In Search of Fitness & Mud!

This past weekend, Sam, Kai and myself took a trip over to the wet and rainy Willamette Valley with some objectives for our trip:

1. Get some intensity into my legs.

2. Let Sam experience the valley mud.

3. Hand deliver some bikes.

My training so far, has been focused on building up a nice, solid, base of endurance, but to race bikes, that's only the base of the fitness pyramid. To gain some good intensity I decided to hit up the Heiser Farms Grand Island Road Race, just south of Dayton, OR on Saturday. I figured this would be a fantastic opportunity to work on my high end while having a bit more fun than suffering along a lonesome Central Oregon road.

Chatting away with the other racers.

We loaded up early Saturday morning and after driving through about ten different squalls after cresting the Cascades into the Valley, we ended up at the scenic Heiser Farms to high overcast and dry roads....YES! After getting all geared up and getting the bike off the car, I went out for my long, ten minute warm-up, getting a feel for the cool single lane roads we'd be racing on. The format of the race was very unique, it was technically a Road Circuit race, but a very short one (course was approximately 5 miles) and the amount of racing was based on time, similar to a criterium. After some quick re-adjusting of my numbers, which I blame from it being the first road race of the year, a brief speech on rules from the officials, we meandered away from the starting line in neutral start. 

Once we hit the course, the pace went up a little bit and then things got rolling about 30 seconds in when a single guy took off the front solo. My goal for the day was to workout, but that was a bit too early for me, so I picked up the pace at the front of the peloton and worked to keep the solo breakaway in sight. Thankfully for my fitness, I was able to get tons of time up front, pulling the rest of the group along for all of Lap 1 and a majority of Lap 2 and Lap 3, as a couple guys started took some shorter pulls, but I made sure to work as much as possible, taking long pulls. *Pulls are bike lingo for being at the front of the group because you are 'pulling' the riders behind you in your draft. Near the end of Lap 3, the solo breakaway rider finally cracked and we closed the gap quickly as he got caught. After a short sprint for some series points (I took 4th so missed on the points), everything re-grouped. I moved to the front to continue my work at the front when a single guy from the Ruckus Test Team came cruising by on the left. I matched his move to keep him contained but when I caught him and looked back, it was just him and me off the front in a break. We decided to make a go of it and worked together very well, as we held off the peloton for the entire 4th lap. As we began the 5th lap, our short-lived breakaway was caught by a chase group of about 5 right in the beginning of Lap 5, thankfully right in the head/crosswind section. It took about a half lap to get a smooth rotation of individual pulls in our small group, but once we did, our breakaway group was able to keep away from the main group for the remainder of the race. As the miles quickly ticked away on the last lap, my thoughts focused on creating the chance to finish well in the race. At just over 1K to go, I was second wheel (right behind the leader), I made my move. This particular section of road was mainly dirt with some gravel and potholes that no doubt were the product of frequent flooding in the low lying section. This turned out to be a good decision, as I relied on my mountain biker side and took the inside line past a gaping pothole to take the lead. My move surprised the rest of the group enough that I was able to put a decent gap between myself and the others as we barreled towards the finish line. The last 500 meters were extraordinarily painful as I pushed the pedals harder and harder to prevent the chasers from catching up to me. At about 100 meters, I looked up to see Sam screaming at the top of her lungs that I better get on it and 'do not let them catch you!!'. This gave me a much needed boost to hold off the attacking group and finish in the best spot possible: 1st Place!!

Super stoked on the result!

It was such a great feeling to have a solid day of working hard culminate in a win like that. The course was epic, the race was well run by the Flahute Racing p/b Trailhead Coffee Roasters team. My bike was on point, hitting every shift and putting every last watt of power down to the ground for me, thanks to Eric's skilled work over at Trinity Bikes. Thanks man! Overall, a sweet day of racing and it was only noon!

Brian and Sam's hand about to enjoy
the incredible Chocolate Torte
at Wild Pear

Our next goal was to deliver two bikes to teammate, Brian Buskirk, who had a nice fork re-build performed on his Marin Nail Trail and a brand new Trek Ion cyclocross bike that was still in the box! We met up with Brian at the Willamette Cheese Company, which if you have a chance to visit, I highly recommend it. They offer cheese tasting of the most delicious cheese I have ever tasted!! After spending about an hour eating all kinds of amazingness ranging from simple Havarti to their very own (invented/created) Brindisi, we headed into Salem for a bite to eat at an incredible restaurant called Wild Pear. Holy cow were we getting lucky with food on the day. Sam, Brian and I all dove into the delicious food, which was capped off with a Ganache covered Chocolate Torte. As you can imagine, we had a bit of a waddle as we walked out the door.

With who knows how many calories of cheese and chocolately goodness we were thankful that there was enough daylight for a short ride in MacDonald Forest's greasy, mud. Yes, your thinking is correct, we were working on our second objective. After being relegated to the sidelines during our race at Echo Red 2 Red, Sam has fully caught the racing bug, and is chomping at the bit to fly the checkers herself. Being that our next race is Mudslinger, we figured it'd be good for her to get some experience with the slick and slimy clay as she is used to riding in our perfect (dry) Central Oregon conditions!

Sam was a natural in the muddy slip and slide!

We took an easy warm-up by riding up Lower Dan's, then some gravel doubletrack to where the fun really began. There is a ridiculously slick hidden trail out there that I figured we'd all have some fun on, during our short ride. It ended up being more of a core/lung workout as we found ourselves laughing so dang hard from the hilarity we encountered. On a scale of 1 to 10 on the greasy scale, conditions were about a 9, which led to some fantastic '...almost there! I got this! Nope, I don't! Oh boy, don't slide into the tree, ok, that didn't work, tree you are now my friend, I don't want to keep going...' moments. Awesome times bringing Sam into the world of mud. Funny thing was, Brian and I spent more time running into the bushes than Sam....Mudslinger better watch out!!!

With a fun short ride and mud all over ourselves, we headed back to the Johnson Homestead for a fantastic spaghetti dinner cooked by my dad, a.k.a. Papa as well as the wonderful Jan. For the second time that day, we found ourselves needing to sprawl out from too much good food, but this time, we had couches and a warm fire to do so. It was so comf......zzzzzzzz.

The sun decided to poke it's way through the clouds come Sunday morning and we headed into town for some breakfast with my Mom (Mama) and Ron. It was nice to start the morning off with a filling meal and good laughs with my awesome family! We headed back to the house where Brian and I went to work on putting together his sparkly new bike. Oooolala is it pretty! We spent the morning getting it all dialed in before we headed out for a fun ride out on the trails again.

Justin and Brian hammin it up for the camera as
we climbed up the gravel roads in search of mud!

This time we were joined by our favorite Corvallis locals, Brian Persons and Justin Finn. These guys know all the good trails and can shred them too! They took us on several fun, muddy trails and Sam's prowess on the bike really started to show as she navigated some pretty gnarly sections out in the hills, objective 2, CHECK! We all had a great time and before we knew it, we had to call it a day so we could make the 2.5 hour drive back home!

Until next time!

-Shane Johnson