It has been a while since I have trashed something on my bike and yesterday ended that streak. As I was going up a small hill on loop 13 at Rowlett Creek the derailleur hanger snapped and wrapped the derailleur around my cassette.
I tried to do a makeshift conversion to single speed by taking off the derailleur and shortening the chain but it wouldn't work with the 10speed chain and cassette. This is also when I discovered the cassette was trashed too.
I'll be taking my bike over to the bike shop this morning to have them look at the frame. The derailleur did some damage to a one of the seat stays and I am not a carbon expert so I want them to look at it. I am not sure what is going to happen if the frame is trashed. The beauty of bike designs is that the derailleur hangers are designed to rip off before they do damage to the frame. So getting the derailleur back on shouldn't be too big of a deal. However, one of the bolt sheared off and I am hoping the bike shop can get it out with out too much issues. I don't have to tools to drill out and retap the hole. The derailleur is a little banged up but doesn't look bent so it might be okay. I know I will have to replace the chain, hanger, and cassette.
This has been a rough year for my MTBing and my weight. After spending some time in Arizona climbing hills at altitude I finally have motivation to get my weight back under control. Pedaling my fat ass up those hills sucked. Yeaaa for motivation. I have been severely lacking in that department for a long time now.
The lakes are still over full and will probably stay that way for the rest of the summer. One of my favorite races series finally threw in the towel and said they are cancelling their races. There would be no way they could put together their races with so many trails closed.
However, there was some good news. DORBA finally announced the dates and trails for the North Texas XC Series and there are some ball busters in there. All of these trails are going to be hard races. I race my best on fast and twisty single track and these trails are not that. This is like a nightmare lineup for me.
Date
Name
Location
11-07-2015
DORBA XC Series - Rain Date 2
10-25-2015
DORBA XC Series - Race 5
Boulder
10-18-2015
DORBA XC Series - Rain Date 1
10-11-2015
DORBA XC Series - Race 4
Dinosaur Valley
09-26-2015
DORBA XC Series - Race 3
Frisco
09-13-2015
DORBA XC Series - Race 2
Big Cedar
08-30-2015
DORBA XC Series - Race 1
Tyler State Park
I doubt I will make the first race. I don't think I will be ready by the end of August but I might go out and get my ass kicked anyway. :)
There will be a vacation blog coming soon, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
I've been kind of lost since my last race. This year has not gone according to plan. Partly due to things out of my control and partly due things in my control.
Since my race schedule has been cleared, mostly because of the ridiculously wet spring, I am currently without a race to train for. So I'm taking the rest of June off, at least from any organized training. I'm going to ride when I feel like it and sit on my fat ass when I don't.
Once July rolls around, I'll get back to piling on base miles and speedwork to hopefully be ready for the fall DORBA XC MTB Series (that is cross country not cyclocross). I'll be shifting from long endurance races, too shorter balls out races. I guess like going from marathon to 5/10k races. These XC races hurt, FACE AND PUKE PACE for about 60-75 minutes depending on the course length.
The fall series hasn't been announced yet because only a handful of trails are even open right now. I'm assuming that later in the summer, when more trails are open something will be announced. The races are a big revenue generator for the DORBA (Dallas Off Road Bike Association) so they will probably put at least a handful of races on. Fingers crossed.
So for the rest of June I'm going relax and enjoy. And spend a week in northern Arizona. My bike is coming along this year!!! Woohoo, I get to fall on new dirt and rocks!
Yesterday evening I was actually able to get out and do a trail ride at a local trail. Due to overwhelming support on a local trail work day (that I couldn't attend due to a b-day party) the Northwest Community DORBA trail was able to open up way before the trail steward thought!
The trail steward posted many warnings about the roughness and condition of the trail. That it would be rough, loose, grassing, and multiple by-passes due to damage but was encouraging people to ride the trail. Riding helps the trail, it smooths and levels it out.
The Frisco trail is a fairly new trail and was only created a couple years ago. There is 8 miles of single track packed into a pretty small space out there. It can be a HOT place to ride during the summer because it's wide open in 70% of the trail. The steward has done a lot with the elevation he had to work with and got about 350ft of climbing pre-lap. It's comprised of an outer loop "Ranger" and three internal loops "Wolverine", "Coyote", and "Redhawk". With an additional look "Raccoon" to be finished soon. I think once "Raccoon" is done it will put the total mileage up near 10 miles. The best part of all it's only 20 minutes from my house!!!
So I got out to the trail at around 5:00pm. It was around 94 degrees but felt like 100+. Due to the heat and the trail conditions it was a slow ride. But I was able to get 20 miles and was out on the trails for about 2.5 hours. I went through about a gallon of fluids while out there.
There were quite a few critters out while we were riding. We found a 7 legged tarantula, saw a skunk running through the grass, and I ran over a cottonmouth snake that was quite pissed at the whole ordeal.
The trail crews have done some cool fixes to combat erosion. Here they armored a descent with bricks to protect it from the water.
Here are a couple of other videos from the ride, because MTB videos are cool!
The rain we received in North Texas this spring was just ridiculous and even though it's been a week since any rain has fallen we are still dealing with the after effects. Pretty much all the trails in the DFW area are closed and will need some major work. People keep posting pictures of the damage. They are saying it will take months of trail work before Erwin is ridable again:
The NW Frisco trail will need some armoring and a ton of trail work too:
Northshore will be underwater for a couple more months until lake levels get back down:
Parts of the Rowlett Creek trail were actually washed away into the creek and will require major re-routes.
The list just keeps going on and on like this. LB Houston, Knob Hills, Windmill Park, and Cedar Hill are all under water. There is one trail that has opened but they only have a 6 mile loop of fireroads open. The rest of the 20+ miles of single track are still shut down and will remain that way for a while. It just sucks that 1000s of hours of work that went into these trails was washed away in a coupe of months. It just sucks.
Here is the TLDR version (or executive summary for anyone over 35):
I raced my Single Speed MTB in the 12 hour Solo SS 35-49 race on Sunday. The 12 hour racers started at midnight and finished with the 24 hour racers at noon. I was able to finish 5 laps in 05:28:37.333 and decided not to continue after that. Cranking my fat ass up the hills and across the rocky terrain did a number my knees. I went into this race 30lbs heavy and payed for it dearly. However, those 5 laps still scored my 2nd place in my division. Laps: 5 Last Seen: 5:28:37.3 Split 1: 57:21.730 Split 2: 58:13.226 Split 3: 1:02:54.257 Split 4: 1:16:37.317 Split 5: 1:13:30.803
Here are the boring details:
My older brother (David), my nephew (Parker), and I all packed up and hit the road early Friday morning to head out to Palo Duro Canyon just east of Canyon, TX in the panhandle. It's about a 6 hour drive so we hit the road at 5am. After the longish and very boring drive we arrived at the park entrance to find that the trail was currently closed so we could not do our pre-ride. Our plan was to get out there around noon, setup our tent in the pit to save a spot (it's first come, first server), do a pre-ride, eat, then go to packet pick up.
Since we couldn't ride we setup the tent, ate, and then goofed around in the canyon for a while. Here is a time lapse from my GoPro from inside the canyon and driving out.
Since we couldn't pre-ride we went back to the hotel to check in and relax until packet pick up at 3pm. When we went to pick up the packets we found out that they had open the trails so we hurried back to the hotel, got out gear ready, and drove back down into the canyon.
We were worried about the condition of the trail since there has been so much rain over the last several days but for the most part the trail was okay. It was soft in some places and really rough in others. The rain had washed over the rocks and exposed a lot of hard edges. My rigid single speed was punishing me on this terrain. I ended up going down in one section when I tried to make a turn with too much speed. You can check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GseUdzwITQ
Once we got cleaned up and ate dinner, the long wait until 12:00am Sunday morning began. We tried to sleep on Saturday afternoon after wandering around in Canyon, TX but no one could get much if any sleep. We eventually decided to pack up and head down into Palo Duro around 8pm. We got down in the canyon and unpacked all the stuff we would need for a long night and morning on the bikes. Here was my setup.
The 24 hour guys started their race at noon so we watched them coming in and out of the pits while we waited for our start. We eventually got dressed, turned on our lights, and rode our bikes to the start line.
We started right at midnight and took the paved road up to the trail entrance and then jumped on the trail.
I would love to give you detailed lap by lap analysis but honestly I don't remember a whole lot from the race. It's like a dream with just bits and pieces that jump out.
David, Parker, and I stayed together on the 1st lap because we wanted to make sure everyone got at least one lap in. It was very different riding the course in the dark. Even with the fantastic lights (TrailLED) you can still only see so far and have little to no peripheral vision. The lights and shadows play jokes on your eyes too. The 1st lap was good. David and Parker pitted faster than I did so they went out without me and I was on my own. Even though there are a lot of people riding it's amazing how you really don't see anyone while riding these events. On my second lap I saw 3-4 other riders and even less on my 3rd lap. All the riders were super friendly and everyone had nice words for each other.
My legs felt good and I was moving along at a comfortable pace (at least one I thought I could hold for 12 hours) but I was having problems getting to a comfortable temperature. It was really chilly in the pit (50F with a breeze) so I put on a jacket for the start of the race but 10 minutes into my first lap I was burning up. So on lap 2 I took off the jacket and I was shivering by the end of lap 2. So I threw on a lighter jacket and about halfway through lap 3 I had to take the sleeves off the jacket and that seemed to be okay. I also had to change my bike shorts between lap 2 and 3 or lap 3 and 4. I ended up putting on the wrong pair to start and they kept falling down. So I was constantly having to pull my pants up while I was riding. The best part was when I was changing I was having a hard time getting the new shorts up because of my sweating legs and ass and I dropped my towel. So I am standing there with my ass hanging out for most of the other teams to see. Everyone was so tired no one cared. I did get a couple cat calls though.
Riding that late and night was hard and between 3-4am was the hardest. I swear I fell asleep on my bike a couple of times and that was scary as hell. Out there in the quiet and dark, it gets lonely even with the coyotes yipping just off the trail. Navigating a trail at night and while tired is hard at times. There were several wrong turns that sent me down some rough parts of the trail. One mistake sent me off a nice 16 inch ledge. It's always nice with the ground just disappears from beneath you. I might have screamed the f-work like a little girl.
When I started lap 4 my knee was starting to hurt and not the general ache that I get in my knees sometimes. This was a different hurt. I under estimated the roughness of the course and how fat I was. I was having to work really hard to crank my fat ass up the hills and it was hurting my knees. Especially my left knee. The downhills were really rough and that was just shaking the hell out of all of me. (Did I mention I ride a rigid single speed, NO SUSPENSION).
So during lap 5 I decided I had had enough.
So I stood there for a couple minutes, then I sat down refusing to press the "Save" button on my Garmin. That would mean I was really done. I stared at it for 30 minutes until I was shaking from sitting in the clothes. Then I pressed it and accepted my fate.
I rode 41.5 miles over 5 hours 28 minutes and 37.3 seconds and I felt like I had failed. I rode my bike for 5.5 hours over rough single track and I felt like a failure. What the fuck is wrong with me?!? My nephew couldn't continue after 6 laps (50+ miles) and he felt the same way.
As it turns out my 5 laps was enough to get my 2nd in my category. Mainly because there were only 2 of us. I know I'm not suppose to tell y'all that. I'm suppose to just brag about my trophy. But I am proud of myself. I worked damn hard on my 5 laps and no one else was there to take 2nd way from me.
The best part of the day was our entire group got on the podium.
After all of this we had been awake for 35+ hours. We got some food, cleaned up, and crashed for a couple hours before getting dinner and passing out for the night. No one was in shape to drive home that day so we stayed and extra night and drove home this morning.
I can't do this blog without a shout out to my trusty steed!!!
I really enjoyed this trip and it was great to actually ride my bike on dirt. I can't tell you how awesome that was but this will probably be my last race for a little while. I need to get my head on straight and get these 30lbs off if I am going to continue to race my single speed. I'm hoping that will light a fire under my ass to get my weight back under control. So tomorrow I will get on the scale to access the damage and then start chipping away.
About a year and a half ago (Jan 2014) the shock on my Specialized Epic died and I had to send it back to Specialized to be serviced. That meant I was forced to ride my single speed bike which had been bought years before, rode for a little while, and pretty much ignored. It was ignored because a single speed is not a lazy persons bike. It takes effort to swap gears and maintain and takes effort to ride. Well with no other option, I started to ride it again and pretty much fell in love my my single speed. Over the next months I rode it exclusively, even after I got my Epic back.
One this day over a year ago I raced my Single Speed for the first time and GOT MY ASS KICKED by my single speed and by everyone else in the SS Open class.
I wish I could point you to the race report from that race but it accidentally was deleted when I killed my MFP account a while back. But I can give you an idea of what happened.
The race was 4 short laps at Erwin park with a nice start on the hilly paved road in the park. The SS group did the same distance as the Advanced Group (CAT2) and I had never raced in the CAT2 group ever! Since it was my first race I didn't gear my bike correctly and went out way to hard. By the end of the 3rd lap I was toast and my back was killing me. The 4th lap was a sufferfest and I am pretty sure only ONE racer (out of all the categories) finished behind me. My back was cramping so bad I could not bend over. It was beyond humbling and humiliating. I had never done that badly in a race EVER.
AND here I am a year later getting ready for a 12 hour race on my SS. I am pretty sure I am about to get another dose of humility, pain, and suffering. You know what, I like to dive in and test my limits. I want to know if something is possible and it doesn't kill me to fail. I learn from my failures and push forward. I know people that would tell me not to do this race because I have only been racing my SS for a year and other that would tell me I haven't trained enough. And they are probably right but I am still going to do it.
The goal for this morning was to get out and get 2 hours of easy saddle time in. I am going to start tapering and just wanted to get a decent but not hard ride in today. So I jumped on my single speed and took off. Within 10 minutes of starting my ride it started to rain. I almost went back to the house but pushed on because I really needed the ride. There was a south wind so I went south so I could have the wind at my back on the way home. The bike/hike path that I was on had several wooden bridges that get slick when they are wet but what I didn't see was the 6 inch metal plate at the end of the bridge. That thing was as slick as ice and I went down so quick there wasn't anything I could have done.
I left a little skin and blood on the pavement. As I sat there on the side of the trail assessing my injuries a nice runner stopped to ask if I was okay. It cracked me up when he said "It's never good when you see a cyclist sitting down." Pretty much.
My injuries were pretty superficial so i got up and finished my ride. I ended up with 28+ easy miles today. Other than the rain and going down it was a good ride.
The best part was getting home and jumping in the shower and cleaning out the road rash. It felt AWESOME!!!
So I went to a race clinic last nigth that was hosted at new local microbrewery. I'm not a beer guy but it was a pretty cool place. The topic of the clinic was how to survive a 24 hour race. Even though I am not doing the 24 hour race next week end, I am doing the 12 hour and a lot of the advice we very helpful.
My biggest take-aways from the clinic were:
Endurance racing is 90% mental
Everyone there was complaining about not riding enough and being 10lbs over weight. Glag I wasn't the only one.
Once you enter the pain cave it's almost impossible to get out so do everything you can to delay, delay, delay your entry.
Consume solid food early while you can.
Don't change anything that touches the 3 points of contact. Hands, Feet, Ass!
You will meet 3 wizards on your journey that you will have to punch in the nuts:
Wizard of humility
Wizard of self doubt
Wizard of physical limitation
After listening to the speaker for over an hour I was both super excited and super terrified. Everyone at the clinic seemed pretty confident that that race would happen!
So now begins all the prep work to get ready for the race. Prepping for a MTB race is a pain in the ass, especially one you have to travel too, and double for a long endurance race. This is one thing I really liked about running races, shoes, shorts, shirt, and run!!!
So I have started to put together the list of stuff that I need to bring. I am sure there will be another dozen things added to the list over the next week but I have a good start.
Bike -- this is probably the most important thing to bring.
Single Speed Bike
Under Saddle Bag - tube, multi-tool, pump, quicklinks, levers
Extra tire (saguaro)
Extra chain
Extra tubes
Chain lube
Stan's NoTube
Chamois Buttr -- Dear sweet baby jesus don't let me forget this!!!
Lights -- since 12 hour guys will be starting at midnight these are important. And they require a small red rear taillight. You will be pulled from the course if you don't have one.
Trail LED XXX (charger, 2 batteries, mounts)
Lumina 650
Lumina 760
Red rear light
Tech -- If it's not on strava it didn't happen!!!
920xt
Charger for 920
Heart rate strap with HR monitor
All the USB chargers!!!
Tools -- this is the stuff that I hope I don't need but have to take just in case.
Chainwhip
Cassette tool
Chain tool
1" box wrench
4mm extended Allen (socket)
socket wrench
hex set (sockets)
star set (sockets)
Floor pump
Zipties with tool
Nutrition -- a growing boy has got to eat!!! This is pretty much a self-supported race. I believe there will be one neutral water/food station but there is no clue what will be there.
8 bottles
GUs
Roctane
Gatorade
Salt tabs
PB & Pickle sandwiches
Pretzels
Mountain Dew
Clothes -- since we will be pre-riding the course on Friday I have to bring extra riding clothes and the temps at night will be chilly so I have to also bring some cold weather riding gear.
Helmet (1)
Shoes (1)
Glasses (2)
Road ID (1)
Baggies (3)
Jerseys (3) including Cookie Monster
Heavy socks (1)
Light socks (2)
Fingerless gloves (2)
Full gloves light (1)
Light jacket (1)
Med jacket (1)
Halo (2)
Ear warmers (1)
Toe warmers (1)
Towels (3)
Other Stuff -- just assorted stuff to make things easier
So I don't know if I have mentioned it or not but I have a race coming up on the 30/31st out at Palo Duro Canyon. I have been worried that with all the rain that it might get canceled like most of the other races so far this year. Especially with people posting pictures like this from Palo Duro.
However, the race director sent out a little ray of hope yesterday. I'll just post some snippets because rest is about the road portion of the race and no one really cares about roadie races. LOL!
Palo Duro Canyon State Park is NOT closed at this time
We were at the park on Monday morning surveying & going over numerous contingency plans. In fact, if the event were on Monday we would have only had one spot that was muddy enough to divert around it.
We have a crew, including some of the best trial stewards, assembled to go to the park Monday morning to assess the trail situation & work on them.
So of course I have been watching the weather like a hawk and things look promising. Even on Saturday it shows a 50% chance of rain but the expected accumulation is around 0.05 inches.
So I got my replacement in Garmin in the mail yesterday. But due to some server errors tonight was the first time I could check it out. So I rushed out trying to beat the incoming storms to get a ride in.
The Garmin seem to work as it should but still had some Bluetooth issues. I think those issues are because I keep my phone in my jersey pocket in a plastic bag.
I really enjoy the night rides on my bikes. Even when riding the paved bike trails you see a different type of wildlife out at night. Unfortunately that wildlife seemed to want to be run over tonight.
My first almost victim was a nice toad. I stopped to shoo him off the trail and tried to get a selfie with the toad. He hopped away and had no interest in my social media aspirations.
I would have felt bad if I had run over the toad, but if I had hit my second almost victims I would have been devastated. I was coming around a turn in a very dark portion of the trail and as my light turned I saw a mama duck with 7 baby ducklings in the middle of the trail. I locked up my brakes and stopped a foot short of all the ducks. I was moving pretty quick and left a 12ft skidmark on the trail. The ducks were stunned by my light and never moved out of the trail. It would have really upset me if I had plowed through all those ducks. By the time I got my phone out to take a picture they had moved off the trail and started looking for food in a little stream next to the trail.
Outside of almost running over some local wildlife, it was a pretty uneventful ride. I wrapped it up at 18 miles because the storms had moved in on me and straddling a large piece of steel in a lighting storm isn't appealing to me.
Note: I did this blog on my phone in the blogger app so I have no clue what it will look
Edited: This looked like garbage and had to clean it up. No more posts from my phone.
A friend of mine asked a question in her blog: How do you feel about the rain? I feel like she was baiting me into writing this blog. You can read her blog about her 50 marathons before 50 here: http://www.accidentalrunner.com/ It's pretty cool, she actually has writing skills and stuff. Let me start this off with a little history. This time last year Texas was in a pretty severe drought. As lake levels were dropping rapidly many cities setup watering bans and even some cities started to drink their own toilet water. Wichita Falls setup a full sewer recycling system so ALL waste water was recycled back into the public water system. As the year went on the drought got worse and worse. But at the start of this year it started to rain, thanks to the mysterious El Nino and it hasn't stopped raining for 4 months. All the rain has been great for the drought since most of Texas is no longer in a drought. I'm not sure if Wichita Falls is still drinking toilet water but you never know with those people up there. However, all the rain has been horrible for mountain biking. Yes, the trails desperately needed rain but we are beyond that need and all the rain is actually destroying the trails at this point. Several of my "home" trails will need months worth of work to get them back to a ridable state. There have been very few races able to go off because trails don't open long enough for any race to happen. Speaking of races, I have a 12hr race in Palo Duro Canyon on the 30-31st that I desperately hope isn't going to get canceled. But it doesn't look good when you look at the total rainfall forecast for next week. Yes, that middle section says 8.4 inches. I am not sure if this is a rain or shine event, but I do know that the entire State Park was closed a couple of days ago because the roads were impassable. So if we can't get into the park then I am pretty sure there won't be a race. That would really, really suck. This is the one race that I am really looking forward too. At this point, I think I would just be happy to be able to ride my bike on dirt. The majority of my miles/time has been on pavement and that just sucks. I ride the roads for base/volume, I ride dirt and single track because I love it. I've been struggling lately to get out on my bikes. Too much pavement.... So to answer the question, how do I feel about the rain? ENOUGH WITH THE FUCKING RAIN ALREADY!!!
Somehow I now have a little girl that will be going to kindergarten next year. How did that happen???
It was just yesterday when she so quickly came into this world before anyone was ready to catch her.
It was just yesterday when we were celebrating her first birthday!
It was just yesterday when she turned 2...
I am pretty sure I have only blinked twice since she turned 3...
Seriously I think I am still cleaning up from her 4th birthday party...
And now I have an almost 5 year old that will be going to kindergarten next year. Karie and I took Samantha over to the neighborhood elementary school last night to introduce her to her teachers and to see her new school. Samantha was so excited and just kept saying "I'm going to make so many new friends next year." She is such a happy and outgoing little girl. I hope that never changes.
So where to start on this one. On one of my rides the other day I noticed my Garmin 920xt was not picking up my HR from my HR strap. I just assumed the batteries were dead so when I got home I put a new battery in it. However, during my next ride it lost the HR signal about 15-20 minutes into my ride. So then I just assumed the HR transmitter was going bad. I have had this one for over 2 years so it wouldn't surprise me if it was going bad. So, I ordered a new one. It worked just fine when I was on the eBike (GPS turned off) but as soon as I went out for a ride it dead again. Well this lead me to check to see if the watch was losing connect to my other sensors (Cadence and Speed sensors). Turns out it wasn't the HR Strap. It was the watch.
You can see that the HR and Cadence data is dropping off. The watch still records the activity and I still get speed from the GPS but I am assuming that my speed sensor is also getting dropped. So after some googling and cussing, I found a lot of people complaining about the same issue. It seems the ANT+ support for the Garmin 920 is pretty shitty and the solution to issues always seemed to be replacement. I contacted Garmin and here is the response I got:
Thank you for contacting Garmin International, I'll be glad to further assist you.
I am sorry to hear that you are having trouble with your Forerunner 920xt. To help resolve this issue I would suggest updating the software on your device. You can update the software using our Garmin Express program.
If you continue to have trouble with your device I would suggest returning it to Garmin for service. To set up an RMA (Return Material Authorization) please verify the shipping information provided below.
They sure jumped to "Send us the watch" pretty quickly. That leads me to believe there really is an issue with the watch. Unfortunately I have a race in a couple weeks that I need my Garmin for. So I responded asking for a timeline and haven't gotten anything back yet. This is going to be a pain in the ass, I know it!!!
Ok, now to my knee, which was pretty pissed last night. It is feeling a little bit better this morning but it's still aching. I am pretty sure that the run I did last Saturday is the culprit. That run caused my knee to get inflamed and it's just going to take some time for it get back to normal. I saw a ortho several years ago while running and he told me nothing is wrong with the knee but the bottom side of the knee cap is really rough and there are spurs on the front and back. So the knee is pretty much pre-arthritic. He told me running or cycling while it's aching won't hurt it but will cause the recovery to last longer. So basically he told me that if I keep running/cycling then to STFU. Since I have a race coming up, I am just going to have to suck it up and there will be NO MORE RUNNING until after my race at the end of the month. I see a lot of ince on my knee in the near future.
