Halfway There

I hadn't mentioned it, but one reason I haven't blogged lately is that my wife is riding the Pac Tour Northern Transcon. Think of it as the Pony Express for bicycles. She tells me that riding 100+ miles every day for a few weeks really changes your metabolic engine. She can now move along at a crisp pace without pushing her heartrate up much at all. Gives you a nice base to stand on.

You can watch their progress here. Anyway, now I'm cooking for a seventeen year old eating machine and trying to care for a pair of oddball cats and remember to water the flowers. While on the road the tour organizers ran out of Hammer Perpetuum which I find about as appetizing as soylent green, but my wife can pretty much live on it. None of the local shops had single servings, so I bought a can and sealed water-bottle sized (2.4 oz, for those who need to know) servings in plastic sealed with small strips of duct tape. Then a quick trip to the UPS Store.

If you've never done it, go to Fedex or UPS and overnight a dozen bags of white powder. You get interesting looks. Not wanting the feds opening this on the way I explained my situation to the guy behind the counter and showed him the transcon itinerary telling him all about my wife's great adventure. He only asked one question: "Why?" Some people just don't get it. For me it's enough that she wants to do it. Since I've looked into my own soul and found a crit monkey I don't empathize completely, but just think that sometimes we have to do difficult things because (to paraphrase JFK) they are difficult.

I'm just looking forward to next week.

Adrenaline Junky

I admit it. Can't do without it. No matter how hard I try I can barely crack the old lactate threshold riding alone. In a pack I can rev way past that on a moment's notice. The Tuesday night crits are now the mainstay of my training, I can spend 40 minutes above lactate and feel fine. Better than fine, now I'm good for days as long as I remember to ice the knees after. Here's the deal, if you're waiting to get in better shape before you start racing, don't. Just race, you'll get in shape. If you're DFL, so what? Everyone (almost) gets an ass-handing the first time, everyone improves.

For the record, the fork is in. It turns out that the extra clearance on the brake boss is intentional. It's there to push the brake pads forward so you can remove the wheel. The result is that the pin on the caliper barely reaches into the receiving hole. It just looks wrong, and every mechanic I showed it to agrees. I'm either going to get a machinist to make a shim, or switch to V-brakes, which don't rely on the pin.

Day 23, Performancebike Holding Out

I guess once they've got your money there's no sense of responsibility toward the customer. If they want to be the Walmart of bike shops it's okay by me.

The Eldorado Tuesday night 40+ race had a weird vibe. In the last two I've shown for the Elite (I,II, &III) pack passed us with less than ten minutes to go. Now people are not supposed to improve their positions when the pack is neutralized and passed by other competitors, but somehow my position seems to get worse while I just follow the guy in front of me. In addition, riders who might have been blown out get a rest and figure that somehow they've magically become more fit as they find themselves still in it at the end. Unfortunately, many mis-measure the final sprint and sit up with about 200m to go. While I'm trying to find room, nitwits are flying back toward me at a high relative rate and I have to try to dodge them.

If that wasn't enough, some dude who must weigh in at 220+ found that he could make space for himself by riding up next to people and poking his elbows outward. I saw him do this between two riders and was sure a crash would ensue, but luckily did not. At one point he did this to me, but was lagging a little and I just felt some extra weight on my hip. Look, I can see this kind of thing if there's $1000 bucks witing for the winner at the line, but it ain't.

FrankenBike held Hostage, Day 22

Ain't it fun dealing with discount bicycle outlets? On July second I recounted my experience with ordering a cyclocross frame and fork from Performance. So here's the sequence:

• After hours of work I figure out that the fork is defective*.
• (7/2) Return fork to Performance shop where I picked it up after a "red phone" order .
• (7/7) Call back to check on things, response: "we're working on it".
• (7/12) I drop in to ask, they need to know what size frame. Why? The frame and fork are a set and Performance will only send both in replacement. So I tell the nice lady with the ring in her nose the frame size (one wonders why they couldn't look up the order).
  
• (7/15) The Performance shop calls me to ask what the frame size was. I KID YOU NOT! Added to that, it appears we'll need to return the original frame.
• (7/16) I call back intending to tell them they'll be dismantling the frame and giving me a refund. Before I can do that the guy on the other end tells me they won't need the old frame back and apologizes for any misunderstanding.
• (7/23) I drop in after my ride, still nothing.

Sometimes I don't blog for a while for lack of anything to say. Now I've got something to say daily until I get my fork. Looks like this could continue for a while, perhaps throughout the cyclocross season. That would be bad luck, because last I looked I wasn't getting any younger. I'd like to hear from others out there who have similar experiences with performancebike.com to recount. Let me know.

*NOT ACTUALLY DEFECTIVE, JUST POOR DESIGN, SEE NEWER POSTS

Unexpected Consequences

The thing about bike racing is that it cuts down on my bicycling time. Huh? After a dense schedule of four races in ten days my knees hurt. Between races I find I need lots of rest. Irony's a real bitch. So I took a week off the hard stuff, actually rode more miles than usual, and now things are better. Nice to get back in the mountains, more in another blog entry since I didn't get to do the intended ride. In any case, it's back to racing this week, two Tuesday night crits followed by the CBR series finale.

Monrovia to Redbox

This took a while. The ride itself (here) is not technically difficult, but quite long. Once you get to Redbox the return route could be one of three I can think of:

1. Angeles Crest,
2. up toward the peak and then go down Chaney Trail, or
3. I always see downhillers take off on the trail which heads west from Redbox (not recommended, I've never done it).

I came back via Chaney and the loop took over seven hours. Out and back could be harder, you dip down to 3100' in the middle and its 4600' at Redbox and the junction of Redbox-Rincon.