New beers, recovery, and a crazy health problem

My last post was a race report about the 12 hour race I did about a week ago. I'm happy to report that my recovery is going nicely, and I'm pretty much back to normal. Hands were the slowest to recover and I have full strength back in them but on a mountain bike ride Friday night they got a tad sore, but nothing terrible. I didn't really do anything special to help myself recover, I tried to eat better and outside of commuting I really didn't ride anywhere, so I think that helped. Something that certainly did not help my recovery is how I spent my Tueday; dealing with benign positional vertigo.

Woke up on Tuesday morning feeling groggier than usual and slightly dizzy, in a few minutes this turned itself into "OMFG standing is a hard, I'm gonna puke!" level dizziness. So after puking my guts out and wondering what the hell was wrong with me, I figured I'd eaten something bad and I'd just go back to bed for a while and worry about work and whatnot once I woke back up, this was a bad move. Literally 5 seconds after laying down, my head was spinning so hard it felt like my whole room was in a blender. I sprinted the few steps to the bathroom and again puked so hard I thought my bellybutton was going to touch my spine. At this point I knew something was seriously amiss I tried to plan my next move. Having no idea why I felt this was I was pretty freaked out, but knew I was "okay" sitting still and even standing, but laying down or cocking my head to the side caused horribly vomit inducing dizziness. So, I determined that the urgent care place was where I needed to go, so I called the only person I knew in town that wouldn't already be at work, my boss. In fairness, it was a little after 9 am, and he lives about 3 blocks from me, so he was a good choice even if I'd had a few more options, which I did not. Anyway, filling out paperwork is kind of a bitch while somewhat dizzy, at least sitting and standing weren't too horrible, some wobbly moments, but reclining or fully laying down was brutal. Once the doctor saw me, it took him about two minutes to diagnose it and sent me to the pharmacy to get an over the counter anti motion sickness drug. Weee. I spent the rest of the day napping and trying to watch tivo'd cycling while in a sitting position on the couch. I'm fine now(I think), but the problems could come back at virtually time with no warning or obvious cause. Great.

Once I got to feeling better, I resumed my usually habit of trying new and/or fancy beers. Here are a few:

Shipyard's fall offering, Smashed Pumpkin.

I generally am not a huge fan of pumpkin beers, most have minimal pumpkin flavor and focus on the spices you'd use in a pumpkin pie. While I like many fruit beers and many spiced beers, most pumpkin beers I've had fall flat, this is no exception. There's a ton of pie spices in this beer with a whisper of actual pumpkin flavor. Shipyard has even less pumpkin in this beer than most other breweries, which is kind of a let down. I think with a somewhat different base beer, and maybe dropping the pumpkin all together, Shipyard has a sweet-ish and spicy christmas/holiday beer. Not entirely sure how to alter this beer to make it better, but more pumpkin would be a quick fix, or scrap it, make a different fall seasonal, drop the pumpkin and try a different base and call it a holiday ale.

This next one is a bit closer to home, I made it.
\That's my Bourbon Oak Porter, aged several months, I don't have an exact record that I can find right now, but at least four, probably closer to six. Anyway, it definitely got better with age. The flavors blended better and the oaky character that was slightly annoying in the initial tasting has mellowed out is is not a present but not overbearing note that works really well with the rest of the beer.

Now for the crown jewel of what I've been drinking recently: 3 Floyd's Zombie Dust. (You'll have to click on the tap list to see a description of it)

Only available in their brew pub and only in pints and growlers, I was lucky enough to have a friend visiting the area who was kind enough to drink me one. I didn't ask for it, I asked for plenty of other things from them in bottles though (which he also brought) but this was a big surprise. It's a fruity, citrusy IPA that is excellent. It's super smooth, not over the top hoppy, but has a citrusy and almost sticky hop flavor. Much love for damn near everything 3 Floyds does and this is no exception.

race report and crash pics

This past weekend was the 24(and 12) hours of Seven Oaks. Trail conditions were as good as they've been in ages, weather was outstanding, and I again attempted the 12 hour race solo.

Yet again I finished 3rd and had a blast. As has been my custom, I'll break the race down lap by lap, as that makes the most sense and is easiest to remember.

Lap 1: Not a bad start, but whatever, it's a long race. a tiny bit of traffic here and there, but I focused on staying smooth and figuring out which parts of the trail were worth working hard at and when I'd be walking later. Rode almost the whole thing without putting a foot down, had a couple small dabs but nothing depressing. Tried to remember/figure out gearing to use in certain spots.

Lap 2: Saw virtually no one. Had the trail to myself and tried to go at a somewhat easy pace and stay off the brakes whenever I could. Figured the more "free" speed I had, the better I'd fair later. After a quick stop at camp for a fresh bottle and some energy gel, I went for #3.

Lap 3: Getting into a serious groove. Things are clicking really well, everything is semi-easy at a moderate effort. Picked a spot to stop midcourse and slam a gu and take a deep breath. Planned on using it most laps. At this point I was a tad under an hour a lap average, even with my quick stops to reload bottles and food. Felt great.

Lap 4: Starting get a little headache and possibly hungry. Probably haven't been eating enough, but pretty sure I've been getting enough fluids. I walk a few steeper climbs, I also experiment with some different gearing. I went to the granny ring on my triple. Turns out that's too low. Seriously, I still had to stand/crouch to get the weigh distribution right to keep climbing, and in that position a little bit harder gear actually works better. Lesson learned, I never went back down that low. Middle ring up front and big cog out back were plenty low enough, 34x36.

Lap 5: Before I started this lap I took a bit of a break, not terribly long, but probably 7-10 minutes. Ate a good amount of food, drank most of a bottle of gu brew, tried to relax a little, reminded myself that I was on a pace to do 12 laps or so. Basically told myself to chill out and that I was doing great. The actual lap was okay, still not feeling as good as I thought I should be but still on an hour/lap pace, despite breaks. Figured after this lap I'd take a bit longer of a break.

Lap 6: I tried to take a longer stop before this lap. I really did. I ate a good amount of food, drank most of a bottle. stretched a bit, restocked my bottle cage and jersey pocket, and got underway relatively quickly. Felt okay, but not great, probably should have stopped longer. Anyway, just after a part of the trail called "Rick's Drop" I went off trail, just a touch, and well, the trail got really really soft and horrible. I started to wash out and fought hard to save it, which really just prolonged the inevitable. But during this process I got crossed up, and did a half lay down, half endo, and hit the very hard and slightly gravely trail pretty hard. Not sure how I did this, but I managed to mangle my front wheel. It rubbed both sides of the fork pretty hard when I got around to sorting my bike out after fishing it out of the weeds. So I did the only logical thing, pull the wheel out and smash it on the ground repeatedly. After a few minutes of doing this and swearing a whole lot, I got it straight enough to clear my fork, and off I wobbled. As the adrenaline spike wore off, I still felt okay, but noticed how much of my had hit the ground really hard. Once I finished the lap I took some time to assess the damage to myself and my bike. I rinsed my legs off to see how much of the filth was blood and what was just dirt. Check it out:
Before any cleaning. Most of the dirt on my shin was there before the crash. The trail was lightly tacky and awesome to ride on.A little bit of a close up to the main damage. It was really hard to tell how much of that was blood and how much was just dirt/sweat mud.

There's the rinsed off view. Not as bad as I thought it would be, but not exactly awesome either. It didn't hurt as much as feared, and even two days later as I'm writing this, my hands and lower back are the worst.

When I went down I hit my head a bit. While I knew my head contacted the ground, it wasn't until hours later that the slight bruising showed up, and I knew I hit kinda hard. A closer inspection of my helmet revealed some cracks and some dented plastic, so I get to buy a new one. Not really looking forward to that, I liked this one. But I think Specialized makes the same model, probably not the same colors though. Oh well.

As I said, I took a long break to check myself and my bike out. I borrowed a wheel, graciously offered by Rick Blackford, and spent 45 mins thinking about if I wanted to try more laps. Turns out I did.

Lap 7: Started slowly, making sure everything on me and the bike worked correctly. I was plenty hesitant about most tighter/faster corners. Once I got deeper into it, everything was fine, but fatigue was starting to show and I was taking slower lines and not making as many slight corrections as before.

Lap 8: Took off without much of a break, but felt good. Figured I had to get moving if I didn't want to take the time to get lights on the bike. As the shadows started to get really long, especially in the eastern parts of the course, the trees and brush seem to get much bigger. The trail gets super narrow where before it wasn't. Finished the lap feeling okay, tired, fatigued, but semi-excited to still be riding. Plenty of light left, but I needed lights for another lap, and it was pretty well impossible at this point for me to get 2 more laps in.

Lap 9: I took a nice long break before this lap, took my time installing lights and getting a good amount of food and beverage. This was the first year I had a powerful light on my helmet. In years past I've had a bright light on my handle bars and either a crappy head mounted light or none at all. I've gotta say it was a great change. The laps started in heavy shadow and quickly moved into total darkness. With a combined 1100 lumens, I laughed at the darkness, I could see almost everything. 600 on the bar and 500 up top worked really well, though the helmet mount on the Serfas 500 was not as secure as i would have liked and bounced around a bit. While this didn't cause problems it was a little distracting at times. Finished at about 9:20, which because the event started at 10am this year, was closer to the end that I've made it in prior years. Somehow despite the crash and general lack of training, I made it the same number of laps, and feel better how than I did last year. I have no real idea what I did differently.

Final thoughts: Good lights are awesome, wish I had more night lap opportunities, but oh well. Crashing sucks, but not being too hurt is awesome. Being smart enough to smash a wheel back into shape in a nice thing, but having generous people to loan you things is definitely better. Hands and back and legs are still sore, they should come around in short order, probably a few days.

I know I haven't posted in forever, but I have no excuse, just busy, lazy, etc. Gonna try to do more writing in the future.