Utah State Road Biker

Few things are more exhilarating than blowing snot rockets with one hand on the handlebar at 35 mph down a 6% grade.  If you haven't figured it out by now, I did a little descending on Thursday (Aug 12th).  Okay... a lot of descending... But I also did a lot of climbing, so I EARNED those 35 mph snot rockets.  I went on a long ride to the tune of nearly 5 hours on SR-65, and since I decided to add all the little short highways I also did SR-86. SR-65 starts at I-80 near Mountain Dell Reservoir.  It heads north, descending down a short hill to Mountain Dell Golf Course where it then climbs a steep grade for a mile until it levels out and passes Little Dell Reservoir.  About a mile after passing the reservoir, the road ascends a little over 4 miles to the top of Big Mountain Pass where it continues down into East Canyon.  A short while later, it passes East Canyon Resort , then East Canyon Reservoir where it intersects with SR-66 .  The road meanders ...

August is here, July is over.  Time for a 2010 goal update.  July's goal was 400 miles cycling, 65 miles running 15 km swimming.  I fell short of the biking goal and biked 301.33 miles.  I smashed the running goal and ran 95.2 miles this month.  A big portion of that was running two half marathons this month.  The Handcart Days Half Marathon and the Crandall Canyon Memorial Half Marathon .  K Jo and I both ran both of those races.  I did them as training runs in preparation for the Bear Lake Brawl Half Ironman.  Handcart Days Half was in Bountiful.  I ran the first 3.5 miles w/ K Jo then kissed her and said, "Have a good race, I am going to start running now."  I finished 2:02:41, K Jo finished in 2:24:37.  It was a good race and a nice course, but there were only three aid stations and no bathrooms that I could see on the course.  Crandall Canyon started at 8800 feet at the top of Huntington Canyon then rose and descended...

Hey blog fans. Just a quick update on my 2010 goal. In June I had a goal to bike 650 miles, run 60 miles, and swim 15 km. I fell short in the bike, rode 291.9 miles, and the run, ran 32.8 miles, but I exceeded my swim goal with 19.2 km. Training is going pretty good. I'm feeling stronger, and going faster than I have in the past, so I feel great. The real goal is to stay fit, and I am doing it! Yay me! In about a week and a half, K Jo and I are off to sunny SoCal for the Strawberry Fields Triathlon and in only 8 weeks I will be doing the Bear Lake Brawl Half Iron Man! Hope you all have enjoyed reading!

Don't you hate it when you're riding your bike down a hill and all you can think is, "Go faster you stupid car."? I didn't actually think that on Tuesday (June 29th), I have before, but not then. I thought I would because I rode SR-190, aka Big Cottonwood Canyon which is a big... freaking... mountain... As the saying goes, what goes up must come down, I went up the mountain and so I HAD to come down the mountain... to the tune of wind screaming past my ears at over 50 mph... but only for a second or two. My average speed down the hill was probably closer to about 35 mph. You still get pretty good screamage at 35 mph. I had a pretty rough weekend... Work was crazy... I was busy attending a wedding reception and church, and I went home teaching. I have stuff going on at home that is UBER stressful that I won't go into now and Monday afternoon... I sliced my finger opening an envelope... that's right... an envelope. Monday night, I went to a movie w...

Today (June 13th) was the first day in almost a week since I have ridden. I have been following my half iron man training program, and last week was very swim intensive. I also took three days off. Anyway, today called for a 75 minute ride, so I decided to tack on SR-152 (aka Van Winkle Expressway) as part of my ride. 152 starts out at SR-71, about 900 E and 4800 S in Murray. It winds its way south east, up a small hill for 3 miles where it terminates at I-215 in Holladay. I, as per tradition, rode this route backwards (okay I don't have a "tradition" but it seems like the last few routes have all been backwards first). The route was kind of scary at first because it is signed at 50 mph and for the first half mile, there is no shoulder, and it interchanges with I-215. I did my best to avoid being plastered, and finally made it to 6100 S where an ENORMOUS shoulder opens up. Being an "expressway", I didn't think SR-152 would get much bike traffic, bu...

A few months ago K Jo was working on our computer when it crashed... and we lost EVERYTHING. Pictures, music, video game save files, you name it, it was gone. About a week prior to the crash, I had moved all of my state road data from my flash drive to my desktop and never got around to moving it back so I lost all of that too. Pictures, maps, elevation profiles and perhaps most devastating... the list. I spent hours on that list and now it was gone, SO I have once again been working on a list of all the state roads in Utah. This time I just decided to go for broke and make a list of all the state highways, including the ones shorter than 5 miles unlike I had previously planned . While working on the new list, I decided that hitting the short routes would not be too difficult, it would just require a lot of planning. So the other day (Friday June 4th) I headed out on a training ride and decided to add SR-151 (aka 10600 S, aka South Jordan Pkwy aka 10400 s). As I said before, t...

I know, I know it's been like seven months, but it was winter, and I THOUGHT I MIGHT ride some of southern Utah's highways, but K Jo and I started snowboarding and I started training for The Utah Half, and... Anyway here is my latest adventure on Utah's State Highways: SR-248. To sum up the whole ride, here is a picture: I love seeing flags when I ride because they are such great indicators of wind speed and direction. Yeah, that was my day... wind. I am picking up some shifts at Park City Medical Center so Saturday morning (May 22nd) I went there to become acquainted with the lab. I really didn't feel like driving all the way to Park City JUST to see the lab, so I decided to see what state roads were near Park City. Luckily, I found SR-248. I am in the middle of training for the Utah Half , and today I was supposed to ride two hours. How fortuitous that this road is 14.5 miles long with lots of hills meaning out and back would take two hours. The road starts at SR-224 ...