel.


Driving over the Pass.


Clear cut because of Beetle Kill.


Logging trucks made a mess of the road, which made a mess of my bike.


Cool board walk.


Moose, it chased me after I put the camera away and started riding.


Lower elevation, great trail.



This must have been a nice house at some point.

PreRace.com

Fall Ride

I have only ridden my bike once a week for about 1.5 hours since the finish of the Breck Epic. So nothing worth writing home about until this past weekend.

A couple friends and I met up at the bus station in Boulder to catch the 8:10am bus to Nederland. There we met up with a couple other friends and hung out at the Happy Trails coffee shop of a few minutes. The ride was meant to be an epic cyclocross ride, but since I sold my cross bike earlier this summer I had to use the 29 inch Superfly. Everyone else was on a cross bike, but once all was said and done I think I had the right bike.

We rolled out and climbed up the Eldora Ski resort and headed over to Tennessee Mtn Hut. When we got to TMH we stopped for a break and out from under a pile of logs appeared a six pack of PBR. Josh, one of the riders in our group, had planned ahead and hidden six packs of beer at various stops along the ride. At that point I realized we were in for a long day. It was a great day of riding, with friends, beers, and great views. I got home 7.5 hours later having ridden about 65 miles.

Here are some of the pictures.







And as always the link back to PreRace.com http://www.prerace.com

Breck Epic

In an attempt to blog more I think I have something worth presenting, for comparison or general purpose interest. Here is my data from the Breck Epic 2010. Awesome Race. I thought about dropping out on Stage 4 but then Stage 5 and 6 were a couple of my best stages, right up there with stage 2. By that I mean, no mechanicals (flat tires) and I felt good at the end and was able to ride hard. Stage 4 I was purely riding to get to the finish line and could have cared less about my position for the day or GC. I felt like I pretty much was giving up. Note that my best stages are also generally shorter stages. Here is my data. I uploaded it to training Peaks because they make it easy to digest the info and have great presentation.

Stage 1


Stage 2


Stage 3


Stage 4


Stage 5


Stage 6

My Calendar

Here is my Calendar. I am putting it up here as an example of what it would looks like to have a personalized calendar on PreRace. It can be made public or private, mine is set to public so that I can share it with you or my Buddies on the www.PreRace.com site.

http://www.prerace.com/user/calendar/Jespi/grid

I am constantly fine tuning it so that I can add events and remove them just with a click, depending on how my schedule changes.

Thanks for reading.

Add an Event

Adding an Event is easy and anyone can do it. So if you know of an event that is not in our calendar, add it. I would suggest searching for it first by clicking the "All" tab, then the state where the event takes place, and then the date. Sometimes the key word search will miss it if we have a different name or a sponsor is in the name such as the "Independence Pass Foundation Ride for the Pass".

Once you have established that we do not have the event, go ahead and add it. First you must sign in. Then you click the "Add an Event" tab. This tab will list out the following: add an event, events you have added, and events you have reviewed.

If it is a series or a stage race you should enter the number of days for the event and click add events. If there are two events on the same day then enter them as a separate stage, like time trial in the morning and crit in the afternoon. Then fill out the form. When you add the web addresses for the event, flier, registration, and other information make sure you enter the complete address (http://www.example.com), without the http:// it will not work. If it is a multi-day event then click Copy info and it will fill out the forms below with the same information as the first event except for the date. Once you have filled out the form you can either add another stage or click the preview button to review your information.

After reviewing your information click "Add Event" and the event is added. The event is immediately viewable by everyone, and we get an email notifying us that the event has been submitted.

That's a wrap, let me know if you have any questions.

Buddies

The buddy feature in PreRace.com is useful for teams and people who want to share their calendar with friends.

Once you have an account you can add cycling events to your calendar. Simply find some events you want to do and click the "Add to my Calendar" button. After adding some events go to your calendar located in the upper right hand side of the tabs bar. Once you are looking at your calendar you will see on the left side there is a box called "Buddies". Toward the bottom of the box is the "Find a Friend" button. Click that and start typing their name. If they have an account their name should show up on the list. Next to their name it either says "private" or "add". You can add anyone who is not private.

Once you have added Buddies you can click on their name and their calendar will become the main view. They will receive an email saying that you have added them as a buddy. You can block people from seeing you calendar by using the "Block a user" button in the box too.

The privacy is set in your account profile. There is a button at the bottom of the account profile that allows you to make you calendar public.

Let your teammates and friends know about this feature so that they can add events to their calendar and you can then see what races or ride they will be doing.

Sync and RSS

PreRace.com has a bunch of new useful features.

New calendar features include the RSS feed and the ability to sync your race and ride calendar with most other calendars. Rather than having to enter your events one by one into your favorite calendar, you can use the PreRace.com calendar and then sync them.

Sync: Basically just search for events. You can do that by deciding you only want to drive 200 miles (or whatever distance) from your home and enter the distance and your zip code into the zip code search and click "go". It will present you with a list of all the events going on within that radius. You can then go down the list and click "Add to my Calendar". This will populate your calendar with your events. When you are done you can go to your calendar and look it over. Click the Sync button at the top of the list. It will present you with some options depending on the type of calendar you have. Follow the instructions and it will add all the events to your other calendar.

RSS: An example of the RSS feed is on the right of this page. The RSS feed shown are the next few events within 300 miles of my zip 80302. Any time you see the RSS logo you can get a feed for that list. You can do it for State search, zip search or your personal calendar among others.

I hope these features help organize your cycling life.