When some of my friends and I made a grand plan on July 4 to have a training weekend up in Steamboat, we were all pretty stoked. After all, what could be better than good times with friends, epic rides on alpine singletrack, and mountains? Not much.

My skis WILL touch down here this winter.

I got in a good little training block before starting the grand taper to Worlds. 3 days. 2 hour ride Friday, 6 hour ride Saturday, 5 hour ride Sunday… almost exclusively on singletrack, and all badass riders. 🙂

The weekend can be summed up in photos.

Saturday, there was about 10 of us.

Um, dude. Your bike? Unicycle??? HOW?!?!?! And furthermore, how can I sell you Ergon grips if you don’t have a handlebar?

I was kicking myself for forgetting my helmet cam.

Pete’s communal meat stick. I swear when you bit into it, pockets of fat would seep out. haha

The wildflowers were off the hook.

Goobers.

Re group.

Guns Masticator.

By the time we got to this lake…I ran towards it lickety split and got in. Chamois and all. At least I took my helmet off.

Powder…. Pig.

The top.

Kelly Boniface is one of my favorite race buddies. We were working on our game face. She wins. 🙂

A looong sweet downhill. Butterflies in tummy.

Massive rewards after 6 hours in the saddle.

Sunday was a smaller group – myself, Dax Massey, Nate Bird, and Essam Welch

The trail was more “underground” style riding. Trail that was not buffed…but loose, technical, and with tons of fallen trees to hike up and over.

Sometimes hiking is part of an epic ride.

I was cursing my short legs.

The group taking in the view at the summit at aha – Summit Park.

Hey boys. These two (Dax and Nate) are racing duo at Trans Rockies in 2 weeks. Git ’em.

Kids bday parties have pinatas and pin the tail on the donkey. Grown up parties have things like very sharp samurai swords.

Peoples’ bdays such as:

Birdie and…

Rob the Carni

in action.

Max. I want one.

Couldn’t think of a more beautiful night to end a weekend to remember.

Here is a secret…. my blog is going to have a new look very soon!

I took a couple days off after the epic weekend and headed to short track for my last one of the year. Unfortunately, my race ended pretty quickly. I was stoked that I rode right off the front of the race, but I guess I was a little too excited. I went down pretty hard in a corner and couldn’t pedal anymore. Very very bad timing before worlds. I admittedly was choking back tears of disappointment and frustration. I’m doing a bit of icing… I now have what looks like two kneecaps. Nothing major, but I don’t have many precious days left between now and worlds. It’s not a bad thing I have to rest, but I had some things I wanted to get done on the bike. Oh well. That was my first crash in a short track so I consider myself lucky.

Back to packing and moving…. and packing….