Thanks to Jill for the added stoke and realization. Even today I am wrestling try to scare up a frame pack for the race, I might have to once again roll my own.

Results will start rolling in Saturday @ after 1:00pm until Sunday @1:00. I am Men’s Solo Singlespeed Rider #16 watch them laps tick up!

So, it is my 2nd week of training for the AZT300. I’ve had a good week and have maybe fallen behind in a few rides and a few areas, but I’ve been trying to stick to it. I only missed one long easy pace ride due to some pretty serious back/arm fatigue going into it.

I rode La Milagrosa twice this week. The first time I did the loop of up Catalina highway amd then down millie. I had Ryan and Nathan tag along for good times down the trail. It was Ryan’s first time and he did very well. He picked up a lot of the molino descent and a lot of the millie descent. I showed him some of the choice lines on the harder stuff.

The second time I rode millie it was with Duncan and Duracell. We shuttled it and rode the Rocks N’ Clocks run for La Milagrosa. I suffered on the molino HAB. I rode more than I hiked and even picked up some new lines on the climb. I didn’t stop at the top like everyone always does. I kept moving down the Molino descent. I was moving down the descent, slowly, but I was moving still. Duncan passed me halfway down Molino. How does he ride SO FAST? The dude is pretty stupid fast. Anyways, I started attacking the hills as I knew it was my only way to tighten if not close any kind of gap between myself and Duncan. I eventually got into a bit of a techy flow goodness and before I knew it I was railing corners and hucking off rocks chasing down Duncan. Two dabs in the rock garden and a dab on the waterfall left line were my biggest failures. I rolled out with a time of 1:12:40. Duncan had me gapped by about 6 minutes. At the end the stoke was off the charts, it was amazing! Technically we had a mini super-D and it was badass! I blew a fork seal during the run and my fork had gone down to 55psi (normally at 95). Duncan said the low pressure and high rebound would make it pack and be pitchy, kinda the same things I was experiencing on the Molino descent (my rebound was already a little slow). We are going to do this again and I am giving that boy a stopwatch, bike computer, or something. I know we can push it sub 1-hour.

I gotta keep working on my dabless millie ride. I know from the turnoff it can be ridden without a single dab. I’ve ridden all the pieces, except the hard uphill after the first waterfall and a hard move coming out of the wash near the end. I also need to figure out where to consistently go at the start of the rock garden, it just splits into a couple different lines.

I also did a tempo ride to work. I was killing the road grind and the singletrack on my route, I got to work 13minutes earlier than my usual commute time where I push it. I had no recovery drink with me and had to get to a meeting. It was awful, probably a trashed workout.

A quick lunch at Samurai with Bailey, Alia, and Janelle made for a good, hard effort. I ate a plate of chicken catsu curry and downed 4 RC colas to get some calories. A round of the tamed Jon Shouse loop was in order. I did a 40 mile loop from my house -> Valencia/Hougton -> high tension power lines -> RR tracks -> three bridges -> AZT pistol hill -> X.9 ranch road -> Old Spanish trail -> Rincon Market -> Valencia/Houghton -> my house. I had some valve stem problems along the RR tracks which were eventually remedied with some electrical tape that I keep wrapped around my pump. I rode along side a train for a while, it was super scary hearing it blow through those narrow windy passages. I rolled the end with my princeton tec EOS headlight and little bontrager 3x AAA light. I was a good test of the bikepacking lighting setup, I might need something a little brighter though. I felt really good on this ride, I had endless power and even dinglespeeded it, 32×20 for the AZT and 35/17 for the roads. The whole time I thought about how I was missing SSAZ and was trying to put the prescribed amount of hurt on myself. I turned cracklin’ oat bran into suffering and turned music into motion. Desert glow and too many saguaros ensued. A good almost-end to a good training week. I felt like a monster out there.

I missed a whole month of blogging, here’s what you missed: