36 Hours to Race - No Bike

The Greenbrier Race is this Sunday and I'm sure all of you regular readers are sick of hearing about it. If not and you want to find out more you can click Here.

I've been haunted the past couple weeks by massive unknowns going into this race. After two knee pain riddled seasons this year I really wanted to try to break out of the shackles of my injury. So far that hasn't gone as planned. My knee actually feels worse than it did last fall and my fitness is questionable. Most of my friends are dumbfounded as to why I even want to do this race. My answer is that I'm stoked to race where I grew up, but I'm not sure that is entirely what is driving me. There is something else I can't quite put my finger on. Either way the whole thing just got a little harder.

I sent my bike "guaranteed deliver" overnight by FedEx yesterday and it didn't make it. There are no guarantee's in life and I guess I was naive to think FedEx would be any different. Right now it isn't guaranteed to arrive until Monday which will be 24 hours too late. There is a chance I can pick it up at a delivery center on Saturday, but I have to call at 5:00am mountain time, exactly 4:51 minutes from now as I type to find out. If I not I have faith that I'll be able to find a bike, it just might not be an ideal race bike. I'll guess time only time will tell - literally!

Jasper of the Night

Rusty and Jasper make up the feline contingent of the zoo that resides in our house. Of the two, Jasper is the more timid while Rusty is generally more social and adventurous. At night when the house is quiet Jasper comes out of his shell and adventures out of the safety of my office. This has earned him the nickname "Jasper of the Night".

Last summer I installed a dog door in the back door. I found the biggest one I could with an extra heavy flap so our biggest dog Nana could get out with no trouble and it would be harder for wildlife to get in the house. The door is about 30 inches tall with a magnet in the bottom that keeps it closed. It takes considerable pressure to break the magnet and open the door.

During the day we open the back door to let the cats adventure in the back yard. They usually go out, but stay close and startle easy. A slight gust of wind will send them tearing into the house and upstairs into my office. The other night I forgot to close the door before it got dark and soon noticed Jasper missing. After a searching Jo and I found him outside through the fenced backyard in a neighbor's front yard. In the past he's gotten out at night and not come back. One time I found him the next day perched at the top of a 30 foot tall tree howling in fear. At the bottom was a geriatric blind and deaf dog that wouldn't hurt a fly. It took an hour to climb the tree, wrangle Jasper into a duffel bag and lower him to the ground with a climbing rope.

Not wanting to repeat the events of that cold morning I made sure the door was shut and got ready for bed. After a hour I noticed Jasper was absent again. I tore the house apart searching for him, but he was no where to be found. Rusty was meowing a distinct meow that both cats use to inform me when the other is missing, locked in the closet, etc. Surely Jasper couldn't have gone out the dog door. It was a typical Colorado Spring night with very strong winds (gusting to 40mph) and while brainstorming as to where else he could be I noticed during a gust the dog door blew open. There was no way he could time it right to make it out and if so the wind would scare him away from the door. The slightest gust terrifies him during the day.

Having failed to find him anywhere else I decided to look outside, sure enough he was two houses over exploring the bushes in their front yard. I locked the dog door and fixed the hole in the fence he was going through. Problem solved right...

Wrong. Last night, when the wind was calm and the dog door wasn't being blown open I caught him doing this:

He would ease up to the door and use all of his body weight to break the seal, then quickly squeeze through the hole. There was no way he could open the relatively huge door on kitty strength alone. It required a skillful technique that must have taken hours of trial and error to perfect. He could go in both directions and seemed to have the technique down. I couldn't help but think of how many nights of adventures he'd gone on without my knowing.

As I finished writing this I happened to look up at where Jasper was sleeping and he was gone. I found him in the back yard trying to get through the patched hole in the fence, I guess I need to start locking the dog door at night.

Bike Packing

I'm leaving Saturday for the Greenbrier Race on Sunday, but my bike has to leave by 10am tomorrow if it's going to get there in time. It's almost 1am and I'm beat. I've spend the past couple hours trying to fit this:

into this:





My narrow road bike fits in this box no problem, but the mountain bike is a different story. After test fitting many times to find the most space-saving position I took a note from Jeff's hang glider short packing posts and cut up an old foam bed roll for extra padding. With the wheels nestled just right in the frame nooks I still had to use significant force to get the lid shut. Being paranoid about bending my brake rotors I took them off. That 1/8" of room made everything fit snug, but not too tight. Okay it really made no difference, but at least my rotors won't be bent.








Done. Off to bed...

Broken Chain - OUCH

You can see where this went - OUCH!!

Training Update 4-21-08

It's been a good week. With 7 days left until my race I've been able to stay on track and get consistent riding in. I normally would have been tapering last week, but due to my late start this year I needed it to bump up my fitness and intensity in addition to getting used to the mountain bike. Tuesday was a beautiful 70 degree day, the warmest of the year. I had my bike built up by mid-afternoon and loaded it up on the Midget using a makeshift rack clamped to the convertible top frame.

For my first ride on the dirt I headed to nearby Marshal Mesa. The riding is short and leaves much to be desired, but it's good training and newly opened trails were calling my name. More importantly I wanted to be able to stop by the Midget on each lap to tune my the new Fox F100 fork and make other adjustments. It was monotonous, but I got the bike dialed and enjoyed the new trails and warm top down weather.

Wed, Thurs, Friday and today were all high intensity mountain bike rides. Five rides isn't ideal for getting race-ready on the mountain bike after a winter of road riding, but it's all I have. My tech skills are still being awakened, but for the circumstances I feel good. I'm digging the F100 fork, but am still finding the edge of my new tire. I'm at a complete loss as to how I'll stack up against the competition in Greenbrier next weekend. In the grand scheme of things, this race is really nothing more than an exaggerated training event, but I am having trouble not caring about my results. The many unknowns including my own fitness level, inflamed knee, and competition have been haunting me.

Forks and Tires

It took hours, but I finally built the mountain bike up yesterday. I hadn't touched it since November. My bottom bracket was filled with sand and grime, I'm surprised of didn't seize on the White Rim last year. With about ten days left until my race it wasn't a moment too soon either.

I'm going to focus on cross country (XC) this season so I made some changes to the bike. My plan B to race Super D didn't work out last year. The Santa Cruz Superlight frame just isn't the right geometry for a downhill bike. The Fox Talas fork I mounted in August gave the bike too much rake in the longer travel settings resulting in carnage on more than one occasion. I've changed back to a straight 100mm (4") travel Fox F100RLC fork which is lighter and is without a doubt the best fork I've ever ridden.

After the non-tubeless 2.4 front tire I was running tubeless last year catastrophically failed as I landed a jump on an off camber piece of Moab slickrock I switched to a 2.1 (smaller cross section diameter) tubeless tire up front. I felt confident the bead wouldn't "un-zip" on me, but the smaller volume hurt my confidence and speed on technical descents. So I found a new tubeless 2.4 Specialized front tire with a tread pattern similar to my old 2.4 and have my confidence back.

Although it should survive the next couple weeks and is running relatively smoothly my bike and it's components are the victim of many miles of abuse and in need of many new parts. This picture of my zip tied and electrical taped seat is a good example.

After the Greenbrier Race next week I'm planning on tearing down the bike, repainting it, and rebuilding it proper as a true XC machine with new shifters, drivetrain, and wheels. Just like it's owner it needs to shed some weight off it's current form to be competitive! I'm going to have to make some trade offs to be competitive the most dramatic will be new tires. I've always favored big volume high tread, but high rolling resistance tires to accent my technical riding style, but on the mostly hard pack and climbing courses most races are held on in Colorado I think these hurt me. It's time I bit the bullet and switched to a true race tire on both wheels. This is really going to initially hurt my technical riding, but I'm confident I can adapt over time.

Training Update 4-14-09

I was able to get enough breaks in the weather to get back on track last week. I had to suffer in the cold, but including my urban assault ride I was able to ride 4 days for a total of 138 miles. I was also able to incrementally increase my climbing a little too and am starting to feel some strength in my legs as a result. It's a fine line with my knee. I feel it after every hard ride, but I've been religious in doing 3 dimensional stretching every day. If I can walk this line just right I think I can be pretty competitive by mid-summer. I'm about 15 pounds heavier than my ideal racing weight, but eating right consistently has been hard for me this season. That is my next big area to focus on.

My first race in is 12 days and I have yet to touch my mountain bike this year. The last ride was the White Rim trail in early November 2007. I'm going to rebuild it into more of a cross country machine instead of the Super D machine I built it up last fall. More on that soon...

Urban Assault Ride

Yesterday I delivered Jo's old Saturn to it's new owner in South Denver. The buyer needed the car this week and I needed to get a training ride in - I saw an opportunity. The problem was, yet another, winter storm looming in the mountains. The rain was supposed to start around noon and turn into snow later in the afternoon. As I walked out of the house I felt a moist chill in the air, that could only mean precipitation was on the way. It would be a race against time.

The buyer's house was deep in the South Denver Suburbs. This was good because it would mean a 40 to 50 mile ride depending on how straight my route home was, but bad because it meant I had to cover those miles before the rain and snow hit. I packed a base layer, mid layer, shell, rain shell, arm warmers, knee warmers, toe warmers, two pairs of socks, and a wool hat. In the short time it took to replace a marker light on the Saturn and load the bike up I could feel the temperature dropping.

Proper route finding would be huge in preventing my urban assault ride from turning into an epic. I know both major bike paths in Denver and felt confident I could navigate to downtown, the hard part would getting from downtown to Superior, just south of Boulder. The area North of Denver is an "industrial no-man's land" in my mental map of the area. I was armed with my new phone, sporting Google Maps, but the battery was low so I could only depend on it as a back up. Before I left the house I spent a solid 20 minutes trying to memorize the area on my laptop.

I dropped the car off in the buyer's driveway, but nobody was home. I raised quite a suspicion with the neighbors as I took the license plates off and then shocked them all by changing into my biking clothes right there in the drive way. I could just hear the phone call to the police, "Help! There is a naked man abandoning a vehicle in my neighbors driveway."

Once I got suited up, I headed out of the neighborhood to the main traffic artery I came in on. I knew if I continued West I'd eventually get to the South Platte River and Bike Path. After a short jog South and then Northwest I saw the river and then the path which would take me straight to downtown Denver. The South Platte Bike Path runs through the ruins of Denver's industrial era, its a stark contrast to Boulder's country roads. I enjoyed the path and foolishly used precious cell phone battery power to take pictures (sorry for the poor quality). Although cold, the sun was still out and my spirits were high.

South Platte Bike Path

Downtown

I rolled by the REI flagship store downtown after just over an hour. I was feeling strong and ready for the unknown that lay ahead. I headed Northeast through the Highlands, but as I crossed over I-70 the weather started to turn. Within about 10 minutes the sun had disappeared, gust front winds pelted me with street trash, and it started to drizzle. I kept my focus and headed North into the "industrial no-man's land". I made it about a mile before I hit my first real obstacle, a wall of train cars 2 deep. I waited at the crossing for about 15 minutes before cold and impatience drove me to seek a new route.

Highlands

I jogged South then West which spit me out on Federal Blvd. Federal is a 3 lane thoroughfare that is not safe to bike on. After about 5 minutes I saw salvation, a bike path to the West. I busted a quick U turn in the next traffic break and rode towards the path. It soon became evident that I was on the wrong side of the creek that the path followed. Luckily, the same train tracks that stopped me earlier provided a solution in the form of a bridge. Just walking in road cycling shoes is hard, so jumping a fence with my bike, hiking up the steep grade to the tracks, crossing the railroad tie bridge, and stumbling down the other side was a huge expenditure of energy. It would have been worth it if the path lead me somewhere useful, instead it took me right back to Federal Blvd! Argh!!

My Route

Problem & Solution

There isn't much of a story from this point on. The constant sprinting and stopping of riding in traffic was taking a toll on my legs. I tried to use my cell phone to Google Map my way home, but the battery was dead. I suffered in cold, wind, and occasional rain through an endless maze of industrial areas and old neighborhoods until I found my way to Indiana Street. In my mental image Indiana was the straightest route North, it wouldn't take long to leave the residential areas for open prairie and cross a couple ridges. In reality, Indiana proved to be a horrible choice compounded by my own underestimating the distance I would have to ride on it to get home. It was a seemingly never ending hell of wind, hills, no shoulder, and constant traffic. I was too cold and exhausted to celebrate as I crested the last hill into Superior, but I was happy to be home. I'll never ride on Indiana again.

Total time including lights, traffic, trains, fences and train bridges: 3:02. Distance 51 miles.

Training Update 4-7-08

Last week was the same story as the week before. I only had two days off to ride and it snowed both of those days, yet every day I worked the temps were in the 60's. My frustration level was only heightened by the looming race I have on the 27th, a mere 20 days away.

Including today, I managed 2 rides totalling about 60 miles. I woke up to snow and wet cold air today, but got my bike ready in hopes of a break in the weather. Around 1pm the snow stopped, but the break in the clouds appeared to be a sucker hole. I didn't take the bait and choose to run errands instead. The snow started again within an hour, followed by several hours of intermittent showers. At 6pm a check of the radar revealed most of the moisture had moved off to the East. I suited up in my warmest clothes and headed out. At first it wasn't bad, but the as the sun drifted behind the clouds lingering over the Flatirons it got cold quick.

I tried to stay positive as the numbness advanced up my extremities and day light retreated to the West. I decided my frustration over the past week was unfounded. I really hurt my knee doing long rides and steep climbing on the few days I rode the week before. My long work week was nothing but an opportunity for my knee to heal a little and it was time to refocus on my plan of incremental increases in distance, intensity and climbing. The race on the 27th will be nothing but a training event for me. I'm not going to focus on results, just having fun and sticking to my training plan.

Finally Got a New Lens!

I finally a got a new lens! After all these years of complaining about the same old 17-85mm I got some new glass. It's a Canon EFS 13-600 Excalibur 3000. I'll never need another lens again. In addition to it's 13mm to 600mm focal range, it's gyroscopically stabilized and has heated grips. Here are some examples of it's other features. Sorry, the M Coupe was the only subject I had available at the time, besides I don't think Jo would approve of me using the X-Ray feature on her!

X-Ray Feature

Black and White Feature

Sunlight Enhancement Feature

Motion Blur Feature

Neon Outline Feature

This post was supposed to happen April 1st, but I've been working all week, so APRIL FOOLS!! (As if you belived me in the first place anyway)