Moab MTB Trip

MOAB

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to travel to Moab, Utah for a three day mountain biking trip with Lane Brostrom and his brother Marc. The experience for me was no different than a midwest skier's first trip out west.  I was in for some scary stuff.

We rented bikes from Poison Spider Bicycle Shop located on Main Street.  My bike was the Niner RIP featuring dual suspension (a must have in my opinion) with 29 inch wheels (another must have).  Acoomodations were at the Best Western Canyonlands also on Main Street. 

Day One was Slickrock.  New riders to the Slickrock park are offerred the opportunity to ride a short practice loop to get accustom to the riding surface and the technical challenges of Moab's severe ups and downs.  We skipped that introductory loop and immediately launched ourselves into the most technical riding I'd ever faced. Frankly, I was scared and the hesitancy showed.  Lane and Marc weren't sure if I'd make it because I kept lagging behind.  After two hours, I managed to loosen up and ride with some confidence.  It was a great day of riding that lasted about four hours.  Afterwards we played frisbee in the parking lot before riding bikes back to town (fyi - we drove up to the park's entrance;  small fee to enter it).

Day Two was Gemini Bridges.  This was the easiest ride of the trip, but still very technical.  Bull Run>Great Escape>Little Cyn (Canyon)>Arth's>Portion of Getaway>Metal Masher Rd>trail head off Hwy 313. 

Day Three was the Whole Encilada (Burro Pass>USFS Road>Hassard County Road>Kokopelli Trail>UPS Road>LPS Road>Porcupine Rim).  This was an epic seven hour ride covering thirty six miles with the most technical riding I'd ever encountered.  We took a shuttle van that started at the bike shop ($25) that took us up a mountain where we climbed out into the cold.  I was glad to be wearing arm and leg warmers plus a light jacket.  From there we rode another thousand feet of elevation before making our long descent. 

The first two hours had numerous extreme downhill sections that made me fell like I was falling downward.  After a couple of creek crossings, we rode through a beautiful stretch of Ash trees.  From there we rode through some wide open stretches before working our way to the most technical section --a 4x4 road that looked like a road of splintered rock. That means if and when you fall, you land on rock not soft dirt.  All and all, I managed to stay upright until the 5 hour mark. Somewhere along the beginning portion of the Porcupine Rim I fell.  When my front wheel rode off a ledge, landing on a slight incline, my front wheel got stuck causing me to flip over the handlebars.  Upon landing, I placed my hands out and my left thumb took most of the weight.  Immediately I knew I sprained the thumb.  After picking myself up, I could tell it was a grade 2 sprain and that riding back was going to be painful. 

After a few minutes to regain my composure, we took off and I did my best to manage the pain.  Marc had some Advil along that I took and that started to kick in about 30 minutes later.

It was a long haul back.  We had another two hours in front of us and I was bonking.  Somehow I thought this was a 10 mile ride so I had only packed two Powerbars.  So for the next few hours I grimaced at the pain and tried to ignore the ache in my stomach.  The last thirty minutes of ride was not rideable so I walked bits and pieces of it. In many sections the trail led right to the cliff's end making any sort of mistake a fatal one.  Eventually, the end came and after catching my breath, I felt reinvigorated enough to ride hard back to town and give back my bike. 

It was great trip and something I look forward to doing again. 

PS Because my flight got delayed I spent another day in the area of Park City, Utah in a quaint town of Coalville. Because Marc has a decent motorcycle collection, we did a nice ride in the area in the early evening.

IM Wisconsin 2013

I signed up for Ironman Wisconsin 2013. 2012 was a fun year without a single triathlon. Without the burden of a weekly training regiment, I had a lot of free time. It allowed me to have a life as well as participate in a few non-athletic hobbies as well. Last year in the midst of traveling to Kona, we bought a mid century modern house in Fox Point. It has permitted me to grow my MCM furniture collection and abstract-modern art collection. At this point, I'm nearly at the end given the space requirements of the house so another endeavor needs to fill the time hence the return to Ironman.

Since I've had a number of good races under my belt and done Kona, I don't really care about how it turns out and remain focused on being the rabbit and Thomas Brunold being the tortoise, ie keeping Thomas Brunold staying behind me for as long as possible (or any others for that matter.) My guess is that it'll take:

Swim - 55
Bike - 5:10
Run - 3:02-05

Training Benchmarks become:
10x200 on 2:30 with 10 seconds rest
230 watts for 4 hrs
7:05 pace for most runs

Race Day
Swim - hard the first 100 yards, settle in
Bike - 220 watts; 260 hill cap
Run - 7:00 for first three miles then a bit faster

The funny thing for me is that my wife Adrienne is the biggest pusher of this. She is tried of me goofing off and thinks I need to do this race to achieve my "nearly perfect race" as most of the ones in the past were be marred by inexperience, flat tires, a penalty, and a busy work schedule. I can live with those hiccups, but she cannot. Secretly, I think she just wants me to be her training partner and do every workout with her rather than just a few like I did this year. See you out there training! Best Regards, Matt

South Shore Half Marathon

1:23:06

I had a fun time doing this with Scott. He was looking to go 1:19 and take out the first few miles at 6 flat. I hung on for about 2.5 miles before settling in at 6:2X pace. Certainly not a hot rod time but good considering weekly run mileage is about 15-18 miles/week.

2012: New Season

The season is about to begin and the local triathlon club TriWisconsin is having their kickoff party next week.

I hope to see you there.

2012: Outside Magazine

February 2012 Outside Magazine

On the right side of the picture:
Cam Knuth
Matt Amman
Adrienne Amman

2011: Wrapup

This has been an interesting year. It was a constant juggle between the fun of participating in a new work venture and the drag of Ironman training. I knew upfront that Ironman was going to take a back seat this year and that work was ramping up; however, I did not expect to have significant hangups when it came to training. Unfortunately, I did get sidelined for awhile.

As I danced across the Central USA for work, I visited too many YMCA's to remember, along with unknown roads, parks, and sidewalks. On my third trip to St Louis, running around the Arch was becoming a bore, especially since it was nearly midnight when I finally fit the workout in. The eventual result was a bad back that lingered with me through Ironman Hawaii.

While the finishing times at this year's races were not great, the fun level was mostly high. American Triple T was a record bottom mainly because the motivation was low, the training going in was too hard, and I got lazy during the races and forgot to take-in the necessary nutrition. Thank goodness I'm not going back to Ohio.

Ironman Hawaii was fun. Because of the aches and pains it wasn't as fun as I'd hope. Adrienne and I did manage to cross the line together, something unique, but that uniqueness did not satisfy the need for conclusion. We both left Hawaii with feelings of "only if." Is there another Ironman Hawaii to come? At the moment, I'll say yes. If life doesn't get more hectic, I figure I'll go back to race the race.

2012 remains uncharted. I have resumed training with Adrienne to the extent of doing something for fitness. I may do a few races this coming year.

2011: Ironman Hawaii

10:58

The race was insane!

Swim: I started in the second row with Adrienne and Cam Knuth. As the cannon went off, the chaos started. It took me just under 30 minutes to get to the turnaround. The whole time I was battered, kicked in the face (causing a small laceration underneath my eye), and felt I like I might drown about 20 times. It was really scary. The swim experience alone made me realize that I don't think I'm coming back to do this race again. Unlike the two practice swims before hand, the salty taste did not overcome my taste sense. (This trip was the first time I swam in the ocean and I battled some sea-sickness and salt-water taste.)

T1: I took my time. I happened to sit down across from Madison, WI Mike Lavery. He commented to me that the swim was brutal. I agreed.

Bike: The week before the back was feeling better than it had for a long time. However, when I shaved my legs the night before the race in the tub, I re-aggravated my left SI joint. Race morning I woke up and it was really stiff and vunerable. I was noticeablely worried. At the race site, I happened to find the ART docs and they worked it over and I got it adjusted. It made it feel significantly better.

I took the first 10 miles easy. Dennis Melowski & Steve Chapin soon passed me. I kept the watts around 200. My pre-race watt target was 180-200 watts. Given my lack of training, I was realistic about it.





I rode about 85% of it upright trying to manage the back discomfort. I had a lot of discomfort in the right glut.

I had to white-knuckle it up to Hawi the winds were that bad.

At 110.5 miles, I got a flat tire by hitting a road reflector on the side of the road. It tore open the sidewall of my front wheel. The hole looked bad and was going to be surprised if PitStop fixed it. It did not. Then I got to work removing the razor blade taped to my frame and cut the tire off. Shortly after that, race support showed up and they put the tire on for me. After I inflated, I rode the last bit in.

Adrienne was about 10-15 minutes ahead of me I suspected.

T2: Again, I took my time. The run around the pier was long. The legs felt great because of the easy bike effort.

Run: I took off at a manageable pace, 7:30s. The first five miles were just fine. I walked every aid station.



I put in a few strong efforts to see if I was going to be okay and I was. Pre-race I had determined that I wanted to run the first 13 miles and run-walk it in.



I saw Adrienne way ahead of me on the first out and back on Alii Drive. But when I came to mile 8, I saw Adrienne walking. She massaging/stretching her right abdomen. We chatted and we both decided to walk-run the rest of the race together.



I had one stop to the porty-potty as we ran up Palani drive to the Queen K. From there we ran and walked until we got out of the Natural Energy lab. At that point, I figured out that if we kept running the last 4-5 miles, we'd crack 11:00. We ran around 8's for the last 3-4-5 miles.









On Alii drive, we grasped each other's hand and walked across the finish.



Post Race: All that Gu, Powerade, and Coke made me sick to my stomach. I went into medical to make sure I was alright. About 15 minutes later they discharged me, but when I went outside and over to the medal and finisher pickup, I puked four times.



After being escorted back to medical, I got an IV.

In summary, Ironman Hawaii is much harder than Ironman Wisconsin. The weather conditions plus the level of competition make it hard to do well. I am happy to have finished the race since my year has been tough from an exhausting work schedule and a bad back. Others seem to love the race, such as Dennis Melowski, but I think Ironman Wisconsin continues to be my favorite. If I do another Ironman, I'll stick to my hometown race.

Mahalo!