New stuff
This sport can be a fantastic money drain. Here are a few new toys I got recently.
Aerus Transition bag. I won this courtesy of Blue Cycles and Adrenaline Tri Sport in Niwot for winning the Boulder Triathlon Club TT series in the spring (a good attendance award, really). I picked the pink floral print over the blue and gave it to my oldest daughter who was very excited to receive it to use for her swim club stuff. Great bag, has a dry pocket for wetsuit, ample room, comes with transition mat. Now I want one for myself (the blue one).
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XTERRA Velocity speedsuit. I got it to use for open water swims late in the summer. This is what I looked like after 2 1-hour swims. I had BodyGlide and a singlet underneath and I am sure it fits properly. I asked two others who own them and they both experience the same thing to some degree. Why would anyone want to subject themselves to that? While it seems to be well made and has a nice zipper system, I wouldn’t buy it again.
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Race Socks compression socks. I joined the legions of people I know who swear these things work for recovery since they promote blood flow. I have been wearing them to work on days after long runs. Now I feel good and look like Larry Bird, circa 1979. What more could you ask for?
A big thank you to Mike and AJ for these.
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Sampson Stratics Aero bars. I had the good fortune to win these in the Boulder Stroke and Stride raffle drawing. I have used these without bar tape for over 300 miles now and love them as these are fantastic bars in every way: They are very light. The slight drop on the wings makes for a favorable climbing position while still keeping the pads at the right height. They are highly adjustable and easy to feed the cables through. The oval shaped extensions are very comfortable and have gritty grip built in, The bend of the extension allow me to hold on without an awkward angle to my wrists. An unexpected benefit is the cable routing is so smooth my ders now shift much easier than with the big cable-kink my previous VisionTech bars necessitated. The only knock on them is that they do not work with brake levers that thread the cable through the internal center, like SRAMs new levers (which I never really liked and are now on Ebay). I recently bought ans installed the matching Sampson levers and they are very good, too.
- August
- 6
Laramie Enduro
Saturday I took part in the Laramie Enduro a 111K Mountain bike race all at above 7,500′ elevation. I last participated in this event 10 years ago and remember it being one of my favorite mtb rides. I have wanted to do it again for some time, but it has become so popular that to get in you need to sign up the day registration opens in January. This year I remembered that and did so.
I drove up by myself in the pouring rain Friday night which fortunately subsided as I arrived at the campground/start-finish line. I then had a great sleep in the back of my pickup truck at 8,600′ right next to my Merlin mtb - which, as a Titanium Moots-YBB-style soft-tail with V-brakes & 9-speeds is clearly now a dinosaur among race bikes.
<rant>
I’m tired of this “absolutely no race morning packet pick-up” bullsh*t. I had to leave work early and drag my ass up to Laramie, WY before 8pm just so I could do 75 seconds worth of paperwork. There is no good reason I couldn’t have spent the night with my family then gotten up at 4am and on the start line for a 7am start. It is now enough to cause me to think twice about registering for events at all. Pump the local economy some other way. I didn’t spend a dime of money in Wyoming on principal after that.
</rant>
Just as I did at the Growler in May, I intentionally lined up at the back of my class at the start. By doing this I feel no pressure to go faster than I want on the technical single-track which could lead to a crash and lots of pain, which I don’t need. If I can pass others, great, if not, oh well. My goal at these “C” priority events isn’t to place well, but to have a good time, ride a challenging course and get in a great workout. Seems like a prudent idea considering I am a bit out of practice having only had 3 mtb rides in the last 2 years.
By the end of the third hour I had passed enough riders to be placed in the top 30 or so. I was cruising through 8″ wide track through tall grass in a prairie and came around a bend to see a fallen tree perpendicular across the trail. Usually such obstacles are well marked with orange tape and some warning. Not this one. After an earnest, yet failed, attempt to bunny hop it, I quickly was flying through the air, sans bike. Fortunately I landed in the soft meadow grass and was back aboard within seconds, unhurt. However, a few cranks later I reached for my brakes and couldn’t find them. Instinctively I repositioned the lever (I leave them loose so when I crash, which is often, they turn down rather than break). Still weren’t there, then I looked down to see I had snapped my front lever. 70% of my braking power: gone, and I still had a looong way to go. 10 minutes later 5 of us got lost and added another 1.5 miles trying to re-find the trail. 
I was quite pissed at this point.
The rest of the day was an exercise in how to ride gnarly, rocky & rooty singletrack at a speed that I wouldn’t kill myself on. The last hour I did a lot of walking.
Training Peaks visual graph of my day
After spending 2 of the last 3 weekends at altitude on 6+ hours rides, I am really looking forward to fresh legs and a 7,000 loss in elevation: IMC minus 28 days…
- August
- 2
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