Hiking the Narrows

I already alluded to this in a previous post, but I didn't have time to post any details. So, several weeks ago Rosey and I hiked the entire length of the Zion Narrows from Chamberlain Ranch down to the Temple of Sinawava in Zion Canyon. The total trip was 16 miles, most of which was hiked in the middle of the Virgin river.

The trip was originally planned as a Birthday trip for my sister M who, like me, had attempted several times to hike the Narrows but always had plans fall through for one reason or another. Unfortunately for her, this weekend ended up being one of those times. She had recently had some surgery, and her doctor, at the last minute, disagreed with her that she was well enough to go on a hike like this. I would have just rescheduled the entire trip but all of this happened two days before we were scheduled for the trip and I already had reservations for everything.

Rosey and I took the day off on Friday and drove down to Zion. We needed to get there before 6PM in order to pick up our backcountry permit and to rent our river hiking gear. The river hiking gear consisted of neoperene socks, special boots that are meant to shed water easily, hiking sticks, fleeces, and a dry bag. Actually we could have just brought our own fleeces but it didn't occur to us how cold it was going to be in the Narrows early in the morning.

The trailhead at the top of the Narrows is an hours drive away. We made arrangements with the rental company to shuttle us up there to start the hike. Even if we had two cars with us, it's just so much more convenient to not have to worry about driving an extra 2 hours at the end of the day to go pick up your car.

Our shuttle left bright and early at 6:30 in the morning. We should have been on the trail by 7:30, but one of the groups on our shuttle was hiking in a different area of the park and we had to drop them off first. So, we didn't get started until sometime after 8AM.

The first three miles of the hike followed a dirt road that ran alongside the virgin river. At this point in the hike there was no canyon and no narrows to speak of... just a river running through a field. It was still a beautiful area though.


The walls of the canyon began to grow around us as we ventured further down the river. It was kind of neat to see the canyon forming like that.

And then, about 4 or 5 miles into the hike, really before we had even gotten int o the Narrows proper, tragedy struck. Rosey had just gotten a brand new digital camera from her Mom for her Birthday a couple of weeks earlier. As Rosey was removing the camera from it's case, it accidentally slipped out of her hand and fell to the ground.

The camera really didn't drop far enough that the impact did any damage. It actually had a pretty soft landing in some really fine sand. However, in the instant that the camera came in contact with that fine sand, the sand somehow infiltrated all of the inner working of the camera and bound them up. We could no longer even get the camera to turn on. So, we were stuck without a camera for the rest of the trip. It was a little sad to be without a camera but I was still just happy to get to do the hike after trying for so long.

I'll spare you the narrative for all sixteen miles of the hike and instead point out a couple of highlights:

• We ate lunch sitting on a log beneath a waterfall. The waterfall was only a 10-15 feet tall but there was a massive amount of water pouring over it.
  
• In the heat of the day we found a nice large boulder to jump off of into a deep pool in the river.
• There were several spots when we were able to take a short swim through some deep parts of the river. We never had to hike in water deeper than our thighs but sometimes we would jump in just to cool off.
• Rosey was pretty excited to spot some fish in the Virgin river. I'll admit that even I was impressed that the fish seemed to be doing so well in such a small and seemingly isolated river. She thought that they were some kind of trout.
  

Sixteen miles is a strenuous hike even on flat ground, but it is all the more so when you have unsturdy footing on the bottom of a rocky river bed. Although Rosey and I were beat by the time we made it back to the Temple of Sinawava, there were no serious injuries or complaints.

Some other people that we passed were not so lucky. There was one guy that we met about 3 miles from the from the end of the hike that was hobbling along because he had blown out both of his knees. I felt bad but there just wasn't much that we could do for him. He was close enough to the end of the hike that I wasn't too worried about him making it back before nightfall. Somehow, I'm guessing that guy didn't do much hiking for the next couple of days.

Rosey and I made it back to the Temple of Sinawava trailhead at about 6PM... nearly 10 hours after we had started earlier that morning. On the one hand it was kind of frustrating to have to take the park Shuttle back to our car, but on the other hand it just felt damned good to sit down :)

The few pictures that we did get before the camera puked are here.

My Special Mountain Bike

I decided this weekend that I hadn't spent quite enough money on bikes this year, so I went out and bought me a new mountain bike. It's a Specialized FSRxc Comp with an aluminum frame, full suspension and hydraulic disc brakes. I'm still acclimating to the full suspension but the light aluminum frame is much nicer than my old steel Gary Fisher that weighed a million pounds and I LOVE the hydraulic disc brakes.

Rosey and I took it out on it's maiden voyage this morning at the Big Springs trail in Provo Canyon. Unfortunately, I don't think that I gave it the send off that it deserved. After tackling the alpine loop yesterday I just didn't have much energy left to do a lot of climbing today. It turns out that the trail that I chose was like the steepest trail in Utah county (probably not literally, but it felt like it today).

We probably only got in a couple of miles before I couldn't take any more abuse and turn around. But then again, going downhill is what mountain biking is all about anyway :) It was actually really fun to cruise downhill on my new bike. I felt like I was able to take it a little faster because of the added stability from my rear suspension. However, even with the new bike, there was no keeping up with Rosey who went flying down the hill. I'm still a little timid when it comes to traversing a rocky trail at full speed. Maybe I'll get more comfortable with practice.

Conquering a Lesser Summit

I conquered my second mountain ride of the summer on Saturday. I did a 40 miles loop from my sister's house in Orem up and over the Alpine Loop. Compared to Nebo, there was about half as much climbing and the overall ride was shorter by 10 miles. Also, I only hit a peak elevation of 8000 feet versus the 9300 feet on Nebo. Nonetheless, it was a worthwhile challenge.

I encountered way more cyclists on the road going over Alpine than I did going over Nebo. It seems to be a fairly popular route. Although, most of the cyclists that I encountered appeared to be riding from the other direction. I've heard that it's easier from that direction (although it didn't seem obvious that that was the case as I descended into American Fork Canyon).

There was however one cyclist going in the same direction as me. He passed me up in Provo canyon before even getting to the Sundance turnoff. I was struggling to find energy early in the ride and was fighting a pretty stiff headwind coming through Provo Canyon. So, I was kind of glad when he passed me and gave me the opportunity to draft off of him for a little while. I had no trouble keeping up with him as long as he was fighting off all of the wind for me :)

We chatted as we rode for a couple of miles, but once we hit the turnoff to Sundance and started the climb I knew that I wouldn't be able to keep up with him for much longer. I may have been able to hang with him for a little while, but it probably would have been at the expense of pushing myself too hard and threatening my ability to complete the loop. So, we wished each other good rides and parted ways.

As I watched him bike off it made me realize how much work I have left to do to really be able to cycle competitively. Cycling is all about your PWR (Power-to-Weight ratio). If you want to be a stronger cyclist you essentially have two options: 1) Gain Power, or 2) Lose Weight. Although I'm thrilled that I finally dropped below 200 pounds, you still just don't see a lot of 200 pound cyclists. My best option to be able to compete with guys like that would be to lose another 20 pounds. Of course, I'll continue to build my power by riding over mountains too :)

A Memorable Memorial Day Weekend

This past Memorial Day weekend Rosey and I got out on a 5-day long road trip through the Southwest. On the way we passed through 5 states (Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Arizona), saw 2 national parks and 2 national monuments.

Our first stop on the trip was Carlsbad Caverns National Park. This is a park that has been on my list of places that I've wanted to see for several years. I'm kind of a sucker for a good cave tour and I heard that this one was supposed to be one of the best. Let me tell you, I was not disappointed. I think that it's fair to say that this was the coolest (neatest) cave that I've ever been in.

I've never been able to get very good pictures in a cave and this trip seemed worst than most. All I managed to get was some shots of complete darkness. So, our only recorded memories from this park will be of the entrance to the caves :)


The cave was just massive and it was decorated with some pretty unbelievable cave formations. There were all of the normal formations that you might expect like flowstone, drapery, popcorn, stalactites, stalagmites and columns but there were also a handful of unique formations. The most interesting one, I thought was called the lion's tail. It was a stalactite that had grown a ball of cave popcorn on it's tail. It was pretty neat. I was also impressed by the fairyland. It reminded me a little of Goblin Valley only with the hoodoos being made of cave formations instead of redrock.

Our second stop was in Guadalupe Mountains National Park. To be honest, this wasn't a park that had really been on my list of places to see, but it was so close to Carlsbad that I figured it warranted a visit if for no other reason than to expand my collection of National Parks Maps :) I think that Rosey and I were both glad that we stopped. We both appreciated the desert landscape and the beautiful and unique mountains and I think that Rosey was particularly thrilled to learn about the geological history of the park (which I'll let her explain in her own post).


We took the better part of the 3rd day of our trip and did a 14 mile hike through the Guadalupe Mountains. The scenery was spectacular and it felt unbelievably good to get out and do some real hiking after spending the 2 days on the road.


On Day 4 we started our trek back home. Instead of going back the way we came we took a slight detour through central New Mexico and stopped by White Sands National Monument. I was impressed to discover that it is the largest gypsum sand dunes in the world.

I also thought it was really neat to learn how the dunes were formed. Apparently water running off the nearby mountains carries alot of dissolved minerals with it. The water settles into lakes in the valley which because of the heat dry up over the summer. As the mineral rich water dries it leaves massive gypsum crystals in the lake bed. Over time the crystals are broken down by the wind and blown into the nearby dunes. It would have been neat to go and see the crystals in the lake bed but unfortunately that part of the park is only accessible via ranger led hikes in the fall.

We didn't stay that long in White Sands and we really didn't do that much hiking. But we did stop to play in the sand. I had a lot of fun walking barefoot through the sand dunes. I was worried it would be too hot to go barefoot, but the sand was actually pretty cool and there seemed to be a surprising amount of moisture just beneath the surface.

Day 5 found us in a small town in Arizona where we had bedded for the night. We still had about 8 hours of driving ahead of us straight up highway 191. I had chose this route hoping that we would get to drive through Monument Valley. As it turned out we didn't get to see Monument Valley but we did get to stop at an unexpected fourth National Park (actually Monument).

As we were driving up 191 we stopped at Canyon De Chelly National Monument in Chinle, Arizona. The park was unique in that it appeared to still be occupied by Navajo residents. In fact there was only one trail in the entire park that you were allowed to hike without a special permit or Navajo guide. It was really quite interesting to see actual residences inside of a national monument.

The canyon was amazing. Rosey pointed out that it looked like a smaller version of Zion Canyon. At first I didn't agree but I started to see the similarity. We didn't have a ton of time so we toured the park by car stopping off at some of the viewpoints along the way. The most impressive viewpoint was of Spider Rock.


I'd love to come back sometime and backpack and/or mountain bike through the park. We just need to figure out how to get a Navajo guide that could keep up with us :)

A Month of "Finally"'s

May has been a month of "Finally"'s for me.

• I finally rode my bike over Nebo after having the goal for over a year and making several attempts.
• I finally hiked the Zion Narrows after numerous failed attempts (due to plans falling through) over the last several years.
• I finally dropped below 200 lbs after thinking that I was real close at least 3 times over the last year.
• And this weekend I will finally get to see Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico after wishing for several years to go see it.

May has been a pretty good month :)

Now, if only there were enough time left in May to finally climb Spanish Fork Peak.

A Whole New Century

It's taken a whole lot longer than I had originally planned, but this week I finally dropped under 200 lbs. I haven't been this light since I graduated high school. I want to keep working to drop another 10 lbs or so to clean up a few of my jiggly spots, but I'm getting closer and closer to my 'ideal' weight.

Going Kevlar

After another two flat tires within 24 hours of each other, I decided that I had finally had enough with my current tires. So, I swapped in my old Roubaix tires for a set of Specialized Armadillos. The Armadillos are made with a layer of DuPont Kevlar (a material commonly used in bullet proof vests) to be extra puncture resistant. I'm hoping that it gives me bulletproof tires but I'm betting that I'll manage to puncture them within a week :)

Conquering Nebo

I finally did it! Yesterday, I rode 48.5 miles from my house in Spanish Fork to Nephi over the Nebo Loop. I hit the highest point of the ride at 9300 feet above sea level. That's 4700 feet of elevation gain from the lowest point at 4600 feet above sea level.

There was a bit of snow on the road once I got up to the higher elevations, but for the most part it wasn't covering the whole road and I was able to find a path through it. However, there were a handful of times when I had to get off my bike and walk through 10 to 20 yards of snow that was completely covering the road.

My biggest obstacle was a massive tree that had fallen. It was too big to climb over so I had no choice but to go around it. Going around it meant climbing 10 feet or so up the hillside. This wouldn't have been a problem had the hillside not been covered in snow. I got three steps into the climb before I was up to my waste in snow. With a little bit of persistence I was able to finally make it to the other side and continue my ride.

I definitely wasn't setting any speed records yesterday. I completed the ride in just over 4 hours. Of course, I couldn't expect to keep a 20 mph average over a route like that, but I think that I was still riding a little slower than normal. First of all, Rosey and I had gone on a 12 mile hike through the mountains yesterday and my legs and body already felt a little fatigued. Second, I was fighting a pretty ugly wind for the first 10 miles of the ride. On top of being generally demoralizing, fighting that much wind kind of zapped a lot of my energy before I even got to the hard part of the ride.

Now that I've got Nebo behind me, I'm starting to set my sights on other climbs in the area. The Alpine Loop is likely to be next on the list. I'd also like to tackle Fairview to Huntington. I'm hoping that with enough training I can compete in the Alta Hill Climb this year. And, of course, the ultimate goal... Haleakala!

Best Practicer

I was awarded the "Best Practicer" award by my piano teacher today. My teacher said that out of 30 or so of his students that I was the most dedicated to practicing regularly. I was really quite flattered :) They apparently give awards to recognize students every semester.


I wouldn't have guessed that I was the best practicer, but then again, I do practice 45 minutes pretty much every day before work. Weekends are my weak spot as I am often out of town and/or engaged in other activities.

The problem with an award like this is that now I'm really going to be conscious about making sure that I practice so that I feel like I earned the recognition. Hmmm, come to think of it, maybe this is a reverse psychology kind of thing and I really wasn't the best practicer at all :)

Lighting Doesn't Strike Twice...

... but apparently flat tires don't abide by that rule. I was out riding at lunch, cruising down Springville Main street at about 28 miles per hour (I love that stretch of road) when all of the sudden I felt the bike bouncing in rhythm with my pedal stroke. That's a sure sign that the rear tire is going or has gone flat. As I slowed to a stop I could hear air hissing out of my rear tire. I discovered as I inspected the tire that I had ridden over some sort of twisted, rusted metal roofing staple.

Fortunately, I keep a spare tube and a CO2 catridge handy for repairing flats. Within a couple of minutes I was back on the bike and made it safely to my lunch destination (Subway).

Later that day... I was riding home from my piano lesson through Hwy 89 in Mapleton when I heard a sharp pop and then a whole lot of hissing. Within a couple of seconds my rear tire was completely flat. The offending piece of road debris was no longer stuck in the tire, but the impression left in my tire looked like it had been caused by a thumbtack. Now who would leave one of those sitting in the middle of the road?

Fortunately, I keep a spare tube and a CO2 catridge handy for repairing flats. Oh wait, I already used my spare tube and CO2 catridge. Damnit! Luckily, I was able to get ahold of Rosey just before she was about to head out on a ride of her own. She was gracious enough to come and rescue me.

I'm starting to think that I need steel belted road bike tires :)

Nebo Loop, Take 2

One of my goals from last year that I left unfinished was to ride my bike over the Nebo loop. It's a 30 mile ride through the mountains that gains and then loses about 4500 feet of elevation.

Yesterday, I made another attempt on the loop. My ride started from home and I made it 20 miles before hitting snow on the road just before Payson Lakes. Although I covered only 1/3 the total distance of the ride*, I managed to climb 3000 of the 4500 feet of elevation gain. And I'm confident that I could have kept going if it weren't for the snow.

* The 30 miles counts from Payson to Nephi. I started my ride in Spanish Fork which adds about 8 miles before getting to the start of the loop. So, I really only rode 12 of the 30 miles... roughly 1/3 of the total distance.

You win some, you lose some

I've always enjoyed watching the touring productions of various Broadway shows that are hosted in Salt Lake City by Broadway in Utah. However, this year was the first year that I've bought season tickets. One of the advantages of season tickets is that you get good seats to the shows that you really want to see. One of the disadvantages of season tickets is that some times you end up with tickets to shows that you're not that interested in. In the past week, I've had both.

Last weekend, Rosey and I got to see "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" at Capitol Theatre. Prior to buying the tickets, I didn't even realize that that DRS was a Broadway show. I only knew it as a movie with Steve Martin. It was a spectacular show. One of the best that I've seen in a while. It was an all-singing, all-dancing, all-entertaining raucous of a show. Although, it was apparently a little too risque for the delicate sensibilities of some members of our Utah audience... half-way through the show about 15% of seats in the theatre had cleared out :)

Last night, on the other hand, was a much less pleasurable experience. We had tickets to see "One Man Star Wars" at the Rose Wagner theatre in Salt Lake City. It wasn't a show that held a lot of natural appeal to me, but I was encouraged by all of the positive reviews that it had gotten. About 10 seconds into the show I knew that I was in for trouble when the sole actor started voicing the opening score for Star Wars while acting out the plot text floating over the "screen".

Fortunately, the show was only an hour long and only encompassed the original Star Wars trilogy. However, that entire hour I spent feeling like I was on the outside of an inside joke. The audience kept laughing hysterically at, what seemed to me, to be the most inane humor. Maybe I'm just not enough of a die-hard Star Wars fanatic (which, of course, I'm not) but I barely broke into a chuckle once during the entire show.

April Training Recap

It was my goal to ride 200 miles a week in April. That means that I should have hit over 800 miles over the course of the month. Unfortunately, I fell short of that goal and only got 714 miles of riding in. I think that the weather was the largest factor in not meeting my goal. There were still quite a few days that I couldn't ride because of the rain.

As I look forward to May, I want to keep the same total mileage goal, but I want to focus on riding fewer, but longer rides. In April my longest single ride was only 52 miles. Most of my riding was accumulated by lots of short 12-20 mile rides (i.e. commuting back and forth to work). I really need to get in longer rides to start building my endurance.

Paddling the Great Salt Lake

With all of the biking that I do during the week, I often find myself wishing for a weekend activity that would keep me active while allowing my lower body to rest a little. It occurred to me several weekends ago that kayaking would be that perfect activity. I still get to be outdoors, I still get to be active, but it puts no strain on my lower body at all.

So, on Saturday, Rosey and I, rented a couple of kayaks from the Wasatch Touring company and headed out onto the Great Salt Lake. The kayaks were reasonably priced at $25/day. If I end up doing this very often, I'd probably want to just buy my own, but in the mean time that's not so bad.

We put in at the Great Salt Lake Marina just a mile down the road from Saltair. I've only been kayaking once before in my life when I was visiting Hawaii for Christmas a couple of years back. Fortunately for me, Rosey is a seasoned kayaking veteran and was able to give me a number of tips on paddling technique and maneuvering. By the end of the day I still wasn't nearly as proficient as she was, but I was at least able to keep the boat going mostly straight :)

We set our sights on Stanisbury island, one of the larger islands in the Great Salt Lake. It was just off in the distance and looked like it would make for a good afternoon of paddling. Well, looks can be deceiving. After 2 hours and a little over 5 miles of paddling, Stanisbury island still looked about as far away as when we started :) When I got home and looked it up on the map, I discovered that it was about 15 miles from the Marina to the island. Oops.

Even without reaching the island it was fun to be out on the water. Our paddle out was through unusually calm water... almost glasslike. We had a few more waves on the way back.

I never really appreciated how salty the Great Salt Lake was until I paddled it. About 30 minutes into our trip we were both covered in a crust of salt from all the water that splashed up onto us. Of course, I was far worse off than Rosey, since my paddling technique was so sloppy that I tended to get water everywhere and over everything :) By the time that we got back to the marina, all of our clothes were stiff from the salt, and Rosey's hair was like a helmet (my hair was spared by a baseball cap that I was wearing).

I'm not sure that I'm reading to go out and buy two new kayaks yet, but I certainly had fun and you can be assured that this won't be the last time that we go kayaking this summer. Next time, I think that we may go for the closers and less saline waters of Utah Lake.

Our Spring Break Adventure

My sister Marci was on Spring Break last week and wanted to get out and have an adventure. Marci, Rosey and I decided to do some backpacking in the Needles district of Canyonlands National Park. We hiked 5.5 miles into our campsite at Peekaboo Springs where we setup camp next to the Salt Creek. The full set of pictures is here.

I think that we may have been packed a little heavy for one night in the backcountry :) How many backpackers do you know that pack in a queen size air mattress and battery operated pump? Hey, I'm not complaining... I slept awesome that night!

The views were spectacular. We hiked in and out of several canyons that wound through the park like a maze.

We had to scale several ladders on the hike including this one. This one was particularly challenging because of how narrow the opening was. My pack was so large that I got wedged in between the rocks about 2/3 of the way down. I wanted to just push back and force my pack through, but I was worried that once I broke free I would end up toppling backwards off of the ladder.

Climbing with Two Wheels

I didn't get a ton of miles on my bike this weekend, but the ones that I did get I had to work for.

Saturday, Rosey and I went mountain biking in Diamond Fork Canyon. We survived about8 miles straight uphill on a rocky mountain trail. We probably would have kept plowing through to Hobble creek canyon but we were both running low on water and didn't want to take any chances. Here is the elevation profile from my GPS:


As if that wasn't enough, on Sunday I decided to tackle Indian Pass on Hwy 191 connecting Price and Duchesne. The inspiration for this ride came last weekend as we were riding the Harley through this very spot. I thought it would make an awesome bike ride... and it did.

The only problem is that it's difficult to gauge exactly how steep a road is when riding in a motorized vehicle. I gained nearly 2000 feet of elevation in the first 7.5 miles of riding. That was rough. My favorite part of the climb was looking at the faces of the passing motorists wondering why the hell I was voluntarily climbing a hill like that.

Once I reached the summit at 9100 ft, it was pretty much all downhill for the next 28 miles. My top speed was a little over 40 miles per hour coming down the steepest section of the mountain. I do wear a helmet on whenever I anticipate speeds like that. Although I was thinking today as I was descending, that at 40 miles per hour, I don't think that my bicycle helmet would really help that much.

My original plan had been to have lunch in Duchesne and then ride back to where I started. Only I hadn't counted on having regain so much elevation coming back from Duchesne. I had imagined that the road was mostly flat after the initial ascent/descent from Indian Pass. Between the mountain biking I had done on Saturday and the climbing that I had already done that morning, my legs were pretty much fried.

I started back to the car but only got about half-way before Rosey met me with the car. I was so happy that she decided to come along and hike while I biked, because I'm not sure that I would have made it back up that mountain :)

Here is the elevation profile of the Indian Pass ride:

Fuel Costs of Commuting By Bike

I was talking to a friend the other day about how I love cycling to work because it is good exercise, good fun, environmentally friendly and saves me a ton of money on gas. He looked at me quizzically and said, "Do you really save that much money on fuel?".

"What do you mean? Of course, I do. I don't have to put ANY gas in my bike"

"Yeah, but how much extra fuel do you have to put in yourself in order to bike back and forth to work?"

I had never really thought of it that way before. On an average day that I drive to work, I end up driving 56 miles. That's 14 miles each way, twice (I usually come home for lunch). My Camry gets about 28 miles per gallon which means that I use 2 gallons of fuel on an average work day. Given the current price of fuel, commuting by car costs me between 5 and 6 dollars a day.

That means that for commuting by bike to be economically advantageous I would have to spend less than 5 dollars a day extra on food. An average day of riding to work accrues 40 miles; that 12.5 each way and then a 15 mile ride at lunch. Between bigger meals to fuel myself and snacks in between meals to keep me going, I probably spend pretty close to an extra 5 dollars a day when I bike.

Of course, that's not going to prevent me from biking to work. Even if I only break even financially, I still get all of the other benefits of biking. And from a fitness and lifestyle perspective I really like the philsophy of "eat more, exercise more". I ran into some guys on a ride last year that put it this way, "I eat to live, live to ride, and ride so that I can eat more".

LOTOJA Route Misunderstanding

I was talking to one of my coworkers yesterday who actually rode LOTOJA last year and realized that I misunderstood the route. The ride does not go through Logan canyon and descend on Bear lake like I had originally thought. Rather it continues North from Logan into Idaho and then turns Northwest at Preston and rides along Hwy 36. We will rejoin Hwy 89 just outside of Montpellier.

On the one hand I'm relieved to discover that I won't have to tackle Logan canyon as part of a 200 mile ride. On the other hand, I'm a little disappointed to discover that the epic ride that I was imagining is going to be a little less epic than I imagined. I've already told a handful people that I was riding Logan canyon as part of LOTOJA. Maybe I'll ride it my way anyway and meet up with everyone else in Montpellier :)

Bike Seats and Long Rides

TK asked in the comments of my last blog whether or not they make comfort seats for long rides on a bicycle. The answer is yes and no. Yes, they do make large padded comfort seats for bicycles, but No, you would never use one for a long ride like LOTOJA. The comfort seats are generally marketed to people that ride slow and for really short distances.

Despite being contrary to what one might consider common sense, it's actually better to have a really small seat on a long ride. The difference between a bicycle and a motorcycle is that, on a bicycle, you actually need to move your legs to pedal. A large seat actually inhibits this action. In addition, there are large arteries that pump blood through your crotch area to your legs. Small seats are designed to avoid placing any pressure on these arteries. A poorly designed seat can actually make your legs go numb after 20 miles.

That's not to say that really small seats are "comfortable" by any stretch of the imagination. But after a 50 mile ride your butt is much less likely to be in agonizing pain on small seat than it would be on a large "comfort" seat.

LOTOJA Registration

I just completed my registration for the 2007 Logan to Jackson road bike race. The ride is a 206 mile trek through the mountains from Logan, Utah to Jackson, Wyoming... in a single day. At an average pace of about 20 miles per hour, I can expect to spend at least 10 hours in the saddle. Fortunately, the ride isn't until September 8th, so I have plenty of time to get my butt in shape :)