I feel awesome, better than I have in over 2 years. Not so much super endurance awesome, but powerful and more in control of my fitness and diet than I’ve been since my peak fitness. I’ve lost 5 lbs in the last 9 days (including 2 Halloween parties) and I feel as if I can lose 5 lbs this week too. My weight has drifted to a 4 year high and I’ve been struggling with it, but it finally feels like my ideal weight and top form are within reach.

The bad news is most of my working out has been out the back door so not a lot worthy of posting on Ogrehut. The possibility of a pump track for the backyard is very high right now, a tractor is on my list of ‘must buy’ things and if (when?) I get it the pump track will be one of the first things I build.

I don’t think I’ll ever get back into long endurance riding, not that I don’t feel capable, but the more I’ve looked into it the more it seems long endurance type events are ultimately destructive to the body. Longish rides are possible but 24 hour racing seems unlikely unless it’s on a four man team.

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Been busy visiting my new grandbaby! More pics at Picasa.

I managed to get a little riding in also and I’ll post a ride review and some details on it a little later.

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This weeks ride was Bear Valley. If you’ve never been to Bear Valley you have missed out on some amazing trails. About an hour 45 minutes east of Stockton on Highway 4 it’s a great destination for cyclists. The 50+ mile trail system there is 100% legal and abot 80% singletrack with some fun jeep roads added for flavor.

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Ok, seriously behind on blogging about riding. Mostly because I’m seriously behind on riding. To remedy this I’m going to try and do a sprint and blog at least once a week for the next month. This means I have to ride once a week which is more than I have been :( So it accomplishes two things.

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Changing to a new webhost. This is a temporary domain but I’ll move all the URLs here soon. All the old links should redirect here but will shortly revert to the original ogrehut.com domain.

The Contact Form works again also so let me know if there are any problems.

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Two big trips over the last few weeks. I took Vivian back to Ohio where she wants to try and make a go at independence with some help from Fiona’s family… 3 days of solid driving through fog and snow then a couple days of rest and Christmas Day flying home. Didn’t get any riding in but I did meet some of Fiona’s family and got to spend a day playing on a 4 wheeler in the snow!

Second trip, right after Christmas was a bit of house shopping. We’re seriously looking at getting a place in Oregon. Haven’t quite knocked out all the details but we’re trying to get as much cash together as we can to make a go at it. For now it’s likely to be a summer home or maybe even just a summer campsite ;) I did manage to get a nice ride in with Fiona on the Eugene bike trails which are very nice, comparable to the ones in Redding or Sacramento. Eugene is apparently a very bike friendly town which is quite encouraging. Finally on the last day up there I managed to wing a ride with the Disciples of Dirt and Randy from MBO on Larrison Creek trail. The weather report said rain most of the day but we were almost completely rain free. Overall a great trip, hopefully we’ll be able to get a bid in on one of the properties shortly.

My struggle with post recovery weight gain continues, I’m still about 15 pounds heavier than prior to my injury in June. All the travel and Christmas sort of bumped me back a bit but I’ve been riding more since getting back and while far from perfect my eating has been better. Hopefully come spring things will pick up.

My winter ride tip for everyone: If you can’t go where you want to ride, ride where you are.

I haven’t been able to get out much to ride so I’ve been doing a lot of local riding from the house. My suggestion is simple, find local close in routes you can hit on a moments notice. When you get bored jump on the bike.

Posted in Mountain Biking | 2 Comments »

Having crashes while mountain biking is considered normal. You come to expect road rash, cuts, and scratches. Broken bones are not common, thankfully.

Usually Ogre only enters a couple races a year at the most.  His primary race is the Coolest 24 hour race.  It’s a cancer fundraiser held on a trail system fairly close to home.  The promoter of this race puts on several others and  offered an entry in the Boggs 24 hour.  Ogre chose to enter in the solo 24 hour category, a first for him, having raced in the past on teams.  I would be the team support, making sure he ate, slept, hydrated at the base camp.  He would suffer through the riding.  His plan was to ride like an adventure racer, push himself, but not over-do-it and to take breaks to recover as needed.  I was more concerned that he maintain his eating regiment as this had been a problem in past races. Read the rest of this entry »

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Ok, seems like every year it gets harder and harder to ride in the winter time. This winter seems a little colder and wetter early on than the past few. This is generally good news around here since we’ve had a few dry seasons, but it does make it a little tougher to ride. I used to be pretty gung ho about winter riding.  The last couple years the idea of riding in the rain and cold has lost it’s appeal. To make things worse, after avoiding the scale for a couple months I finally weighed myself and discovered I’m at a 2 year high.

So the problem is, how do you get back in shape when you aren’t motivated to get out and ride. My solution has been twofold, short high intensity exercise and radical diet change. Read the rest of this entry »

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