Life's Adventures

Booo we´re in Colombia

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 15:17:00 +0000

And we are finally on the road again!
Yumay and I flew to Bogota beginning of January, and sure enough, Yumay´s bag flew to Lima, a little ahead of schedule for us..... After dealing with all that missing bag stuff and having to change pesos we did not get to the hostel until way after midnight, and sure enough it was full, but finally we crashed dead tired in a dumpy place not too far, waiting for our travel luck to improve a bit.

"The before picture"

Next morning we checked in to our backpacker hostel, found mail from Andres, a guy we met at a Christmas party in Seattle, who actually was from Bogota and had lots of friends there. Armed with tons of local what-to-do info (thanks Andres!) we explored the city, climbed to the local mountain to overview the gigantic city... totally out of breath (Bogota lies at 8800 feet and the top of the ¨little hill¨is at over 10´000 feet!).

Sundays the city of Bogota has what is called a ciclovia, they shut down half of the city´s major streets and tens of thousands of people from the age of 2-100 walk, run, inlineskate and cycle about the city.... incredible! Yumay and I ran for over 3.5h and close to 20miles that day, it was certainly the best way to see the outskirts of Bogota. Hopefully the US cities will pick that up sometime soon... traffic is decreased significantly as its tough to drive on half the streets, and people there seem much fitter too!

Through Andres we met Santiago, Carolina, Tono and Mimi, and they showed us around the city, and since Monday was a holiday, we got to drive out of the city north and enjoy the beautiful countryside, and had a phantastic barbecue, something of a barbecue i have not had since argentina, boy do they like their meat here, and do they know how to prepare it well!

Santi, Carolina, Tono, Mimi and Yumay enjoying the grilled meat and the view

Anyhow, after a few enjoyable days in Bogota we were ready to explore more of the county, so we headed north to Cartagena, a nice colonial town, hot and humid right by the ocean, and a good stopover to the even nicer northern towns.

Funky christmas displays and Cartagena old town

We pretty soon headed up to Taganga Beach, a stone´s throw from our main goal, parque tayrona, one of the most beautiful, unspoiled parks i have ever seen. Its a Jungle park by the ocean, filled with hiking paths and pristine beaches. There we spent 3 days hiking and camping within the park.

Yumay relaxing....

Wannabe Tarzan....

Playa brava.. we had the whole beach to ourselves

One of our main hikes, 6h to one of the beaches, we did not see a single soul, but lots of great bugs, huge spiders, snakes and butterflies... it was simply incredible and left us breathless and alone on a white sand beach. Certainly the best place to visit in Colombia. After the few days of trekking we spend a few days in a really nice hostal in Taganga, and then headed out to Ecuador.
We were beind schedule so we decided to fly, as we had a boat to catch on Galapagos islands, and almost did not make it. After we flew fine and safely to Bogota, our next flight to Quito looked fine. They announced about 5 times that they were cleaning the plane, thats why we could not board yet... nice... a very clean plane.. so clean that it apparently could not fly no more.. eventually they took the plain away with no announcement, and hours later brought a new one... now apparently Quito had too much fog and no planes could land anymore, so aound midnight they shoved us off to a 5 star hotel somewhere in Bogota, nice, but not really, as we only got like 3h of sleep and then needed to get back to the airport... unfortunately the game of fly cant fly continued on way into the day and with 13 delay we finally took off.. phew! So we immediately flew off to Galapagos and made it finally on time!
On the Galapagos islands we met Mike and Anna, they have been on a 6 months honeymoon and we were super excited to see that our paths will cross and booked the Galapagos trip together.
Thing was Galapagos is expensive, so we decided to go for the cheapest Boat (out of like 50 boats available), the Yolita. Originally designed for 12 passengers (and even then too small), they upped it to 16 a few years ago... its tiny, super old (actyally its 28 years old and in 2 months will be taken out of service), and full of termites (no joke), but hey, you get the see the same animals, eat the same great food and have the same guides, for less than half the price of a medium class boat, so we endured the painful heat and sound from the engines at night, and had quite the amazing 8 day trip. 8 day trips are designed such that you see a major part (about 50%) of the islands and the wildlife...

The trip was totally worth it, and I want to go back one day, from a friend we heard it may be able to be done in a kayak (sure, quided, but think of doing a multiday kayaking trip, WOW!)...

Huge tourtouse and relaxing sealion....

Birds in action...

Almost comic-like....

Curious Iguana

Us in Galapagos...

Blue footed boobie mating dance...

Snorkeling was great!

White tip reef shark...

Swam with turtles quite a bit...

And played with sealions...

Rogaine for Men with Hair

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Tue, 15 May 2007 00:39:00 +0000

So Yumay and I are organizing a Rogaine on June 9th, and last weekend, after having been out there once before and numerous hours studying maps and creating the course on paper, it was time to set up the monster portion of the race. Rogaine stands for Rugged Outdoor Group Activity Involving Navigation and Endurance... so much for the longest acronym known to men...

This one is different from the conventional 6/12/24h rogaine races... they are usually only on foot. Creating a bike and foot course took a lot of studying the possibilities of how to deal with people doing the 4h bike 4h foot vs the 6h foot race.... phew....

Havin Fun

Spring is here...

Someone tipped off the chipmunk (on top) and it knows all the CP locations now!!

Tamarack Springs Campsite

Anyhow, Yumay and I packed the car Friday night and started nice and early at 5am to get out there and get going.... and the going was tough. Every checkpoint has to be checked, double checked, measured with GPS, and then vetted (by Glen next weekend). So needless to say my plan of getting it all done (30cps) went out the door in a jiffy.... after roughly 10h of riding and running, and lots of breaks readjusting CP locations it was time to go to sleep at the beautiful Tamarack Sprints Campground. Its free camping at a gorgeous campsite, what wonderful place we live in! Saw probably about 30-40 deer and elk while up there too...

Killer Views

The next day we did a combination of ride/run/drive to get more done, and now the course is almost done! Still lots of work to do figuring out CP values and all that fun suff... but that s why I decided to do the race to begin with... lots of learing, lots of fun!

Sun, Fun on the Peninsula...

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 04:29:00 +0000

Wednesday night sometime past midnight, buried in emails from work and sponsorship, permit and course planning projects for 4th Dimension, Yumay and I decided we needed a break, and looking at our schedules we figured that would be sometime in mid-august, unless we left this weekend... so two very last minute but very determined emails to our bosses and the next morning we were getting ready for our three day weekend on the olympic peninsula. Woohoo! Havent been there but once, and just a drive by anyways, this time we wanted to do some good runs and rides... so off we were to Sequim after our regular MerGeo.com team ride on Thursdays at Tiger... we caught a late ferry and found a nice little motel.. and were not more than 20 minute drive away from one of the best mountain bike rides washington has to offer... Dungeness/Gold Creek... about 20 miles with 4500 feet of climb, this ride offeres some of the best singletrack there is.. and all that surprisingly dry... it was a great day of riding, about 5h of constant technical but not too technical riding, and top views of the olympic mountains.

First mountain flowers after a long winter...

Having fun!

River crossing balance...

The next day we were off to run the Lake Ozette triangle... after a beautiful drive along the north coast of the peninsula we got there, beautiful sunshine, just a little wet from the days before.. unfortunately 6 out of the 9 miles are running on wood planks, and about 1.5 miles into the run i slipped on a slighly slanted piece of wood that was as slippery as a banana peel, and fell, and hurt my ankle, AGAIN for the 2nd time this year. Not as bad as last time, but no running for a few days.. we still made it to the wild coast but with my swollen and tender ankle I decided to just stay out there and enjoy the weather and then hike back the way we came... so we skipped day three and went home... a bike ride on sunday will be better and still doable with a tender ankle.... two out of three aint that bad!

Saw Bambi along the way...

WoW!

Assessing ankle situation...

On the north coast...

The gloves are off...

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 14:05:00 +0000

Getting ready for a grueling 1000 mile race with 100'000 feet of elevation gain I am convinced I need to simulate the race a bit more to not get annihilated during the race.... so I need to do climb, lots of it.... and there is not really too much nearby... at least not uninterrupted 3000-5000 feet... hurricane ridge is the best on the bike at the moment, but one has to drive 2h and take a ferry.... mad lake and devils gulch are still snowed in... so I did L'alp d'Issaquah.... named after L'alp d'Huez its barely a homeopathic version of that in terms of total climb, but its 2.7 miles and 1400 feet of climb, not that bad for out here ey?

So I drove there and climbed it.. once, twice, (as riders looked at me, wait, did he not just... why?) four times plus once from the back side... got in just under 6'000 feet of climb by 10am, when I had another job to do... Eric was organizing one of his Northwest Trail Runs and I agreed to go pick up all the flags and markers from the half marathon course.... so it was another 13ish mile run with 4000 feet of elevation gain... great training doing 10'000 feet of gain that morning, something I need to do lots from now on... and we certainly have the hills to train on....

Photo by Murray Maitland, who did aid station...

The best commute in the world.....

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 00:42:00 +0000

I have the best commute in the world and I challenge anyone that reads this... its 22.2 miles of uninterrupted bicycling path going from Redmond over the noth end of the lake down to Seattle. Very few roads to cross (5-6) and only one major one with a red light... the trail is in excellent (Redmond) to good (Bothell, Seattle) condition, and I there is enough dirt/gravel shoulder for running as well. Over the years I have usually biked to/from work anywhere from 1-4 times a week, and recently to get ready for my Gigathlon I have started also inline skating and running... Roadbike takes me 1h-1h20, MTB 1h10-1h30, Inline 1h45-2h, and running about 3h30... a little on the long side for a morning commute but when I make it out of bed at 4.30 (like today) I can make it... and running almost a marathon before work gives you a good sense of achievement (as well as seriously tired/achy legs throughout the day).... a picture of the Burke Gilman Trail below:

While the trail is completely flat there is also plenty of opportunities to veer off and add some distance and serious hills (Puget Power, Tolt Pipeline, Swedish Hill, etc)..... a blessing of a commute I am very very greatful for!

BEAST #1 in the Bag

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 00:15:00 +0000

Another Season of BEAST has started... what a relief that it all went well. When Eric called me up over three years ago and told me he wanted to start a midweek adventure race series I thought he d gone a little mad... and sometimes I love to be wrong....

BEAST started three years ago with 42 racers (only 20 preregistered...), many good weather races and phantastic race courses (Eric makes a map for every race, does not just use USGS maps, and updates every orienteering map to perfection), the race numbers shot up to about 80-100 racers, where its been pretty steady... the UW race (#3 of the year traditionally) gets more racers due to the easy central location, the paddling (canoeing in rented standardized boats at the UW activity center) and the fact that it requires roadbikes, not mountain bikes... a little easier for beginners.

This first race was in Redmond and it all started when I did a BBTC ride with Ruri and AV a long time ago and found that there were dozens of really cool singletrack trails right behind my house... over a year I explored more and then the idea was born using these for a BEAST...

Great times, lots of racers, meeting everyone again after the offseason, and an epic battle of many lead teams finiding Manny's pulling ahead by less than a minute ahead of my buddies Jeff Woerner and Ryan Fleming and winning it! Great Job Marty, Kara, Chip and Mark (even after dry heaving several times!). My wife Yumay who religiously does the BEAST races brought out two microsoft newbies and together with Clint Arney they got 5th overall, of 38 teams, and she had a blast and thought the race course was epic....

Not many pictures as my camera died about 5 seconds before race start....

Aaron and Carol busy checking everyone in....

Prerace meeting... prerace anticipation

Checking maps and listening to eric.... just a few seconds to go...!

A very MerGeo Weekend....

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 03:36:00 +0000

This past weekend it was time to get together with the Team (MerGeo.com). Unfortunately people were injured (Eric, Aaron), on vacation (Julie, Ruri) and busy.. so only five showed up to our first team ride at Black Diamond. The new map and the extra trails were totally worth the trip down there, and Matt, Peteris, Kim, Yumay and I rode and ran the trails for about 4h until we met up with Aaron Vanderwaal (who's leg is almost healed and did his first road ride since his horrible crash in november!) to talk about the Team's schedule. While sitting there and talking, we had the TV running and all of a sudden saw a familiar face.... it was Marty Couret from Team Manny's who got into a national TV commercial talking about the new Aleve Gelcaps, a stint he got during participating at our 4th Dimension Winter AR!! How cool is that!

Getting Ready to head out...

Roger and Matt on the Trail

Sunday I did my new favorite Sunday workout, get up at 5, start riding at 5.30, bike to and up and over Cougar Mountain twice, and then out to Red Town Trailhead for a Seattle Running Company Sunday Trailrun at 7.30am, and after a 10Mile run head back home.... at the trailhead I met Vin and my teammate Matt Hayes and we booked it, 10Miles/2000ft el.gain in 1h43, not bad for already having done 35k/3000ft gain on the bike.... just for the heck of it we rode across Cougar Mt. Top one last time and then around the lake.... I was holding on for dear life (hence no pictures) tugged close behind matt who was riding an average of 23MPH around the lake... did not even look like he was breaking a sweat!
After I got home and inline skated for 30 minutes I knew I was done for the day and ready to input some serious loads of sushi!! After the shower walking down the stairs my legs hurt like after a 6-12h adventure race... that s the kind of training that is key, but usually when I am training by myself I just wont push that hard.... thank god for teammates!

Sleepless in Seattle

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 20:26:00 +0000

The title reflects more the memory of how it constantly rained during the "Sleepless in Seattle" movie, not that I have been particularly strong (3-5h/night) in the sleep division either...
I love the northwest... I want grow old here, and I am happy that whimpy Californians and Floridarians move back to where they came from when they cannot deal with the cold and wet... but every once in a while I break down too and feel a little whiny myself, and wish back the time when I lived in Berkeley... in 6 months it rained 3 times there... for a combined 5h....

March has been bad, bad, bad... and somehow the only good days we had were midweek days, so every saturday, like clockwork its the same weather....

Yup, that one...

Training has been going really well considering that I am about three months away from the big race... still a lot of work especially on the bike and the swim, but I am getting there...
Today after a desperate overhaul on my bike by Performance, I rode 62 miles in the rain, this ride called "The son of the last dirt trail", its from Kissing the Trail, a great mountain bike guide from John Zilly. Boy it was cold and the trails were wet! I forgot my goretex booties at work and therefore could not feel much of my feet (except for a dull, cold pain) for the most part of the 5h ride.. except for in the shower when the skin and flesh started to warm up... that is one painful feeling like thousands of ants crawling around...

The ride encompasses Tolt Pipeline Trail, Puget Power Trail, Farrell McWither, Redmond Watershed, Told McDonald, Snoqualmie Valley Trail and East Lake Sammamish Trail and can be modified at will, but my version is about 100k with 3000ft of climb and its 60% fireroad, 30% singletrack and 10% road... not bad, when its DRY!! Spring is around the corner and I have got to say that its the most desperate I have ever been for warm/dry weather.. maybe due to not having taken time off through the winter since I ran HURT100...

Dirt deposits in the patented "Love Channel" on my MTB saddle... seriously, that is the official patented name...!! Behind the bike is my super fuel... powered by Clif!

Connecting the dots...

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 06:58:00 +0000

Things are slowly coming together on the Gigathlon race I am doing this summer... for those who dont know what the heck I am rambling about, its a 900 mile/105'00 feet elevation gain multisport event (swim, cycle, run, MTB, inline skate, each discipline every day)...
http://www.gigathlon.ch/
Too bad that they only have it in German or French but here is the course..

And the distances/el.gains..

Trainig has been going great, and I am swimming a ton theses days, so really the preparations are going as planned... to make it easier, I have been very lucky to get some major sponsors for my race, among them Clif Bar , who apart from making sure I will never go hungry also is providing major sets of race jerseys.....

K2 skates also just came through big and provided me with superb race and training skates, and Yumay some as well to be able to train together... Yumay has exceptional skate and swim skills... the two things I need badly, what a lucky coincidence...

The radical 100... after my first training the only thing left to worry about is how much it was going to hurt when I wipe out at 17-18 miles per hour....!

Fresh off the press I also am getting great support in the swimming category, where Blue Seventy is providing me with the Triathlon Wetsuit of the Year! The Blue Seventy Helix was used by Tyler Patterson in his amazing 55 mile swim (37h) last year, and Tyler is teaching me the ropes of how to swim fast and long...., its amazing the amount of support I am getting from everyone here in the northwest....

The helix... aint it pretty?... and fast!

Paddle Schmaddle

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 06:24:00 +0000

Aaron is doing a weird american move Roger does not get but smiles anyways...

After I made my mad decision to take part in a 900 mile, 105'000 foot elevation gain triathlon this summer, I stopped paddling, one of my favorite pasttimes last year... and been swimming like mad (well not really, like 3 times a week but that s a pretty mad thing for me, not particularly excited about the slowest sport in the world!). Anyhow, after the Cap Forest Ride yesterday I decided to meet up with AaronVdV who has made some nice recovery advances lately and is limping faster than ever.. and paddling faster than ever too.. ! So we went out to the Northwest Outdoor Center and paddled out to 520 and along the floating bridge to the other side and back... good being out there again, and planning the season with our new MerGeo.com captain!

MTB @ Cap Forest

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 05:21:00 +0000

Last weekend I rode at Capitol Forest with Glen, RVG, JVG, Aaron Rinn and his buddy Chad. Met up at Krispy Kreme in Tacoma the usual DART fashion, about 15-30 minutes late but in good spirits! Then headed down to Cap Forest. Originally planned on doing the Capitol Peak 50 mile running race course on the bike but our tight schedule, lateness, and some minor bike defects, plus the fact that there was massive snow on Capitol Peak, all slowed us down, but we still ended up getting in a good chunk of biking, about 26 miles and plenty of vertical, which is not hard to find out there!

Glen's car is in desperate need of hydration! Will nuun help? :)

Gotta first get to the trail!

Started off in dreary rainy weather and got to experience what Cap Forest is like in the winter.... WET! Had to cross a big stream and bike up 1500 feet to start with, so after a quick cold footbath the bodies got warm immediately... the ride was a sufferfest in the best of good-pain way... wet, difficult, lotsa climbing and difficult singletrack descending, and at the end a steep climb up to Capitol Peak, which we got about 2/3 up until we hit heavy snow....

Biking in the snow is fun... and difficult.

Boy was it wet!

DIRT, DART!

Yeah well the hardware suffered too...

No words necessary...

it was fun but difficult to ride in a foot of snow, and Glen needed to be back in the city so we called it a day... an awesome day with great bikers... what else would I want on a rainy day!

Raise the roof for Colinoooooooooba III

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:55:00 +0000

Colin celebrated his 46th birthday in style this past weekend.... with the 3rd annual Colinoba! This mix of streetscramble, adventure race and drink fest is a classic already now, and hordes of AR buddies participated, namely DART, missing link, Manny's, Trioba, Double Trouble, Dr. Strangelove, Robin, etc....

Colin with his very stylish flamingo theme glasses....

Superheroes on speed... missing DART

Prerace meeting....

The jist of it is find CP locations all over the city as you are running around with a digital camera and an empty big beer bottle, take lots of funky pictures according to rules and instructions, and drink at least three pints in three pubs/bars across the city (also specified)...... I could explain more but let me just make it easy and wrap it up for you... fun, awesome training, great friends.

RVG, JVG and Jerry won the thing, I raced with John, a coworker of Colin's from Boeing and we got 2nd, just seconds behind Jen and Rick Jerabek, but noone cared too much about the results, everyone was out there to have oodles of fun.... pictures courtesy of RVG....!

Adventure pure at Orcas Island 50k

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 23:35:00 +0000

This past Saturday I ran the Orcas Island 50k Fat @$$ run which as you can imagine from the name is on Orcas Island! Originally I wanted to run, then not because Franklin and Ats were coming to town, then yes again since Franklin absolutely wanted to do the run and heck that was even better. Not having been able to run much since the H.U.R.T 100, I expected little of the race and started off easy, which is how I usually do best. There were superb runners there, Bryan Morrison, Kyle Skaggs, Ralph Pooler, Brock Gavery, Glen Rogers, Van Phan, Scott McCoubrey, to just name a few, so I knew I needed to run my own race or else I would just blow myself out. The race was tailored to my strenghts, with 8000 feet of elevation gain there were not a lot of flat parts in the race. Four big hills were going to be climbed, including the top of Mt. Constitution. After 9 miles, where we returned once to the start/finish, I was in roughly 25th position, just warming up for hill #2. After that I powered up the powerline trail which was not so much a trail but a general rut in the ground that could be followed, and some sections were a plain scramble. There I passed Van, Scott, Brandon, and Murray among 4 more racers in just 10 minutes, feeling good about having taken it easy in the beginning, knowing there was still plenty of race left for me to finish well. Both highest peaks of the race were snow covered, and both times were the actually only time it rained, or with my luck snowed up above the snowline, so I experienced virtually try weather all day. Hill #3 was Mt. Constitution, and then after the 2nd aid station there was a whole lot of descending to do. I felt great at all times, powered only by clif shots, shot blocks, and hammer perpetuem, plus a few ecaps and nuun. I finished in 6h05 in 10th place, and felt really good about my race. Just 5 minutes behind Glen, bugger! Especially since Murray and I got lost for about 3-4 minues at mile 9 where we took a wrong turn and ended up down at the water.

Happy, tired, a wee bit wet....

4th Dimension Winter AR

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 23:49:00 +0000

Let me start off by saying that the first ever adventure race that Yumay and I organised together was awesome, as that is all that really matters! We had an interesting time leading up to the event, its not easy, that s for sure. The permits, course design on everchanging snow conditions, racers that change their mind if and with whom they ll race, and volunteer coordinations sure take it out of you even just getting there. Saturday morning (the race was Sunday) Ruri and I met at Hyak Lodge, where the race would eventually start less than 24h hours later, and had a mission to complete. To put out all the 21 checkpoint flags.. preferentially in the right location, as one does not want to mess with tired, angry adventure racers!
The whole thing started off pretty disasterous.... the batteries of the GPS died, due to extreme cold, and having to constantly carry them in my pockets to warm up was cumbersome.... then I found that one CP was slightly misplaced on the map... what to do? Replace in the field or on the map? After an hour of no major disasters my snowshoes broke apart?? WHAT!?! Seriously, just broke in two different places, and I did not even run very hard...
So after a quick stop at the lodge we went onwards, me with new snowshoes, to finish setting the course. It got better and better, and at the end I was almost having fun! The stress levels were certainly there... would the course be long enough, accurate enough, well percieved?

Pre-race rambling...

Got back to the lodge, a quick hot shower and from then on it was just a blur of events after events... racers started arriving, checking in, and before I knew it it was 12pm and I had to be up at 4am to get the volunteers started. The pre-race night was a success though, Bruce cooked some great meals as usual and raers mostly chatted and/or watched the adventure race DVDs I had borrowed.

Volunteers Kean Williams and Jessica Lundin in action

Morning of was hectic but went very well, Volunteers were in place thanks to Aaron and Matt who have a knack for being on the ball, and people like Vivian and many others that are so good at this volunteering thing... its amazing how much easier it is with good volunteers.

Race started just a minute late, and people were on their way! 29 teams (76 people) registered and 28 showed up since Tyler Patterson broke his hand two nights before, and the mad stampede of overly eager adventure racers barreling down the icy road from the Hyak Lodge was almost comic to watch. Once gone, I had a few minutes to relax before the madness of who which what continued.

Don Brooks slams back another one in the hopes of not having to do penalty laps

Overall it went really well though and DART won in a superior fashion before MOMAR. Not all teams made it, in fact several never even got to CP5 (out of 20) due to the sometimes a bit difficult navigation, but everyone was in very good spirits about it, after all finishing a hard course gives one a greater sense of satisfaction. The final part, a special event "biathlon" where people had to throw snowballs at coke cans and if they missed run/skate extra laps was very well received (except for the few poor ones that had to run all six laps... !).

Winning Team: DART-nuun

Team Snowblind, happy to be done...

Overall a total success, got us thirsty to do another one or two....

H.U.R.T Hurt!

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 19:15:00 +0000

Any race that is called HURT probably is trying to do a pun to pain.. HURT is no different...
H.U.R.T stands for Hawaiian Ultra Running Team 100 Miler.... auguably the toughest 100 miler in the US (not counting Barkley since you need to get "chosen" to race)... its a 100 miler with 99% singletrack, 24'000 feet of elevation gain and loss (the latter hurts more than the former) and very, very gnarly trails... washed out riverbeds, roots as far as your eyes can see..
So I decided to do it! CCC100 went well, and its up or out, always!

I cant necessarily say I had a lot of fun training for it this winter... doing double Mt. Si's in snow storms only mimic the drastic elevation changes not the weather there, and the rain, rain, constant rain throughout the winter got to me over time.. but I prepared for it well, and felt I was ready to roll.... in any event if it did not go well Yumay came along and we were going to go out to Kauaii to hang out for a week so the trip was already a success to start with. My buddy Matt Hart was there along with Krissy Moehl, having some other Washingtonians there was great, and my plan was to not run as fast as them as that would mean I am going too fast!

Steadily uphill.....

I started off rather fast-paced on the first of the five 20 mile loops, finding myself to be running with Krissy Moehl (who would eventually finish 2nd place overall!) and then even passed her and was about 20 minutes ahead of her after lap 1.... not the smartest thing to do knowing that she is a much stronger runner than me... oh well, I listened to my body who told me I was feeling phantastic....

Popping blisters, FUN!!

Second loop I started to slow down, naturally, and being passed by some people, not freaking out about it, I was running my own race, and actually was running by myself for about 80% of the fist 60 miles, when Yumay would jump in and pace me to the finish... Matt was done by then, runing the 100k version.

Mile 50... hot, hot, hot...

After mile 60 I found out I was in 5th place overall out of the about 100 people, NICE! I was feeling the constant heat over the day that started taking its toll, only feeling-wise though, speed wise I was still going really strong up the hills.... Yumay was with me and I felt like this was going to be one of my best races ever.... slip, slam, pop!
Slipped in the middle of the night, very sleepy, on a root, fell into the bamboo forest and sprained my ankle!!! Darn, so close... spend 2h trying to continue but I was down to a crawl and at mile 72 I had to pull out... fortunately I was past the 62mile mark so when that happens and one does not finish the 100 miler they automatically qualify for the 100k time... which I ended up 5th in and got a buckle as well.... no harm done, I ll do this race again in a few years... !!

Season's culminations, 8th place at USARA championships!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 16:55:00 +0000

It has been a good, hard, long season, and last weekend Eric Bone, Julie Schnepf and I headed down to Santa Barbara in California to take part in the U.S Adventure Race Championship, a spot we earned by beating Team DART-nuun at the Trioba 12h race at Snoqualmie Pass.
I had not raced with Julie before but Eric did and they were supremely successful, so I was not the least bit worried, and found out soon I did not need to be anyways.

We arrived at San Jose Airport and were picked up by Eric who drove down with all our bikes and gear, and off we were to Santa Barbara. We were planning on arriving early to have plenty of time to prepare, but the day ended up a blur of constant running around checking in, picking up race maps and infos, going to meetings, getting the gear ready, working on maps very late and dropping in bed to catch 1h of sleep from 3-4am... knowing we will not get any sleep the night after anyways unless we drop out....

Race start had an interesting twist... a warmup... one had to ride to the start... it was about a 6 mile ride on undulating roads to the start, where we then coasteered along the beautiful coast (we ran across Kevin Costners lawn.... sorry!!), all the way back the the hotel where the kayaks were waiting... (not really worthy of the name, pretty sad that they used Sevylor Tahiti inflatables for such a big race!).

There were 50 teams present, two boats per team, makes 100 boats... and one was deflated... ours DANG!! Could not believe it... had to run around and find the guy responsible who then pumped up and fixed the boat... then Eric in a Boneheaded usual approach to try to stay as dry as possible was trying to enter the surf way too early and capsized.. not once, not twice, three times... we were on the water in probably 48th or 49th place..... wow, what a start....

Our paddling skills did not help, I was sitting way too low in the boat and did not get enough power so we only passed about 5-6 teams on the water and came out in the early 40 range, ready to rumble! The first bike leg went well and we moved past team by team... the only good thing when you are way in the back....

Eric powering up the first hill of the day...

Then we got to the trek and had a superior run, partly because we ran well and Eric's navigation was solid, party due to a misplaced checkpoint that two teams nicely enough mentioned and we found it in the wrong place immediately... after 7 hours or racing we suddenly found ourselves in 6th place!!! The race was on!
After we got on the bike we were once again plagued by bad luck, Eric's light gave out and mine had connection issues so apart from having to deal with the issues we had inferior lighting once darkness set compared to the other teams out there. It was necessary, the downhill sections were brutal and Dan Barger, in his usual, slightly arrogant fashion, proclaimed that the night before with "I dont like easy races...!", yup.

We fell back to about 10th place throughout the night's uphill fireroad battles and downhill singletrack maddness, and as the sun came up I caught second wind. This is something peculiar with me, I get a huge surge of energy the morning after a long hard night, and used it to tow Julie at first, then Eric, and then both, and we managed to pass a team up to the last hilly checkpoint... from there it was downhill to the beach, finish a reasonably short Orienteering section, and along the coast to the finish. With strong headwind, cramping muscles and big smiles we rode the last few miles along the beach and finished the US Championships in 8th place... superbly happy with this race... could we have done better? Always, there s not a team that does not drop minutes, maybe hours in a race that lasts 27h30minutes.. but overall this race went about as well as we could have hoped for.. after all we were ahead of many very strong and well funded adventure race teams such as Golite Timberland Sprint, Wingnut and Mighty Dog... this is it for me for a while... I am taking a mini-sabbatical from MerGeo, stepping down from my captain role and will only race the fun races next year... its time for others to step up and for me to take it a bit easier.....

Done! A well deserved 8th place...

My first 100 mile run, Cascade Crest 100

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 23:20:00 +0000

When I told my mom I was going to run 100 miles (omitting the fact that there is also 22'000 feet of elevation gain in it) she righfully asked "now why would you do something so stupid?"... for which I had no real good answer.... because I can? Hmm... I can also run into a burning building but I am not going to do it anytime soon....

So I stopped trying to explain why I love the things that most people find a wee bit cooky... watching Amerian Idol or reading about who Paris Hilton did last night is a cooky pasttime for me and noone will ever really be able to sell that to me....

Anyhow, I love doing what I do and so getting ready for this race was exciting.. after a couple of AR's and rogaines I was ready to train for the Cascade Crest 100 mile trail run, but my excitement got a pretty good damper when I fell and hurt my knee on the Skuookum Flats down in White River while mountain biking. One rock in the wrong place (or Roger's bike in the wrong place I guess) and I heard the pop... some ligament had been pulled... and while I could ride ok running was totally out of questoin for almost two months... it was exctuciating not being able to run... and after 5-6 weeks when I was able to get back into it we were in Amsterdam, about one of the flattest cities in one of the flattest countries in the world.... so much for good training....

Cross training came to help and before I knew it it was two weeks before the race and the knee felt fine.. two double Mt. Si trainings and I was about as ready as I would ever be biven the circumstances.
I had great support, Yumay was going to wait for me at Mile 32, then Jerry Gamez took over first pacer duty from mile 45-67, and Yumay from 67-100....
Early on in the race I started running with Diane VanDeren, one of the most amazing women I have ever met... once a star Basketball and Tennis athlete (she was good enough to play at Wimbledon) she began having seizures after a bad fall from horsebackriding when she was younger... after three kids and a successful tennis career the scar on the brain broke, and the seizures came back with full vengeance.. ten years of crippling seizures every day left her no choice but to go for it, a large part of her brain was amputated in an amazing surgery, and she was left with very little short term memory and bad vision at night, but otherwise healthy... she took on ultrarunning and is now on the NorthFace Ultrarunning Team and one amazing athlete!
It was a pleasure running with her and listening to her talk, and the time passed very quickly.

Off they go... start of the CCC100, 70 or so racers....

Diane Vanderen, my running buddy for the first 45 miles....

Water, nuun, lots of Clif, Ipod.... good to go!!

At mile 45 Jerry took over and I started to fade... I wasnt running fast to begin with, Diane slowed me down and rightfully and smartly so.. but somehow I got worse anyways... just as we were entering the (in)famous Snoqualmie Tunnell.... I was passed by Van Phan who was pacing another 100 miler virgin and they were moving fast... was I done?
My stomach was feeling bad, after a full day of strong heat many people had troubles, but somehow miraculously it went away and never came back immediately after we exited the tunnell... 50 mile mark was reached.. barn door was open (still very far away but open!), and Jerry turned up the cranks!! He gave me some kickass tortillas with cream cheese and ham, and after eating Clif Bars, Shot Blocks and Shots all day my body loved the change and responded very well.... I hauled up the hill passing three people and figured I was proably in about 25th place..... not bad...
After Mile 67 Yumay took over, Jerry said bye (thanks again!) and we started getting on the trail from hell...its called that for a good reason... nevertheless I did really well in this section with Yumay's help and we passed another few people...

As night comes, Roger is visibly tired, roughly around mile 65...

Then came the needles... short very steep pinprick needle climbs, over and over and over.. and I continued passing people until we met up with Jeff Arnd whoe Yumay and I (he had no pacer) ran with until the end... 14th place overall... extremely happy given the midigating circumstances.... and made me want to come back for more!

Done! Mile 99.9, a few steps to go!

And the infamous Borat picture Eric A took and modified... yeehaw

RAMSHOD!

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 14:07:00 +0000

In honor of RAMROD, we did RAMSHOD this past weekend, Run Around Mt St Helens in One Day....

DART organized the training/outing and invited us and Yumay and I were in without a doubt, what a cool way to spend the weekend, drive down friday night late, sleep in the car, on the ground or in a tent at the trailhead (all versions were used, we went for tent for the 4h of sleep we got), then head out supremely early (3am up, 3.30 start).

Erik Nachtrieb getting ready for the day ahead....

Aaron Rinn and Yumay powering up the gravel...

4.45am, getting light out...

Group picture in the early AM

The run can be done clockwise or counter clockwise (D'UH!) and that depends on when one wants runnability and water (east) or slow going and dry, super volcanic rocky ground (west)... we wanted to cover as much ground as possible first so we ran at night in the open flat east fields and were making great progress... the run is about 34 miles and 8000 feet of elevation gain/loss in this lollipop loop. Amazing views down and up the mountain (one can see smoke/fumes coming out of the crator!) were plenty, as was wildlife and different vegetation zones. We ate blueberries galore and treated our water from streams that came off the mountain... an incredible outing.

Narrow volcanic paths....

Happy to be out there...

Cmon how hard can it be to navigate around a volcano!

Aaron running down the volcano...

On the rockier, gnarlier southwest side of the volcano

Double fun! Devils Gulch, Mission Ridge

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 13:37:00 +0000

Last weekend I rode with RVG, AV, Ryan Fleming and Glen Rogers in Wenatchee.... it had been almost two years since the 24h Trioba (man those were the times when Trioba still organised hard and unique adventure races!), and I had not been back since.

Now thats what I call carpooling!!

Little cool-off for Glen...

We got a pathetically late start (as always when too many people are involved) and drove out there, not making it to the start until about 11pm... but we were all excited and ready to rumble! I had trouble initially keeping up.. the DART boys and AV were hauling up there! They waited and soon we got into a good rythm and made it up there to the top together, riding with a guy on a single speed that we met on the trail. Amazing that he kept up, after all we re not so slow out there... but we soon found out he is a 24h mountain bike racer and had won a few very prestigious races on single speed...

Ridin up the gulch...

After the Devils Gulch up it was Mission Ridge down and being tired from the upupup (5000 feet roughly) the down down down was just as hard, if not harder... I combined for about 5 falls, some pretty dumb and spectacular looking (e.g. dead bug pose fall, falling on your mountain bike, rolling over, not being able to unclip so that i landed on my back and my bike, still attached to myself was sticking straight up in the air... oh yeah and i ran into a tree too.. that hurt!)

Back at the trailhead.... nice ride!

We made it, the weather was gorgeous, and I ll be back less than another 2 years again, that ride needs to be a yearly occurrence!

X-adventure, Idaho

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 23:19:00 +0000

A year ago we competed in the X-adventure and got a whiff of the glorious racing scene that lies beyond Washington State... and this year we came back for more. Aaron VanderWaal reinforced our team in the late fall and we were able to train and build a larger, hopefully even stronger MerGeo.com team for this season!

The race was near perfect, with grueling bike and trekking legs, a 400 foot rappell!, class IV whitewater paddling, and snow up the whazoo.... X-adventure pure! We did not fare as well as to be expected... but again learned a lot in terms of minimizing lost time and racing together well. Its a hectic race and takes a couple of times to fully get used to..... we ll probably be back again.

MerGeo.com with the padding gear...

24 h in circles? That exists??

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 17:42:00 +0000

Those were the words of a friend... what? Why would you do that? That exists? Thats stupid!
All valuable questions and statements but not to me... why do I choose to run around in circles for 24h... because I can and want to see how long/far I can do it for... this time I only ran the 100k, basically around the same lake in a 1 mile loop for 62.5 times.. which equaled 100km... my knee was bothering me and I did not fuel very smartly (used too much bad food at aid station instead of my race food such as Clif), so I called it a day after 12h53, making it the farthest plain run I had done to date... it was good training for my 24h rogaine race and 100 mile runs to come, and I enjoyed the scenery even though it repeated itself a few dozen times....

Roger coming out of aid station early in the race...

My own little aid station, to be accessed every mile....

Done! 100k in 12h53...

Colinoba II, Guinness Rules!

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 17:35:00 +0000

Yumay, Roger, Bill (aka Ducky Boy) and a bottle of Prangster Beer!

My AR buddy Colin Ness had his 45th birthday this past weekend and what better way to celebrate it than with friends, and what better way than outdoors and what better way than with a mini AR course with lots of special tests and events....

The idea is simple... its an urban adventure, places on maps that one has to find and then take pictures of the whole team plus their mandatory team beer bottle.. (not that s a mandatory team item you dont usually have in AR!)... and lots more....

Yumay and I raced with Bill, a coworker of Colin's and we had a blast and ended up 2nd behind DART/MissingLink/Guniess (there lies the reason, its the strenght of the beer!! :)...

Reed and Andrea studying the maps and instructions...

Team Prangster Beer in front of the Cinerama...

Colin and Connie, what a great Bday!

Desafio de los Volcanes

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 15:12:00 +0000

January 1st.... I had just gotten up and no, I was not hung over but sore.. not from drinking but from doing 3 orienteering races in 24h... long story, not important to this one...
Aaron Rinn calls..... hey do you want to do a race...? Sure, what? Then I hear words such as expedition and patagonia and epic and team and hold on what? when?? reallly???
Anyhow the jist of it was that Team Big Bear's Heather Salzer and Ted Devito were looking for teammates to race the Desafio de los Volcanes (literally conquer the volcanoes.. though the volcanoes kind of conquer the racers...), and Aaron Rinn decided to race with them. In need of a 4th, they asked me, VERY LATE... just four weeks to race start.... at least I did not have to specifically train for it for months.. I had started my winter/spring training early and felt in good shape... well I guess we d find out... I had never done a race longer than 36h before... it was going to be epic... and in patagonia!!

So I said yes...
A couple of weeks of hectic borrowing and buying gear, learning how to ascent hundreds of feet with ascenders, and upping my kayaking, and there I was at the start line all nervous, what is it going to be like? How will I do without sleep for days? Will my body hold up?

Team Big Bear, Heather, Ted, Aaron and I

Cant wait, my first expedition AR, ready to go!

Ready, set go!!! There were 50 teams, two boats per team, 100 boats... and two capsized going into the sea.... and Aaron and I were one of the two... yikes!! Pumping out the boat and then still sitting in a gigantic pool of water in the first 70km kayak leg was not that comfortable, but we set into a good pace and worked ourselves from 49th place (there was one team that took even longer in the beginning) to about 15th place at the end of the paddle.

Heather and Ted, perfectly syncronized...

No words necessary...

Photos Courtesy of Aaron Rinn

After a quick 12h bike leg we were on the water again for another night of padding... it was scary as hell since the mountain lake was very choppy and we had fast, but tippy kayaks... pitch dark we tried to not fall in the water... and somehow made it...

After a mandatory rest stop where my teammates slept like logs I spent most of the time laying around wondering why I could not sleep.. hmm, adrenaline, fear? Anyhow I knew I was in it for a long one since our next mandatory rest would not be for 2 days....

We biked to a tyrolean traverse and traversed over this very cool waterfall to the other side.. only hooked on two single ropes that were attached to the same tree... adrenaline kept us from worrying about it.. the faster you go across the sooner it is over (or as they say the sooner you die the longer you're dead :)....

Heather, Ted and I on our way across....

Roger demonstrating a good style for tyrolean... head down, body up, bike between the legs.. and then pull as hard as you can!

After kayak/bike/kayak/bike we knew we were going to have an epic trekking leg... and we did... 37 h or uninterrupted trekking across two mountain ranges and an impressive volcano! Taking food and gear for 37 h is quite tricky.. how much do you need, what do you need.. we did not get any support for so long... our packs were very very heavy....

Made it!

Does not play well with others.. this is right after I fell head first into a bush of nettles.. .that hurt!

The trek turned out to be a disaster at first.. we lost nearly 7 hours trying to find a trail that was not on the map.. but we had to get across some raging river wiht apparently one place to cross.. the maps were from the 1940s.. you think I am kidding, I wish I was kidding... so it was more like using your spanish (hard to do at 2am when noone is awake) and your wits (hard to do when you got little to start with and not sleeping for 50+ hours)..... or then there is insanity... its when you do the same thing over and over and expect a different outcome... so we combed the trails over and over... and eventually stumbled across a map someone lost (right when Aaron said "I know now we are on the right trail!") and realized it was our own we had lost about 30 minutes ago.... we had run aorund in a circle and come across our own map... thats when we decided it was not only time but essential that we took a power nap...
Power naps suck but even more so at freezing temperatures and being spooned by Aaron and Ted, oh gee! So we got up 30 minutes later and I made myself believe I was totally awake since I had slept an amazing 30 minutes in 50hours... hehehe...
We still did not find the trail but apparently made so much noise around one of the houses that one of the farmers came out and asked us what the heck was going on.. I was the only one on the team speaking spanish and was trying to explain to him. He was cool about it and very nicely pointed us to the right path, but I begged him to actually physically show it to us and so we trotted onwards and found it... by now it was 5am and we were going to have to cross a cold river up to our chest, so we added another hour of nap time such that we crossed when the sun came up so that our bodies would warm up and dry immeditaely....
This was our lowest point in the race and our lowest ranking (35ish) and then we finally got it right.

Aaron visibly tired powering up the n-th hill of the day...

Bridge crossings were not for the faint of heart...

We started passing people getting up to Puyehue, the volcano we had to climb, and then chose a particularly good route down it (with us I mean Aaron who was navigating very well by then, being backed up by Ted), and we passed several teams that got stuck in the many ravines down the mountain and had to backtrack up to 2 hours!

After an amazing night spent on the low plateau on various fire roads I had the most amazing hallucinations.... I was now approaching 70h with 1.5h of sleep, and it took its toll..... it all started when we were looking for a checkpoint in the dimming light of the night breaking in.. and I saw them.... two checkpoint personel sitting there.. I went over and told them how happy I was to see them, in Spanish obiously... only to be pulled away by Heather who pointed out to Ted and Aaron that I was speaking Spanish to cows now .... WHOA!! There they were, two life sized cows where I just saw people...

Border!! 1 mile to go to Argentina...

Amazing, ridiculously dangerous ropes section...

Made it though the night, found a town where we again had to find a little road but this time it was day and I asked every man woman and child for directions and we got through this section much quicker... arriving at our next CP after 37 hours...
2 times 1h of sleep and off we were again, a few hours of kayaking and then a 27h mountain bike ride... which went well and by the time we crossed the argentinian border we knew we only had one trek left....

My feet, the perils for the feet are many in such a long race... sorry

We managed to get that last section started ok but in the TA I was just too tired to care much about reading the spanish instructions about the leg, and the english ones were unusable as always, (since they just use babbelfish!) and so I dropped that paper and told the guy Si, Si when asked if I understood everything, and we got on course... it was supposed to be a short section, just a few hours....
After a few hours (we were making great progress) we got to this singletrack that led us straight to the finish (if it would have been a straight line) but then turned into this bushwhack and ultimately dropped us onto a beach with nowhere to go..... we saw some teams that rambled on about instructions and swim and all that jazz, that s when it hit me.... costeando is coasteering.... coly cr$p..., we need to get into that mountain lake....
So I told my teammates about that I forgot to translate that section... it was only a 1km section of alternatively swimming, coasteering along ropes and on beaches, but it was a mountain lake and 4am, it was soooooo cold! Aaaron Ted and I did not bring extra clothes but fortunately dry bags so at least we were able to drop the clothes in there.. but it meant in order to have dry clothes at the end of it we needed to go commando! So naked coasteering it was! The coldest 15 minutes of my life...

We made it through that and through the very scary ropes section and eventually dropped down into another gully that lead us to have to swim to the beach to run to the finish, but the coastguard (with instructions from race management) picked up every team to forego this (permit issues) and before we knew it we were done! Over 120 hours of racing, a team worthy of the 11th place we got, and very happy to be done! My first expedition race was with great people, great racers, and a phantastic support crew (thanks Rikky, Tom and Adi!)....

Bring out the champain we did it!!!

Moab

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 17:06:00 +0000

View from porcupine rim trail....

Christmas vacation in Moab, the best I have ever had!! (please dont tell my mom! :)
It was dreary as hell in Seattle and the forecast was that there would be a new record of 23 days of rain in a row... and we were going to stay home... fortunately Yumay could not take it and wanted to go away for Christmas so I just looked on the map and decided on Moab... man what a lucky punch.

After a loooong drive (20h in 2 days) we got there fresh and ready to rumble! Slickrock was on the menu and we were hungry and devoured the trails up there.. it was sunny and we were on vacation and got a sweet deal on a hotel and things were looking up... three days of riding and two days of running/hiking really made a difference on our tortured phyche... almost made us forget that when we return to Seattle we would once again have to deal with the rain... but Moab was one for the books.... check out the pics, they should say it all... Porcupine Rim was the best ride when we were down there, just blew us away, just a bit of snow at the top and the rest was in great condition... and since it was Christmas there were virtually no other bikers and hikers...

Along the white stripes (see in back) on the slickrock trail....

A few more hundred yards to go to the porcupine rim high point....

Slickrock

Yumay in perfect pose

Happy campers...

Arches...

Roger running down an arch...

BEAST

noreply@blogger.com (Roger Michel) — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 17:28:00 +0000

Team North's Ruri Stenson, Trea Schocken and Aaron Vanderwaal knocking down their second win in 4 weeks after winning the MAC...

After having organized four successful super sprint adventure races Eric and I decided it was time to go for a bigger one, so last week we held the very first Fall BEAST Race.....
It was a blast, we had a bit more time not having to frantically check people in within 35 minutes but a comfortable 2h.. :)
70 racers took the plunge in the very cold but clear conditions and battled it out on a approximately 4h winning time course.. the lead teams all had problems so winning time was actually a bit slower.. most teams finished, and regardless if or not enjoyed the usual great post race grub from Bruce! The course took racers along the Puget Power and Tolt Pipeline trails to the Redmond Watershed...

Happy Racers at the start...

Roger with some last minute instructions.. everyone s staring at all the maps in his hands...
Registration is running hot...

Ready?

Go, race is underway...

Checkpoint found, now where are we going again?