Warming up | Cyclingnews

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Another tough training ride…(Image credit: Keith Bontrager)

May 7, 2008

I cooked for him too, which was a challenge. His step mother is an amazing chef - she prepared one of the best meals I've ever had with his family when I was there. He's a pro, and pros eat carefully so they don't have to haul too much baggage up hills. And they eat a lot. I don't cook entirely with fueling athletic performance in mind though I am not that heavy handed with the butter and cream of course. Making sure he was happy pushed me a bit farther though and it worked out well. I've always wanted to see Chef Willi – the chef who worked for the Postal and Disco teams in action to see how this is done. Maybe this year.

It's a long ride and really good when the weather is cooperative. It was, sort of. The first two days along the coast were sunny, windy and very cold. The arm and leg warmers stayed on the entire time, so I had no chance to work on my farmer's tan at all, which was a bummer. But south of Santa Barbara things improved so I got my stripes going pretty good. I finished up with a short ride into Santa Monica and a dinner at Chez Jay, a favorite of mine.

The next day I was scheduled to ride with the folks in Pasadena and, of course, it got hot. The temperature was in the high 90s for the ride. Ouch. The route started with a 4000 foot climb and then a very good singletrack descent in the mountains behind JPL, so all I had to do was get to the top intact, and I did. Every MTB ride I've done in SoCal has the same sort of elevation profile. The ride is almost done when you are half way in – it's all down from there.

After a very well attended barbeque back at Pasadena Cyclery we watched Klunkers. I had not seen it before. You should if you get a chance. It's a very cool flick and really spells out the details of what happened way back when in the early days of MTBs. Those folks were riding some pretty dodgey stuff down the hills and going fast too. Billy Savage was the guy who made the movie and he was there too, just to add to the fun. It was a fine night.

Right after the pancake breakfast the next day I hopped on a plane to Lyon, France. My first race of the year would be a three day stage race in Limousin – Le Grand Traversee du Limousin. It's three days off road, medium long stages, with lots of short climbs and some singletrack. It looks like fun. I am not race fit yet, so I am not sure I should say that I will be racing, but I think I am fit enough to ride well and finish with something like a grin. It's been raining fairly constantly in that area to so my grin will probably be speckled with mud. That is a fine thing with me - way, way, way better than being chalk man again. Way better.

Keith Bontrager is best known as the bike and component design guru behind his eponymous road and mountain bike components, but behind the scenes the man universally known as KB is an enthusiastic and well-respected endurance mountain bike racer. KB has taken part in a over 50 24-hour races in the last few years, and in his diary takes us inside the mental, physical and technical challenges of long-distance mountain bike racing, starting with one of the sport's greatest tests, the seven-day TransRockies Challenge.