2007 August | UltraRob's Adventures

Doing the Leadville 100 with One Leg

August 10th, 2007

Everyone has their reasons for doing Leadville. They want to be fast. They just want to get an official finish. Some to get a message out. Kenyan Ibrahim Wafula wants to send the message that disabled people can do tough things. He’s not just trying to finish in 12 hours to get an official finish. He’s trying to finish in under 10 hours. Let’s all wish him luck with that.

He has been riding and racing in Kenya with one leg. He recently got a brand new prosthetic leg. Earlier this year gwadzilla saw him and took some pictures and wrote about him.

There’s another one legged mountain bike racer, Brett Wolfe although I haven’t seen anything about him the last couple of years. According at an article I found, he’s had a kid and isn’t able to race as much. I have 2 and it certainly makes it hard to juggle everything.

In 1999 I was racing the 24 Hours of Moab solo. I passed Brett during one of the night laps just before what we call nose dive hill. The course drops really steep into a rocky gully and then it’s steep up the other size. It’s something I could ride but I feel the chance of crashing is fairly high during the middle of the night when I’m tired and can’t see as well.

I had gotten off and was walking down when Brett came flying down on his bike. He doesn’t use a prosthetic and just hops on one leg when he’s off the bike. It probably would have been hard to hop down. I was really curious to see how he’d get back up the other side. To get up out of the gully there are a couple rock ledges. I’d through my bike over one shoulder and use my other hand to help pull me up. Brett threw his bike up on the first ledge and then used it to pull himself up. He did the same for the next ledge. I was very impressed.

I did 11 laps. I actually could have gone out for a 12th lap because I finished my 11th lap just before noon. I couldn’t see how doing another lap would change my placing so I just waited a couple minutes to roll across the line right at noon. I finished 9th. Brett did 10 laps a and finished 14th out of 23 racers in the solo category. Very impressive!

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Tags: cycling, Leadville 100, mountain biking
Posted in Bike, Mountain Bike | No Comments »

Perfect Description of My Current Job

August 9th, 2007

It would be impossible to describe my current job situation better than this Dilbert cartoon. I’m not sure how but it has to change soon. My health and my family are too important to let it continue. If you wonder what I do for work, you can look at my LinkedIn profile.

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Technorati Tags: job | miscellaneous | stress

Tags: job, miscellaneous, stress
Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Is Lance Armstrong Doing the Leadville 100?

August 7th, 2007

Update: he didn’t race in 2007 but Lance Armstrong has entered for 2008.

A few weeks ago I posted the reasons it seemed that Lance Armstrong was still going to race the Leadville 100 this year. A Bicycling article the next day basically confirmed it. Since then a post on the LT100Bike group said that someone that had ridden with Lance at RAGBRAI had asked him about the Leadville 100. According to the poster, Lance said he wasn’t doing this year but he wants to race and win it next year.

Someone also posted a link to a VeloNews article. In it Mark Higgins, Armstrong’s spokesperson, was quoted saying that Lance still has a scheduling conflict and won’t be doing it this year. Joe Polk also posted today on MTBCast that he had talked to Ken Clouber this morning and Ken hasn’t heard anything from Lance. Ken did confirm that he has Floyd Landis’s race application

With him being here in town Thursday night, it really seemed like he was planning on racing. We’re only a 2 1/2 hour drive away. It’s possible he just doesn’t want people to know he’ll be there. That seems unlikely since there was a lot of publicity about him doing RAGBRAI and the New York Marathon. Ken should also have heard from him.

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Tags: cycling, Floyd Landis, Lance Armstrong, Leadville 100, mountain biking
Posted in Bike, Mountain Bike | No Comments »

Floyd Landis Sightings

August 6th, 2007

Picture from Why Howard Laughed

I’ve been hearing rumors that Floyd Landis has been in Vail training for the Leadville 100 mountain bike race this weekend. Biking Bis reported that Landis rode the Copper Triangle on Saturday. It’s a 78 mile road ride that goes over 3 passes and goes through both Vail and Leadville. Howard and the group he was with got pictures with him.

Someone posted to the LT100Bike group this morning that they had seen Landis yesterday above timberline on the Columbine climb. It seems like he’s taking Leadville seriously. He’ll need to have gotten a lot faster since Vail Teva Mountain games if he wants win. Dave Wiens was fast in May for the Kokopelli Trail Race and then endurance mountain bike specialist Nat Ross is also on the Leadville entrant list.

With Landis being at the Leadville 100, my friend says he’s going to dress up like the devil at the Tour de France complete with a pitch fork. He’ll be on some of the climbs and run along racers. He thinks I should dress like a chicken. I haven’t found a chicken outfit though. Maybe it’s because I haven’t looked.

Chicken outfit or not, my current plan is to go up and spectate. The last 6 years I’ve either raced or crewed so it would be fun to be able to get around on the course and see more of the race. I haven’t been up to Leadville yet this year and we own an old mining claim a few miles out of town that I should check on.

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Tags: cycling, Floyd Landis, Leadville 100, mountain biking
Posted in Bike | 5 Comments »

State Games of America Road Race

August 5th, 2007

Saturday I was at the Air Force Academy stadium about daylight to help out with registration for the State Games of America road race. The fields were small which wasn’t too surprising since it was sanctioned by USA Cycling and almost all road races in Colorado are sanctioned by the American Cycling Association.

The Federal Center Classic which was an ACA race was the same day in Denver. As an ACA club, Pikes Peak Velo wasn’t allowed to do any advertising.

Since a lot of road racers don’t even have a USA Cycling license, I think well over half the racers had to buy a one-day license. Even with the small fields there was some good racing on a great course.

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Tags: Colorado Springs, cycling, State Games of America
Posted in Bike, Road Bike | 1 Comment »

Telltale Signs That Cycling Has Taken Over Your Life

August 2nd, 2007

I was reading my June issue of TailWinds from the Perimeter Bicycling Association and found how to tell if cycling has taken over your life. It was originally posted on the Metal Cowboy Mayhem blog.

Actually less than half of the list is true for me even when I’m training hard. I’m sure my family and co-workers could come up with a list at least as long to prove that I’m addicted to cycling. When I worked at Agilent, there was a guy that always said I rode my bike distances that he would only consider doing in a car. Now he also works at Fluke Networks and says that I ride distances that he would only consider doing in an airplane.

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Technorati Tags: cycling | mountain biking

Tags: cycling, mountain biking
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I’ve Been Tagged

August 1st, 2007

View of Red Rock Canyon Open Space from my parents’ house. When I was growing up, the grassy area on the left was a landfill.

I’ve been tagged by Fritz at Cyclelicious to tell five random facts about myself. I was also tagged in December by Biking Bis but never got a post written.

When I was 6 months old, my mom put me in the top bunk of my brothers’ bunk beds so I could watch my siblings play. My Dad had put a board across to keep my brother from falling out so she thought I’d be safe. My brother climbed up with me and his weight pushed the mattress down enough that I slipped under the board. I fell head first onto the concrete floor. My Mom saw it happened from across the room but there was nothing she could do. At the ER they couldn’t find any signs of a concussion but a x-ray showed I had fractured my skull. I was kept in the hospital overnight and sent home.

I’ve lived in 4 houses in my 36 years. I was only 2 when my parents moved to where they still live so I don’t remember the first one

I’ve been in 49 states. Guess which one I haven’t been to.

I did an unsupported solo ride of 140 miles when I was 16. It was part of a bigger trip. I rode about 130 miles to part way up Independence Pass. I met the rest of my family and we camped for 2 nights. Then I rode on over to Aspen and up to the Maroon Bells. My brother and I then climbed the Maroon Bells. We also did an overnight trip to do Pyramid Peak and 3 high thirteeners on the ridge to the south of it.
The day after finishing the mountain climbing, I tried riding home. I ended up running out of daylight. I was a little less than 30 miles from home with 23 miles of downhill and a drop of 3,000 feet. I was bummed I didn’t get to ride the easy part. I had thought my tires felt really low but I kept pumping them up to 100 psi. A few days later, I figured out my presta valves were stuck and I only had about 40 psi. That’s when I learned to always depress the valve before pumping.

I didn’t get my drivers license until I was 18. I could get everywhere I wanted to on my bike. When I was 18, I was working for a stucco company and my boss was happy I couldn’t drive the trucks out to the job sites so I got my license. My first year and a half of college, I rode 10 miles each way from my parents’ house. I never missed class because of weather. Not even when it snowed 8 inches or when it was -10 degrees. Now I’m dependent on driving and don’t commute by bike nearly enough.

Now it’s my turn to tag 5 other bloggers. I know this meme made the rounds the end of last year on several blogs I read. I don’t remember which ones and I’d rather ride my bike than spend time figuring out which ones. If you’ve been tagged before, I’m sorry to tag you again.