Tour of Front Range

First off - Here are some pictures of the Epic rappel in the AXS Moab 12 hour race!

Last Sunday, Mike, Boyd, Brooks, Tiff, James, and Mike's buddy Rife put in a long day in preparation for the AXS Buena Vista race. Starting at the bottom of White Ranch we Mountain biked up Longhorn to the top parking lot, across to the top of Belcher hill, down Mustang, back up to Longhorn, and down to the base. After a quick stop at the cars, we hopped on Hwy 93 and rode to the bottom of chimney gulch. Up chimney gulch to the top of lookout mountain, across the top and down Apex. Unfortunately, Enchhanted Forest was still snowed-in, but we still had fun. Back climbing up grubstake loop, and back to the bottom apex. From there, back to White Ranch, a quick stop at the cars to put on the running shoes, and back up white ranch on foot. It was a great day, and we all had a lot of fun. We were all really excited that we felt pretty good after 7 hours of climbing, and looking forward to the race in 2 weeks. This Wednesday, most of the team will be heading to the Boulder Theater to check out the new Collective mountain bike movie, Thursday evening, some of us will be going for a run/trek across boulder OS PARKS, while Tiffanie will be checking out the Environmental Sustainability of the New Belgium Brewery with GoLite. Saturday, Brooks, Tiffanie, Colin, and possibly Boyd will be checking out the Sports Garage Demo days with Rocky Mountain Bicycles, and it sounds like Mike will be in Nathrop, CO for the MSC Chalk Creek mountain bike races. Busy week for the team!

Cheers, hope you are all doing well!

HAPPY EARTH DAY!!!

Happy Earth day everyone! We hope you are doing well, and encourage everyone to do what they can to help the environment today! To that front, please check out the link below, to see what one of our sponsors, Native Energy, is doing to help the environment in a local Colorado town.

A Wray of Hope

Just one reason (among many - check out their site) that we believe that Native Energy is THE best environmental offset company available.

Cheers, and remember- do what you can to make our world a better place today-and everyday!

Brooks takes 7th in Arkansas Point Challenge MTB race

Brooks headed down to Pueblo, CO this past weekend to visit the parents and race in a mountain bike race at Lake Pueblo State Park. It was great fun, and the 28 mile course was fast, loose, and flat. The expert class had a lot of fast racers (including several semi-pro riders) and although he was holding down 4th place for most of the race, a flat tire around the 22nd mile pushed him back to 9th place. Luckily, 2 hours is a really short race for us, and he was able to push hard at the end when other riders were slowing down and made it back to 7th at the finish.

It was a great time. This is a race to check out for next year!

Physio Testing

Friday Apr 18, Brooks and Boyd headed down to our newest sponsor; Boulder Performance Lab to get some physiological testing done. Unlike the standard VO2 max, Lactate profile tests most athletes have done, we were looking for something a little different. Jason Smith at BPL was great to work with, and designed a fully custom test protocol to address our physical needs/concerns. The information we got was amazing, and we are excited with what we can do going forward with the results of the tests! Thanks so much to Jason Smith, what you do is amazing. If you want/need any physiological testing done, go see Jason at BPL! (click link under sponsors for website and contact info!)

Team GoLite Places 7th in Moab Adventure Xstream 12 Hour!

Sorry it's been so long since the last update, but we have been busy! We once again headed out to the high Utah desert for the first race of the season, the AXS Moab 12 hour on April 5th. The race consisted of a ~7 mile paddle on the Colorado River, 50miles of mountain biking, ~8 miles of running, and a breathtaking 275' rappel. The team for this race consisted of Tiffanie Beal, Chris Boyd, Brooks Beal, and new team superstar James Kovacs. Despite the deep sand, and some other small problems (how often has your seat fallen off your bike?), we had a great race and a lot of fun. Although we were in 5th place for most of the race, we are still pleased to have placed 7th against some of the top teams in the US.

We would especially like to thank all of our sponsors: GoLite and GoLite Footwear, Smartwool, Native Energy, NUUN, Maxxis tires, Tifosi Optics, and Ay Up Lighting systems. It was a good start to the season, and we are working hard for the next races coming up!

Tifosi!

The Team would like to thank Tifosi Optics for supplying us with sunglasses for the 2008 season! After our long Moab weekend, we unanimously decided these were the best sunglasses we have tried (and believe me, we all have a LOT of sunglasses). If you are in the market for sunglasses, you have got to check out Tifosi.

Moab Training Camp

Check out all the Pictures HERE

Well, this is about as much fun as you can have and still call it training. With just 2 weeks until our first race, the team headed out to Moab for the weekend to work on mountain biking and team dynamics. As expected, everything went great! Tiff and Brooks headed out Thursday evening to secure what was the last campsite at sand flats (thanks Jeep Safari!) and the rest of the boys headed out first thing Friday morning. With some time to kill, Tiff and Brooks rode Amasa Back in the morning, then met up with the boys around 1pm at the Gemini Bridges trailhead, to take a spin on Gold Bar / Golden Spike. We had a great time, everyone rode well, and besides a sore elbow, a great time was had by all.

Saturday morning, we woke up early to tackle the Porcupine Rim, Slickrock loop. It was a blast, and after a long day in the saddle (and some huge confidence building moments for Daddy True) the boys headed back to Boulder. Tiff and Brooks were planning on staying another day, but decided it just wasn't the same without the guys, and headed back home.

GREAT WEEKEND! Here are some pictures to tide you over. We'll probably post more soon too!

We'll have the Training with a side of more Training...

Training continues. Today Brooks, Tiff and Colin headed down 93 out of Boulder to ride the Belcher Hill Trail out of White Ranch. This long and steep 45 minute climb worked our legs as well as our lungs on trail that is more technical than what we expect to see at the race in Moab. After a fast descent we started to recall all the first rate teams we noticed that were signed up for AXS Moab...and we turned around and went up the hill again.

Getting ready to climb

Historically speaking, the Moab race in the Adventure Xstream series is largely a bike race. It kicks off with paddling, transitions to the bike for a long, steep climb to a rapel, transition to running and than back to the bikes to the finish line. The bike sections are known to include 40-50 minute climbs up steep fire roads and potentially some Moab singletrack.

With this in mind, long mountain bike climbs up steep fire road has been the name of the training game lately. This week found the metro-Denver/Boulder area dealing with two separate snow events that mucked up our trails in the foothills. So this past Saturday (3/8), Boyd and Colin found themselves heading north to Fort Collins, which was spared the white stuff, to try and find some good training ground. What they found upon riding at Horsetooth Mountain Park was a place that has been added to the short list of great places to train. With fun singletrack and a killer long fire road, Horsetooth had everything we were looking for including some great views of Longs Peak and the divide. The fire road is very close to the climbing that we'll (potentially) have to do in Moab so it's a fair bet to say that we'll be heading back to the Fort the next couple of weekends to get our climbing legs ready for the race. The trails were dry as promised, aside from a few snow patches, and the singletrack is technical enough to make it fun, but not enough to keep it from being a fast ride.

Sunday found Tiff and Brooks skiing in Telluride, Boyd riding at Vail and poor Mike in China on a business trip. Being the only one in the Front Range, Colin did a hill-intensive road ride including the "Wall" on McCaslin Blvd. No pictures, but Colin's quads are screaming right now!

First Race: AXS Moab!

We are registered for our first race, Adventure Xstream's 12 hours of Moab in early April. Training is in full swing and we're all getting pretty pumped to get out there and race. For this one, it looks like the team is going to be Brooks, Tiffanie, Boyd and Colin. Based on past experiences it should be bike intensive race which is also famous for it's 250' rapel.

Last weekend Boyd and Colin got out to do some training on the Mountain Bikes in the glorious sunny weather with temps in the 70's. We headed south of Golden and rode the trails on Green Mountain to get some good climbing in on the Mtn. bikes, but since then, we've had two snowstorms here in the Front Range so the team may be relegated to road riding this weekend if the trails don't dry out. Ahh, the pleasures of a Colorado Winter.

Updates should be coming more regularly now, so please check back to see what we've been up to as we prepare for a great 2008 racing season!

-Team GoLite