Moab in February

Well my damned metatarsal stress fracture made sure that I could not train for the Moab Red Hot 33k as I had planned – but Joselyne was signed up as were 45 other Fort Collins trail runners so I made the winter pilgrimage to the desert to cheer them on and get in some mountain biking. The forecast was for cold, wind and wet but I remained optimistic.

I got in a couple great rides. First, had to do the legendary slickrock loop:

The next day, I saw Joselyne and 350 other crazy trail runners off at Gemini Bridges for their 33K or 55K races. As you can tell, everyone was super duper psyched to be out in the 40F rain getting ready to run 20+ miles:

While they were out running to Gold Spike and Poison Spider Mesa, I hit up the Moab “Brand” Trails and some newly constructed MTB-only singletrack called Deadman’s which was fun flowing moderately technical and rocky singletrack (reminded me of hartman rocks in gunnison). The weather was 100% suck; steady drizzle, cold, 20+ mph winds. Still had fun though!

Rode up the Poison Spider Mesa trail to cheer on the trail runners. Joselyne did awesome; she came in about mid-pack with a time of 4:26 for a very technical, slickrock and hilly 33K. I won’t go through all the results of the Fort Collins crew but we had some great races including 4 top-10s in the mens 55k race and at least one top ten in the womens.

Next day, the sun finally came out for some Amasa Back action – one of the coolest trails I’ve ever ridden. The earlier rains packed down what might have otherwise been oppressive sand. Trail conditions were perfect and the light was spectacular:

Finally, we did a bit of touristy drive-by sightseeing at Arches National Park on the way out.

Japhy really enjoyed himself:

I took a bunch of video with my ContourHD helmet cam but they are super-shaky and I need to stabilize the images, cut them into a proper movie, etc. I’m just too lazy to deal with processing them in IMovie at the moment so thats gonna have to wait.

Great weekend. I live for road trips like this.