I once read a tip on Bart Gillespie’s blog about spending a lot of time on your race bike coming into a race in order to get a “feel” for the bike. He’s definately onto something with that. In the two weeks prior to Bump & Grind I almost exclusively rode the race bike. Starting this week I’ve only been riding the race bike in preparation for the Fool’s Gold. It’s amazing how much better you get doing this.

Today riding Red Bug trail, arguably the most technical trail in town, the bike felt like an extension of me.

Here’s a pic of one of Red Bug’s notorious root gardens. Not such a great pic I guess. The rootiest part is up the hill where my bike is.

Since I’m a n00b at racing over 2.5 hours or so I’ve been thinking a lot about the logistics of staying hydrated for the Fools Gold. I just read that you can have drop bags at all the SAG stops which adds another wrinkle. It’s looking like the temperature will be in the high 60’s for the 7am start and probably around 80 when I finish. I guess that means I’ll need less liquid than I need down here. I’ll figure it out one way or another… hopefully not the hard way. I’m gonna play it safe and put the granny ring back on too.

I’m getting excited.

One nice thing about my extended absence from bike racing is getting back that race giddiness I used to feel way back in the beginning. At some point in the late 90’s I lost that, which is why I quit I guess.

If you’ve got 11 minutes of ear time have a listen to what in my opinion is one of the best Jane’s Addiction songs ever and probably in my top 20 favorite songs of all time. It’s a rock and roll masterpiece. It seems like it would be a pretty good warmup track the way it builds up and then ebbs and flows.

Warning! This is a negative post, so if you don’t need any negative vibe in your life right now don’t read it.

Not all cyclists are jerks, but there exists a breed of cyclist on the roads that have a distinct jerk like quality. They don’t let cars get by, which pisses the driver off of course, then the next cyclist the driver encounters gets the retaliatory behavior. I see small groups of cyclists (5-6) out all over the freakin road with traffic backed up and oblivious to the situation. The bike fascists talk about “share the road” but won’t go single file to let a car pass.

Just call me Judas.

Out on the dirt roads I’ve made an effort to be friendly and show the rural locals respect. In turn, they have given me respect. I see the same vehicles out there and have established a friendly raport with them. I yield to them with a wave and they don’t buzz me at 50mph and leave me in a cloud of dust with a load in my chamois.

Sunday morning I saw a couple of cyclists cresting a hill riding toward me on a long straight section of dirt. My first reaction was, “Cool, more bikers”, because after hours and hours of ride time on these roads I’ve never seen another cyclist. My reaction soured though after I saw they were holding up a guy in a truck who I see every Sunday morning. This road is big enough for two vehicles to pass slowly but there’s one grooved in line down the middle. They were riding the right center line not willing to go into the softer stuff on the shoulder and let the truck by. That ticked me off. As I passed I smiled and waved then pointed at the truck and politely said, “Car back”. I’m sure they knew that already, but I was hoping that my comment would encourage them to let him by. I saw them eventually go single file on the right line and the truck got by, but not without coming real close to droping into the ditch on the left.

All these months of mutual respect and friendly waves and now he probably thinks cyclists on his road are pesky jerks. Or maybe he already knows cyclists on his roads are jerks and he recognizes me from all the other lycra clad weenie packers? Yeah, I’ll look at it that way.

This breed I’m refering to is snobby too. A wave usually gets nothing in return.

Maybe I’m just on my man period. My wife says I have one.

I’m done projecting this negative energy.

Dear Reader,
I’m about to get bike nerdy on you. I made some changes to my MTB setup over the last couple of weeks. Here’s the bike.

Here’s the changes.

Crank Brothers Egg Beater pedals
I’ve been riding Time ATAC’s for quite a while but after spotting the egg beaters on the bikes of several fast guys I decided to try them out. I picked up a pair of slightly used Egg Beater SL’s on Ebay. So far so good. I like the release and with my new carbon soled Adistar XC’s the small platform is not a problem because those soles aren’t flexing. Plus they’re around 150g lighter.

SRAM Grip Shifters
Back in 1995 I replaced my thumbshifters with Grip Shift but when Shimano came out with rapidfire I switched and never looked back. However, since I busted my front shifter last week I figured I’d try them out again. I’ve only got one ride on them and I’m not sure what I think. I definitely like all the adjustment you get out of the front shifter but I’ll have to give them more time. Would it be weird to run grip shift for the front and trigger for the back? Hmmmmmm.

Maxxis Ignitor UST tires
I’ve been wanting to try tubeless tires since I got this bike but only now got around to it. The idea of not having a tube just seemed so weird. I thought about converting a standard tire to tubeless with Stans Sealant but that’s just to much work and mess so I settled on finding a reasonably light UST tire. Maxxis advertised the 1.95 Ignitor as 610 grams and that’s not much more than running a 500 gram tire with a tube.

I was pretty disappointed when they arrived and one weighed 660 grams and the other 665 grams. I expected them to weigh a little more but not 50 grams more. I don’t know what the story is on the weight discrepancy but Maxxis should probably stop advertising them as 610 grams.

Weight aside I’m real happy with the tire. I’m running a little over 30 psi in the front and about 35 psi in the back which, a long with the more aggressive tread, translates to a lot more grip than I’m used to. I went out to the technical singletrack at Red Bug to push them and they held firm.

Even after I bought the tires I was sceptical of them holding air. I just couldn’t fathom a stand alone tire holding air, but they actually do. They do slowly lose pressure but I usually have to pump my tires a little before every ride anyway so that doesn’t matter. I cleaned the inside of the rim, where the bead sits, on the rear tire and it’s holding air better than the front. I’ll take the front off and clean it too.

So now the only thing to worry about is a puncture. I’m thinking about running a small amount of some kind of non-latex based sealant like Slime to protect from thorns.

My Position
When I got this new bike I set it up exactly like my old bike, which I set up in 1997. I don’t think that old position is good for me anymore and since I’m doing a 50 mile race in a couple weeks I want to get back to comfortable. I think maybe my muscles have gotten tighter in my old age. So I flipped my stem from negative rise to positive and had no neck problems at all on a 4 hour ride wednesday. I also think it balances me on the bike a little better in the singletrack.

There’s only one more problem left to solve. On that 4 hour ride my little WTB Shadow V Team saddle was killing my backside. I heard the Rocket V is comfy. Let me know what your buns love, cause I need to get a new saddle ASAP.

If you didn’t know the national mtb championships were in Mt Snow, VT last week. Reading about the event got me thinking about my Mt Snow experience, and here it is.

It was 1996 and I had just graduated from college. I wanted some adventure so Nathan King and I plotted a trip from Tallahassee allowing us to hit NORBA Nationals at Mt Snow and Traverse City, MI. We hit Pisgah National Forest, Shenandoah National Forest, and a week of fun in Boston on our way up. All some of the best riding I’ve ever done.

One thing to keep in mind is that 1996 was arguably the peak of mtb racing in the US. Fields would fill at 100 riders and the courses were packed with fans. Mtb racing was huge. When we got to Mt Snow we, along with hundreds of others, parked in the lot of a Ski Lodge that was closed for summer. We suited up for a ride and off we went. We rode our own paces which means we split up. When I got back to the parking lot in the early afternoon, the car was gone. I sat there for quite a while waiting…. for nothing.

I spent the rest of that day eating the little Powerbar samples from the Powerbar booth and drinking water from the water fountain and looking for the car. I rode back and forth and back and forth between the original parking spot and the race venue. Night came and I was freezing in my spandex and hungry. I went to the Naked crit looking for Nathan and the car but didn’t find either. I did see some naked people on bikes though.

When the naked crit was over I got desperate. That’s when I saw the Cool Tool bus full of hippies parked in the lot where the crit was held. For those that don’t remember, the Cool Tool bus was a modified school bus with bunks, couches and other neat stuff. I went to the bus and explained my situation and they couldn’t have been cooler. They hooked me up with the little bit of food they had on the bus and also a pair of cool tools sweat pants. They showed me a bunk that wouldn’t be used that night and invited me to stay.

I was warned that the owner/founder of Cool Tool was out partying and that ]he was an obnoxious drunk and a loud snorer. They were right. Around 3am he and a buddy got back to the bus and woke everyone up. I noted several Cool Tool riders pulling the little mattresses off their bunks and going outside to sleep on the deck of the ski lodge so I did the same.

Early the next morning I returned the sweat pants and mattress and continued the search for the car. First place I went was back to the original spot and their the car sat with Nathan wondering where I had been. I remember being very angry.

The race went off the next day and I was slow from go. I remember getting caught by some of the junior experts and thinking about how much I sucked. One of those juniors was Tom Danielson so I guess it hindsight that’s not to bad.

I don’t know how much my ordeal affected my race but I tend to think it did, I was exhausted. The rest of the trip wasn’t all that fun for me. I had a decent race at Traverse City but still not what I was looking for. After that we spent two weeks in Vail, Co staying with Dave Baton which was fun but I just couldn’t get out of the funk I had dropped into at Mt Snow.

That’s my sad Mt Snow story. One day I’ll get back up there and exorcise that demon.

Sunday morning someone on the ride smelled bad. I don’t know how it’s possible to smell so bad at 8:30AM. All I can figure is he really wanted to wear a certain bike costume and since it hadn’t been laundered since the last ride he began the day smelling bad.

I’m not sure his name and I wouldn’t say it if I did because the purpose of this post isn’t to pick on one person, but to advise anyone who will listen. Please use soap.

Before you put on that fermented chamois consider your ride mates and their burning mucous membranes.

De La Soul just happens to have a jingle about this very subject.