Last weekend

Sorry that it has taken me so long to get this up but it’s been a pretty hectic week and time has been stretched pretty thin. Even though it’s been busy it has been a good week. Cooke stayed with us on Wednesday night on his way back home to Washington. That crazy fool decided he was going to trailer his Mustang and drive it from KS to WA which was like 26 hrs or so… No thanks! Either way it was great to have him come by and drink a few beers. It proves how much of a lightweight I am though because 3 beers in 3-4hrs was a bit much it seemed.

Alright, so now on to the story of last weekend. We headed to Denver Sat morning and I raced at 12:40. It was a bit warmer than I care for, at about 91 degrees, and the dust was flying for sure. I jumped into the “Open” race which is P/1/2 category riders and unfortunately it was a small race starting at only 14 racers. It was definitely a race of attrition though on a very dusty rough course and only 9 of us ended up finishing. 60 minutes later the pain and suffering was over and I was pleased not only to have finished but to have finished ahead of a cat 2 racer and only 15 seconds behind another cat 3 racer who was beating me by minutes last year.

After the race we grabbed some lunch and then went looking for some colorful aspen trees. Needless to say we didn’t find any… but we did find some nice views! I also added more pictures to the Photo page so don’t miss those!



Fabucross weekend!

Well, this is the first weekend that will be free for a race. Janelle, Katelyn and I will all be heading to Denver for a race on Sunday. I will be doing the open race and we will see how it goes. My new bike came in early this week and the guys at Colorado Cyclist got it built up for me in time for me to get a ride in on it and dialed in a bit to race this weekend. Now all I need to do is throw the race wheels on it and have some fun!

Keep your eyes peeled for some more pictures of the weekend either Sunday night or Monday.

New Page

Alrighty, I wanted to give you all a heads up that I have added a Photos page to the blog. I have only posted a few photos so far but in the next week or so I will be putting some more attention to adding more and more pictures in my spare time.

Oh weekend here I come…

Well, today the body is dragging. Two nights ago Kate was up 5 or 6 times fussing. We are so spoiled having her sleep all the way through the night. Just in case you don’t know that by all the way though the night I mean from 10pm to 6:15am when we wake her up. So I can’t complain too much but when you get into a rhythm of actually getting great sleep I think it hurts even worse than consistently inconsistent sleep.

I did work from home on Wednesday though and Kate stayed home with me and that did one thing. I told Janelle it simply reaffirmed that I could not be a stay at home father. She had a super fussy day and wouldn’t sleep for more than 5-10min at a time so I was not able to get everything done that I wanted to and if you don’t know it frustrates me when I am not able to get everything accomplished that I may be hoping for. Not her fault by any means I guess I am just goal oriented, even if I don’t make a list and cross things off like my very organized wife. She’s the list queen! I do have to admit though when she makes a weekend list of things we have to do and she goes and crosses something off that I’ve done I do feel cheated… 🙂
This week has been a pretty slow week at work with a lot of the staff out of the office though. Between our La Ruta recon camp in Costa Rica, IM Arizona camp going on and the performance testing camp going on this weekend the office has been a bit baron and the people who are here are trying to get prepped for the camp this weekend. I will be working this weekend though so I need to get a good night sleep tonight and get prepped and excited for the camp tomorrow. It looks like I will be doing 7 bike fits between Saturday and Sunday so let’s rock and roll! In preparation for this camp though I did go out for a bit of a stress reliever ride to get in the right mind set. Basically it was as hard as I could go on the climbs and then use the descents as some recovery. It is a good way to almost make yourself puke and I always feel good after crushing it like that.

Thanks SidiAmerica!


Alright, I can’t go without thanking Sidi for replacing my old Sidi Ergo 2 cycling shoes. about 2 months ago I noticed that my Sidi riding shoes had some yellowing on one of the plastic parts on them. I sent them into Sidi and they were so gracious as to even send me a pair of demo shoes to wear in the mean time while they waited for my size in the 2011 shoes to arrive. Check out the new kicks!

On an even brighter side, I have ridden the past two days. That is not the exciting part (even though it is great) but the fact that I finally feel like my fitness is back to where it was before Katelyn was born. I have felt rather sluggish since taking nearly a month away from the bike after her birth and I feel like my old self again. Now, only more to come in that realm I hope! That’s it for the night Katelyn is squirming out of her blanket and needs to be fed.

Father Daughter time

Today Janelle had to work which meant that it was just me and Kate. Which I am pretty sure Janelle was at least a little worried about. “Why?” you ask? because at about 2:00pm she called me to make sure that everything was going well. I think it was to make sure Katelyn wasn’t balling, the house wasn’t on fire and if it wasn’t on fire that I got the honey do list completed that she gave me this morning (not 100% done…SORRY!). 🙂

Since Janelle did work today though I decided it was a GREAT time for some father daughter bonding time. So we headed to the mountains to enjoy the beautiful weather (low 70’s) and some amazing scenery. The choice trail of the day was 7 bridges trail near the top of Cheyenne Canyon, just off of Gold Camp road. Kiya went with us and since Katelyn has been around she

has seemed to become a bit more mature and by that I mean manageable. Today, as you can see she was the leader of the pack on our hike. She lead the whole way up and down the trail.
Kate is officially a hiking champ. Today was her 3rd hike in her 10 weeks of life and she lasted nearly 1.5hrs on the trail with me. She slept all but the last 5 minutes of our hike. The sun shone directly in her eyes and woke her up (had to improvise with the hat so she didn’t fuss too much). All in all today was A LOT of fun and it even ended in some smiles from Katelyn before I put her in the car seat for the trip home. Hopefully there will be much more hiking to come even though the winter months. She is getting close to being able to support her head and that is what I am waiting for to get her in the hiking pack that Grandpa Les and Bobbi gave her for a baby shower gift.
By the way, the reason for the picture of the trees is because the aspens are turning yellow and that makes me VERY happy to know that fall is here. Fall drive into the mountains here we come!

‘Cross is upon us!

Alright, so as many of you already know I LOVE ‘cross season! It is my favorite time of the year and always gets invigorated to get back on the bike after a long summer. I like the cold, the rain, the snow, swampy muddy conditions and even the warmer weather when it has to be that way. There is nothing like finishing a race with mud caked in your hair, your face covered like you are getting one of those funny facial things that ladies get to soften their skin and your legs smoking from just turning yourself inside out for 45minutes.

This weekend is the official start of cyclocross season in the Colorado region as well as the U.S. UCI scene in Nittany. Unfortunately though I will not be able to start racing this weekend. The main reason is I don’t currently have a new ‘cross bike yet. I’m working with the guys at Colorado Cyclist to get that part straightened out though and like always they are taking GREAT care of me. On the 18th we’ve got a local race here in COS but I will be working our Performance Testing camp at CTS that weekend so there is no racing then… “So, when are you racing?” you ask. That is a good question. I guess the excitement will continue to build until I am actually able to race. In the meantime I will stalk cxmagazine, crosstube and all of the other cycling related sites until the opportunity to race presents itself.

Thought for the day: Do you have the same outlook on your races as one of my athletes?! I hope so! “I’m going to win that race in buffalo. You heard it here first. Its just how I feel.”

Cripple Creek Ride

Friday Morning we pushed off from CTS around 8:00am on our way to Cripple Creek. It was a great morning and started off a bit chilly. Jim Lehman, Adam Pulford, Daniel Matheny and myself were expecting the trip to be about 5-5.5hrs of total ride time and with fall rapidly approaching we knew that there was little chance of running into thunderstorms. With a few tough climbs on the way Jim put the hurt on all of us and left us hoping to be as strong as he is at 40 years old.

Coming back through Woodland Park we realized we were actually making much better time than what the ride typically takes. In fact we made it door to door in 4:37min. The ride clocked in at 89miles and just shy of 7,000ft of climbing. Not a bad day in the saddle and certainly a ride that needs to be done more often! Thanks a bunch fellas!

East bound and down

Well, we made the 11 hour drive to Oklahoma this weekend for Janelle’s grandmother’s funeral. It was a sad day in the McIlvain household and for the town of Hennessey, Oklahoma. Gran lived a long full life and from the full chapel it was apparent that the number of lives she touched was far greater than I am sure she probably would have ever imagined.

Today marked a new step in our family life as well. Janelle dropped Kate off at her sister’s house this morning on her way to work. The past few days have been pretty tough for Janelle in anticipation of dropping her off. I can’t imagine how difficult it was since she has spent all but 5 hours of her waking moments with Kate since she was born 2 months ago. As the days go by it will get easier and easier but I think at this point it is very difficult to see that in sight. Seriously though, it’s hard to miss this little face!
After 22 hours in the car over the last 2.5days it was great to get out and stretch my legs on the road bike. There is nothing like a jaunt up Orion to Gold Camp and then down Cheyenne canyon. The weather here is AMAZING and you can start to feel a bit of crispness in the air which is making me think that we are quickly losing are summer warmth. The fact that it hit 52deg last night doesn’t hurt that insight as well.

Why the legs?

So, the other day I was asked the question by my lovely wife, “why do you put pictures of your legs on your blog?” followed by laughter and mocking. So after the question I assumed I should follow up with the answer on here in case there are others were wondering the same thing. The leg pictures are there because of the name of the blog. I guess I assumed it was more like the adventures of the legs but apparently some think differently. Sorry if there has been any confusion…

On another note, Thanks a bunch to Brian Delong & the rest at Ideavise for the sweet new kit. I’ve never had a Champion System kit until now and they are REALLY comfortable!