We had this goofy acronym in high school football (I had the bench on lock down sophomore year) that a lot of meat heads really took to heart: NGUNNGU (never give up, never never give up). Most of them have since given up and resided themselves to the desk for the next 40 years. But I just can't do it. Earlier this week I wanted to give up and sit on the beach this weekend instead of continuing my battle against the trail. But my new scooter has inspired me to continue on. The 49cc Vino goes full throttle all the time. Plus I need revenge after being outfoxed by the trail last weekend in Butte. I may have lost the fire for a few minutes during the Butte 100, but the trail won't quit so neither am I. So I'm off to the High Cascade 100 for round four of Pip vs. Trail. I won't let off the gas until I look like these guys!
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Canmore: OWNED!!!
I was also very pleased to have figured out the night riding a little better. Eventually, there will be no difference between my day laps and night laps. But Oakley is still finalizing the night vision Jawbones I have requested. Until then, lights will do. My best NIGHT WORK! was only three and a half minutes slower than my fastest day lap. Part of this feat was due to the full moon. I derive immense power from the full moon, and at one point I let out a howl.
Our team took a second 24 hour victory of 2010. We are really starting to function like one big machine, Big Rig included! We were a little bummed out at the continual lack of anything whatsoever for winning, but whatev. It's just annoying when the promoter is obviously raking in dough on the event and can't throw the working man a bone. Oh well, one more grease rag in the garage. Til next time trail, but rest assured I am not content to rest on the victory!
Pippo,
A voracious predator of the trail.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Pip vs Trail Round Deux: Canmore.
Well the score is Trail 1, Pip 0. I guess I never gave the trail the respect of a recap after it kicked my butt at the Firecracker 50. The trail did not relent in Breckenridge, I was a mere mortal trying to do more than my legs could push. To be fair, most of my training for one month leading up to the race was riding my beach cruiser to get Latte's on the way to work, and then riding it for cold ones after work. The transition into corporate life was difficult at first, but I think I've got it dialed in a little better this time around. I basically just need to plan my life to the minute between now and 24 Hours of Moab, the finale of Pip vs. Trail 2010.
I am overconfident as ever going into this weekend's 24 Hours of Canmore: Pip vs Trail Round Deux.The fellas are flying right now, I dropped off the big rig for some fresh lube, and America is better than the rest of the world, especially Canada. After attempting my first fifty, I realized how much more I prefer 24 relays to ultra events. I would much rather do six 15 mile hot laps than sit there and suffer for 100 miles. I am really excited for this weekend. We just had a great weekend of epic road rides at the 9th annual Highline Hammer and we all feel great.
At the request of upper management, I am not to use my USB broadband card while in foreign countries, so I will save the results for Monday. But I assure you, it won't be anything like round one!
I am overconfident as ever going into this weekend's 24 Hours of Canmore: Pip vs Trail Round Deux.The fellas are flying right now, I dropped off the big rig for some fresh lube, and America is better than the rest of the world, especially Canada. After attempting my first fifty, I realized how much more I prefer 24 relays to ultra events. I would much rather do six 15 mile hot laps than sit there and suffer for 100 miles. I am really excited for this weekend. We just had a great weekend of epic road rides at the 9th annual Highline Hammer and we all feel great.
At the request of upper management, I am not to use my USB broadband card while in foreign countries, so I will save the results for Monday. But I assure you, it won't be anything like round one!
Sunday, June 27, 2010
King of CdA
Aaaahhh the new life allows me little time to devote to the personal blogosphere. We have been going full throttle in CdA since Thursday, with energy reaching white hot levels. This may have been the best weekend for Montana athletes ever. I am astonished and amazed to be a part of it:
Samuel " stubborn as the badger" Schultz: First Pro xc win.
Linsey "cool as a cucumber" Corbin: First Ironman win, course record.
Adam "meaner than a rattlesnake" Jensen: 9th Overall Ironman CdA. Biked the shit out of that course.
Ice Shryock: Debut Ironman good for 11th place? AYS (are you serious)?
Ironfans: Out with the Owls, Up with the Eagles!
Hammer Big Rig: DID WORK!
Montana athletes, Ice, Jensen, Hammer....WHITE HOT right now!
Also great job to all Montanans, Dr. Ruby, Jeffy, Joel Carlson, Everyone!!!
Pip
PS Look for a new era in the blogosphere coming soon: Pip vs Trail, a six part series starting next weekend and finishing in Moab. I'm doing two 24's, one fifty and three 100 mile mountain bike races this summer. If I win, I will have a lifetime of Man-ness to draw upon. If I lose, well, the buzzards get to eat some decadent meat.
Peace out.
Samuel " stubborn as the badger" Schultz: First Pro xc win.
Linsey "cool as a cucumber" Corbin: First Ironman win, course record.
Adam "meaner than a rattlesnake" Jensen: 9th Overall Ironman CdA. Biked the shit out of that course.
Ice Shryock: Debut Ironman good for 11th place? AYS (are you serious)?
Ironfans: Out with the Owls, Up with the Eagles!
Hammer Big Rig: DID WORK!
Montana athletes, Ice, Jensen, Hammer....WHITE HOT right now!
Also great job to all Montanans, Dr. Ruby, Jeffy, Joel Carlson, Everyone!!!
Pip
PS Look for a new era in the blogosphere coming soon: Pip vs Trail, a six part series starting next weekend and finishing in Moab. I'm doing two 24's, one fifty and three 100 mile mountain bike races this summer. If I win, I will have a lifetime of Man-ness to draw upon. If I lose, well, the buzzards get to eat some decadent meat.
Peace out.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Comin' up for Air...
Woah...
My first visit to mtcx.com in three weeks revealed I haven't updated my own blog in three weeks! I do apologize if this has ruined anyone's attempt to make the 9-5 go by any faster. But as usual I have a semi valid excuse- I work 8-5! Plus training...AND doing 24-s with my amigos from the dealer services/athlete relations/race team cave at Hammer Nutrition. So let's just say I've had a very busy few weeks and I'm finally coming up for air...
For starters I really love my new gig at Hammer. It is a heck of a lot easier to get out of bed every morning doing something with passion. My chair is backordered (or so I'm told) so I was presented with a new desk, computer, phone and a yoga ball to sit on. I also rode to work with a spider plant and a picture of Reily to up the feng shui factor. To my right is Brad Lamson, an all around great guy and ultra runner (upper management wants him to ride more however). Across our section is Jason Keister and Matt Butterfield. El Bandito sits on the other side of a wall that we don't really like. So that's our crew, we do our thing in the office and then ride trail after work.
Now that you know too much about my new office life, I should share a bit about the race this weekend. On Thursday I packed about 85% of what we were supposed to bring to the 24 Hours Round n Round in Spokane (I'm new...) Oh well I brought the essentials anyway: Shoes-check, helmet-check, bike-check, clothes-check.Oh and we bought meat, coffee and beer later on.
Rolling out to Spokane was Jason, Matty, Bandito, Myself and Steve Born (best crew chief ever). Brian, Miles, Ivy and the new Hammer Big Rig came the other way from Seattle and met us at Riverside Park. I don't know I thought this race would be easy, just finishing a 24 hour race is tough let alone the competition. Of course the usual pre race googling gave us some dire news...It would be a very long 24 hours.There were several strong teams in our division, including the local boys from Great Northern Cycles and the classy Missoulians of MOZ4X. The course was a challenging mix of fun singhee, leg burning dirt roads, lung busting climbs and tire eating rock gardens. Needless to say the top five was constantly changing based on who had to run 3 miles to get home.
The first 8 hours treated us well with Matty turning in a very fast lap and the rest of us riding well. We were up about 20 minutes, which by the way doesn't mean a damn thing at nightfall of a 24 hour race! Sure enough, the race starts at night and ours started off headed for disaster. My first flat happened in little Vietnam, a crazy e-wok style section down by the river. I had some trouble with my pump and had to find assistance from a spectator. After this ten minute debacle, Bandito double flatted on his lap, running for quite some time back to the pits...Luckily Matty and Jason were riding super smooth otherwise we may have been caught. On my next lap I flatted again, crashed and then my bar lights went out leaving me with just the spotlight which was kinda weird. Upon coming home to a decent lap time, I decided to keep this a secret from the team as our morale was not so hot. At this point in the night I'd had enough. Enough of screwing up at the one thing I know how to do, enough moping around and definitely enough of these coyotes yappin' at my heels... I was becoming furious. I headed out on my second night lap full of rage. I was so PO'd I could only focus on the trail. I was briefly distracted by a deer, for a second I thought it was a redneck aussie out spotlighting kangaroos and I should chase it. Night time at 24's are so cryptic. Wait....still work to be done. Everything just started clicking. I finished the night lap only five minutes slower than my first hot lap the day before. Boom. Five minutes tacked on our lead. Dawn came, five more minutes on lap 5. Lap six, samesies. I wouldn't be stopped. Trouble was, neither would our chasers. All morning our lead bounced from 5-10 minutes, they could smell us it was so close (or we just smelled that bad...idk). After my lap 6 at like 10:00 we had to have a pow wow. Two of the fellas had given their all and trust me they surely did. So I didn't even take off the rags, I just sat in the sun for 45 minutes sipping Recoverite. I had no idea what type of lead I would go out with but I knew for certain if I was caught I would have no response. I was so happy at the start line to see el Bandito I forgot how cashed my legs were! Then the other teams crew chief yelled Russell's gonna catch you. I yelled back good luck. Sorry for the plug but the wide array of Hammer products helped out on lap 7, I was still going full gas after being on it for 24 hours. There is also something about being in front that lets you feel no pain. The last lap was super fun even tho it hurt like hell. Relay's are great because they are such a team effort and we really worked well. Oh and to Russell's credit he turned in a smokin' last lap, four minutes faster than mine. Not enough though to keep Hammer from a well deserved W! That's all for now, pics to follow!
P
My first visit to mtcx.com in three weeks revealed I haven't updated my own blog in three weeks! I do apologize if this has ruined anyone's attempt to make the 9-5 go by any faster. But as usual I have a semi valid excuse- I work 8-5! Plus training...AND doing 24-s with my amigos from the dealer services/athlete relations/race team cave at Hammer Nutrition. So let's just say I've had a very busy few weeks and I'm finally coming up for air...
For starters I really love my new gig at Hammer. It is a heck of a lot easier to get out of bed every morning doing something with passion. My chair is backordered (or so I'm told) so I was presented with a new desk, computer, phone and a yoga ball to sit on. I also rode to work with a spider plant and a picture of Reily to up the feng shui factor. To my right is Brad Lamson, an all around great guy and ultra runner (upper management wants him to ride more however). Across our section is Jason Keister and Matt Butterfield. El Bandito sits on the other side of a wall that we don't really like. So that's our crew, we do our thing in the office and then ride trail after work.
Now that you know too much about my new office life, I should share a bit about the race this weekend. On Thursday I packed about 85% of what we were supposed to bring to the 24 Hours Round n Round in Spokane (I'm new...) Oh well I brought the essentials anyway: Shoes-check, helmet-check, bike-check, clothes-check.Oh and we bought meat, coffee and beer later on.
Rolling out to Spokane was Jason, Matty, Bandito, Myself and Steve Born (best crew chief ever). Brian, Miles, Ivy and the new Hammer Big Rig came the other way from Seattle and met us at Riverside Park. I don't know I thought this race would be easy, just finishing a 24 hour race is tough let alone the competition. Of course the usual pre race googling gave us some dire news...It would be a very long 24 hours.There were several strong teams in our division, including the local boys from Great Northern Cycles and the classy Missoulians of MOZ4X. The course was a challenging mix of fun singhee, leg burning dirt roads, lung busting climbs and tire eating rock gardens. Needless to say the top five was constantly changing based on who had to run 3 miles to get home.
The first 8 hours treated us well with Matty turning in a very fast lap and the rest of us riding well. We were up about 20 minutes, which by the way doesn't mean a damn thing at nightfall of a 24 hour race! Sure enough, the race starts at night and ours started off headed for disaster. My first flat happened in little Vietnam, a crazy e-wok style section down by the river. I had some trouble with my pump and had to find assistance from a spectator. After this ten minute debacle, Bandito double flatted on his lap, running for quite some time back to the pits...Luckily Matty and Jason were riding super smooth otherwise we may have been caught. On my next lap I flatted again, crashed and then my bar lights went out leaving me with just the spotlight which was kinda weird. Upon coming home to a decent lap time, I decided to keep this a secret from the team as our morale was not so hot. At this point in the night I'd had enough. Enough of screwing up at the one thing I know how to do, enough moping around and definitely enough of these coyotes yappin' at my heels... I was becoming furious. I headed out on my second night lap full of rage. I was so PO'd I could only focus on the trail. I was briefly distracted by a deer, for a second I thought it was a redneck aussie out spotlighting kangaroos and I should chase it. Night time at 24's are so cryptic. Wait....still work to be done. Everything just started clicking. I finished the night lap only five minutes slower than my first hot lap the day before. Boom. Five minutes tacked on our lead. Dawn came, five more minutes on lap 5. Lap six, samesies. I wouldn't be stopped. Trouble was, neither would our chasers. All morning our lead bounced from 5-10 minutes, they could smell us it was so close (or we just smelled that bad...idk). After my lap 6 at like 10:00 we had to have a pow wow. Two of the fellas had given their all and trust me they surely did. So I didn't even take off the rags, I just sat in the sun for 45 minutes sipping Recoverite. I had no idea what type of lead I would go out with but I knew for certain if I was caught I would have no response. I was so happy at the start line to see el Bandito I forgot how cashed my legs were! Then the other teams crew chief yelled Russell's gonna catch you. I yelled back good luck. Sorry for the plug but the wide array of Hammer products helped out on lap 7, I was still going full gas after being on it for 24 hours. There is also something about being in front that lets you feel no pain. The last lap was super fun even tho it hurt like hell. Relay's are great because they are such a team effort and we really worked well. Oh and to Russell's credit he turned in a smokin' last lap, four minutes faster than mine. Not enough though to keep Hammer from a well deserved W! That's all for now, pics to follow!
P
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
A Redneck Cinco de Mayo!
Aaah my last holiday alone at the center of the trail universe, so bittersweet....Such a shame to spend such a "bueno" holiday here by myself. Soy contento though because we had a good ride tonight at the Cinco de Mayo edition of Wednesday Night Worlds, and I made myself a fine feast.
I figure if I'm going to move out of the chainsaw toting Tally Lake area and into the au pair dragging suburbs of Whitefish, I need to clean up my act. I started with tonight's dinner. Tally Lake Phil would have been fine with grillin' a few bear brats and crackin' a Donkey (24oz. Tecate) for such an occasion. But for tonight I made twice baked sweet potato chicken fajitas. It was actually very easy and quite a treat. To start, toss a sweet potato in the oven at like 425. Now go take a shower because hopefully you just went on a hard bike ride. This is also a great time to drink a cold beer!
By the time you've dried yourself off, it's time to toss the fajita mix in a frying pan. Since I'm constantly keeping the pedal to the floor, I buy the homemade chicken fajita mix from Marcus Foods. It has chicken, red and green peppers, onion, garlic and spices. Its pretty good as is but I add some crushed red pepper and chili powder in olive oil to heat things up. This should take about 12 minutes to fry on medium heat and by that time your sweet potato should be closer to edible.
Next, cut the sweet potato right down the middle, cube and expel the contents into your fajita frying pan, carefully preserving the skin! The cubed sweet potato should still hold its form so don't cook it too long. Now is a good time to add some more oil and red pepper to your pan and stir it around a bit. All thats left is to arrange your sweet potato skin on a plate and pile on as much as you like. Then melt a little pepper jack or other queso and pop it back in the oven for maybe five minutes on lower heat. Finish however you like but I added some avocado, kiwi and salsa fresca. Yippeee!
I figure if I'm going to move out of the chainsaw toting Tally Lake area and into the au pair dragging suburbs of Whitefish, I need to clean up my act. I started with tonight's dinner. Tally Lake Phil would have been fine with grillin' a few bear brats and crackin' a Donkey (24oz. Tecate) for such an occasion. But for tonight I made twice baked sweet potato chicken fajitas. It was actually very easy and quite a treat. To start, toss a sweet potato in the oven at like 425. Now go take a shower because hopefully you just went on a hard bike ride. This is also a great time to drink a cold beer!
By the time you've dried yourself off, it's time to toss the fajita mix in a frying pan. Since I'm constantly keeping the pedal to the floor, I buy the homemade chicken fajita mix from Marcus Foods. It has chicken, red and green peppers, onion, garlic and spices. Its pretty good as is but I add some crushed red pepper and chili powder in olive oil to heat things up. This should take about 12 minutes to fry on medium heat and by that time your sweet potato should be closer to edible.
Next, cut the sweet potato right down the middle, cube and expel the contents into your fajita frying pan, carefully preserving the skin! The cubed sweet potato should still hold its form so don't cook it too long. Now is a good time to add some more oil and red pepper to your pan and stir it around a bit. All thats left is to arrange your sweet potato skin on a plate and pile on as much as you like. Then melt a little pepper jack or other queso and pop it back in the oven for maybe five minutes on lower heat. Finish however you like but I added some avocado, kiwi and salsa fresca. Yippeee!
Treats!
Cran-raz la croix w/kiwi.
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