Having fun Getting ready for the Grand Canyon

The last two weekends have been great fun as we bump up our endurance training to handle the cool stuff we have planned for this summer.

On May 16th we did about 7 hours of biking for our annual 100 mile Reach the Beach bike ride on a tandem with Mary and James. No flats, amazing weather, almost no wind and close to 17 miles per hour average. Also a great leg workout without the pounding of running (we would do that the next weekend!!).

We once again stayed at the Craftsman Bed and Breakfast in Pacific City with Mike and Laura as our excellent hosts. If you are in Pacific City, stay at their place. An evening soaking in the hot tub with dinner at the Bistro catching up with new and old friends was how we ended a great day.

The following weekend was hills and Gorge running!

Trisha did some Dog Mountain repeats with Ronda, Micheal, Cheri on Friday to smash those quads into shape. Dog Mountain climbs straight up 2,800 feet in 3.2 miles. Up, up and more up!

On Saturday, I did about 7 hours of running in the Gorge. Herman Creek to the PCT then up to the Benson Plateau. We then hit the snow and blindly made our way across the Benson Way through the snow to the Ruckel Creek Trail. Pounded down to the Gorge 400. Across on the Gorge 400 trail and then back up on the Herman Creek trail to tackle the Nick Eaton Ridge. Then some amazing cruising down the Gorton Creek trail to finish up. Ronda gives a great account on her blog.

It was hard. It was amazing. I hit the toughest section of trail I have tackled. I was working as hard as I could and it took me 39 minutes to do 2 miles!! Try the Nick Eaton trail if you are really looking for a challenge!

Why all the training? Trisha and I are running the Grand Canyon this coming weekend. Rim to Rim to Rim. From the North Rim to the South Rim and back up the North Rim. 45 miles of fun with 11000 ft of vertical to keep you honest! We are ready and we just cannot wait!!

Body Building and Biking

Lots of firsts this past weekend: Trisha and I went and watched our first body building competition and did our first 75 mile bike ride.

The bodybuilding competition was the Seven Feathers Classic at the Seven Feathers Casino in Canyonville, Oregon. Our friend Ronda was competing so we went down to give moral and verbal support. It was inspiring to see all the athletes dedication and commitment. I was also glad I had done my push-ups earlier in the day so I could at least pretend I had some muscle definition :-) . Ronda did great finishing 3rd in her height class. If you are interested in more details read her blog here.

After a short sleep, we hit the road again for the relatively short drive to Champoeg state park and the start of the Harvest Century rides. With James and Mary, we had signed up for the 75 mile route option. Trisha and I road on the tandem bike (thanks Scott!) with James and Mary riding solo.

The ride started kinda cold with even a few raindrops. Then just as the legs were loosening up and getting into the riding groove we hit a traffic jam: hundreds of bikes waiting in line to catch the Canby ferry across the Willamette River. Luckily the sun came out to warm us up as we ended up waiting almost one hour. The hill on the other side of the river really got the blood pumping and made everyone quickly look forward to the next aid station.

The route does a large loop around Chehalem mountain and pretty much goes right by Bull mountain and our house. Then on out to Forest Grove. We missed one turn on the way (none of us saw any marking) but I don't think it added or subtracted from the ride.

The next section was pretty grueling for us: lots of rolling hills and I suspect we rode a fair bit of the stage with a tire on the verge of going flat. Trisha noticed the tire was low at the aid station so we filled it back up. About 5 miles later it was flat. Checked the tire, changed the tube and set out again. 2 miles. Low again. Pump, ride, repeat. We got within one mile of the finish and were totally flat when Trisha jumped off the bike and ran in the last mile to fetch the car and end our day. She is a such awesome shape right now a little 1 mile run after 75 miles of biking hardly phases her :-)

The ride is at a nice time of the year with a reasonable price ($45), with weather that will generally cooperate. It is a scenic but challenging, rolling course. The lunch was tasty: chili, salad and baked potatoes washed down with apple cider...really quite good. Chocolate milk at the last aid station brought me back from the dead.
The route could be marked a little better, the aid stations were a bit sparse (there are only so many bagels and peanut butter you can consume to stay fueled), the refreshments were all gone at the finish when we arrived and something needs to be done about the bottleneck at the ferry.

Would we do the ride again? Yes. We are not sure how to beat the ferry problem but likely starting earlier would help. It would be interesting to hear how many people had to wait versus those who just basically pulled up and crossed.
Not sure I would do the ride in the rain. Staying warm would be quite a battle.

Now I can focus back on running and the next four weeks of hard training before I head back to Champoeg for my next race: the Autumn Leaves 50km on November 15th.

2008 Bridge Pedal

To celebrate being home from our 2 weeks of vacation in Canada (blog posts still to be written), we did the Providence Bridge Pedal this morning.

Trisha had signed us up for the 6 bridge Family ride for the nice price of $50. The kids were a little nervous about the distance but we knew that with their endurance from the track season, the ride would be no problem.

We moved at a consistent pace through the 14 miler weaving around downtown Portland to cover 6 bridges over the Willamette river. Starting at 9 am we hit the Hawthorne, Ross Island, Marquam (I5), Burnside, Broadway and the Fremont (I405) bridges.
It was really cool riding over the 2 interstate bridges. You really get the perspective of just how big and high these bridges are! And the ups and downs on the bridges are steeper than you might think.

The whole route was closed to car traffic making it very safe and generally we could move along at our own pace. At 3 locations we bottle necked with the number of riders...which was quite a number!! We always got moving again quickly and the rest breaks were good for the kids.

Great ride and next year we may have to try the 8 bridge route!

So much mountain biking...so little time

The last 3 Mondays we have done short track mountain bike racing. I do believe we are addicted!

Both this week and last week, unlike the first week we planned better and arrived about 1 hour early. This works out really well as we beat the traffic and had lots of time to preview the courses.

For Week 2, Trisha picked up her ClifBar door prizes she won from the previous week, the she went with Ronda and did a beginner skills tutorial. I went out with Alex, Cole and Leah on the main course. Both Cole and Leah had spectacular wipe-outs on some of the more technical downhills but I was bursting with pride as they picked themselves up and kept on ridin'. It was great how many of the riders called out encouragement to the kids. Cole did almost 2 complete loops.

The course for week2 was less technical but with longer loops. With our endurance from running we could really pick people off on the longer straight stretches....that is until we started having mechanicals :-(
Trisha's grip shift lost its grip :-) and my pannier frame "popped" a support beam the second time I slammed into a pot hole on the back side of the course. The loose support beam got in the way of my pedaling and eventually blew off. This left the metal cage sitting back on my rear tire and rubbed off my tail light. Slowed me down a bit for the last 1/4 loop :-)

I had hoped to place in the top 15 but I only made 19th. Still up from 22nd last week. Trisha was 16th, Ronda was 6th! Full results are here.

Then more riding out last Friday at the west Wilson River trail.
Ronda had planned for us to cover both the West and East sections of the trail but when we discovered our prowess (or lack thereof) of handling hills and switchbacks, we ended up only covering the west section. Over 2 hours of fun (faster to run it!) with enough crashes to prove we were learning :-)

We finished out the riding with week 3 of short track last Monday. I did the preview of the course with the kids and am happy to report no crashes this week. Trisha, Ronda and Kris raced (15th, 4th and 6th respectively) while I elected to sit out fearing injury with my race only 5 days away. I did duty as photographer while the chicks torn up the course!

Short Track Mountain Bike Racing

Our ever adventurous friends Ronda and Kris invited our family to hit a race that is part of the Portland Mountain Bike Short Track series. As promised it was fun and a great workout! The details about the series are here.

We showed up close to late due to traffic. Cole and Leah took part in the kids race. This race is really catered to children slightly younger than Cole and Leah as the track is really just a loop on some grass. Apparently this changes and may be more challenging depending on the week.
Next week we plan to arrive about 1 hour earlier (around 4:45) to get out and try the real course for both the kids and Trisha and I. Knowing the layout of the course before the race is a huge advantage: when to pass, when to start pushing for the next hill, what bumps you can really hit hard etc.

Both Trisha and I "raced" in the Beginners class. 10 bucks to enter. We got to the line after the real start so we headed out with the Juniors. Made for more people to pass and to pass us!
For the next 20 plus minutes we pedaled, grunted, sweated and tried not to crash cruising around the track. My legs felt great but my lower back and arms started to feel the strain. I really did not know the rules out on the course. I was tentative to pass, did not know if / how much I could run and when the pain would end :-) Next time I will be better prepared...at least mentally. I don't even really know how many laps I did...I think 3. The results should be up later in the week.
This video from the series site gives a good idea of what it is like, fun and scary:


We are planning to go back again next week so come out and join us.

Reach the Beach 2008: Team Tandem

For the third year in a row, Trisha and I tackled the 100 mile Reach the Beach bike ride on a tandem. It has become an annual tradition to ride with Mary and James and be our inaugural ride of the season.

Normally we do at least some training but it was literally our first real ride of the year. None of us had done the bike training we had hoped for but besides some issues with the heat everyone did really well. Trisha's line: "The hard parts were still there and tough but they seemed shorter than previous years." Yep, my girl just keeps getting stronger!

This year was by far the warmest with Oregon experiencing a heat wave. James' bike computer was reading 100 degrees on some parts of the ride including the heat coming off the road. We drove out the night before to drop off the cars and let the kids have some fun beach time with Grandpa and experience a rare time on the Oregon coast when it is warm and not windy.

The flat sections this year were devoid of the normal head wind which I think really helped us to have more strength in our legs for the last stretch of flat before hitting the beach to finish. The food at the aid stations was good with the watermelon at the Amity station my favorite. They do need to work on having better cookies :-) Supplemented with some great cold Cokes at mile 35 we were good to go.
We did have some nasty wind heading into the coastal pass but once we were in the forest it was much cooler and almost no wind and our traditional "discussions" about speed on some of the harder uphills

We did stop at all the aid stations ensuring to fuel and hydrate with an average bike speed of close to 16 miles per hour and around 6.5 hours of riding time. No flats as well...wahoo! Some sunburn in weird places but you live and learn :-) Speaking of weird...I saw Leif, an ultra runner, out on the course on a unicycle...ouch and crazy!
I am really happy with how my quads held up after a relatively hard week of 50 miles of running. Kickin' that training in for the PCT 50 miler!

We once again stayed at the Craftsman Bed and Breakfast in Pacific City with Mike and Laura as our excellent hosts. If you are in Pacific City, stay at their place.

An evening soaking in the hot tub with dinner at the Bistro catching up with new and old friends was how we ended a great day. Sunday morning was lazy with a light run and then a great Banana Foster French toast breakfast at the B&B and then the drive back to Portland. Some year maybe bike back?

I would highly recommend this ride for people wanting to try out a longer organized ride. There are several different distance options (110, 100, 80, 55, 26) and all have the glorious downhill at the coastal range through the Suislaw National Forest to be spit out on the coastal flats. No better biking than burning down a hill at almost 40 miles an hour through coastal rain forest following a beautiful river as it races down to the ocean :-)

Come join us next year! We have our hotel booked already :-)

Bicycle Built for Two: Reach the Beach 2007

Trisha and I had the good fortune to do the 100 mile Reach the Beach bike ride on Saturday.

The ride goes from near our house out to the coast at Pacific City, Oregon.
On Friday night we drove out with Grandpa and the kids to do a little playing and eating at the beach and drop the car off so that we would not have to ride back from reaching the beach :-) !

With Grandpa Swanson holding down the fort with Cole and Leah, we headed out Saturday morning from our house on Scott's tandem (thanks again for the lender Scott!!)

We met up with Mary, James and Jeff for the ride and pretty quickly got on our way.

The ride works its way south west out to coast. This year there was a pretty strong headwind for the entire ride. We also believe they snuck in a few more hills. We had no flats but the tandem refused to shift into the lowest gears so we got a great workout going up the hills!

We had lots of fun in our group and the constant eating on the ride...like an ultra without quite as much aerobic workout ;-) The easy way to do a 100!

The is great to end with a series downhills after cresting through the coastal range. The cruise down to the beach is very scenic and fast. You pass through the Suislaw national forest and race over numerous one-way bridges.

After about 6:15 of riding time we hit the finish line.
We then posed for the traditional Reach the Beach finish shot.

We ate some more food and then headed to the Bed and Breakfast and the hot tub.
If you ever want to stay in Pacific City, check out the Craftsman B&B...great location, food and hosts.