I went mountain biking in the snow today, through the streets of downtown Frederick… so it wasn’t technically mtn biking but with the amount of snow it was still demanding.

me
this is what the roads looked like
Joe, Jeff and Anna (back to front)

Audio books, c&o pics

C and O is pretty but about as untechnical and flat as a trail can be... some days when I am in a certain mood I actively seek out places like this… places where my body is occupied but my mind is fee to wonder so I can concentrate on listening to my audio books… I save the music for the times when I am riding hard and need something to keep me motivated… the audio books keep me from getting bored with out making me feel like I need to be riding fast.

before autible.com and my Ipod I would ride with a tape player and books on tape… this was super bulky filling up two jersey pockets one for the tape player and another for the tapes… I was thrilled when I found out about autible.com 6 years ago... now I can carry multiple books on my ipod and it takes up a fraction of the space… I would recommend as a great alternative to music for solo easy rides.

So I listened to short story’s of the Sherlock homes for a few hours and stopped to take pics of the sensory at times.. here's what I got…



this bridge at the seneca creek aqueduct
one of the many locks of the canal paralleling the c and o
one of the more well maintained sections of trail
big rocks in water

Kelly Acres compu-trainer & sub freezing snow mtn biking

Saturday I joined Anna at the Kelly Acres indoor compu-trainer class… It was my first time doing one of these classes… it was way more motivating than riding in front of the tv at home… As Anna described it “Once you see that little cyclist figure representing you on the screen you cant help but feel motivated to ride fast”.

with the equipment hook ups multiple statistics could be measured including… watts, rpm, speed , total distance traveled and position compared to other riders…ive never owned one of those watt meters but after riding for a while I could see why it would be pretty valuable information to know in order to compare yourself to others and personal past performances.
I came in third and averaged just under 300 watts on a 15 min course…hopefully i can improve on that.

photos from Kelly acres blog

On Sunday I road with Jeff Dickey in sub-freezing temperatures on snow covered trails in gambrill state park… I was expecting it to be pretty slow going but the snow was packed down from others who came before us so it was actually pretty fast… it was just the two of us and we did a pretty big loop in under 2 hours… we ate at the mountain view diner after the ride... it was a good dinner… dinner fanatic John Burns would love it.

the C&O

Rode the C&O…I joined Anna on her morning commute into work…

It’s a hardcore commute… about 35 miles from where we started @ white ferry in Frederick MD to WA DC.. the first ten miles were petty muddy and the temp was 35 degrees (when we fist started @ 6:40).

The C&O goes all they way from DC to Pittsburgh! Has free camping sites along the sides of the trail and it pretty well maintained…some of the views are amazing including large rock structures waterfalls and views of the Potomac.

The trail isn’t technical… it’s a flat and strait dirt road that only maintenance cars are allowed on...despite being flat and free of rocks I managed to get a flat tire from some broken glass… Anna was kind enough to wait for me despite me making her late for work.. I turned around 28 miles in to are tri to DC (7 miles shy of getting all the way into the city) for me it was 56 miles round trip and that took me about 5 and a half hours including a few brief stops.

I defiantly would like to ride this trail some more… next time I will bring a camera along to get some photos of the more beautiful sections…

I just finished cleaning my bike with one of those pesticide sprayers… there are no hook ups for hoses at my apt building so that is what I am using now… I shopped around and found a pesticide sprayer with 65 psi…


The next most powerful one was only 45 psi and cost twice as much…

I was impressed with the sprayer… it worked better than I expected but still not nearly as good as a hose…

it took longer than normal to clean my bike and at the end it isn’t as clean But its good enough and I and think of any better alternatives.

wolves in Gambrilll State Park!!! (or maybey german sheppards)

Went for a night ride last night and at Gambrill state park @ about 6:30 … I was on one of the dirt roads that go through the park and I saw a silhouette of what I thought was a deer… it was frozen just looking at me… it had four legs and was kind of shaped like a deer… it wasn’t till I was pretty close about 100 ft away did I realize it was a big dog... it looked like a German Sheppard...and as I got even closer (20ft away) I noticed another German Sheppard just off the road also frozen looking at me… no tail wagging or barking just a blank stare.

I was moving along @ about 17mph and it was pitch black so from the time I noticed it wasn’t a deer to the time I noticed I was next to a couple of big dogs was only a few seconds....At this point I was a little freaked out as the thought crossed my mind that these might be wolves...

I didn’t see any collars, …I hadn’t seen any a possible owner… no people or vehicles parked on the side of the road … and they looked identical…either I saw two stray German Sheppards or a pack of wolfs.

thought about turning around to get a better look… after all they didn’t show any sign of aggression …but then I reconsidered realizing that that would be kind of stupid… if they were wild animals why risk getting bit.

because I didn’t have a tail light i couldn’t see anything behind me … then I thought to myself... Are they chasing after me right now!?! Could I stay upright if one of them got a hold of my leg!?!?... being alone in the dark was making me more paranoid than I would normally be…instead of riding fast to get away i decided to keep the same speed that I passed them at not wanting them to think I was panicking… if you don’t want be treated like a victim don’t act like a victim ( I leant that from watching Opera but i'm not sure if it applys to dealing with wolves)

I left the park and took the road around back to my car to avoid having to ride through the wolf gantlet again.

When I got back to my apartment I goggled to see what kind of wolf lives in this area…could have been red wolf

my possible wolf experience reminded me of this t-shirt that team mate Sean Daley had told me about…

tall bike

yeaa!!!

Mountain biking for fun and relief? Or not?

Mountain biking for fun and relief? Or not?

Like other hobby’s and sports mountain biking is a good way to relive the stress of your work and life issues…

The more mountain biking in your life the greater the relief… to a certain point… because when you get more involved and serious about mountain biking you become more likely to have your emotions involved…Getting worried about races…being angry if races don’t turn out well… feeling the needing to have the newest and best technology all the time… needing to ride a least x amount of miles a week to stay fast… ect ect ect

So instead of being a way to relive stress and the burdens of life, cycling can cause stress if ambitions to achieve mountain biking goals go beyond a certain point...Its hard to point out exactly where that point is...Its probably different for different people... but a possible indicator is if when trying to achieve mountain biking goals it feels stressful like a job… when you feel your worth is directly linked to how well you perform on a bike… when in the pursuit of accomplishing your goals leads to neglecting other aspects of your life…when worrying and nit picking details about riding takes up an obsessively large portion of your days…

Its just like the guys who get too serious about world of war craft...

The reasons why you are doing the activity in the first place can become lost… clouded by the blind motivation to accomplish goals (or in the case of world for war craft… the need to complete quests).

My conclusion… I believe less emphasis should be on accomplishing specific goals and more should be put on fulfilling the reasons you started started riding in the first place... for me that's fun and relief (sometimes transportation and/or socializing) could be different for others.

weekend group ride

Gambrill/Watershed
9:45, Sunday

Another group ride… there was a group of 15 of us…we split in to two groups; A and B… I was designated to lead the A group… im ok with getting my self lost but i was a bit worried that I might get my whole group lost… i took them on trails that Anna Kelso had shown e on another group ride the week before… there were a lot of turns involved to retrace the same loop we did… I remembered some portions but about half of the time I just guessed… so I was amazed that we were able to retrace the same route with out taking a wrong turn…i was also amazed that none of us had a flat tire... with so many sharp racks and so many riders i would have put money down that at least one person would have a flat...

the route is a particularly technical … I was planning ion bringing my camera with to capture just how technical they are… but I forgot… I will try to remember for next time.



We all ate at place to the left of “If The Show Fits “ shoe store (I don’t remember and I cant read the sign) after the ride.

ride and trail maintenance

On Saturday some riding @ my new local trail network Gambrill park and the watershed… starting to find my way around a bit better… I rode with Jeff Dicky (also a UNH alumni) and some of his riding buddies… I think there was 7 of us and between all of us there was 5 flats and two torn off derailleurs. there is a lot of sharp rocky sections that cause flats. I think every other ride I have been on up there so far I have got a flat tire... so the day before are ride I went to the local bike shop here in town Wheel Base to pick up some extra tubes and a mini-pump. I bought this topeak pump…

It was a petty reasonably priced pump and it was put through the test last weekend… It seems to work really well… I am happy with the investment

Then on Sunday I did some trial maintenance in Gambrill park. It was nice to meet some people. Their seems to be a pretty passionate group of mountain bikers in the area.

Move

Moved to Frederick MD… some good riding here... Gambrill State Park is about 7 miles from where I am living.

winter should be a bit less brutal here than Maine so hopefully i will be able to ride more...

The Trail of Two Lakes, SERIES FINAL, Mount Snow, W.Dover, VT

The Trail of Two Lakes, SERIES FINAL, Mount Snow, West Dover, VT

Sept 20, 2009


I thought I saw about 15 names on the registration but I must horrible at counting because I think only 7(?) of us were at the start line… officially the smallest turn out of the year (in the root 66 series pro /cat1)…

there were some huge turn outs in the beginning of the season...30+ feilds… some big names… regional fast guys…cycling dirt was doing interviews and race coverage…I was styked about the progress…and I thought the root 66 series was becoming a big deal and mountain biking was making a comeback… but progress really slowed down for these last few races…attendance got pretty low…but still progress I suppose because it was on average still better than previous years (@ least in the pro/cat1 category)…

anyways…. back to the race…

I liked the course…it was three, 6 mile laps... each lap was about twice as long as the east cup race I had raced earlier in the year...there were several new sections that I had never raced before at mount snow…the fact that the conditions were like perfect was probably a large factor in why I i enjoyed racing this course so much …it was just how I like it… dry and cool (65 degrees)… Most of the races this year have been supper muddy…I believe this is only the second race of the 13 races I did in the series that I didn’t get covered in mud …the other being fat tire classic…and that one was wicked hot.

I had an ok race...I was very close to getting a 3rd place and getting my first podium of the year… i had a 40 second gap on 4th place … but just before the last lap decent I got a flat and was passed by 3 or 4 guys…putting me in last or second to last….i was a bit of a bummed but I suppose not a big deal in the larger scheme of things.

Seamus Powell won the race

This was the last race of the root 66 series so the overall results and winners were determined…in my category(pro/cat1) here’s how it looked…

1 Seamus Powell
2 John Foley
3 Mike Mooradian
4 Mike Joos
5 Kevin Hines
6 Joshua Wilcox
7 Mike Rowell
8 Nathan Ringquist
9 Thom Parsons
10 Greg Carpenter

congratulations Seamus!!! he got really fast this year.

It’s the end of the racing season for me…but I still hope to do a lot more riding with friends and bike trips…next week I am going to WA DC to a wedding and bringing my bike along… hopefully their are some nice trails down there to rip.

Landmine Classic/GT Golden Bike , Hingham, MA

It was about 75 degrees and sunny….Trails were muddy and had some big puddles from the rain the previous day…

It was a GT golden bike race…there was the gold bike, a GT booth and a whole crew of cheer leaders who did a dance and cheer before the start of are race…Which felt a little bazaar to me…normally the only females you see at mountain bike races are the occasional girlfriend or wife of a male mountain bikers who might race themselves...but they rarely wear skimpy outfits or dance around.

I think 18 started in my category (pro/cat1…which is a little lower than average for this year)… I was expecting more considering that the race was so close to Boston, a central location for many.

i went from leading the race … then fell to 3rd… then fell to 6th and by about 3 miles in to the 26 mile race I was 7th... I think that is how I finished unless someone dropped out or got lost in front of me… which is a good possibility considering all the rocky fast sections and all the turns and overlapping the course did…more turns arrows and road crossings than any other race ive done.

the 49 year old x national chanp Kevin Hines won… my ex team mate and riding buddy Andrew Freye was in a close battle for 2nd with John Foley which he lost after a slip up on one of the wet bridges…team mate John Burns had a good race finished 5th?

The next race is the series finally and the last race I plan to do this year…it will be at mount snow again…it will be my 3rd time racing there this year… and with out Kabush and the 80% rule I will be able to do the whole race with out getting pulled …. Yay!!!

weekend at kingdonm trails

the parking lots were packed...it was crowded with mtn. bikers

Rode with Brent, John, Andrew on Saturday for 6 hours

Brent...the one in orange... we met up with him after he had just won and set a course record climbing the Burke mountain access road...congratulations!!!
Andrew
Burns

Then on Sunday i rode with Matt, Ryan, Shelia and lee for 6 hours

Matt
Ryan
Sheila
Lee

went in the river after both rides...


it was a fun weekend... hopefully i will be able to get up there once more before things start getting too cold

pads

Norcross Scurry race did a number on my break pads…

August 29 Norcross Scurry, Ashford, CT

Almost missed this race… I assumed it was on Sunday because most races are … I figured it out @ one AM the day of the race while reading Thom parson’s blog that the race was on Saturday (thanks for mentioning it Thom).

This was a new race in the series…I liked it ...it was windy and pretty fast with some rock gardens thrown in… well… it would have been fast if the trail wasn’t covered in a thick blanket of mud from the tropical storm that had been going on all day.

Turn out was the lowest I had seen all year…the rain I'm assuming was a large contributor to that…only 9 in the pro/cat1 open category… think all categories were low.

I was in 5th for the first lap then moved into 4th after John Foley flatted… I finished in 4th…

I think Mike Mooradian won again... Honorable mention to John Foley for getting two flats and not finishing far behind me in 6th… John is good at riding in mud… it seems like every muddy race we do he finished like 10 min in front of me…

I took a dip in this pond after the race…the water was surprisingly warm…it felt good

after the race.

Start/finish

I had made plans the day before with Andrew Freye to put up some of my art work in the Starbucks he works at but when I made the plans I didn’t know that I was going to be racing that day…so after the race I rushed home…took a quick shower …unloaded all the bike stuff packed all the art stuff…drove to Starbucks an hour north and had just enough time to get my artwork up before they closed at 8 pm.

I think it turned out good (thanks Andrew)

the case of the flat tires

Did some detective work to figure out why I had a flat issues at my last race…I checked the two tubes that went flat and discovered that one of them was from a puncture on the outside (thorn glass or sharp rock) and the other from the inside ( a problem with my rim or rim strip)… I thought I was dealing with one serial puncture…. but I was wrong….two puncture causers were working together to foil my race.

I did some more sleuthing to find a sharp area where the loop of the wheel came together…I sanded down the sharp spot. put a new rim strip on and checked for sharp objects in my tire

Hopefully this mystery is solved… if I get another flat at the Norcross Scurry race this weekend I will reopen the case.

Bike for Bovines moutain bike/day hike race

Stonewall Farm,
Keene, NH

I had heard bad things about this course so I wasn’t expecting much… but I think it was a pretty nice course… it kinda reminded me of races I’ve done out west in Colorado…long gradual climbs and decents but there was more roots and mud than the CO courses I had done.

We did 2 laps on a 13 mile course …I flatted on the first lap most of the way through… I had been doing ok up to that point I was in the top 5 (I think) … I fell to last after the flat…I fixed it and still had motivation to ride fast … I felt I might be able to pick off one or two other pros before finishing….then I flatted a second time half way through the second lap…I had used up my tube and co2’s so on the first flat so I was unable to fix it…there must have been something wrong with my rim strip because I had had a flat a few days before on the same wheel…

example of a messed up rim strip

I felt it was bad luck to get a flat in the dead center of the longest course I have done in years… if I had known a way to cut the course, dnf and get back to the start/finish faster I would have done that but I didn’t so I walked the course… I tried running a few times but its pretty annoying hitting the back of your leg on the pedal… the last few miles were on really flat old rail road trails that I felt comfortable slowly riding on with out messing up my rim.

I came in about 50 min after everyone else… as soon as I came through the finish officials announced that results were now posted for the men pro category… it was nice of them to wait for me...

i think 12 pros started , 3 DNFed, I came in 9th and Mike Mooradian won

Race Reports...why?

Race reports?

sometimes writing race-reports make me feel like a needy child ”hey mom look at me”…”look what I did, I finished 38th at a bike race” (said in a squeaky high pinched voice)…

I hope that one day i won’t be at the mercy of needing others approval… I will just be able to sit, naked, Indian style on top of a cliff all day and be happy with who I am and not feel any need to prove anything to anyone….because I don’t want to be doomed to a life of feeling the need to flex in the mirror and google myself all the time …i don't want to constancy feel the need to determine my self worth based on how popular i am or how fast of a bike rider i am.

for example...if I did have a lower back tat I would like to be in a metal place where I wouldn’t feel self conscious about it…that’s the type of attitude I want to have but I think I am still far from accomplishing that.

i’ve got this counter on this blog so I can check to what degree i am accepted on a daily basis … it is just another example of how I am at the mercy of others view of me.

my conclusion… race reports are cries for attention…personally I am using them like training wheels till I can accept myself with out the approval of others... but as i mentioned in a earlier post human are social animals so I'm not sure if it is possible to change the way we are wired...it would probably be easier to accept the fact that i need the approval and attention of others than it would be to learn to not need anyone's approval.

U.S. Cup/Windham Cup, Windham, NY

I stayed with Brent Mellen, Andrew Freye, John Burns Hattie and Ben in a condo…
the condo was only a few miles from the race venue…played some monopoly, and ate a pasta dinner Friday night before are race… race wasn’t till 2 on Saturday … it felt weird to not be in a rush before a race…i didn’t know what to do with myself… I played some solitaire, watched a documentary on bigfoot, took a nap and played some more solitaire… it only took me an hour to get ready for the race.

THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT
part 1

part 2

part 3


I felt fine going into this race… I had a decent call up (fourth row)… my start went ok… I wasn’t in last place like last weekend (@mount snow)…I kept myself in the top half of the field for the first lap…on my second lap climb the heat started to get to me… it was about 90 degrees and the climbs were on fire roads with no shade and I was wearing a black jersey… everyone was dealing with the same heat but I don’t think I was doing as good a job of dealing with it…I started feeling nauseous and light headed…my will was broken and I was very seriously considering dropping out of the race ... I decided at the pace I was going I would be pulled soon anyway so I would just keep going….

i eventually started feeling better part way through the 3rd lap, still not 100 percent but good enough to get my will back and repass about half the people who passed me when I was feeling ill ...I was pulled after 4 laps of a 6 lap race… again, same as last weekend at mount snow I was very close to making it out another lap but I wasn’t too bummed about getting pulled because I really wasn’t having to much fun (not on the climbs anyway , descents were still rad) it was just too hot to ride hard….I didn’t have any mechanicals, injuries or anything seriously bad happen to me…. under the conditions I think I did as good as I could do... I came in 38th out of 73 starters (all results)

After the race took a dip in the river with Burns Brent and Ben… it felt awesome… it was fast moving water only about a foot deep…we laid down on are backs and let the cool water roll over us…. I will defiantly be visiting that river again the next time I race at Windham…

Overall a fun couple of days but I did regret not having the opportunity to play mini-golf at the super sweet mini-golf course in town…with out teammate Sean Daley’s wife, kyla there to school everyone I was a shoe in to get my first W of the season… next time.
Ben

Brent
melted pre race gummy bears

performance song

just saw this supper funny video on wheels blog...



there is a lot of truth in this video...the obsessive performance guys and the guys trying way to hard to look like a trendy messengers...i think i fall into the performance category...i hope i don't come across as being that obsessive.

U.S. Cup/Snow Shootout, Mt. Snow, Dover, VT

i stayed with Andrew Freye his girlfiend Hatie (thanks for the feeds) John Burns ,Macky Franklin, Jaime Dinkins and Kat (real name?)... in a nice place with a rustic widerness/ US Marine Corps theme... it seems the owner of the house was a former Marine and posters and toy army men hidden in every all over the place... it was like an Easter egg hunt trying to find them all... the house was way nicer than a hotel or sleeping out of the car which is what i probably would have done if Andrew didn’t set this up...thanks Andrew

Even though I get schooled at these big national races I enjoy going because i like the big event feeling… there are more people around to see me riding fast and more people who look at the results…those seems to be important things to me (as I mentioned in a previous blog entry)…
The race was dryer and shorter than it was for the regional race two weeks ago...it was about 65-70 degrees…the terrain was typical mount snow… steep climbs and steep descents… this year entire thing was rideable as compared with some previous years when it wasn't.

I felt ok at the start but I found my self in last place going up the first climb… pretty normal for me…I think I’m just naturally a horrible at starts…by the end of the second stair step of that climb I had reeled back about 10 guys and needed to wait a bit as riders had bottlenecked at the start of the single track…I passed a few more guys on the decent…teammate John Burns and I were riding together at this point and we stayed within eye shot of each other for a while…

On the third lap decent I caught up with my root 66 buddies Brent Mellen and Matthew O'keefe on one of the cut across sections of the decent… Brent is normally way faster than me on these ski mountain courses and Matt is normally faster than me on every type of courses … so I felt like I was doing good or they were doing bad? Either way it was nice to see some familiar faces… I led down the decent and i could hear Matt right behind me making comments on my foot out approach to the corners... at the bottom of the decent we regrouped so we could work together on the dirt road that goes through the start finish… Matt put in a big pull and wasn’t pulling off so I went around and let him ride Behind me till we started going up again…

I passed another rider on the 4th lap climb and another on the decent and was closing in on a third on the start finish dirt road… but as approached the finish line I saw a man step out in front and motioning his arms for me and the rider in front of me to slow down…the 80 percent rule was in effect… meaning if your more than 80 percent back you get pulled…I was a bit bummed I was so close to making the cut…Oh well… I had a good race… mechanical free and I felt strong through out… so I don’t have much to complain about…

I finished 34th out of 71 starters… that’s top 50%... way better than my normal bottom 25% I do at these national races....i think the biggest contributor to my better finish this year is the fact that the pro and semi-pro categories were combined… a lot of gentlemen who were slower than me moved into my category…. So now I seem faster than i am at their expense.

next weekend is Windham ... i'm looking forward to it


aqua-car i saw at the gas station on my way up to the race

getting ready for the start of the mens short track

mens short track start

Burns
Andrew and Hatie

results of the mens xc

August 2 2009 Annual Hodges Village Dam, Oxford, MA

Turn out this week not as stacked as it has been through out the year… still pretty good…low twenties I am guessing… It was cloudy and about 75 degrees.

The course was very unique... it reminded me of a steeple chase… a lot of dirt roads and deep puddles...


one section in particular was about 25 ft long and about 22 inches deep…

their was also a bridge that was floating in the water… as a person ran across it, it sank down and tipped… it kinda reminded me of the moving platforms in super Mario brothers

I pretty much spent the majority of the race riding alone… I wouldn’t see any one till the last lap… I passed a couple of guys and was closing in on a third person… I was trying to pull a ninja stealth attack on the third person... my goal was to catch him off guard and make my pass before the quickly approaching finish line.



but my ninja skills were lacking today... he noticed me 200 ft back and started hammered… I tried… but didn’t have enough time to close the gap… i finished 7th

it felt good to take a dip in the pond after the race with Wheels...the clean up /swim after the race has because as important as the race itself... i am thinking about creating a blog that focuses post race swimming places.... it is going to be called... mike joos post race swimming places blog (my towel is better than yours)... not really... but i will probably mention them a lot on this blog.

today i swam here...