Tour de Turkey

     Fall is now over. The leaves are coating the trail. We have had several storms recently that have kept all of us busy cleaning the trail. There were so many sticks down that we have had to walk the trail three times in the past few weeks just to remove sticks. There were so many down that the trail was not rideable. It's a lot of work, but it is more than worth it. My renewed excitement for mountain biking is still growing. I'm having a good time riding the trail and being in the woods. I have been running again, both road and trail, to help with staying in shape during the colder months. I have my eye on doing the Cedars Frostbite Half Marathon again in February.

Lots of sunsets on rides this time of year

     Halloween has passed now. At work we did a Prostate Cancer Awareness campaign in November. The theme was mustaches, since that seems to be the cool thing nowadays. We got a head start on No-Shave-November with some Halloween mustaches...made from tasty whipped creme. We even relived the old owling video in the last picture.

Me

Tavis

Pat. She kind of looks like Hulk Hogan with that 'stache.

     Shannon and I love our current rental house on the Clark Farm, but we are ready to find a place of our own. We have looked at a few houses, including one on the same street I grew up on. You can almost see the trail from the back porch. But the inside of the house had a weird layout that we didn't like. And the price was way too high. The owner gave us a tour and repeatedly mentioned the wood floors were "hand-beaten by prisoners using chains." Weird. Sounds like a good way to get haunted. The searching continues as we have not found the right house yet. We have our eye on one, but I don't want to talk about it yet for fear we may miss out on it. It would be our dream house for sure.

     The Jamis Xenith SL is built now. I had some issues finding an adapter for the PressFit bottom bracket, but that is all straight now. I've ridden the bike a few times. The cockpit feels exactly like my old Sette Forza, and the bike handles similarly. It's a bit twitchy in standing, but I have not decided if that's a good or bad thing yet. I like the new Easton EC 90 Aero wheels. They are stiff with acceleration and feel very fast. They are also a bit more forgiving on the bumps than the Mavic Cosmics I had on the Sette Forza. They also produce a totally different sound. You can hear me coming from far, far away. I'm doing my training on a new set of Easton EA 70 wheels. Here's the bike with both wheel set-ups.

Training set-up

Stealthy race set-up

     One thing I used to do as a Junior was to do race-simulations all the time. It helped me get in better shape and built up my confidence. If I could do the race in training then there was no doubt I could make the distance and hold the pace on race day. I got out of the habit when I got out of college the first time at Austin Peay. I got busy and changed my training to do more base miles. I felt like I knew how to race now, I just needed saddle time. I believe making that assumption was a mistake. When you train alone, it is hard to stay motivated when you just ride. Intensity keeps me interested. Fake race scenarios and beating my own times keeps me pushing hard and I end up with a much, much better workout each day. Shannon and I decided to make up our own race series for the winter, starting on Halloween weekend with an XC race and continuing on Thanksgiving weekend with the "Tour de Turkey."

     Tour de Turkey was four days long. Four days of mountain biking on our trail. I did a four-lap XC on Thanksgiving Day to start things off. I had to start early in the morning to get done before we had to go to Thanksgiving Dinner at my grandma's house. It was the first bitter-cold morning of the year too. I had to do a warm-up on the trainer inside before going out. When I started the ride, it was a brisk 16 degrees. The trail was frozen, which helped add speed. The leaves are deep now and not ridden down yet, so that really slows down lap times. Instead of my normal 23-25 minute laps, I was turning 30-32 minute laps. Shannon even braved the cold for a one lap XC effort, as did my parents.

     Stage 2 was a night short track in the backyard using the yard and a piece of singletrack. I had to work on Black Friday, so we could not ride until after dark. It was cold again with the temp hanging around 22 when we were riding. It was really fun to hammer at night. All four of us rode again, so we were sort of racing each other even though we were all going at different speeds. I did a 30 minute effort.

    Stage 3 was back to XC, this time riding the loop backwards. I again did four laps with lap times being slightly faster in this direction. The temp was again cold, but a little bit better at 30 degrees. We wrapped up things on Sunday with another XC, this time on a short 0.8-mile loop that I laid out to test my skills as much as my fitness. I raced for about 90 minutes on the loop, completing 18 laps. The course beat me down. It had several short, steep climbs with root ledges to make me push hard, and a few dry creek crossings full of big rocks kept me focused. It was another fun day. And the weather was much nicer at nearly 50 degrees! The four days were sort of a mini training camp to get us ready for the tough winter ahead. More practice races are in my future as I really think they are helping keep motivation high and give me more quality workouts.