Destroyed Shoulder….

Well as many know already (and its actually quite amazing how fast everyone heard about this) I had a really bad crash this last Sunday! I was up doing Cecil Linders race up at Paris Mountain on Sunday and the race was pretty well packed! The track was actually quite fun with tight little tree sections and small tight rock sections with a few good pedaling parts out of corners…. was fun!

My first run was good and I had a very good time putting me in first place with a 1:49.
My second run was mainly for fun but of course I’m always looking to get an even faster time and I believe I was on my way to at least a 1:46 until my rear end swapped out from something and within a blink of an eye I had plowed my shoulder into a large tree going about 30mph…. I’m sure the tree was like… ” What was that…???” as its top branches may have moved less than an inch…

To give you a good idea of how bad it was I was in a flat out sprint in my 4th gear and stopped dead on my shoulder and where I lay on the ground my feet were up on the same tree.
I knew I was pretty buggered as I couldn’t breath and my whole shoulder was completely numb and I was still trying to figure out what had just happened? I lay down on the ground for about 10 minutes. The pain was probably the worst I have had to endure…

Amazingly after 3 hours in the hospital I found that I had a Seperated AC… which is pretty bad but it could have been worst!… the best part of the day is that I still had won the race!… Thanks to everyone who helped me up… I should be fine I think mainly just all my muscles are sore so I should be fine!

Cheers

Canoe Trip 2008

Whiteface 5K was over… I quickly rushed back home to Danbury to pick my stuff up and headed out for my Birthday Holiday!.. I was going on a 5 day Canoe trip up in North Minnesota with my Uncle and Cousin!!

We arrived in Minneapolis on Monday morning and stayed the night in the Hotel in Ely where we prepped all our gear for the next 5 days in the wilderness!… I was pretty well prepared as I have been ready for about 2 weeks since I knew I was going! We got up early in the morning and ate a great breakfast and then we headed out to the lake where we luanched off!.. The weather for that day was a Cold front was coming through so we knew that it was going to be raining and many times that day we got stuck in the middle of these big lakes with pouring rain… But, we were having such a blast!! we ended up the day finding a small campsite that was hidden enough from the storm. We ended up eating ham and cheese sandwiches for Dinner as it was just way to cold and windy to cook anything out there. I think that night from all the padaling we had done from the day and being so cold and wet I went to bed at 5PM and was out till 7AM the next morning.
Day 2 of our trip was much better… with it still being a little windy and cold I put on my long pants and long sleeve shirt which was about the warmest gear I had!! I don’t think I took off those clothes for the entire trip…hahaha.. nasty.
We saw a bear on the banks of one the lakes which was really cool!.. it was a nice easy day as we had the wind behind us so we made our 2nd campsite in record timing and so I got to fish in the afternoon with my new travel fly rod!!… which by the way is so nice… I used to be a big fly fisher before I started riding bicycles for anyone who didn’t know that!.. I caught that day 3 small mouth Bass which we ate for dinner!

Day 3 of our trip I woke up really early and it was freezing!!!… I went out in the canoe and went for a little more fishing and caught another 4 fish!.. I let them go because I didn’t feel like gutting them and cooking them… We had such a nice day!! Our campsite was so nice it had almost a veranda.. it looked like a good honeymoon spot… we had a good day with a bit more of Portages… which were pretty brutal as we had to carry between 4 of us 2 canoes, 4 large 80-90lb gear bags, padals, clothing bags…. we eventully had it down to an art in the end but took a while to get used to it!.

Day 4 was our longest day by far.. we ended up doing 15miles and 16 portages! we were so beat by the end…. I think I may have damaged my shoulder that day. The Weather though was the best it had been all week… no wind and super nice sunny weather… we got some fantastic pictures that I will get up soon..
We ended the day in our second to last lake and we all went fishing after we set up camp… My cousin was so funny… he had the bass rod out and was catching all these tiny small mouth bass that we had to throw back.. I was catching pretty much the same. We had found this great spot and was perfect for fish. It was set back off the main lake and was filled with small bass… anyways we were sitting there not catching much and all of a sudden my Cousin starts freaking out saying” I just saw a huge Pike!”… as he said that it took his lure and with a burst of energy it snapped his line… his face was priceless!

Our last day was a pretty short one as we only had about 4 hours to get to the end of the last big lake. My uncle had thrown out his rod in hopes to catch something good..he wasnt catching much either but small bass… as we were crossing the large lake he hooked into another bass. I could see that when it jumped it was small and in wasn’t fighting very much… all of a sudden it started giving a better fight… I thought” hmm must be bigger than I thought!”… anyways this fish was giving a pretty good fight and it took us about 10 minute to bring it in… all of a sudden as it got closer we realized it was a small bass… but there was a 36″ Pike chowing at it and was not letting go!! This fish was HUGE!!! My Uncle couldn’t really see as he didn’t have his glasses on and so he was telling me to put both of them in the net… I looked pretty puzzled as I thought… what part of this fish should I put in??… his head???!! maybe bash the fish over the head would be better!! hahaha… anyways the Pike let go and we had a very unhappy mangled bass….
So that was quite exciting!.. we ended up getting over to the pickup point and got all our gear out.. we were pretty tired and chilling out when a bird started to take my trail mix… these birds were so cool!! they would fly into my hand and sit and eat… crazy birds…

The Canoe trip was an awesome experience! It was really great to be out in the wild with nothing around.
My Uncle did an amazing job of looking after us with food and organizing the whole thing!

Check out the pics… I should have some more up as soon as I get some!

Cheers

White Face 5K

My last official race is pretty much done! The Whiteface race as many know is a 5 K Downhill race and is packed with awesome sections all the way down the mountain.
The times were roughly the same as last years except that this year I was more Fit and focused.

The weather was great the whole week! I ended up staying with the Mullaly gang who are a great family full of talented riders. We camped out near to the venue and went swimming everyday at the local swimming hole which is always a ton of fun!

The race itself was great… I just built up my new Proto Makulu DH bike up and let me tell you it performed so well!! just made it effortless and so smooth with the Cane Creek DB on the rear.
I came into the race with a ton of confidence and no stress as this year I knew how to race this race.. As I watched everyone off the start line just pin it and sprint the whole first straight I knew they would be so tired by the first woods sections which by the sounds of it was the case. My start on the other hand was so laid back that I got on the bike and just almost took my time off the start.. the result was being so calm and relaxed the whole way down and by the last woods sections I felt so strong!
I ended up taking the win by a cool 20 seconds I think..! Lovely!.

The race afterwards was the chainless DH race and I knew this was going to be such a fun event. I got to the top and most of the riders had put their lycra shorts on over their shorts and put their peeks on their helmet on backwards….. so Funny!… I was all about business though and I wanted to see how close I could get to my time of 7:24… which wasn’t to far off since I knew what kind of times I could do in each section using the Freelap Timing Systems in practice…with that in my mind I put on some armour because I knew I may need it for this run. My start was great I teared down the first straight and jumped onto my bike…(Chainless)
The next couple of corners from the start were fire roads and very dry and slippery and I was drifting all over the place and almost lost it in sections… I kept calm and super focused and I was concentrating on just keeping my speed up as much as possible… The only thing that slowed me down was I caught up a rider and since I couldn’t pedal around him I knew I had to wait for a chance so I may have lost about 4-5 seconds there…. my time in the end was a 7:44 so 20 seconds off my other time with the chain… it just shows you how much pedaling you really needed to do… kind of cool…. also my time was fast enough to take 2nd in the main event… even cooler!

Anyways it was just an awesome weekend! straight afterwards though I had to rush back to CT and pack all my camping stuff for a 5 day Canoe trip in North Minnesota!!! going to be sweet.. I will see everyone later and I should have a story up on my adventure!

Cheers..