Rogaine for Men with Hair

So Yumay and I are organizing a Rogaine on June 9th, and last weekend, after having been out there once before and numerous hours studying maps and creating the course on paper, it was time to set up the monster portion of the race. Rogaine stands for Rugged Outdoor Group Activity Involving Navigation and Endurance... so much for the longest acronym known to men...

This one is different from the conventional 6/12/24h rogaine races... they are usually only on foot. Creating a bike and foot course took a lot of studying the possibilities of how to deal with people doing the 4h bike 4h foot vs the 6h foot race.... phew....

Havin Fun

Spring is here...

Someone tipped off the chipmunk (on top) and it knows all the CP locations now!!

Tamarack Springs Campsite

Anyhow, Yumay and I packed the car Friday night and started nice and early at 5am to get out there and get going.... and the going was tough. Every checkpoint has to be checked, double checked, measured with GPS, and then vetted (by Glen next weekend). So needless to say my plan of getting it all done (30cps) went out the door in a jiffy.... after roughly 10h of riding and running, and lots of breaks readjusting CP locations it was time to go to sleep at the beautiful Tamarack Sprints Campground. Its free camping at a gorgeous campsite, what wonderful place we live in! Saw probably about 30-40 deer and elk while up there too...

Killer Views

The next day we did a combination of ride/run/drive to get more done, and now the course is almost done! Still lots of work to do figuring out CP values and all that fun suff... but that s why I decided to do the race to begin with... lots of learing, lots of fun!

Sun, Fun on the Peninsula...

Wednesday night sometime past midnight, buried in emails from work and sponsorship, permit and course planning projects for 4th Dimension, Yumay and I decided we needed a break, and looking at our schedules we figured that would be sometime in mid-august, unless we left this weekend... so two very last minute but very determined emails to our bosses and the next morning we were getting ready for our three day weekend on the olympic peninsula. Woohoo! Havent been there but once, and just a drive by anyways, this time we wanted to do some good runs and rides... so off we were to Sequim after our regular MerGeo.com team ride on Thursdays at Tiger... we caught a late ferry and found a nice little motel.. and were not more than 20 minute drive away from one of the best mountain bike rides washington has to offer... Dungeness/Gold Creek... about 20 miles with 4500 feet of climb, this ride offeres some of the best singletrack there is.. and all that surprisingly dry... it was a great day of riding, about 5h of constant technical but not too technical riding, and top views of the olympic mountains.


First mountain flowers after a long winter...




Having fun!



River crossing balance...


The next day we were off to run the Lake Ozette triangle... after a beautiful drive along the north coast of the peninsula we got there, beautiful sunshine, just a little wet from the days before.. unfortunately 6 out of the 9 miles are running on wood planks, and about 1.5 miles into the run i slipped on a slighly slanted piece of wood that was as slippery as a banana peel, and fell, and hurt my ankle, AGAIN for the 2nd time this year. Not as bad as last time, but no running for a few days.. we still made it to the wild coast but with my swollen and tender ankle I decided to just stay out there and enjoy the weather and then hike back the way we came... so we skipped day three and went home... a bike ride on sunday will be better and still doable with a tender ankle.... two out of three aint that bad!





Saw Bambi along the way...


WoW!


Assessing ankle situation...




On the north coast...

The gloves are off...

Getting ready for a grueling 1000 mile race with 100'000 feet of elevation gain I am convinced I need to simulate the race a bit more to not get annihilated during the race.... so I need to do climb, lots of it.... and there is not really too much nearby... at least not uninterrupted 3000-5000 feet... hurricane ridge is the best on the bike at the moment, but one has to drive 2h and take a ferry.... mad lake and devils gulch are still snowed in... so I did L'alp d'Issaquah.... named after L'alp d'Huez its barely a homeopathic version of that in terms of total climb, but its 2.7 miles and 1400 feet of climb, not that bad for out here ey?

So I drove there and climbed it.. once, twice, (as riders looked at me, wait, did he not just... why?) four times plus once from the back side... got in just under 6'000 feet of climb by 10am, when I had another job to do... Eric was organizing one of his Northwest Trail Runs and I agreed to go pick up all the flags and markers from the half marathon course.... so it was another 13ish mile run with 4000 feet of elevation gain... great training doing 10'000 feet of gain that morning, something I need to do lots from now on... and we certainly have the hills to train on....

Photo by Murray Maitland, who did aid station...

The best commute in the world.....

I have the best commute in the world and I challenge anyone that reads this... its 22.2 miles of uninterrupted bicycling path going from Redmond over the noth end of the lake down to Seattle. Very few roads to cross (5-6) and only one major one with a red light... the trail is in excellent (Redmond) to good (Bothell, Seattle) condition, and I there is enough dirt/gravel shoulder for running as well. Over the years I have usually biked to/from work anywhere from 1-4 times a week, and recently to get ready for my Gigathlon I have started also inline skating and running... Roadbike takes me 1h-1h20, MTB 1h10-1h30, Inline 1h45-2h, and running about 3h30... a little on the long side for a morning commute but when I make it out of bed at 4.30 (like today) I can make it... and running almost a marathon before work gives you a good sense of achievement (as well as seriously tired/achy legs throughout the day).... a picture of the Burke Gilman Trail below:

While the trail is completely flat there is also plenty of opportunities to veer off and add some distance and serious hills (Puget Power, Tolt Pipeline, Swedish Hill, etc)..... a blessing of a commute I am very very greatful for!

BEAST #1 in the Bag

Another Season of BEAST has started... what a relief that it all went well. When Eric called me up over three years ago and told me he wanted to start a midweek adventure race series I thought he d gone a little mad... and sometimes I love to be wrong....

BEAST started three years ago with 42 racers (only 20 preregistered...), many good weather races and phantastic race courses (Eric makes a map for every race, does not just use USGS maps, and updates every orienteering map to perfection), the race numbers shot up to about 80-100 racers, where its been pretty steady... the UW race (#3 of the year traditionally) gets more racers due to the easy central location, the paddling (canoeing in rented standardized boats at the UW activity center) and the fact that it requires roadbikes, not mountain bikes... a little easier for beginners.

This first race was in Redmond and it all started when I did a BBTC ride with Ruri and AV a long time ago and found that there were dozens of really cool singletrack trails right behind my house... over a year I explored more and then the idea was born using these for a BEAST...

Great times, lots of racers, meeting everyone again after the offseason, and an epic battle of many lead teams finiding Manny's pulling ahead by less than a minute ahead of my buddies Jeff Woerner and Ryan Fleming and winning it! Great Job Marty, Kara, Chip and Mark (even after dry heaving several times!). My wife Yumay who religiously does the BEAST races brought out two microsoft newbies and together with Clint Arney they got 5th overall, of 38 teams, and she had a blast and thought the race course was epic....

Not many pictures as my camera died about 5 seconds before race start....

Aaron and Carol busy checking everyone in....

Prerace meeting... prerace anticipation

Checking maps and listening to eric.... just a few seconds to go...!

A very MerGeo Weekend....

This past weekend it was time to get together with the Team (MerGeo.com). Unfortunately people were injured (Eric, Aaron), on vacation (Julie, Ruri) and busy.. so only five showed up to our first team ride at Black Diamond. The new map and the extra trails were totally worth the trip down there, and Matt, Peteris, Kim, Yumay and I rode and ran the trails for about 4h until we met up with Aaron Vanderwaal (who's leg is almost healed and did his first road ride since his horrible crash in november!) to talk about the Team's schedule. While sitting there and talking, we had the TV running and all of a sudden saw a familiar face.... it was Marty Couret from Team Manny's who got into a national TV commercial talking about the new Aleve Gelcaps, a stint he got during participating at our 4th Dimension Winter AR!! How cool is that!

Getting Ready to head out...

Roger and Matt on the Trail

Sunday I did my new favorite Sunday workout, get up at 5, start riding at 5.30, bike to and up and over Cougar Mountain twice, and then out to Red Town Trailhead for a Seattle Running Company Sunday Trailrun at 7.30am, and after a 10Mile run head back home.... at the trailhead I met Vin and my teammate Matt Hayes and we booked it, 10Miles/2000ft el.gain in 1h43, not bad for already having done 35k/3000ft gain on the bike.... just for the heck of it we rode across Cougar Mt. Top one last time and then around the lake.... I was holding on for dear life (hence no pictures) tugged close behind matt who was riding an average of 23MPH around the lake... did not even look like he was breaking a sweat!
After I got home and inline skated for 30 minutes I knew I was done for the day and ready to input some serious loads of sushi!! After the shower walking down the stairs my legs hurt like after a 6-12h adventure race... that s the kind of training that is key, but usually when I am training by myself I just wont push that hard.... thank god for teammates!

Sleepless in Seattle

The title reflects more the memory of how it constantly rained during the "Sleepless in Seattle" movie, not that I have been particularly strong (3-5h/night) in the sleep division either...
I love the northwest... I want grow old here, and I am happy that whimpy Californians and Floridarians move back to where they came from when they cannot deal with the cold and wet... but every once in a while I break down too and feel a little whiny myself, and wish back the time when I lived in Berkeley... in 6 months it rained 3 times there... for a combined 5h....

March has been bad, bad, bad... and somehow the only good days we had were midweek days, so every saturday, like clockwork its the same weather....


Yup, that one...

Training has been going really well considering that I am about three months away from the big race... still a lot of work especially on the bike and the swim, but I am getting there...
Today after a desperate overhaul on my bike by Performance, I rode 62 miles in the rain, this ride called "The son of the last dirt trail", its from Kissing the Trail, a great mountain bike guide from John Zilly. Boy it was cold and the trails were wet! I forgot my goretex booties at work and therefore could not feel much of my feet (except for a dull, cold pain) for the most part of the 5h ride.. except for in the shower when the skin and flesh started to warm up... that is one painful feeling like thousands of ants crawling around...

The ride encompasses Tolt Pipeline Trail, Puget Power Trail, Farrell McWither, Redmond Watershed, Told McDonald, Snoqualmie Valley Trail and East Lake Sammamish Trail and can be modified at will, but my version is about 100k with 3000ft of climb and its 60% fireroad, 30% singletrack and 10% road... not bad, when its DRY!! Spring is around the corner and I have got to say that its the most desperate I have ever been for warm/dry weather.. maybe due to not having taken time off through the winter since I ran HURT100...


Dirt deposits in the patented "Love Channel" on my MTB saddle... seriously, that is the official patented name...!! Behind the bike is my super fuel... powered by Clif!

Connecting the dots...

Things are slowly coming together on the Gigathlon race I am doing this summer... for those who dont know what the heck I am rambling about, its a 900 mile/105'00 feet elevation gain multisport event (swim, cycle, run, MTB, inline skate, each discipline every day)...
http://www.gigathlon.ch/
Too bad that they only have it in German or French but here is the course..

And the distances/el.gains..

Trainig has been going great, and I am swimming a ton theses days, so really the preparations are going as planned... to make it easier, I have been very lucky to get some major sponsors for my race, among them Clif Bar , who apart from making sure I will never go hungry also is providing major sets of race jerseys.....

K2 skates also just came through big and provided me with superb race and training skates, and Yumay some as well to be able to train together... Yumay has exceptional skate and swim skills... the two things I need badly, what a lucky coincidence...

The radical 100... after my first training the only thing left to worry about is how much it was going to hurt when I wipe out at 17-18 miles per hour....!

Fresh off the press I also am getting great support in the swimming category, where Blue Seventy is providing me with the Triathlon Wetsuit of the Year! The Blue Seventy Helix was used by Tyler Patterson in his amazing 55 mile swim (37h) last year, and Tyler is teaching me the ropes of how to swim fast and long...., its amazing the amount of support I am getting from everyone here in the northwest....

The helix... aint it pretty?... and fast!

Paddle Schmaddle

Aaron is doing a weird american move Roger does not get but smiles anyways...

After I made my mad decision to take part in a 900 mile, 105'000 foot elevation gain triathlon this summer, I stopped paddling, one of my favorite pasttimes last year... and been swimming like mad (well not really, like 3 times a week but that s a pretty mad thing for me, not particularly excited about the slowest sport in the world!). Anyhow, after the Cap Forest Ride yesterday I decided to meet up with AaronVdV who has made some nice recovery advances lately and is limping faster than ever.. and paddling faster than ever too.. ! So we went out to the Northwest Outdoor Center and paddled out to 520 and along the floating bridge to the other side and back... good being out there again, and planning the season with our new MerGeo.com captain!

MTB @ Cap Forest

Last weekend I rode at Capitol Forest with Glen, RVG, JVG, Aaron Rinn and his buddy Chad. Met up at Krispy Kreme in Tacoma the usual DART fashion, about 15-30 minutes late but in good spirits! Then headed down to Cap Forest. Originally planned on doing the Capitol Peak 50 mile running race course on the bike but our tight schedule, lateness, and some minor bike defects, plus the fact that there was massive snow on Capitol Peak, all slowed us down, but we still ended up getting in a good chunk of biking, about 26 miles and plenty of vertical, which is not hard to find out there!

Glen's car is in desperate need of hydration! Will nuun help? :)

Gotta first get to the trail!

Started off in dreary rainy weather and got to experience what Cap Forest is like in the winter.... WET! Had to cross a big stream and bike up 1500 feet to start with, so after a quick cold footbath the bodies got warm immediately... the ride was a sufferfest in the best of good-pain way... wet, difficult, lotsa climbing and difficult singletrack descending, and at the end a steep climb up to Capitol Peak, which we got about 2/3 up until we hit heavy snow....

Biking in the snow is fun... and difficult.

Boy was it wet!

DIRT, DART!

Yeah well the hardware suffered too...

No words necessary...

it was fun but difficult to ride in a foot of snow, and Glen needed to be back in the city so we called it a day... an awesome day with great bikers... what else would I want on a rainy day!

Raise the roof for Colinoooooooooba III

Colin celebrated his 46th birthday in style this past weekend.... with the 3rd annual Colinoba! This mix of streetscramble, adventure race and drink fest is a classic already now, and hordes of AR buddies participated, namely DART, missing link, Manny's, Trioba, Double Trouble, Dr. Strangelove, Robin, etc....


Colin with his very stylish flamingo theme glasses....


Superheroes on speed... missing DART


Prerace meeting....

The jist of it is find CP locations all over the city as you are running around with a digital camera and an empty big beer bottle, take lots of funky pictures according to rules and instructions, and drink at least three pints in three pubs/bars across the city (also specified)...... I could explain more but let me just make it easy and wrap it up for you... fun, awesome training, great friends.

RVG, JVG and Jerry won the thing, I raced with John, a coworker of Colin's from Boeing and we got 2nd, just seconds behind Jen and Rick Jerabek, but noone cared too much about the results, everyone was out there to have oodles of fun.... pictures courtesy of RVG....!

Adventure pure at Orcas Island 50k

This past Saturday I ran the Orcas Island 50k Fat @$$ run which as you can imagine from the name is on Orcas Island! Originally I wanted to run, then not because Franklin and Ats were coming to town, then yes again since Franklin absolutely wanted to do the run and heck that was even better. Not having been able to run much since the H.U.R.T 100, I expected little of the race and started off easy, which is how I usually do best. There were superb runners there, Bryan Morrison, Kyle Skaggs, Ralph Pooler, Brock Gavery, Glen Rogers, Van Phan, Scott McCoubrey, to just name a few, so I knew I needed to run my own race or else I would just blow myself out. The race was tailored to my strenghts, with 8000 feet of elevation gain there were not a lot of flat parts in the race. Four big hills were going to be climbed, including the top of Mt. Constitution. After 9 miles, where we returned once to the start/finish, I was in roughly 25th position, just warming up for hill #2. After that I powered up the powerline trail which was not so much a trail but a general rut in the ground that could be followed, and some sections were a plain scramble. There I passed Van, Scott, Brandon, and Murray among 4 more racers in just 10 minutes, feeling good about having taken it easy in the beginning, knowing there was still plenty of race left for me to finish well. Both highest peaks of the race were snow covered, and both times were the actually only time it rained, or with my luck snowed up above the snowline, so I experienced virtually try weather all day. Hill #3 was Mt. Constitution, and then after the 2nd aid station there was a whole lot of descending to do. I felt great at all times, powered only by clif shots, shot blocks, and hammer perpetuem, plus a few ecaps and nuun. I finished in 6h05 in 10th place, and felt really good about my race. Just 5 minutes behind Glen, bugger! Especially since Murray and I got lost for about 3-4 minues at mile 9 where we took a wrong turn and ended up down at the water.

Happy, tired, a wee bit wet....

4th Dimension Winter AR

Let me start off by saying that the first ever adventure race that Yumay and I organised together was awesome, as that is all that really matters! We had an interesting time leading up to the event, its not easy, that s for sure. The permits, course design on everchanging snow conditions, racers that change their mind if and with whom they ll race, and volunteer coordinations sure take it out of you even just getting there. Saturday morning (the race was Sunday) Ruri and I met at Hyak Lodge, where the race would eventually start less than 24h hours later, and had a mission to complete. To put out all the 21 checkpoint flags.. preferentially in the right location, as one does not want to mess with tired, angry adventure racers!
The whole thing started off pretty disasterous.... the batteries of the GPS died, due to extreme cold, and having to constantly carry them in my pockets to warm up was cumbersome.... then I found that one CP was slightly misplaced on the map... what to do? Replace in the field or on the map? After an hour of no major disasters my snowshoes broke apart?? WHAT!?! Seriously, just broke in two different places, and I did not even run very hard...
So after a quick stop at the lodge we went onwards, me with new snowshoes, to finish setting the course. It got better and better, and at the end I was almost having fun! The stress levels were certainly there... would the course be long enough, accurate enough, well percieved?

Pre-race rambling...

Got back to the lodge, a quick hot shower and from then on it was just a blur of events after events... racers started arriving, checking in, and before I knew it it was 12pm and I had to be up at 4am to get the volunteers started. The pre-race night was a success though, Bruce cooked some great meals as usual and raers mostly chatted and/or watched the adventure race DVDs I had borrowed.

Volunteers Kean Williams and Jessica Lundin in action

Morning of was hectic but went very well, Volunteers were in place thanks to Aaron and Matt who have a knack for being on the ball, and people like Vivian and many others that are so good at this volunteering thing... its amazing how much easier it is with good volunteers.

Race started just a minute late, and people were on their way! 29 teams (76 people) registered and 28 showed up since Tyler Patterson broke his hand two nights before, and the mad stampede of overly eager adventure racers barreling down the icy road from the Hyak Lodge was almost comic to watch. Once gone, I had a few minutes to relax before the madness of who which what continued.

Don Brooks slams back another one in the hopes of not having to do penalty laps

Overall it went really well though and DART won in a superior fashion before MOMAR. Not all teams made it, in fact several never even got to CP5 (out of 20) due to the sometimes a bit difficult navigation, but everyone was in very good spirits about it, after all finishing a hard course gives one a greater sense of satisfaction. The final part, a special event "biathlon" where people had to throw snowballs at coke cans and if they missed run/skate extra laps was very well received (except for the few poor ones that had to run all six laps... !).

Winning Team: DART-nuun

Team Snowblind, happy to be done...

Overall a total success, got us thirsty to do another one or two....

H.U.R.T Hurt!

Any race that is called HURT probably is trying to do a pun to pain.. HURT is no different...
H.U.R.T stands for Hawaiian Ultra Running Team 100 Miler.... auguably the toughest 100 miler in the US (not counting Barkley since you need to get "chosen" to race)... its a 100 miler with 99% singletrack, 24'000 feet of elevation gain and loss (the latter hurts more than the former) and very, very gnarly trails... washed out riverbeds, roots as far as your eyes can see..
So I decided to do it! CCC100 went well, and its up or out, always!

I cant necessarily say I had a lot of fun training for it this winter... doing double Mt. Si's in snow storms only mimic the drastic elevation changes not the weather there, and the rain, rain, constant rain throughout the winter got to me over time.. but I prepared for it well, and felt I was ready to roll.... in any event if it did not go well Yumay came along and we were going to go out to Kauaii to hang out for a week so the trip was already a success to start with. My buddy Matt Hart was there along with Krissy Moehl, having some other Washingtonians there was great, and my plan was to not run as fast as them as that would mean I am going too fast!


Steadily uphill.....

I started off rather fast-paced on the first of the five 20 mile loops, finding myself to be running with Krissy Moehl (who would eventually finish 2nd place overall!) and then even passed her and was about 20 minutes ahead of her after lap 1.... not the smartest thing to do knowing that she is a much stronger runner than me... oh well, I listened to my body who told me I was feeling phantastic....


Popping blisters, FUN!!

Second loop I started to slow down, naturally, and being passed by some people, not freaking out about it, I was running my own race, and actually was running by myself for about 80% of the fist 60 miles, when Yumay would jump in and pace me to the finish... Matt was done by then, runing the 100k version.


Mile 50... hot, hot, hot...

After mile 60 I found out I was in 5th place overall out of the about 100 people, NICE! I was feeling the constant heat over the day that started taking its toll, only feeling-wise though, speed wise I was still going really strong up the hills.... Yumay was with me and I felt like this was going to be one of my best races ever.... slip, slam, pop!
Slipped in the middle of the night, very sleepy, on a root, fell into the bamboo forest and sprained my ankle!!! Darn, so close... spend 2h trying to continue but I was down to a crawl and at mile 72 I had to pull out... fortunately I was past the 62mile mark so when that happens and one does not finish the 100 miler they automatically qualify for the 100k time... which I ended up 5th in and got a buckle as well.... no harm done, I ll do this race again in a few years... !!