2014 Wrap-up (make-up for laziness?)

Somewhere around the start of summer, I seem to have stopped posting things here. I suspect it might have something to do with the first few pictures here. We scraped and painted our whole house and when we were done with that, we roofed our garage. It was all quite an undertaking.

We've lived in our house for over ten years but have never painted so we don't know when it was last done. Some of the paint was so checked that it looked like the varnish on antique furniture. The internet told me that if you make sure to re-paint as soon as the paint is getting chalky on the surface, you don't have to scrape the old off in order to re-coat. Good to know, my guess is that it was chalky when we bought the house. What you see here was a pretty typical average, where about half of it came off down to the wood. Thankfully the siding is original redwood so even the bare parts don't rot or anything.

I'd noticed a while back that the insulation in the roof of the garage was starting to look saggy and then later it started to pull its staples and fall down. There was obviously a moisture or ventilation problem but this didn't make sense because it'd been fine for the last 8+ years, why is is screwed-up now?

Enter the '90s roofers. This was a crew which laid nice straight rows, trimmed all the ends to be even, put on a good ridge-cap, all without noticing that they didn't use a starter strip on the end of either eve. This meant the grooves in the three-tab shingles on the first row had nothing under them but tar-paper! Credit where credit is due - that tar-paper and later, sheeting, held on for a long time. What I discovered was that I now had a roof which looked like brand new underneath except the end 8" or so was pretty much non-existent. I could actually look through from above and see the board under the eve. I can't imagine how moisture was making it's way in there.

Thankfully the previous owner kicked in some extra cash when building this garage to make sure it would last - all the eves are fiberglass/composite underneath and cedar on the ends with all cedar trim. Other than a couple rafter-tails, nothing but the actual roof sheeting was rotten! I just walked down the ends with a circular-saw, cut it off, and patched it in with strips.

Then it was cyclocross racing season again! We hadn't planned to do much of this in 2014 but were inspired by working at our Pella race and started up shortly after.We did a pretty full circuit and traveled as far as the East end of the Quad Cities. It was, as usual, fantastic and I enjoyed all of it. Traveling, racing, spectating, it was all great and I look forward to next year!

These pictures should pretty well summarize how Corrine's season went. She spent a LOT of time on podiums and has now upgraded to the next higher race category! Nice work!

Then it snowed and winter was here:

And that meant it was time for stouts:

Capital City CX

Capital City Cross Day-1, we headed out expecting to get wet. That's the odd thing about cyclocross I suppose, knowing that it would be cold and raining just made me look forward to getting onto the course all the more.

It did rain during the men's race but the course held up pretty well and remained rideable (for most people anyway). There were a few off-camber hills that turned to mud and there were the run-ups which became mostly mud as well. There were definitely plenty of people who decided to lay on the ground and take a nap for a bit, so they were easy to ride around. 

Day-2 promised sunshine and clear skies. Double-race weekends still working great - I felt even better today than yesterday and went on to finish with my best placing in a cyclocross race to date. We had a great showing today as a whole team.

IMBCS #5 Moorehead Pioneer Park

I think this was about the earliest we've left home for a race, out on the road before 5:00am. We had about a 200mi drive to north-west Iowa and our race starts mid-morning. 

Our new strategy to arrive at check-in more than 5-minutes before staging has been going well. This leaves us time to do things like unpack, eat, and pre-ride the course. My legs were feeling decent when we got there and I think I'm starting to adjust to the new training schedule. Corrine and I have been spending two days a week in the gym doing both weight-lifting and running, two days a week on bike trainers in the garage doing interval max training, and two more days putting in mileage out on the trail/road. This leaves one day of doing nothing but that might become yoga soon. I like it!

The whole thing was a blast with constant brutal transitions from steep climbs to fast, swoopy downhill. Lap times were running 22-28min. Being in Category-3 and only doing one lap made me wish again to upgrade next year for some more ride time. We'll see. 

Corrine took home a 3rd place and Cody snagged a #1 spot. 

Elkhart TT Finale

I don't have much for photos from this evening because, on the final day of the series, I also entered the Elkhart TT. It was....a long, straight piece of road that I tried to ride on really fast. 

Corrine and Rick both ended the series with a first-place overall!
Cody and I were, if nothing else, not last place.

Elkhart TT #4

The fourth of five Elkhart time-trials was today. It was a beautiful night to be outside, just a little warm with a constant gentle breeze. It seemed there was a slightly smaller crowd this month and I'm guessing the Iowa Games had a thing or two to do with it. 

A pretty standard time trial for spectating - watch people ride off down the road and then they eventually come back. Highlights included Corrine getting another 1st place which locked up her 1st overall in the points series. It's now a sure thing even if she doesn't show up for the final.  A new one for me was a sighting of a bamboo tandem bike!

IMBCS # 3 Seven Oaks

After a long break where there's a gap in the season schedule, we're hitting it hard now! IMBCS #3 today which is at Seven Oaks Recreation near Boone IA. The race staging and registration is on top of the ski slope. Somehow arriving early (new experience for us), we find that there is almost no one here and wonder how tiny these fields will be. We find the parking area where there are a few more vehicles and get setup. More people rolled in later but I think there were less than ten people in my category. 

I don't have any pictures of the Jimmy Johns team racing but there were several photographers wandering around so we'll see if anything turns up. 

This course was super fast and has a pleasant mix of technical features as well as smooth downhill runs. It sounded like lots of people had visited to pre-ride it in the week prior but we did no such thing and, in fact, didn't even go on the trail prior to staging. After a really fast start down some gravel, I was trying to stay in 3rd and ended up blowing through some marker tape and almost rode into a big drop-off. 

As we were milling around waiting for official results, I saw a guy licking shot-blocks and sticking them to his top tube. He claimed this works great and they stick best if you get the Margarita flavor. He was racing Cat-1 Expert and we did see him later after finishing his first lap with the blocks still on board.

Official (enough to fill the podium spots anyway) results came out with Cody in 2nd place in his category and Corrine 3rd in hers. I think I am 6th (same category as Cody) but no complete list out yet.