On Friday evening,  I threw out to our teammates a challenge to take some photos of their biking antics. Knowing many of us were riding all over the place this weekend. Here's a taste of what we accomplished! (In no particular order...) ENJOY! ~corianne

Slacker Saturday ride with Sara Harper, Rodney Lucketti and Todd McMillan
​25ish miles consisting of road, Towpath, Hampton Hills, a windbag and a brewery. Not too shabby and we made it back before sundown after much doubt!

Brandon Render (Sir Speedy Kitten, Juice man or Rendor) - his lovely wife Melissa, Kenny and Corianne Kocarek headed over to the first Tri-State 6 hour race in Versailles State Park ​ in Indiana.

Zachary Bastin and his wife Shelly completed the 2016 Wooster Urban Adventure Challenge: 27+ miles of biking, hiking, canoeing, running, and many fun challenges!

Scott Palmer and Dicky Dee hit up the Spokejunkie's ride at Dillon State Park in Zanesville

Awesome weekend of riding! Saturday at Dillon with the Spokejunkies, and a Sunday solo ride at Chestnut Ridge. Huge thanks to our sponsors. Mounted my Absolute Black oval ring on Friday and man what a difference. Really smooths out the pedal stroke, especially on the climbs. And thanks to Emily at Infinit for dialing in a custom formula for me. I felt great Saturday and only bonked because I underestimated the ride length. Today, I rode Chestnut with no Camelback and only a single bottle of Infinit, in 90 deg heat. Climbed faster than usual and felt better than expected at the end. Not even close to cramping. ‪#‎ninerd‬ ‪#‎absoluteBLACK‬ ‪#‎ovalthis‬ ‪#‎iaminfinit‬‪#‎fatguyproblemsolved‬

The Jones and Burgess families headed up to Hampton Hills for a MTB ride!

Slacker Sunday Ride at West Branch State Park with Rodney, Nick, Sara & Todd 

Some team-mates on the Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure this week - Sunday was the first ride!

Covered bridges and skinny tires heading out for a post ride beer somewhere in southern ohio - Feeman

Hope you were able to get out and enjoy!

Back in April, Jim Costello and I raced the WVMBA Big Bear Enduro.  We had talked about racing a couple of the WVMBA Enduros and after showing interest in the 1st event of the year, we both get a message from Travis Peebles of Blazing Saddle Cycles offering us a place to sleep in the cabin that he rented for the weekend.  With the trouble of figuring out where to stay out of the way, we were in!

Since this was an Enduro, we figured it best to go down and pre-ride the 5 stages on Friday.  I thought this was a great idea, as I had never ridden big drops, roll-ins and other rock features we would face that weekend.  Once I picked Jim up, we made a relaxing trip down to Bruceton Mills, where the Big Bear Lake campground would host the event.  On the way Jim mentioned that he wasn’t sure he’d ever met Travis.  I reminded him that Travis was the guy who had Elvis at his team tent at the Vulture’s Knob 24 hour race and roasted a whole pig!  Immediately Jim remembered and got even more excited for the adventure to come!

We arrived to the parking area around noon and began changing into the appropriate EnduroTM attire.  It just so happens, with no discussion between us, that Jim and I bought the same helmet.  In the same color…  EnduroTM Blue…  For the past 2 weeks months we had been taking flak from everyone we rode with about how we were matching EndurBro’s and how the helmets matched nothing about the rest of our kits.  Before we pedaled off, we ran into Jeff Simcoe.  He is the main person maintaining the trails at Big Bear.  He gave us some helpful tips on which stages were important to pre-ride and help prevent us from getting lost. 

The climb out of stage 2 was awesome!!  It reminded me of the final miles of the Snake Creek Gap TT in Dalton, Ga.  Huge, chunky rocks on a long grinding climb.  I kept thinking how much Kenny would love this climb, but know how much he would be cursing me on the downhills to get there!  We made it back up to the top of the mountain and started down stage 4.  This was the most technical of the stages with big rock features that required some knowledge of the proper line choice to keep from falling into a crack or off an edge.  And to top it off, it ended in the same spot as stage 2, so we got to do the fun climb again!!  We were out of time to pre-ride stage 5, so we started heading to camp.

As we made our trip up to stage 4, Andrea Wenger passed by going down stage 3 so we provided the appropriate “motivation.”  Waiting for our turn to start the stage, 2 people with Walmart looking bikes come pedaling up the road, turned directly into the start and began going down the trail.  Everyone at the start gives that WTF stare and the jokes about bikes exploding commenced.  I was able to ride everything on stage 4 without any issues.  On the preride, we noticed a couple of bypasses around some muddy chutes.  By the time we went I figured the mud would be cleared out and I could just moto the ruts and be fine.  Boy was I wrong…  One of the ruts was already deep and apparently still hadn’t found solid ground underneath as after the stage I notice the bottom of my fork legs had acted like shovels and brought some of the trail with me.  For the rest of the stage, I was snickering to myself how Jim would have to break into his emergency chain cleaning kit so it didn’t trouble his OCD for stage 5!  Up until that stage, everyone had stayed relatively clean with only the occasional puddle.  This is remarkable because according to Jeff, the weekend before the area received 8” of snow!! 

On to the final stage of the day.  We didn’t preride this and were told that there isn’t anything difficult.  It was a very gradual grade, especially compared the other stages, and required a great deal of pedaling.  Two very hard days were beginning to be felt in the legs.  We both finished with only a couple of near-misses and Jim grabbed a beer from the keg that wasn’t available when Cary went by at least an hour earlier. 

At this point one would think that the adventure was over, but there was quite an experience still remaining.  Due to the distance back to the staging area, a shuttle was planned to take everyone back to the start.  Jim and I threw our bikes on and grabbed a seat on the back of the trailer.  Just as the trailer began to leave, a couple of kids came chasing after the shuttle.  We threw their bikes on and one of them sat on the edge of the trailer directly behind me.  About 30 seconds down the road, the trailer hits a big bump and I see air between his ass and the trailer deck.  I grab one arm and drag him back against my knees while Jim grabs the other.  Now that he is sitting on my lap he feels compelled to introduce himself as Nate.  I was getting to be very close to Nate.  Jokes about the shuttle trip keep flowing between him and Jim, before the topic of how you shouldn’t mention this to your mom until you are at least 25 (guessing he was in the 15-17 year old range??) to keep her from getting upset.  Well, not 30 seconds pass and a car goes by the other way.  Nate starts yelling “Hey, that’s my mom!!”  Jim and I look at each other with the ‘what are those odds’ stare and make sure we have an extra tight hold on him so he doesn’t fall off then get ran over by his mom.  Luckily, Mom doesn’t look to be too worried and follows us to the drop-off point. 
​
Now all of the adventure was officially over.  We turned in our timing chips, got cleaned up and made our way back home.  I ended up in 8th in the sport class, while the dropped chain cost Jim a few additional spots.  He finished out in 18th.  I would personally like to thank Jeff Simcoe, Ben Klimer and all the others who put on a great event!!  And once we get into the summer and past some of the big races, there is definitely going to be a KSD field trip to Big Bear to go check out the xc trails and maybe even hit some of the enduro stages.  And now the WVMBA Big Bear Ultra is on my radar for August!!

Ready or not the 2016 mountain bike race season is upon us and by this point in full swing.  I will keep this short and say that by the time I started training for 2016 some of my KSD  teammates were already racing. 

My first Enduro and first race of 2016. Not being in prime physical condition and not racing any previous Cross Country or Enduro races this year I didn't have the mental focus that I am accustom to heading into a race event like this, but what I did have was the bike. Now I will be the first to tell you that a better bike doesn't make a better rider, but having the right bike can make the difference between fun and disaster. Now was this the first time I raced the Mayhem enduro? No. But it was the first time on I raced on a bike with over 6 inches of travel, 36mm forks, and 27.5" wheels.  

The goal,
 My goals were to be able to do the bike some justice and at least jump all of the more natural dirt built jumps and maybe, just maybe, a wooden feature like the road gap or the new and improved creek gap "2". And most importantly, have fun.

The ride,
Saturday's pre-ride didn't look promising. Physically I felt good but I just didn't have my "mojo" whether it was riding with unfamiliar teammates and not having at least some of the usual rowdy KSD crew around, or having those big welcoming rocks stare at you from the landing side of the jumps, or not riding the Wilds in two years? I don't know so I just cruised the course until we met up with some dudes hitting the creek jump on stage 4. We watched them hit the jump a few times and then one asked "anyone else want to try?" I replied " yes, I want to check your speed" so as I followed him to the approach of the jump the speed felt too slow but I stayed on his back tire to complete the jump.  This was the little boost I needed. Saturday evening - free beer provided by Weasel Boy brewing of Zanesville, the party was on.

The Race,
I did a morning pre-ride of stages 1 & 2 with Mark a team member that couldn't be there Saturday for warm up. My legs felt weak. During the transfer to stage 1 I tried to keep my speed up to help keep my flow for the stages. However, we caught up to another slow moving team and I got bored so I tried to "bunny hop" a small roller, only I didn't have any speed and my back tire caught a tree root to drop my front tire on the downside of the hill and over the bars I went. Usually this is something of the norm for me and I was quite amused with myself and Matt's comment "I think I heard you say every cuss word in the book before you hit the ground" (or something like that ) anyway,  this could have been the kind of thing that gets my blood flowing for the rest of the day only to ruined by disappointment as I found my Garmin screen shattered. 

I did make pinkbike.com though...so that was pretty cool! http://www.pinkbike.com/u/beavercity/blog/wild-in-ohio-the-2016-mayhem-enduro.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=mobile&utm_campaign=news