The Newest Schlafly Team Member!

She will have to wait 20 years 364 days until she can enjoy the sweet, yummy Schlafly goodness! Legally...
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MS 150

This years MS 150 was a blast. Schlafly had 4 members attending the event and we had a good time. All four of us traveled to Columbia on Fri. evening, set up camp, and went out to eat. It was a little dead Fri night and we needed to rest so we called it an early night and climbed into are tents. There is normally plenty of room in my tent for plenty of people, but for some reason brad decided to put all of are bikes inside the tent and cramp are living quarters. It worked out great though because Lindsey and I were on one side and Jay and Brad shared a twin mattress on the other side of the bikes. Lindsey and I never heard any commotion through are "bike" wall, but you could feel the love in the air..... if I may say. Anyway we all awoke in the morning and started with a pancake breakfast and off we went. All 4 of us had decided that day before to tackle the 100 mile route and so we did. It was a beautiful day for it and the first century for 3 of are riders. I think that a couple of us could have gone further because they decided to SPRINT the last mile. O.K. it was like 300 yards but the intentions were there. We hung out in the company tent area for awhile as we refueled with some schlafly beer that was donated to the whole foods group. They are all a bunch of tree huggin, stick eatin, hippies..... but they are cool. My cousin just had to be one of them. We packed up are tent and headed to are hotel for a good nights rest and a hot shower around dark and you could tell that we were all about dead. The morning came to fast and before you knew it we were back at the fairgrounds unloading are bikes for day 2. Jay had a very important " YOU BETTER NOT BE LATE OR I WILL KILL YOU" appointment to make, so he only did the 40 mile route. Lindsey choose the 75 mile route and took it easy as Brad and myself brought on the pain with another 100 mile day. Brad did awesome all day long, for the day before was his first ever century, not to mention that his longest ride prior was 75 miles or so. So to be able to go back to back centuries was a great accomplishment. I had eaten something at lunch around are 70 mile marker and somehow got a boost of energy, so without warning, I climbed a hill and forgot to wait for Brad. Alright I didn't forget, but I really wanted to go and see what I could do the last 30 miles. If it was anyone else, I don't think that I could have gotten away with it, but he is such a nice guy, that I knew he wouldn't yell at me!! I cranked them out as fast as I could push and ended up averaging 19.4 mph at the end of day 2. That was my personal best compared to my previous 18.9 from the day before and a prior century this year and 1.5 mph gain from the last years Ms 150. So needless to say I was very happy with the outcome and can't wait to do it next year. I guess that we have to clear it with Schlafly first, but next year we are going to reserve a spot for a corporate tent and Its going to be awesome. It is a year away but you can never start planning to early. We need a good showing of volunteers and riders to man are tent and show are pride for are sponsor so any ideas will be accepted. For are first year there in 2010 we need to be the best! Jay, Brad, Lindsey, and myself saw what other tents have to offer and we know that the Schlafly tent will be the place to be!!

ICCC Castlewood MTB Race

Finally, my kind of race! After what seems like a lot of racing on non-technical single track this summer, I had the opportunity to repeat a good showing of 2nd place at last month's Castlewood Challenge with another race in the style I prefer. That means climbing, rocks & roots, and some flowy singletrack for rest thrown in for good measure. My concern with racing the Blue Ribbon trail is that I rarely trek back there on my occasional Castlewood visits because you technically have to "trespass" through some highly eroded trail owned by the railroad to access it these days. Because of that, the race was staged from a trail about 10 minutes or so away from the park. Parking was a bit of an issue, but I shared a ride & Rich & the gang even had trucks to haul your stuff to the staging area from the remote parking that was available. After registering, Tom and I explored the flats for a bit to see what that was like. Interesting terrain - not really all that flat, but fast & flowy with some berms, short, steep hills & turns to keep you honest. I knew what awaited after the tunnel from my pre-ride a few weeks back - some nice hill climbing and more technical than the previous few races have been for sure. My pre-ride had not been very clean, so I was a little concerned. After I headed back to the start, I saw my youthful competitors, Ashley & Gabrielle, along with Celeste, a rider who is thankfully older than me, so chatted with them for a bit. Gabrielle had hurt herself on one of the downhill drops last week, so she was concerned as well. Ashley is with the KC gang, and as we were chatting, the KC guys road up to tell Ashley that after the tunnels, things were dicey. I assured her it wasn't that bad, but I could see the doubt. Ashley is the points leader in women's sport & has the top spot locked up for the points series, but she likes to win and is a super nice, but tenacious, competitor. When race line-up was called, I felt unusually calm considering the level of difficulty for this race. My thought was just to go out hard & ride my best & show the the out of town girls, Ashley & Celeste, what home-field advantage is all about. And much to my surprise, I was quickly out in front & stayed there. Gabrielle was right behind me through the start, but when we reached the hills, I expanded my lead. But...on the "flats" Gabrielle was able to get right on my tail again. I had one mechanical on the first lap that slowed me a bit - lost my chain once, but didn't let that affect me mentally & just fixed it & forgot it. First lap down, I was in the lead by a slim 3 seconds. Now, I figured out something. I race so much better in the lead than trying to play catch up! This was my kind of race, but dang-it, I was pretty sure I could not sustain the pace for 3 laps, and I knew that there were way too many flats that Gabrielle could catch me on, so I had to push myself. Second lap was the same story as the first - could pull away on the tough stuff, but Gabrielle was right on me on the flats. Had one issue on the 2nd lap - big stick got caught in my spokes & rode the first big hill hearing the sound of that stick rattling my spokes the whole way. I wanted to wait until the mandatory dismount on a sketchy section that was required by the park, so was glad to make it all the way there without that stupid stick giving me too much trouble. Crossed the line with a 4 second lead on lap 2. Now. Get this. I'm breathing hard for over an hour & those hills were long & I had worked a double shift on Friday and teaching a ding-dang group strength class in the mix, so the 3rd lap was worrying me with my sore legs and fatigue from work on Friday. Gabrielle and I jockeyed back & forth briefly, but when we hit the hills, she had to dismount & I made it up to the top. However, I know I had slowed down on this lap a bit more because I was noticing things I had not on the first two laps, like a bridge that we had to cross. I could not remember crossing a bridge & thought briefly I was lost, but kept on going and just figured I was too much in the zone on the other laps to notice. I lost my chain again on the third lap, and that was what allowed Gabrielle to catch me. She was right on my tail again & finally passed my on the flats before the finish. She was just ahead of me when we crossed the finish line. I definitely made Gabrielle suffer for that win - she put it all out there on the line. I could not push the sprint through the last grassy section and I lost by 8 seconds. My plan worked in that the home girls took it to the out of towners. We smoked them, but I lost the best race of my life. No mechanicals would have made the difference, but my attitude was excellent and I beat the mental demons of letting little things like chains and sticks bother you during a race. It was awesome!

MS150 day - Century day for all!

100 miles in the book for 4 of the Schlafly members at the MS150!!!!!!! Ouur jerseys were a huge success, probably could have sold at least 15 or so. More details and pics to follow, to damn tired to write tonight. Sleep then more riding in the morning.

Leadville Colorado

Nathan and I left for Leadville Colorado on Tuesday September 1st and arrived Wednesday morning around 6:15 am St. Louis time. We ended up taking a nice little nap and decided to start our trip by taking a nice ride on the Mineral Belt Trail. We took our road bikes for a nice 12.71-mile ride. Nathan seemed to do very well with the elevation, but me on the other hand not so much. I was dying! The view was awesome. We saw quite a few old mines and some mines that are still in use today. On September 3rd, we took our Mountain Bikes to Twin Lakes. Remember this is my third time actually mountain biking. We started the ride on the wrong route. The directions that they have aren’t the greatest. So we head down this “faint single track trail” that we were looking for and well lets just say it was not a single-track trail. It was a loose gravel road and that’s where Nathan had his first “fall”. So after riding a little further we decided that we didn’t think this was the right trail we were looking for. So we turned around and headed back to the road. We found another single-track trail hoping this was the one that they meant. In the end it wasn’t but managed to meet up with the one we needed and were able to start following the directions that we received. We followed the non-wooded single-track trail halfway around the lake. It was nice for me to try and get used to. We finally hit some wooded trails and I actually enjoyed mountain biking!! There were a few big hills that did me in, but I never had to get off my bike! The view was unbelievable! We came to this old village called Inter-Laken. They are trying to redo this little village so people can use it for Weddings or actually stay overnight in this house they are fixing up. While we were taking alittle rest at this village we could see some storm clouds filling in! So we decided to get going. There were a few creeks for us to go through. One or two of them were a little deeper than we thought! Once we went through these creeks we hit the more “technical” part of the ride. We weren’t sure what they meant by “technical” but boy oh boy did they mean TECHNICAL! I of course had lots of trouble. I think I ended up walking my back the last 4 of the 5 miles that we had left. I did end up hitting a rock making my front tire basically stop, which then caused me to go over my handlebars. Since I wasn’t clipped in I didn’t really fall on my face. I was able to catch myself. I did get a little bruise on my thigh and the pedal did jab my knee giving myself a little scrap. My bike on the other hand tumbled down the hill. When I got to my bike, I started to get on it and realized that my brakes were facing towards me. I walked my bike over to Nathan telling him that we had a HUGE issue! I was thinking that I was going to have to walk the whole way back (which in the end I did because it was so difficult.) He looked at me and took my bike and was like what happened. Then he took my bike and turned my handlebars 180 degrees. Yea I looked like an idiot! Sure gave us something to laugh about especially since Nathan wasn’t having such a great time with his bike either. He ended up with a lot more scrapes and bruises than I did. Let’s just say he was not a happy camper! In the end we had no more pictures of this ride. I am sure Nathan will tell you all about it!

On Friday we decided to climb Mount Elbert. Mount Elbert has an elevation of 14,433 feet. We started our hike around 7:15 AM. It took us 4 hours to make it to the summit. We met quite a few people on our way up and met some wildlife that followed us to the tree lines. I will post some pictures of our bird friends. We stayed up on the summit for about 30 minutes. About 200 yards from the summit we started seeing some storm clouds start to delvelop. They say that when you see clouds forming turn around and head back down the mountain. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!! We are 200 yards from the top. So Nathan and I finished the hike up there. Boy I was beat when we finally got up there. But it was beautiful. I don't think our pictures gives it justice. Just so beautiful. Those storm clouds ended up giving us some lovely snow at the top of the mountain. CRAZY! Considering we started off in jeans and a long sleeved shirt. We didn't really pack accordingly for snow so I was freezing! Then on our way back down from the summit we heard some thunder!!! YIKES! Good thing we were on our way down. At about the time we got to the tree line it started raining on us. It ended up taking us half the time to get down the mountain then it did to get up. So we ended up being gone for about 6.5 hours and walked 9.5 miles! What a huge accomplishment HIKING UP MOUNT ELBERT!!!!

Then on Saturday we rode about 15 miles in Salida on our mountain bikes. Let's just say Lindsey's legs could not function. So that bike ride pretty much sucked for me. Overall we had a wonderful trip to Leadville. Maybe next year some of the Schlafley team members will come with us!

NEXT STOP COLUMBIA!!!! MS15O HERE WE COME!!!!

40 Down!!!!!!!!!!!!

The last time that I posted on the blog, I had just set a new personal best of 31 miles. Well since that time I have broken that personal best 3 times. I took it from 31 miles to 32.5 miles, then to 33.5 miles. Well I was growing tired of just jumping up by a mile at a time. So I decided that I was going to do 40 miles even if it killed me! So I set out from my parents house in Lake St. Louis, and planned on riding down towards New Melle. I had ridden there one other time with Jeff, and I really liked the route. It was probably the warmest day that we had in the last 2 weeks. I thought that I had enough water on board, but I would find out 32 miles in that I was one bottle short. At that point I was 8 miles from home, when my legs started to cramp! I had two choices at that time. I could have called my wife and had her come pick me up. Or I could try to stretch it out and keep going. I picked option two, I was not going to give up!! So I stretched my legs for about 5min, and got back on my bike and started heading for home. I went about another 2 miles, and my leg started to cramp again. So I got off and stretch some more, and hopped on and continued on my way. Most of the rest of the trip was downhill, except for a few minor hills. About 1.5 miles away from home there was the first of two small hills that I had to climb to make it back to my parents. When I got about 3/4 of the way up that little hill, my left leg cramped up so bad that it would not move. I was at least able to make it up the hill to a parking lot were I got off and rested for about 10 minutes. I was not going to give up, so I stretched like crazy, and was able to get it worked out. I only had 1.5 miles left so I jumped on and was determined to make it home even if I had to stop 20 more times. The only other stop I had to make was a red light. I had made it home! The rest of the day I spent drinking water and stretching my legs. I must admit though that night I had several celebratory Summer Lagers! There is nothing better then a nice cold Schlafly after you accomplish a goal!!

Tour of Missouri pics. and Ms 150 weekend

Team ASTANA

It is almost here now. The MS 150 in columbia MO. Great ride and I hope that the weather will stay nice. This will be Brad and Jay's first century, possibley back to back centuries. I think that Lindsey is also going to try one of the days, so lets cheer her on. Its a great time and hopefully the weather stays nice for us. I went down to the Tour of Missouri on Mon for the circui race. Very cool. Everyone should try to make it to a stage to show your support, or they may not come back. There was a large crowd downtown and it seemed like every turn of the course was packed with people. Well wish myself, Lindsey, Jay, and Brad good luck and weather this weekend. Also good luck to Mary in her MTB race!

Tour of Missouri!!!

Big George Hincapie in the Red, White, & Blue kit. Mark Cavendish is right behind him in the Yellow Jersey!

Team Columbia chasing down the break. The break was 4min ahead at this time. Columbia rider Mark Cavendish won the stage! Columbia chased down the break and ate them for dinner!!

The Peloton going through the King of The Mountain! The sign would look better with Schlafly instead of Michelob Ultra!

Levi Leipheimer climbing a hill. He would look great in Schlafly blue.

Sure was alot of fun to watch!!!!