Category: YearOfCycling

Rexy: Queen of the Desert (how we got here)

Up until recently I’d never completed a 200 mile bike ride. It’s been on my list for years. Once I finished my first century, ticking off 200 miles seemed like the next logical thing to do (that progression is debatable, but that’s beside the point).

But, for this reason and that reason, it never happened. And in 2020, the year I would have been most likely to give it a go, I got too enamored by Everesting to plan a 200 mile ride. In fact that first Everest, at 155 miles and ~19 hours total, was by far my longest … Continue reading

Zion National Park

Ok, we’ll ignore the fact that I got a little behind here and just press on a bit with the wrap up BWR and the final couple big events of 2021. I’m not so far away from it all that I feel like I need to just skip it, but I will be soon. So, with that out of the way:

We left off with bedtime ahead of a day of exploring. The plan was to spend two days at Zion and/or Bryce National Park. In Zion I really wanted do to Angel’s Landing and The Narrows. I know … Continue reading

The Hell of the South: Race Day

The day started before sunrise. A 7:35AM start time had me wanting to be at the start no later than 7AM. I polished off my now “standard” race morning breakfast of oatmeal with dried cranberries and cinnamon (heating up some water in the hotel microwave) and cold brew with oat milk. I also took a few minutes to look at the course one more time. It had been changed the day before when the organizers deemed one of the big climbs had too dangerous of a descent given the amount of recent rain. Fine by me! We still had 128miles … Continue reading

The Hell of the South: The Lead Up

Earlier this year I decided I wanted to try bike racing. I signed up for Rebecca’s Private Idaho (at the encouragement of my BaseCamp friends), Rexy (because I wanted to do 200 miles), and Ned Gravel (as it seemed like a good, local, first gravel race). Three races of varying lengths and types seemed like a good way to dip my toe in the race scene.

However, in early April I stumbled across an Instagram post from the company Hyland’s. They were looking to put together a sponsored team for the upcoming Belgian Waffle Rides, a series of … Continue reading

RPI: The Queen’s Stage Race

Okay, before I finish my ENTIRE season of races, I’m going to get this post in about our first time racing the Queen’s Stage Race at Rebecca’s Private Idaho. I’ve been putting it off because it was such a big event and I didn’t know how to quite sum it up. It’s gonna be a long one, but here goes:

DAY 0 – WEDNESDAY, Sept. 1st

A couple weeks before RPI we realized that it would be silly to try and drive the whole 11 hour trip on Wednesday and then start the race on Thursday. So on Tuesday … Continue reading

The new hotness (name TBD)

Way back in April (and several times thereafter) I hinted that I’d won a new bike. But then I never posted anything about it, mostly because it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I actually received said bike.

tl;dr I won a shiny new Alchemy bike with custom colors and I’m totally in love ?

This isn’t a short story, but I want to record it all because it’s quite the journey. It’s a lot of nerdy bike things, but here we go anyway:

THE SET UP

At the end of 2019 I decided to sign up for Rebecca’s … Continue reading