Almost Trainer Time

Well it has been a couple of weeks since my last post, not much exciting been happening. Doing alot of road riding, spin classes and weight lifting - typical off season stuff. Work is keeping me busy as usual and I am looking forward to the upcoming Thanksgiving Holiday, while I wish I could be home with my family I realize there are others spending this holiday in more dangerous and remote locations than me with far less of the everyday commodities we take for granted. Meanwhile the road riding has been good for working on the speed and been getting stronger on the legs with the weight lifting. The temperatures are definitely starting to drop so it will soon be time to hook up the trainer and start riding some of the Courses on that so will see how some of these computer course push the training envelope. Looking forward to being back home soon for a couple of weeks for mid-tour, and hopefully the second half of my tour goes as quickly as the first half. That's about it for now so Everyone have a good Holiday and Keep on Riding.

Been Keeping Busy over here

Gotta have the proof if your riding this far - 75.8 miles(Basically to Seoul and back)


This is the view of Korea when I am 30 miles from Home


Not exactly sure what this sign was warning was ahead but I sure never saw them!


This is waht the fields look like when they harvest the rice in the fall


Looking good and sporting The Bike Store Gear at 0700hrs!

Well it has been a while since I last posted, have been in a MTB race, Hiked some Korea Mountains and Been working 18hr days during the week on occasion. This weekend was kinda nice had a few days off and took it easy for the most part. Yesterday was a nice day to get out and ride so I headed up to Osan AFB, Songtan, Korea met up with Mark, a rider up there and hit the road for 25miles with him. Since I had ridden up there, a additional 13mile warm-up and then back I hit the 50 mile mark right at the intersection to head back to Humphreys. Well since I had little else to do yesterday I decided to go straight head out to Pyongteck Harbor and round my ride up to a even 75 miles. Was a nice easy base mileage ride and was actually a good way to clear my head and relax.
Anyway, next weekend we are looking at hitting a race down south it is a 100 mile MTB race so need to get the ETSX ready to go - some of the hills out here can be pretty steep as I have noted in previous post. Weather is starting to get winter like out here so working more on the strength training at the gym and pulling out the Real Axiom trainer so I can keep up the riding. Looking forward to the fact that I will be back home in about 3 weeks for leave and spending the month of December back home with the family. Well that is about it for now I have some pics to post and as always - Keep riding and Keep the Rubber Side Down!

So you think you can downhill huh??

Well that was the question I was asked one bright shiney Sunday morning as I stood at the base of the slope where DHers were screaming down the trail catching massive amount air and comparing who had the bigger.......suspension. Anywho one ski-lift ride to the top later there I stood with my All-Mountain ETSX about to see how all mountain it really was. The phrase I don't think anyone has uttered to me in quite a while came out "I am not waiting for you to go down the hill", that was humbling indeed. Well to make a long story short I made it down the hill thought it was awesome, I am sure the DH guys thought I was a pansy taking the smaller jumps not to mention wearing spandex, but I can say I actually rode a DH trail on a Ski slope......AWESOME! think I might try it again.

My 200th Post cool!

Well didn't realize it till just now as I signed in write this post and add some pictures from last week but this is my 200th post on this site! Wow who would think I would find that much to write about? That has to be at least that many rides if not a few more. Anyway Here are some pics from the Saturday ride up in Daechon - Enjoy!

ORAMM will be a breeze.....

Yes folks that is Rebbeca Gross


Several of the riders that went for a second epic ride on Sunday


This is Mik our guide on Saturday and Sunday


Well if I continue to ride these trails out here doing the climbing and downhilling that is part of standard Mountain Biking in Korea I will definitely be in the kinda shape that would make ORAMM much easier. Went out to the city of Daechon this weekend to do some riding and camping and got a good dose of both of them. The camping part was good food, good beer and good friends all hanging out together. These guys and gals in Seoul that ride do this right, trailer Bar-B-Que grill, enough food to feed a small Army and one great cook who came down to camp and cook for the rest of us riders.
The riding was what I now realize is typical for Korea, the trail warm up is usually a climb that will get your heart rate up to max, levels out for a little and then climbing again. We then decided to do a downhill run before we went up the hills in our groups. So the original statement from one of the female riders was that the downhill was nothing that a beginner with a little bit of skill couldn't handle. As we are sitting at the top of the hill the DHers all start busting out shin guards and elbow pads, I ask "Hey if this is so easy why all the hardware??" oh just in case don't want to get scratched. I am thinking ok what are we in for? Sure enough it starts out mellow enough but gets kinda hectic pretty fast there where six foot drops rollers off of roots going vertical and stairs that were enough to make you teeter/tooter your bike on the wrong line(guess where I was). I once read that riding downhills that had erosion and washouts, ruts was to make you feel like you had a bigger pair than you actually did, well if that is the case then they are all walking around Korea thinking they have elephantitis of said body part.
Anyway after making it down the first run without wrecking the bike(I tried at a really hairy and rooted section but the bike wouldn't go down) we started back up the hill. This time we climbe up to the point we started the downhill at and then mapped out the climb to the fortress on the next mountain over so we could get there. The climb on the fire road wasn't to bad when we hit the point that started the single track I could tell this wasn't going to be good. Now our guide up what was going to be the most irritating, challenging, tourretes inducing, single track climb I have encountered since.......well I can't think of a climb this difficult in my extensive 6yrs of riding, not even ORAMM said yea this is rideable except for a couple of parts. My impression was those couple of parts where the beginning , the middle and The End. At times I had the bike by the handle bars and stem dragging behind me as I used my other hand to pull me up the trail. Add to this the fact that the favorite Korean past time is hiking and that puts a whole new dimension of difficulty in technical single track.
When we finally get to the top of the climb from hell, Mik our guide looks at me and ask "Are you ok?" well you can imagine the response that got. Anyway I have to give him credit though, short of the view over the Grand Canyon this was the most B E A utiful view I have seen in any country I have been to to date. I am pretty sure I could see Seoul and that was over a 100 to the north of us. Without a doubt worth the effort to get to the top. After a couple of photo ops we do some fire road back down the hill and meet up with some of the other riders on the way eventually meeting back at the point where we did the first downhill. A couple more runs down and back up the hill and we called it a day and headed back to the campground. No ride would be complete without one wipeout which I did as I made the second run down the hill on the very end of the downhill section that combined roots, washout and ruts all at once for the trifecta of downhill challenge. While I am waiting for one of the riders who was out there with us to email me some pics, Wong from Malaysia, I have a couple from the Sunday ride the group did. I wasn't part of this ride but the view is pretty much the same and some good pics so thought I would include them. So Keep the rubber side down and keep riding!

Good Training Week

Well the MTB race last week was a good measurement of how much work I have ahead of me to get competitive with these guys in regards to climbing. That was 25 miles of up the hill down the hill nothing technical in fact about 10 miles of it were road riding so I could have done without the FS on this ride. The trail was all fire road on the hill the big technical portion was maneuvering through the lose rock and gravel and maintaining your momentum up 22% grades. More than once I crested a hill only to look up and go "you gotta be kidding me!" Combined it was over 3300 feet of climbing in 25miles. The Koreans were passing me like I was standing still going up the hills on there Carbon Fiber hardtails cruising up like it was cool, however on the downhills....different story there. I would have to say they err on the side of caution going down, with good reason as someone was killed in last years event when they missed the turn. They were a little to cautious for me though, you had a fire road wide trail and your major concern was not hitting some really lose stuff and hopping from one side of the trail to the other on the turns other than that the benefits of FS definitely helped me make up ground. So for the rest of this week I have started lifting trying to develop some strength for the climbs and do some off season training while still getting in a ride or two during the course of the week. I seemed to have added a couple of inches to the waist line when I wasn't watching so need to get that back off and get the body fat back down to a acceptable percentage. Anyway here are some pre and post race pics still waiting for the website address from the event they had some good photo and sag support out at the event. Hope everyone is doing well back in the states and Keep the Rubber Side Down! Later.

Mountain Bike Racing in Korea

Well this oughta be interesting, I am in no way in competative race shape but how many people outside the pro ranks get to say the raced in a foriegn country? So I am heading out this weekend to a town called Jecheon to ride in a 45Km MTB Race with some other of my military MTB riding buddies. Should be pretty interesting I hear it is some pretty steep hills on the climbs, not technical but definitely a workout. Since I have been getting my butt handed to me on the hills out here this oughta be a experience. Life is good between work, college, and work I have managed to get in a ride or two when I can. Well it is late so I will keep it short, oh by the way I got a few pages of fame in the INSCOM Journal a article detailing the skills and exploits of my dazzling mountain biking skills! LOL but it is good reading. Anyway I will post more when I get back hopefully I keep the rubber side down and don't wear out Granny on the way up the Mountains!