Fontana city national

Well I just finished up with one of the longest weekends I've had in a long time. Friday started off leaving to Fontana at 8 in the morning, arriving at the race at about 2:30 I was excited to start riding. The hill opened at 3 for practice for a couple of hours, and it went good. Got more comfortable with the bike and was feeling alright.

Saturday morning started with a good breakfast at the hotel and headed straight to the race for practice for the day. This practice session I was feeling even better and started jumping a section in the course that nobody else was doing. A hop double thing off of a rock onto the downside of the hill. It was a fun yet time saving move that I got dialed in by the time practice was over. The rest of the day consisted of walking around the pits and checking everything out, watching some XC races and pro DH practice. I was ready for the race runs to start the following morning.

Sunday morning came around quick and I was stoked to get to throw in a few practice laps and get the race run done.....I may have practiced a bit too much as I noticed my legs were pretty much dead as I walked from the shuttle truck to the start gate. I was nervous that I wouldn't be able to pedal along the wall section very good.

I sat int he start gate hoping that I would have a clean run and be able to pedal hard. Flash forward to after my race run, I crossed the finish line and my legs were on fire. As I sat there cooling down I realized that my run had been pretty dang good, no mistakes really. I missed a two lines that I would have liked to get but all in all it was a good run, but I didn't feel like it was enough to win. Surprisingly I took 3rd place, which I did not expect. So I was happy with the weekend.

On another note: Nate finished up 1st in his class, Doug took home a solid 2nd place, and Ian Keller came away with a 25th place finish in the pro class.

Pictures and links will be posted as soon as they come out!

Fontana city national

Headed over to fontana this weekend for the city national. Im hoping I do well, however, Im using it mostly as a warmup race for the upcoming summer. My dad and I are going so it will be fun to hang out with him for the weekend. With the demo all fresh and ready to go, I cant wait to get there and get on the hill.

Im glad this isn't a big race because I've got alot of stuff on my mind and am not totally focused on this race. Everything from Homework, to getting sick again, to my money situation is weighing my mind down. I really want to just put it out my mind for the weekend if possible. But like I said before, mostly using it as a warmup and to figure out where I am compared to where I want to be.

Seems like Deja Vu at the moment as well, last race I was fighting off sickness and today it seemed to hit me like a ton of bricks...Runny nose, sneezing, aches. Here it comes again, during race weekend. Oh boy!...not

Ill keep you updated throughout the weekend as to how it is going.

Demo

2010 Demo 8. Great bike to ride, great bike to look at. Its neat!

Super-D

Gotta go to this race this summer for sure!
June 17th-19th

Ashland, Oregon......12 miles....800 ft. of climbing, 5000 ft of descent...40 minutes of pure and utter deliciousness....oh good lord.

vid:
a href="http://www.pinkbike.com/video/143770/">
Article:
http://www.pinkbike.com/news/ashland-super-d-race-recap-2010.html

Saturday ride

So I went on a great XC ride today in Sedona. I met up with my dad and we rode some of his favorite trails. I gotta say, this being only my second real XC ride, I like it more than I thought I would. The trails were awesome today and riding and hanging out with my dad is always good. I hope we can make it a regular thing throughout the summer.

Gym training begins tomorrow night. with the racing season rapidly approaching I've put the gym off long enough. Now just need to find a way to make it fun.

Video

My first shot at making a video. Made it a while ago but Im just now putting it up.

Just a few pictures of the 4x bike up close. The weather is killing me, I need to ride!!!

Schedule

Heres a schedule of all the races that will be going on this summer on the west coast. Hoping to go to as many as I can, hopefully that will be most of them!

Fontana Races
-Southridge Winter series
March 5-6
-Golden state series
March 25-27 (fontana city national)
April 9-10
May 21-22
-Southridge Challenge
November 19-20

MSC races
June 3-5 Angel Fire
June 24-25 Crested Butte
July 8-10 Telluride
July 22-24 Keystone
August 5-7 Snowmass
September 2-6 Grandby

Sea Otter
April 14-17

Ashland 12 mile super-d
June 17-19

Just a picture of my new bike corner in the apartment.

Winter time

I know, I haven't posted in a long time so I figured id get updates on what has been going on. Its winter time here in Flagstaff and there is zero riding to be done. Although there was a break in the snow for a few weeks we were only able to get out to ride DH once to dust off the rust and throw the bikes around a bit.

I did however go to Fontana twice since the last post. The first time was to keep my 4x career alive and going. Although the results turned out good with a 3rd place finish. I decided that 4x wasn't for me. Do't get me wrong its very fun and I enjoy it, but not having raced bmx my whole puts me at a disadvantage when it comes to the starts. Therefore im putting 4x on the backburner for now and concentrating on DH. Which brings me to the most recent race in which I was doing downhill. With saturday practice being the most fun i've had on a bike in a while, I planned on a fun weekend ahead. With every practice run I got more comfortable with not only riding DH again, but also with the new bike im on for the season. As the day drew to a close I started feeling the flu that had plagued me for the week prior to going to the race. I decided that I wasn't feeling strong enough and to prevent further sickness, opted out of race day on sunday.

Although I didn't race, my friend Nate participated in his first DH race ever. With a solid 5th place finish in Beginner, hes on his to way to becoming hooked on the lifestyle that comes with riding.

My plans are to do alot more races this riding "year" and get to where my results regularly are in the top 10 in Expert/CAT1. Hopefully with some great adventures and fun times with the crew this summer, all of our bike careers will take great leaps and bounds and we can all enjoy each others success.

951

So I recently purchased an Intense 951. Its undoubtedly the best DH bike I've ever ridden. I'm not sure if its because of the fact that the rear shock is CR1 tuned or not, along with the FOX40 fork, it is by far the best handling bike I've ridden to date.

The engineering on this bike blows my mind as well. Here are a few of the things that make this bike so amazing:

"The G3 dropouts offer 3 positions for the user to move the rear dropouts. According to Intense, the three G3 holes yield the following

* forward hole yields a 65º HA, 17.25” chainstay, 14.5”bb
* middle hole yields a 64.5º HA, 17.5” chainstay, 14.125”bb +.5” wheelbase over forward hole
* rear hole yields a 64º HA, 17.75” chainstay, and a 13.75” bb, +.5” wheelbase over middle hole"

Info taken from the website below, check it out:

http://www.sicklines.com/2009/07/22/preview-2010-intense-951-fro/

When I first purchased the bike it had a beat rear triangle, which also sported a real nice crack, and also had zero decals from the factory on it. After getting a new rear triangle and decal kit, and about 3 hours of work; its back looking at its best! Here's some pics to look over.

Too Long

Wow! Its been a too long since my last post. Im still alive, and still riding though!...

Ive been riding and training a lot lately at the slalom course here in town. Working on my corner speed and endurance. It payed off too! I recently made the trek over to Fontana, CA for another 4x race. It went well at the end of the day and I came home with a second place which I was happy about. I'm hoping to keep doing that good through the winter series coming up and progressing with each race. Enough writing, here's some pictures and a link to a few pages of pictures of all the fun. Enjoy!

http://www.photoreflect.com/pr3/thumbpage.aspx?e=7258935

New Bike Rack

Well i've been planning and designing a bike rack for my truck...needless to say after forcing myself to not be lazy I finally built it today. It lets me haul three bikes without them touching each other, for easy and safe transport. It ended up being very sturdy and it even turned out to look like something that you would buy. It came together great and i'm excited to use it! Now that its done, i'm thinking about making a few of them and selling them...who knows!

Dirt jumping in Prescott

Well, after my crash at sunrise I decided to stay off the DH bike for a bit. This lead to riding my hardtail more and dirt jumping. I headed out to the much talked about dirt jumps behind costco in Prescott. Besides the fact that they had not been touched in years they were still in good enough shape to be ridin. With about an hour of work, they were in good shape again and thus fired me up about dirt jumping again. So far they have been fun, heres a few pictures of the place.....

Crashing sucks

Well....Im sitting here writing this on monday morning, still sore and not being able to walk normal. As it neared 4 o'clock on saturday I decided that a few more runs would be the perfect way to end the day of riding. This thought came minutes before a pretty gnarly crash that left me with a headache and some sore shoulders, and more importantly a blown out knee that was immediately swollen to the point of not being able to walk really.

I feel like I probably had it coming since I haven't crashed in awhile. However, this had to happen a week before the MSC race that I was planning on attending in Colorado. Just my luck.....Oh well, Im healing up and waiting till I can ride again.