The One with the Tour of Utah

In 2006, Larry H. Miller (former owner of the Jazz and most of SLC) started a road bike race across Utah.  I know, what's with all the road bike posts?!  Justin is kind of getting into it.  He wants to buy a bike!  (update: he has bought a bike.)  We are definitely still mountain bikers but you can ride on the roads earlier and later in the season than on the mountains.  So we'll probably get road bikes to get in and maintain "biking shape."

Last year we watched the end of one of the Tour's stages.  It finished right off of campus.  People are loud and crazy, ringing cow bells and yelling.  It's fun.  This year (on Aug. 9th) there was another stage right by campus so we walked over with Mike (a member of Justin's research group who mountain bikes with us often).  The bikers get going so fast!!
 

Justin and Mike

The Pelaton (main group of riders)

After all the bikers pass, their support vehicles follow.  It was kinda funny to see these in the circuit race, driving loops through downtown.  There are some nice bikes up on those racks.

This section was coming off the only downhill in the circuit.  The riders get in "super-tuck" position and just fly down the road.

We were also "Tour groupies" on Saturday (8/10) and drove around chasing the route from Snowbasin to Snowbird (both ski resorts meaning LOTS of climbing, ouch!) with our friends Bonnie and Kristian.

Bonnie, Kristian and Justin

We waited beneath an underpass.  The riders went up and across that hill in the background and down the highway.

Here they come!!  The front riders are called the Break.

This was a long enough race that there were a few groups in front of the Pelaton.  After the first group (Break) came the Chase.

And back to the Pelaton.  That's a lot of bikers!

We wanted to see the bikers speeding downhill so we went to the bottom of Big Cottonwood canyon.  This volunteer cracked us up.  He was very enthusiastic about his role.

Check out how fast they whipped around this corner.

Other shots from segments of the race across the state.  These are all from the website.  They cycled past some pretty awesome scenery.

Manti Temple

Escalante National Park

Red Canyon (near Bryce Canyon National Park)

Other side of the Red Canyon arch

Escalante again (this is where we did our Coyote Gulch backpack trip a few years ago)

The One with Saints and Sinners

"Saints to Sinners" is a road bike race from Salt Lake to Las Vegas.  I love the name, super funny!  Justin was invited by Bonnie and her husband Kristian to join their team.  He's not a roadie but he's in dang good biking shape so he accepted.  The race has 30 legs and they had a 10 person team so Justin rode 3 legs.  Their team started at 6am Friday morning (7/26) and finished about noon the next day.  They came in 8th place out of 17 teams in their division.  The sad thing is they were only 10 minutes behind the 6th place team but Justin got a flat on the road which took about 15 minutes to fix.  So had that not happened they would have come in 6th!!

Here are Justin's legs :)

And here's what he biked during the race:
His first leg was from about 2:30-3:30pm.  For easy comparison I'm using his Strava maps because they show distance, elevation gain and time at the top and have an elevation map at the bottom so you can see just how much he climbed.

His second ride was 1-1:45am!!  I thought this leg would be his hardest.  It was the shortest but had one of the biggest elevation gains for the entire race.  Justin said it was really dark and actually started to rain on him.   He said riding that late at night was a little scary. At one point he had just passed 2 other bikers and was all by himself when he came upon the Mountain Meadows Massacre memorial sign.  Creepy!!  He definitely picked up a little speed right then.

 

This leg shows how impressive a biker Justin is.  The fastest time for that leg was 35 minutes (set by the 2nd fastest team overall who did the entire 800+ miles in just over 24 hours, only 5 minutes behind 1st place).  In Justin's division the fastest rider took 38 minutes.  Justin's time was under 46 minutes!!  He came in 5th in division, 12th out of 52!!  Not bad for a non-road biker!!  That's my hubby :)

His third leg was the second to last of the race.  Justin came in 4th in division and 11th overall on this leg.

I cannot imagine how crazy these people are who sign up for this every year.  I mean, it would be fun but EXHAUSTING!!

A few pictures at the finish line:
(*I wasn't at the race (obviously) so I got all these pictures off the Facebook page.  Thankfully there were some good ones of Justin.)

 Here he comes!! (The guy in front, fist pumping, is Kristian's brother,

the last rider for the team.  Justin just wanted to ride through the gate.)

A little closer.

A little closer. 

 Bam!!  Hottie with a body.  I mean, bike :)

I bought that Utah jersey Justin is wearing for Christmas at least 3 years ago.  We may not have even been married quite yet, just engaged.  Anyway, it hung in his closet for a few biking seasons before he decided his other jerseys could finally be retired and this one could be worn.  Why buy new things if you're not going to wear it?!  I'm the exact opposite.  I buy a new shirt and wear it that night :)

Team photo: Bonnie and Kristian are on the left and hopefully you can pick out Justin :)  The rest of the team was Kristian's dad (who sponsored the team), 2 of his brothers and friends they each recruited to fill out the roster.  You may notice that there are only 9 in the picture.  Our bishop is actually an avid roadie and participated but had to head back to SLC early for church the next day.

We don't know these other teams; I just like their photos.  They're funny :)

Can you hear the Chariots of Fire theme song right now?

The One with the Big Ol' Tree

The weekend after Girls' Camp was our ward Youth Conference.  I had actually been released for a while so I didn't participate much in planning it and wasn't planning on going but the girls wanted me to and it was at Bear Lake so I convinced Justin to go with me.  We drove up a day late with our friends Kristian and Bonnie.  I was pretty excited to finally use my wakeboard that has been collecting dust in the spare closet for 3 years now.  Sadly, it was not to be.  Literally minutes after we arrived at the lake the boat the youth had been tubing behind all day broke down!  I put my wakeboard in the water just to say it got wet but I didn't get to use it :(  Bear Lake is still beautiful and a lot cooler than the valley was at the time so it was still a good trip.  We played midnight Missionary Tag with the YM and YW on the golf course behind the cabin we were staying in and the youth thought Justin and Kristian were so fast.  Apparently they've never seen me run either because I was included in the "fast old people" group.  This was a surprising inclusion because my flip flops had broken at the lake and I was wearing Justin's Chaco sandals.  Not exactly running shoes.

The real reason I was able to convince Justin to go on a youth trip with me was the opportunity to mountain bike in Logan Canyon.  We usually stick to the several, easily accessible canyons near our house so this was a fun new adventure.  We decided to do a ~5 mile trail that ended at the Jardine Juniper, the oldest living tree in Utah.  The first few miles of the trail were pretty exposed and it was hot so I didn't think we were going to make it.  At one point I honestly stopped because I thought I was going to throw up.  Physical activity is hard in the sun.  Eventually we got under some trees and the trail leveled out which made it much more enjoyable and we made it to the tree.

The Jardine Juniper!

There were some beautiful views from the tree platform.

This sign says the tree is over 1500 years old.  Crazy!

A few more landscapes.

And Justin :)

The One Where We Got There Late

I don't know what it is (maybe the 4 hour drive) about camping in Moab but we always get there after sundown.  It makes it very hard to find an open camp spot and we inevitably end up on the same mesa overlooking the city.  It's a beautiful view in the morning but a little chilly at night.  This trip was no different.  Justin, his dad and I went camping and biking in Moab back in April before it got too hot.  It was our first bike ride of the year so we took it easy and didn't do the big Slick Rock trail.  We hit up the Bar M practice trails which are still really fun.  I even (unknowingly) did part of Dead Man's Loop, yikes!!  I think I surprised myself the most with how well I actually did on that trail.

We also did a short hike out to Corona Arch. 

This arch is famous for being easily accessible for "arch swingers."  People hike to the top basically wearing rock climbing gear and then swing out and through the arch.  It's pretty crazy!  Someone actually died recently on that very arch because they didn't measure the rope correctly.  Ouch!

 *For some reason we didn't take pictures at the Arch so neither of those are mine.  They're from Google.

Sunday morning before we drove home we went to Canyonlands and Justin showed us where he'd been backpacking the month before.  We did a short hike and took some pretty pictures.

The aptly named Canyonlands :)

  Justin and Wes standing on an arch.  Looks totally safe right?

This is the view from below!  There is literally empty space directly below the arch walkway.  Crazy!!  Kinda like the rock bridge Indiana Jones had to cross in the Last Crusade.

 

 Me and Justin on the arch.

I just think this one is cool with the jet flying by.

Justin being silly.  As usual.

A ranger was giving a talk right when we showed up so we learned what all these formations are called.  I already can no longer tell you but it was neat.

Hmmm, this may be the only biking post without pictures of our bikes!