Weekend Update

Thursday night I ate it pretty bad at Dr. X's Sugarhouse clinic. I was descending a fast grassy slope chatting with J Dub and next thing I know I'm landing full on my left shoulder. I was barely able to limp home riding one handed and immediately hit the ice and vitamin I. Friday California Bob was in town and we had plans to ride Super Crest. Not wanting to bag out on plans made months in advance I sacked up and did the ride. It hurt like hell at times and I walked a couple sections that I would have needed both arms to clean but this time of the year you can't let a minor thing like a sprained shoulder keep you away from that ride. Saturday we spent most of the day at a BBQ relaxing and Sunday I planted 150 bulbs in the front yard one handed. Over the weekend my shoulder seemed to be healing pretty fast but over the last couple of days the healing has plateaued. I cant lift much with that arm and carrying a bike is out of the question so on the official injury report for Draper's CX race I'm listing myself as questionable. We'll see how the rest of the week goes.

Wind Cave and Dirty Bikes

The day after Moosecross we hiked to the Wind Cave northwest of Victor. It was a pretty cool hike and the fall colors were spectacular but the 1800 feet of climbing over 2.6 miles worked over my non hiking legs.

Last night I embarked upon a long overdue project. Bike Cleaning. It took me over two hours and I couldn't decide what was worse. The fact that we own eight bikes or the fact that I'm so lazy that they were all long overdue for a cleaning.

Grand Teton Brewery Octoberfest

This is truly what is at the end of a rainbow. A Leprechaun tossing a keg

Rhonda likes her beer dark, bitter and plentiful. I'm glad her taste in men isn't similar.

Moose Cross

We woke up Saturday morning in our B&B to the pitter patter of rain on the roof. All through breakfast it poured buckets on and off and I started getting excited for a mudfest of the ages. After breakfast we got our gear together and headed the five miles down the road to the venue arriving to mostly clear blue skies. No more rain but at least the course will still be wet right? Wrong! It rained all morning five miles up the road but the course had only received light sprinkles. We headed out on our warmup laps to very un-crosslike conditions. Very dry and very dusty.

Rhonda's group raced first. She hung with the leaders through most of the first lap but gradually fell back as her lack of saddle time due to a myriad of injuries over the last six weeks caught up with her. She finished 7th out of 15 or so but two of the girls who beat her moved up and did the A race later finishing in the top 10.

For my race I got a call up to the line. The race organizers must have sensed the cross demon lurking within me and wanted me up front where I belong (It also might have been that the call-ups were based on time of registration but I'll go with the former idea). My cross demon decided to stay hidden till another day and I was quickly but in my place near the back. I rectified that during the first run up where the mad skills that Kathy and Ali taught me burst out and I loped (I'm too tall to call what I do running) past 5-6 people. I passed a few more people on the 2nd barrier section and settled in with a small group in the middle of the field. The rest of the race was basically me gaining a ton of time on the straights and getting killed by the MTB'ers on the tight corner sections. By the end of the race the corners were so loose that I was buried to my spokes at times and had no traction while the guys on fat tires just floated through. I finished 10th out of 20+ which I felt pretty OK with for my first cross race. I was clean through the barriers and kept my intensity up the whole time. I raced pretty well but got killed in the multiple 180 deg corners. I'm thinking the 30c tires that came on my bike aren't going to be meaty enough for some courses so I'll probably look into an upgrade to some 35's.

Cyclocross is wicked fun. In MTB races I often have trouble maintaining intensity and focus because I usually spend most of the race by myself. Everybody in my category is either five minutes ahead of me or 5 minutes behind me and there are so many people on the course I have no idea who's who. In cross there is always somebody near by and they're always direct competitors. You always feel like you're battling (even if it is for 10th place). Also you don't have to worry so much about saving energy for the next climb. You just pin it and go. The only negative to that is that it hurts like hell all I wanted to do was finish the race but as soon as I was done all I could think about was my next race.

MooseCross Pictures

Cross Camp

This one time at Cross Camp, Ali made me do funny things with my bike.

In all seriousness the Ridley Cross Clinic on Saturday was amazing. I've never gained more two wheeled knowledge in one day in my life. Ali and Kathy took control of me and the rest of the newbies from the start and lavished us with one on one attention. We went step by step through the mount and dismount until we had all perfected it and then moved on to cornering, braking and finally a simulated mass start. I caught on to the whole thing pretty quick and by the end of the day was able to hit the barriers at full speed. I signed up for Dr X's Thursday training sessions and will be able to hit most of those so I should have the technique down pat by the end of the season. Now if I could only get that top end fitness thing going.

Yes those are full size barriers, they just look like the kiddie ones.

I did say "hitting the barriers full speed"

Synchronized dismount

Tire rolling resistance study

I read this very interesting study the other day on tire rolling resistance. A common idea many people have that the higher the pressure and the narrower the tire the less rolling resistance you have. While this is true on the road any time you are off road (including gravel or hardpack) the less pressure you run and the wider your tire the less rolling resistance you have. In the study they show that a 2.1" tire at 57 PSI has 50 watts more rolling resistance than a 2.4" tire at 21 PSI with the same tread pattern. The argument that the wider and thereby heavier tire slows you down is true but only by 4.2 watts per 500 grams of weight during acceleration only. Tread pattern does make a difference as expected. Low profile/semi slick tires were proven to have much less rolling resistance than tall knobby tread patterns. So wide semi slick tires run at low pressures have by far the least rolling resistance with weight making a small but measurable difference. This was kinda what I thought all along but I was very suprised to see the wider tires having less rolling resistance. I've always been a 2.0-2.1 semi slick type of guy but maybe now I'll have to look into those 29x2.3 Karmas for next season.