Implosion Imminent

When we bought our first house, I experienced heartburn and stomach problems for well over a month. Probably from the stress. That was 9 years ago. It never went away, just kept quiet here and there for periods of time. For the past 6 months, it's been knocking at my door weekly. Doc's can't pinpoint the problem, can't prescribe anything that works. Now I'm starting to miss work, skip rides, wake up in the middle of the night in pain... life sucks.

Why write about it? Because I've realized that this same problem has also plagued my racing for many years. About 15 minutes into a race, I get the same nasty heartburn feeling and it slows me down for about 10 minutes before letting up. If I could only fix the problem, I'd probably be faster.

The problem is really bad at the moment, to the point where I might bail on the Napa Dirt Classic tomorrow if it doesn't get better in the next few hours. Frankly, it's pissing me off. Can't eat this, can't drink that... Mylanta, Tums, Pepto, Maalox... none of which "fix" the problem. Sucks to be me. Kaiser looks even more stupid each time I visit them.

Any suggestions? I'm thinking I'll just cram a bunch of spicy, greasy crap down my stomach until I implode... then they'll have something to fix.

PC

Boggs III Finale

Boggs is over and the team is back home recovering from what I would consider a relatively huge success. We did however suffer one casualty. Joey Howard crashed at the bottom of one of the downhill fire-roads and ended up getting Medivac'd back to Sac with a broken cervical vertabra. He's going to be fine, but in a neck brace for a while.
A few of us gathered the night before the race and chilled with pizza, fire, beer and tequila for a true, grass-roots, race-prep ritual. The next morning, the rest of the Cat Pack rolled in with red and black a-blazin... ready to rock. And rock they did..

17 MC riders threw down on Boggs mountain, accumulating about 100 laps total amongst us all, some of which pulling in 9 laps in 8 hours with mileage in the 70's! We had Rhonda Figone take 1st place women's Expert, Asa Salas 2nd place Pro and Ken Mederios in 2nd place men's single-speed.

My personal experience with the race was awesome. I raced single-speed sport and pulled off 7 reasonably fast laps (one 49'er) with an extended break in the middle. No mechanicals, no crashes, a few cramps and a headache, but overall an awesome, strong finish. The hills made my bones creak a little, but somehow I kept plugging away tacking on more miles. I actually impressed myself with my ability to pick it up in the end and have some decent laps times for my last few laps. I figured that it would have probably gone the other way around.

Today, a little quad pain here and there, but feeling groovy enough to push the mower around the lawn for a while and tinker on my dirt bike for a bit today. Looking forward to PC, Napa Valley Dirt Classic and Sea Otter the week after. Boggs is truly a wonderful race and an awesome trail that begs to be ridden again and again. Each lap reminded me of the brass ring on a merry-go-round (for those that are old enough to remember those). Good times.

Boggs III pics on Flickr

Papa C.

Off to BOGGS!

The first Prairie City race kicked off with a SUPER BANG last night. Over 500 riders showed up and I must say it was a bit overwhelming, but still fun. Team Mad Cat kicked down with 20 riders on the course and even more trailside for support. Red and Black everywhere! Tomorrow, the Team heads to Boggs Demo Forest for 8 hours of singletrack bliss. We've got about 20 riders heading over to populate the forest with our favorite colors. I'll post some pics all said and done. It's going to hurt, but great for training... It's going to make Sea Otter feel like a trip home from the corner market on Stingray holdin' an icee.
Wish us luck!

Papa Gato

Let the games begin!

We've trained, we ridden, worked out, played hard and ate a well balanced meal. Now it's time to suck it up and see how our training will pay off. This week, the team begins a few weeks of racing, followed by more racing (2 races/week) for the next 3 weeks. Prairie City, Boggs 8hr, PC, Napa Valley Dirt Classic, PC, Sea Otter, PC, then a small break before another PC race then Cool24hr. So much for fun rides, because there won't be time. Come June, you'll find me sipping a Guiness poolside watching my homey-cats pump the track and gettin' silly. The next 3-4 weeks is the majority of what many of us have been training for, plus all the PC races and of course Death Ride in July. It's fun and I must say... I'm addicted to riding my bike. At any point today, I could have easily swapped my polo shirt for jersey and headed out for a spin. All in good time...

Papa Puddy Tat

Chinese Ticks and Singletrack

Last Saturday we gathered The Cats and headed over to China Camp in San Rafael for a day of super-cool single-track and fun. 12 Cats (the dirty dozen) clawed up the trail and collected about 23 miles throughout the park. I believe our venture uncovered every single nasty climb there was to find. The sweet singletrack wasn't enough for some of our punishment seeking riders, so we detoured a few times to test our legs and minds. My knees are still aching 4 days later.

As if the climbing didn't hurt enough, a hitchhiking tick decided to burrow into Yvette's neck, so Mojojo had to do an emergency extraction. He moved in like Steve Irwin mumbling something in an Aboriginal tone and grabbed that sucker with his teeth and pulled it out head and all. (substitute fingers for teeth for visual fancy).


All of our Cats use Frontline or Advantage (for that Raceday edge) so it came as a surprise that this little guy was successful at landing the first stage of his mission.

At any rate, a great ride, great people, great post-ride eats and THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WEATHER I have seen so far this year.

It's that time of year, so check your legs, socks, clothes and friends for ticks. They carry disease and can really be a pain in the ass (if you let them get that far). :-)

To see more pics, view our Flickr page here.

Death Ride is on!

Found out today that I'm in for the 2008 Death Ride. The lottery names have been listed and quite a few of our Team are in as well. It should be a great year now that I'm forced into putting more mileage and hill climbing in. I feel like this might be what it takes to give me more strength for the the single speed MTB races, and provide me with an awesome goal for the year.
I don't just want to give it my "all". I want all 5 passes in a reasonable time with less pain in the end. 15,000 ft of climbing and 129 miles sounds pretty brutal, but I'll work up to it. It should be fun!

Yesterday, a friend and I did the Georgetown loop with some added climbing and it felt pretty good. Granted it was only 60 miles and 8000 ft of climbing, but we hammered it out pretty fast and were back home in under 4hrs. I could see doubling that up at some point. Gonna need some salt tabs and Sportslegs though... :-)

Papa

Crime Scenes & Trailwork

So... today was our scheduled trailwork day with FATRAC out at Salmon Falls AKA Darrington Trail. Our group all arrived on time for a 10:30 departure into the singletrack for a few hours of much needed clearing and downed tree removal. We split up into 3 groups so that one group could clear a tree from Sweetwater before meeting up with the other 2 on Salmon Falls. The day was awesome, weather good, good work, pics, yadda yadda.
About 1pm we began to wrap up and head back to the trailhead. Upon arrival back at the trailhead, we initially noticed yellow caution tape across the entire parking lot around our cars. My initial thought was that someone was breaking into cars and the cops had arrived. We then were notified that a body had been found by some passing motorcyclists in a ditch at the north end of the parking lot. Pretty freaky stuff.


After our raffle and the process of giving our names/statements to the El Dorado County Sheriffs, we were allowed to return to our cars and vacate the lot. Channel 3 and 10 were on scened to report.
There's more pics of our day on Flickr if you're interested.

News Story

Trailwork pics on Flickr

Usually a day of trailwork leaves you with good intrinsic satisfaction.. It did, but was short-lived.

Papa Cat