Yesterday I had a pretty strange ride. First thing in the morning I went to see Eric Heiden’s wife, Karen, about my hand. She is super good with hands. She said that I need to get a MRI to see exactly what is wrong with it and it would be pretty complicated to actually make it work better. My thumb has a little arthritis on top of being super loose. Anyway, I guess I heard what I needed to.

So, I decided to go for a long-ish MTB ride up to the top of the mountain and ride the Wasatch Crest Trail along the ridge. I started up the same climb as yesterday, the Armstrong Trail (not related to Lance) and just before I got up to the Mid Mountain Trail, I came upon a woman that had her rear wheel out and looked like she needed some assistance. I asked her if she was okay and she sort of hesitated and then said she was having trouble getting her skewer back in the hub.

So I stopped and took a look at it. I’m not sure why the skewer was out of the hub, because she had just flatted and changed a tube. It was the first time she had ever changed a tube and it sounded like it took a while. She broke the valve stem off the first one and had to patch the original tube. Anyway, sometime during the process she had the wheel on its side for a while and had pushed it hard into the ground because the axle was crammed full of sandy clay. Completely full. A skewer wouldn’t go in a millimeter. I took out a multi-tool and used a small allen key to try to dig out some of the stuff. It was super hard and I could only get out the first inch and a half from each side. The middle third or so was jam-packed. I finally put the skewer in and pounded the wheel on the ground and the remaining dirt came out. It took me a while to get her going. I rarely come up on a mechanical that I think that I might not be able to fix. At least one as silly as this one was. But, for a bit, I thought that it wasn’t going to work. I thought about it later and figured I could of tried filling the axle with water and that might of helped some, but that didn’t come across my mind at the time. Anyway, she was very thankful and I went on my way.

So I rode up and then got on the Pine Cone Trail to climb to the top. It is a very nice climb. I got up to the top and it comes out on a gravel road that you have to ride for a mile or so before you get to the top. I was riding up the gravel road and there was a sharp switch back. Standing there was a big family. Two parents and 3 daughters. That was sort of depressing on its own since I’d been climbing for over an hour to get up there. But what was more depressing was that the three kids were pretty fat and that they were on really junky bikes with flat pedals. I’d thought I had done a pretty good ride to climb the 3000 feet up to the top and here was a normal, everyday family just standing there. They stopped me and asked me if this was the Wasatch Trail I said yes, but I’d never ridden it. Then they pointed to a singletrack that went off from the switchback and asked if that was the trail. I had been so consumed about riding the steep corner, plus perplexed by them being there, that I had completely missed the singletrack. I stopped and got out a map and realized that was the right direction. I asked them what they were doing, since the Wasatch Trail is marked difficult on the trail map and the father said that they were going to ride it over to Canyons.

I found that nearly impossible to believe. It was going to be a 30 mile, hard ride for me and they had to be going less than 1/2 my speed. One of the daughters pulled out a tupperware container out of her backpack and started eating a big thing of macaroni and cheese. It seemed so surreal. Pretty depressing on my part. I wished them good luck and started down the trail.

I thought about it for a while. It was depressing because I thought I’d ridden high enough that I wasn’t going to see anyone but a pretty fit athlete the rest of the day. It would sort of be like climbing Mt. Everest and getting up to the last technical section, near the top, and some guy comes walking up in shorts, smoking a cigarette, asking which way to the top.

I guess it was great that the family didn’t have any limitations and were just going to try it. They seemed way over their heads in my estimation. I rode the ridge trail for just a mile or so and came upon a super technical, off-camber sand stone area. There is a zero percent chance that they could have went past this point. It would have been nearly impossible for them to ride the section or walk the section. I think they were lucky that part came so early in the endeavor because obviously they didn’t have any knowledge of the area. There wasn’t a turn off for 12 miles. At least a turn off that got them back down towards where they came from. I wish I knew where they ended up.

The rest of the ride was great. Great views from the top. Great single track descent. I rode down to the Red Pine Lodge, got a coffee, then rode back to the Holly Trail and descended into Canyons. It was just about 30 miles. Really great. My butt doesn’t think so, but my mind does.

I’m packing up and heading back to Steamboat Springs in a little bit. I’m kind of up in the air about what I’m doing this weekend now. I guess I have another day to decide.

The woman I came upon with the wheel issue.

The family was at the top of this gravel climb.

This was in the waiting area of the Heiden’s Ortho office. Where else could you go and there is a race bible from the Tour of California mixed in with the magazines?

Some of the singletrack descents were muddy.

I saw this on the bike path riding back up to Park City. Pretty extreme.

Bromont is the best sleeper in the world.

Someone sent me a link to an interview that Mike Creed did with Frankie Andreu and said that Mike was calling me out on bike handling. I sort of knew that Mike did a podcast thing, but had never heard it. I clicked on the link and was mildly depressed to see that the thing was nearly an hour long. I don’t have enough time to listen to Mike question Frankie about bike racing all morning. So, I turned the podcast on my phone and proceeded to make oatmeal, etc.

Luckily for me, about 14 minutes into the “show”, it comes up. I knew when it was going to happen exactly when the subject came up. It is here, the Frankie interview, at around 14:30.

The subject is about taking what another rider sees as unnecessary risks. Specifically, diving corners in a criterium. I’ve written a little about this before, but it seems like a good time to go over it again. Maybe using a couple specific cases.

During the Nature Valley Gran Prix, in the St. Paul criterium, a few years back, I had a few lap discussion with Mike Creed about what he saw as me taking unnecessary risks. He was pretty civil about the whole thing, except when he called me out when I did it. The problem was that he said something when I was coming around the outside of the field. Maybe he had seen me dive inside earlier in the race or something, but to yell at someone for going around the outside, I didn’t get.

So, the race was 100% sure going to be a field sprint, so I slowed down and talked to Mike about it for a while. He said something like I was too good of a rider to be doing stupid shit like that. I asked him what he thought was wrong with passing people on the outside. I explained that if I fell going wide through a corner, that no one would fall but me. He said it wasn’t “correct criterium racing”.

He then got into the diving corner deal. I do understand his thought process somewhat. On the podcast he repeated pretty much exactly what I told him. I told him that it wasn’t dangerous because I wasn’t going to fall. If it scared some people, that is part of the sport. I asked him if he had ever seen me fall on my own or knock someone down in a corner.

I explained to him the reason that I was diving corners and moving up continually. It was because the Bissell team was sitting at the front doing the standard riding slowly, on the inside of the course and chopping the whole field at every corner, from the second they said go. I told Mike if he wanted to make the race much safer he would go up to the front and yell at them for endangering every rider in the race for the hour and a half. He agreed with me, but said that it was a “tactic” that the “Pro” teams use now to control the race during criteriums in stage races. He acknowledged that it was super dangerous, but that is just how bike racing is. I explained to him that as long as the “Pro” teams use this bullshit tactic, that I’m going to be riding through the inside of the corners. When I’m on the inside of a corner, the only person that is control of my destiny is myself. And sorry, I really don’t trust that many guys nowadays in the bike handling skills. There were multiple crashes that day, tons of them.

I remember along time ago when Mike and Danny Pate were riding the Sunset Loop at Redlands. That circuit was about 6 miles, 3 up and 3 down on a super twisty technical descent through a neighborhood. Mike and Danny were super young and would scream down the descent, passing riders on the way, on the inside and outside. It is so strange, because when I saw this, I applauded the skills they were using and honing. I knew that both of them were in it for the long run and would be good riders.

Anyway, there are times to ride “unethically” and times to just stay in line. When the field or teams in the field are making the race unsafe, then I feel it is totally fair to ride whatever way to make myself the safest. Another example.

During Nature Valley Gran Prix once again, in the Minneapolis circuit race, it was raining crazy hard. United Healthcare/Healthnet, whatever, was riding at the front, for obvious cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater, Nathan O’Neill. All 8 of their team was riding at the front, braking down to about 15 mph in the corners, half the time falling, and then accelerating out of them. They announced on the line that they would call the race if the conditions got too bad. The conditions were bad very early, so I knew that the race was going to be shortened. I rode the inside of nearly every corner the whole 20 minutes. Guys were sliding out virtually every corner. I attacked when they rung the bell and won the race by 30 seconds. That was 30 seconds in one lap.

Anyway, I was sitting in dope control after the race at the YMCA and Nathan O’Neill comes in, way after the one hour limit, and is all pissed off he had to leave the hotel to pee into a cup. The team director at the time, Jeff Corbett, says something derogatory to me like, “Best race win of your career Tilford.” Nathan starts telling Jeff how dangerous it was and that you couldn’t even see the manhole covers. I was thinking, they are in the same place every lap, they aren’t moving around.

Then he turns to me and says something like I was scaring the shit out of him coming on his inside. I told him I was doing that for a couple reasons. One, he was riding orange Maxiis clinchers in the rain. That in itself would justify it. But, really, his rear wheel would slide 6 inches at least one corner every lap. Plus, I think at least 4 guys on his team, that were leading the race, fell in 20 minutes. They were riding scared, arms straight, braking in the wet corners, doing virtually everything wrong for riding safe in the rain. So, riding the inside line was the only way I was going to be assured to not fall. I rode one lap 30 seconds faster than their team, with Gord Fraser and Greg Henderson, both Healthnet, finishing 2nd and 3rd. I could have kept that speed pretty much the whole race.

He said something about respecting the leaders jersey, blah, blah, blah. I told him I had no intention of falling on the ground in a bike race because of some etiquette that he thought should exist. And that I wasn’t willing to put myself into an unsafe position because of this so called etiquette. According to Mike Creed, and probably Nathan O’Neill too, it probably sounded arrogant. But it wasn’t, it was just fact. I would use the word confident instead.

Sometimes riding through the inside is a easy way to move up 50 places coasting. As long as you don’t knock anyone down, touch anyone, then I don’t see the problem.

Bicycle racing is all about taking risks. To be successful at the sport, there are inherently a certain amount of risk always. Calculated risks are just that, calculated. And each and every individual is the one that makes these calculations. Risks for some are an after thought of others. Each rider possesses a different skill set. It is up to the individual rider to know when to use each skill he possesses. Sometimes the risks are acceptable by other riders, other times they aren’t.

There are abunch of different reasons to ride what some people consider unsafe. Mike says in his podcast that I was the worst at this. I think I am one of the best at this. I guess it’s just in the perspective and who it is unsafe for. I very much doubt that Mike would like to be in my body in icey, rutty cyclocross race. Clipping in at the start is huge risk, but we still do it.

Winning the Minneapolis Criterium in the rain.