Philipsburg 2019

I had a pretty busy last couple months of racing - 4 of the Wed night series, the mullet classic climb, and Spirit Bear in Kalispell. Nothing really went that great for me, but I did get 4th a the Blue mountain race and due to actually going to them all was 3rd overall in the series, so that was neat. Spirit bear was a little disappointing though, with a 9th place finish. I have some words about most of all that written down elsewhere so maybe I'll copy/paste it here eventually. Anyway, this post was to talk about Philipsburg.

After all those other not really great results, I've been a little less confident in my fitness. I'm also slightly heavier than I'd like. On the plus side, June was all big weeks, racing, and hard efforts for the "Pete Mitchell Inverted Enduro," and I've been doing alright at Wed Worlds.

Bearmouth Road Race 2019 recap

Bearmouth was brought back last year, and is pretty much the only road race in the state. MSU does still put on theirs, and this year there was a UM crit the same weekend, but I didn't make it out in the open field for either. I do wish I'd gone to the road race, it looked like a great course out by Lewis and Clark caverns.

One thing I am starting to appreciate for road racing is a fully paved course with minimal traffic. At bearmouth, we basically have the roads to ourselves. The first out and back is a nice, rolling frontage road along the river and interstate from Drummond to Bearmouth, the second out and back goes over a pass to Helmville. No one has much of a reason to drive on those roads.

On to the race, there were about 25 in our open field. There's a long 1/2/3 race, and a short 4/5 race. But because of the difficulty of getting a road upgrade around here, an "open 4/5" category was added, which means anyone can race in the big race if they want. I managed to actually get myself a cat 3 upgrade last year but there are a number of really fast, experienced racers around who still are 4/5s on the road.

Oh right winter is over

Lot of snow and cold days this winter. I didn't get outside on a bike until march 19th, which means not a lot of miles this year. Thankfully I did not let myself get too fat or out of shape over the winter and have a couple of good weeks in my legs. We've had a few Wed worlds rides, and I went to the death ride, which was a miserable, cold, wet day (in a fun way though), but hadn't done a real race until yesterday.

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.