All smiles.

Questionable decisions. This year has been somewhat of a transition year for me in terms of racing. I have never 'trained' before, i have never changed gear for races before and i have never worked at different feeding and fluid intake strategies. One for the reasons for this is that if something doesn't work, you are likely going to be off the pace.

I have had numerous successes - using nuun tablets, hammer nutrition perpetuem, changing to a lower gear and learning to pedal with a higher cadence by using a 39:16 on my fixed gear a lot.

A lot of this has been about shenandoah for me. I haven't ever done a race that has been so hard. Don't get me wrong, it isn't hard to finish per se. But it is hard to go fast on a rigid singlespeed. There is a lot of climbing, and there is a lot of hard, technical singletrack descending. In order to go faster than last year several things have had to change.

For 10 at kirroughtree i intended to use a small 1 litre wingnut bladder pack, 2 flasks of honey stinger gel (with 9 packets in total in them) and bottles with nuun, restocked every 2 laps.

Each lap is 8.6 miles with 300 m of climbing/descending, and i was hoping for at least 10 laps in the 10+1 hours you have.

All went well for 3 laps, which was good as id felt pretty wabbit the week before and was concerned i had a bit of a cold, or was just plain tired.

Then i started to have wildly fluctuating energy levels. The gel was giving me some energy pretty quickly, that then seemed to cause an absolute crash shortly afterwards. Fluid was a struggle as the course is relentlessly technical, so it is possible that i wasn't actually getting the best from the gels due to poor hydration.

Nevertheless stomach cramps started followed swiftly by catastrophic legs cramps. At hour six i ate a cheese roll and trina made me a bottle with hammer perpetuem and i rolled a couple of slower laps. After that i was able to ride on, albeit with continuing cramps.

Lesson? gels don't work for me. Hydration *is* massively important and the gels seem to require more fluid than i could get on board on a rough course.

So: i need to mount another bottle cage to the jones (thank you King Cage!) and go back to the hammer with occasional other bits and bobs.

Boilermaker

First proper ride. Impressed. Thoughts shortly. Meanwhile im supping a brew, eating beef, and boilermaker beans.

Mix:
2 cans pinto beans,
3 chopped yellow oinons,
4 heapoed table spoons molasses,
2 table spoons worcester sauce,
a good number of dashes of hot chili sauce,
a half jar of hot salsa (commercial),
a triple of bourbon (at least),
1/3 jar of FRESH dijon mustard,
a half pint of amber or dark beer,
4 rashers of charred bacon.

Cook in oven at 180c, or 350f for 30 mins with lid on, then 30 mins with lid off after a stir. Keep looking and take out when reduced to a nice slop.

Yo.

Member

Adventure cycling, a good bunch. There is an interesting article in the latest issue of their magazine of the pros and cons of how to load a bike. Front vs rear, high versus low.

And also, Aaron teasdale has a great gallery of TDR/GDR pics.

Go lookee...

Pinner.

Ready for action.

Explosive power.

Monday: took the 'maiden out for a run. Read about it at vc moulin. A top ride and saved not once but twice by bruce dickinson. Then yesterday slotted in a super tight twisty ride with chris and dan. Swift pint then home on the train, as ac-dc fans spilled out of glasgow. Awesome.

On the move: at peace.

Its ben a busy couple of weeks, as ever. We were down in london visiting the G funk and (....wait....) helen. A top time had. Friday was traveling and chilling, we were in Hackney, a fine spot, really like it. Saturday was all about coffee, crosswords, the barbican (amazing - reminiscent of JG Ballard's stories of the descent of the middle classes, whilst at the same time being oddly serene) and incredible breakfasting. We popped in to see ben at his gallery, Austin, and watched as the fixed fashinistas rolled by (photo from tipped.co.uk).The number of singlespeeds decked out like fixies (ie no rear brake) is frightening. After a glass or 2 of belgium's finest in the Dove, we dropped in to Moro for a world class meal. Amazing food, better company.

We failed at the karaoke. We were aiming for something against the run of the mill, eye of the tiger perhaps, but it didnt happen. Sleep. Sunday after a wander through the flower market, we did another crossword while waiting for food. Who knew about the apse? We thought arse, hence the moustache...

Making room.

Spent the whole day moving stuff around.



Found some tubes as well.

Wide load...

So, thinking and thinking as i am want to do. I have a 29er 50 wide single wall Uma rim from Speedway cycles. The original plan was to build this on to a whub for the new bike. Then i got to thinking. Dangerous stuff. Kris Holm has a new 47mm wide, pre drilled, eyeletted double-wall rim available. It weighs just shy of 800g. The Uma weighs pretty much the same, but is inherently weaker due to the singlewall construction. Hmmmm.



Then i thought, at 800g it is unlikely i am going to use either for racing. A duster weighs ~500g, so why have 300g of extra rotating weight. Using the old multiply-by-4 rule for rotating mass, that is a colossal increase in weight.

What about a Salsa cycles Gordo? It is welded and double wall and eyeletted, but at a measley 35mm wide and 700g it is hardly a better compromise.

So now i am thinking of an Edge composites 40mm wide rim. (they are going to be coming out with a neato seat post also) Only issue...it ain't available yet...

xXc magazine.

Found xXc magazine recently. Well worth a read, and some nice photos in there from some names i recognise.

Spending some time on the dt spoke calculator. The 29er uma rim to whub is going to rip. Dress it up all nice in a maxxis ardent and feed the monster.

Something wicked this way comes...

More.

DEEEEE de, de di deh diddah.

Its back on, and mtb cast has it covered.

Going far...

New link added...check it....

Go fargo.

ParaSITE.

I cant remember where i got this from, but it was designed for homeless folk, who could link it up to air-con out flows and thus fill it up with warm air to create an insulated bivi shelter.

Know what im talking about?

Makes you wonder doesn't it. Anyways, i found another link about it...gizmag and from there to the designers page.

Times they are a changing.

The above photo is linked from Jason Sager's site. He works with the Jamis pro mtb team. They are currently using Edge carbon *tubular* rims for their mtb's.

Look closely at the scale. See the number?

The Geax tyres they are running are not heavy either.

Imagine dropping a full pound of rotating weight from your wheels. Wow

What else?

The bicycle escape had a pic of an IF they built recently, designed to take a hammerschmidt.



For some reason that is appealing to me...

As is this super clean disc placement from vertigo cycles.



So: when do i get my internal geared/2 speed, ti, super light & fat rim wheeled bike. eh?

Just sitting...

Woke up this morning feeling a little weird. A bit sweaty, heart rate a bit fast. Really tired. I'd wanted to go for a ride, but i think the sensible thing to do is sit tight, and hydrate. It also means i a) avoid the torrential rain we seem to be in for, and b) get time to write up some thoughts about some kit i'm using and the trip to the Picos we did.

The last week has seen a fair bit of bike admin. The pinkster got pretty wet before being packed up for return from the Picos, so i needed to redo the rear brake cable routing and clean the steerer ( i could see some rust when i took the bars off).



It also gave me a chance to inspect the fosketset. This is my 'tuned' king headset, that has seen quite a few loaded bike rides since it was fitted and i was curious to see fi there would be any signs of unusual wear and tear on the bearings, steerer or compression ring.

Nope. None. Rock solid.



A bit of a rub down with grey scothbrite pad and rust-be-gone.

The other thing was to mess about with the cable routing. The pinkster, in order to use seat stay mounted rack mounts runs the brake cable down the underside of the stay prior to it routing into the calliper. The issue was the angle with which it entered the bb7 unit - it added a lot of friction. So, i bent up some steel conduit and shortened the cable, dripped some triflow down there and now it is smoooooth. Yeah, its probably a bit boring, but i do like to take care of the details...

Andy Cathcart memorial ride.

Drumlanrig. A bunch of people connected by one thing - calling Andy a friend. We rode in a bunch around the forest. We rode roots, rocks and put our backs into it when we climbed. The sun shone, the rain poured and the smiles and effort made it a special day.

Photos are on the flickr group. Apologies for the blur. I think my wee camera was a little underpowered for the lower light areas in the trees.

Bristol 12.

This is now up on the VC Moulin site. Go there for the full skinny.

Ready as i'll ever be...

Bristol 12 this weekend.

12 hour solo which is the first race for the season for me, since the blairadam bash actually, and one i am looking forward to immensely. Prep has included riding my bike, rescuing the cat from a tree, burning lots of garden refuse, and sleeping.

Bring it on!

Trans Portugal.

Jac and Chris (fellow vc mouliners) are currently racing the trans portugal. This is an 8 day race down the length of portugal, with some up and down thrown in for good measure.

It seems the freaky hot weather has been a little tough on jac, and chris had a bike issue (cracked frame) that was a little difficult to surmount.

Nevertheless, it seems as though they march on ... chris on a new (?) bike!

Go brah!

Watch it on: sleepmonsters.co.uk

Andy Cathcart Ride.

From John Parker:


I’d like to invite you all to get together and commemorate the life of Andy by riding the trails of Drumlanrig Castle on Sunday 14th June. This was one of Andy’s favourite riding locations due to its twisty technical singletrack. Although in all my time riding there with Andy he never revealed the fact that Drumlanrig actually offers less challenging trails graded green and blue for the saner among us so even if you know someone who would like to come along but is a bit unsure of the trails this could be an option.

Here’s a couple of websites to get the juices flowing:

http://www.drumlanrig.com/pages/content.asp?PageID=144
http://cycling.visitscotland.com/mountain_biking/mb_centre/mountain_biking_drumlanrig
http://www.hollygarden.co.cc (Copy of the trail map)

There’s also a kids adventure playground which I can personally recommend and the gardens of the castle also make for a nice day out so if you want to bring the family along then it would be a great day out for all.

The only thing we ask of you is to ride with the same fury and passion which Andy did, but this may involve de-tuning your trusty steed by removing a brake or snapping a bolt or two ;-)

The plan is to meet in the lower car park around 10:30am and try and set off around 11:00 am. Rik (The hands that carved the course) at the bike shed has secured enough spaces for us all in this car park

I may have missed people off the list of emails address so I would be grateful if you could pass on the invite to anyone you think would like to come along and share memories.

Looking forward to seeing you all on the day.

John