The end of the season

Here in Montana, once rolling thunder happens bike season is pretty much over. The week before it got a little cold and rainy and then the week after I think it snowed for a few days. Since then I've gotten out a few times but not a whole lot and I'm already starting to feel fat and out of shape. I definitely need to get a couple of pairs of skis and a fat bike to be a little more active during the winter. And I do plan on lifting weights a little more often. I got into it in feb or so last year and I think it made a pretty big difference as far as the race season went, especially the first half.

More new tires - Challenge Baby Limus tubulars

I think I previously mentioned that I had planned to race cyclocross on Clement/Donnely MXPs again this year, ideally on wide, tubeless wheels. But that wound up not happening, because Alex at Missoula Bicycle Works had a set of tubulars sitting in the back. Seeing how everyone is now on disc brakes they weren't doing him any good so I got some new wheels.

How I learned to stop worrying about the stutter step and love cyclocross

I think I'm going into my 5th season of cyclocross, and maybe the 6th season of racing bikes. For me, a full season has been around 3-5 road events (including gravel races), another 5 or 6 mountain bike races, and then 6-7 cyclocross races. A big portion of those are the wed night beer league, where we have 4 mtb races and 6 cross races. Outside of those I don't get out much and have actually never even left town for a cross race. The only "real" cross race I've done is Rolling Thunder, and I've done that I think 3 times. Every year I intend on doing more of the wild west series, and every year it seems not to happen. Mostly because it costs money to go drive somewhere and race and I always seem to wind up kind of broke in the fall. The other is that it's the end of the year and prime time for slacking off and drinking beers.

Where was I going with this? Oh, yeah, cross racing, and racing in general, and the fact that I am not actually all that experienced or good at it. In cyclocross, you have that added challenge of needing to get off and back on your bike for runups, barriers, and other obstacles. if you are not good at running the barriers and other obstacles, and carrying speed through corners and difficult sections, you won't do very well even if you have the best fitness. The other side if this is that if you are good at doing those things, you will do better in races even if you aren't the fastest guy at wed worlds. While the pros make it look so easy and fast and smooth, getting to that point takes work, and I had not been doing enough.

Crowsnest pass, Alberta, Canada

Last July when I was in Canada I got in a short ride at the crowsnest pass, which is the border of Alberta and BC. It looked like there was a lot more trail to check out and I was a little disappointed to have not spent more time in the area. Then this July when I was there, my uncle mentioned he was going to be camping there for the first week or so of August. It worked out for me to go up and bring my mountain bike and a tent.

New tire day

My cyclocross bike, an older Orbea terra, was built to race and not much else. It comes with one bottle cage mount, a tall bottom bracket, a steep head tube, the original brakes were pretty mediocre, and the gearing range was short. I used it as a road bike for a summer, and found the ride to be pretty harsh even with 28mm tires due to a lack of frame compliance (my road bike, with the same wheels/tires/pressures, rides much better). The plus side, of course, is it's light and fast and handles well on a race course. But over the years I've made some changes that have improved both comfort and performance.

Philipsburg 46 MTB race

It's been awhile since I put something up here, and June has been a pretty busy month of mountain bike racing. I"m going to skip ahead to the last race I had on the schedule since I already wrote it.

Butler Creek, Grant Creek, and Snowbowl

For some good gravel/dirt riding with a lot of climbing, butler creek is a good place to check out. While most people think of snowbowl as being up Grant creek, it is actually in the Butler creek drainage, which is the next one over. From Grant Creek, when you turn onto snowbowl road, you climb over a saddle into butler. Snowbowl road climbs the east side of butler creek and ends at the ski area. There is also a road on the other side from Butler creek, and you can make a loop out of the two on a bike. On top of that, you can ride to the top of tv mountain, snowbowl, and point 6 on actual road, and there's some singletrack down the front of the ski hill.

Getting to snowbowl via snowbowl road is pretty straightforward, so I don't think I need to go into much detail. But if you've never been in butler creek it's nice to have a map or gpx track to follow, as there are a couple of junctions up there. The main thing to keep in mind is that you actually want to take Point 6 road when you get there, as that is the actual name of the road that continues to the top of Butler creek (and all the way to Point 6).

The most basic route is to climb to the base of snowbowl via one of the roads, and descend the other