There in a fortnight.

When I worked (that really shouldn't be past tense but whatever, I'm a part timer) at Cahaba Cycles I was fortunate enough to overhear many conversations the other mechs had with customers over the phone.

My favorite:

Customer - "Do you sell pennyfarthings?"

Eric - loooong pause "Yeah, we'll have it ready for you in a fortnight sir..."

Anyway, I went to go ride the planned Chainbuster course at Oak Mountain again Saturday and bailed after the first lap. That was tough. I went ahead and committed to something I have resisted for months now - no activity for a couple weeks.

I have had a lingering hamstring strain for about three months now. It doesn't hurt, per se, but damn is it annoying and uncomfortable. I can ride just fine but running always fucks it up again, as does yoga oddly enough. Rejuvenating? Not this round. 

It took me this long to really realize what was going on with the leg. Basically, there are two types of hamstring tears. The first would be an acute tear, with swelling and a big loud POP. These are usually seen in sprinters. The next is a chronic tear, which is much smaller and less painful. It has a gradual onset and is mild enough to allow continued activity while never really allowing the tear to heal. Pretty sure I have the chronic version of a hamstring tear. Hopefully it heals up without me constantly aggravating it. Some good transverse friction and eccentric exercise should do it. Time to be the patient instead of the therapist for a bit, I suppose.

I joined the BUMP crew Sunday to help finish Quarry Road Bypass. This is going to be a new trail at Oak Mountain and is looking pretty badass right now. I want to ride it soon. My ribs are incredibly sore right now from all the tool swinging and rock carrying. Manual labor isn't so bad when it's nice outside.

Loyalty?

I finished half of a sponsorship app to a great tire company yesterday and stopped suddenly with the realization that there is no way I could make it an entire season on only one brand of tires.

I have not yet thrown the application away.

On one hand I have never had a company tell me if I could a deal on their stuff I could not use the product of a competitor but it almost seems like an understood standing condition. Maybe I am crazy. Or have a guilt complex.

In other news in the incomplete applications department, I almost signed up for a 24 solo this weekend and decided not to. The bike race will have to wait, other things have priority at the moment (suit shopping, dog bathing, and not being gone the whole damn weekend to name a few). Good luck to Lee and Zach, my Bici brethren.

Bamacross Numero Uno: Brookside

My condition after the first cyclocross race this year...

Mind: Satisfied I raced hard
Legs: Unimpressed with what the Mind requested
Stomach: Confused by today's diet of cheap beer and hot dogs

Bici Coop was the sponsor group for the first Bamacross race this year and I think we pulled it off with style to spare. A great turn out yesterday made quick work of setting up the course which everyone seemed to be pretty amped to go suffer on. The grill was going strong before noon. The new baby blue jerseys turned out quite well - thanks Paul Halupka. You da man, man.

I will let Alan do the full recap on the team site since he probably has a better grasp on how everyone ended up so I will just throw in some words on how it went down for me out there.

Something has been wrong this year. I'm not nervous on start lines any more. No extra trips to the bathroom for no reason. All vital signs stable. Perhaps being unable to focus on anything for very long is a blessing in race situations.

Brent lined up the Singlespeed people with both Masters classes and the women. Awesome, a big group start so I don't have to worry about who is ahead of me.

"First Masters 35, then Masters 45, then singlespeed, then women," Brent called out.

So much for my hide in the pack tactics, I would have to watch as the other ten one gearies rode away from me on the first straightaway. My fears came true as they started us and sure enough, most everyone rolled on past me. I was confused...no way they could go that fast for 45 minutes.

I had no tactics, no game plan, no goals. Cross is still very foreign to me. I am better at the transitional stuff this year but don't have enough time on the Nature Boy yet to be comfortable tossing it around like a mountain bike. Good thing you don't have to comfortable to go fast. About two laps in, we had established a lead pack of three including Sam, Phillip, and myself. We were right together the next twenty minutes or so, slowly picking off the Masters racers. Ah, carrots. I love carrots.

I quickly decided I would be able to speed up on the last lap and win. Nevermind that I had already attained my top speed and would not be able to speed up under any circumstances.

Awesome plan. Failed execution. Phillip and Sam put ten or fifteen seconds on me during the last lap and that was that. Third place. My eyes felt like they were bleeding, so glad to be done. Hell of a lot better than I was expecting. I got a weird Surly t shirt as a prize that says "I'm with Big Dummy." The shirt has a hand pointing directly south. I need to ride around on someones shoulders when wearing it, I suppose. Nothing wrong with that at all. Totally normal.

Bamacross has really grown the past few years and I am stoked to be a part of it. Here's to a gloriously long and painful season.

Bamacross prep.

There was a cyclocross training race yesterday.

It was $25...mmm hm. No thank you. Went to go mountain bike instead.

Later this week I will further my sabotage of my cross racing potential by signing up for the Chainbuster 9 Hour race at Oak Mountain that is slap dab in the middle of cross season.

Sweet, they put up a map of the course on the site - which is unmarked...but no problem. I compared a couple maps and it looks like the route will be:

Chainbuster Nov 12 race map

South Trailhead Parking Lot
Up Quarry Road Bypass - construction is going on with this today, should be finished soon
Down Bump Trail
Johnson's Mountain
Foreplay
Rattlesnake Ridge back to South Trailhead Parking Lot

Good course choices, I hope the map they put up is correct. This is going to have lots of climbing and lots of rocks. That is a good thing.

How to, er, mount things.

Yep, no way to miscontrue that one.

Last cross season I didn't practice a single time and did fair at the races.

I have wondered many times why anyone would purposely go out and practice getting on and off their bike to get ready for cross. I mean, how hard can it be to get on and off a bike? I guess I should say remount and dismount to fall in line with the proper lingo. Turns out getting the whole mounting issue gets pretty tough at speed. I was always so exhausted in the races I didn't even notice how bad I was at the non riding parts of the race.

I noticed today. I took the Nature Boy out to ride the pseudo cross course at George Ward. The bike was awesome. 32 psi front and 35 psi rear feels like a good pressure and the brakes still do what they are supposed to. I like it.

I however, sucked. I can get off a bike pretty quick but discovered I do this stupid stutter step deal when trying to remount at speed. Think Michael Jordan pump fake before a jump shot...too bad it wasn't the '93 Finals or I wouldn't look like a bumbling idiot doing it. This effectively brings one to a halt to give a false sense of security when jumping back on a seat similar in layout to a fence rail. Go figure, I want security when jumping on something unyielding. The problem seemed to be unwillingness to actually jump off the left leg to get on.

After troubleshooting the hot water heater tonight I was still irritated with my pump fake remount and went to practice some more. I'm not fast doing it but I can now do it without the stutter step. Really gotta JUMP off the left leg and COMMIT to getting up there. Think cowboy jumping up on his horse. Maybe not having a big cowboy hat is the issue at hand here? Who knows, I have over two weeks to figure it out.

I still want to double up and race Andrew's J and B special tandem in the 4s race with him. Now that will be awesome.

All City Nature Boy build.

Done, son.

I rode it around some last night. Much like the other good handling bikes I have had - it rides like a bike. A very green and sparkly bike.

For the curious, here's the build list:

All City Nature Boy frame and fork
Cane Creek headset
Stans Arch rims laced to Surly hubs with Dt Comps and brass nips
Tubeless Michelin Mud2s
Shimano Dura Ace crank
KMC 610HX chain
XTR pedals
Paul Neo Retro cantis with Kool Stop Salmon pads
SRAM S500 levers
Salsa Cowbell 2 bars
Silver Thomson post and black Bonty stem...one of these needs to change for fashion's sake
WTB Vigo saddle

**Not pictured is a Tangle bag from Revelate Designs. I got the medium and it fits the 52cm frame like it was made custom. Good for DK200, Trans Iowa, or carrying lunch to work.

A more detailed post will be warranted once I have ridden it more but I will say the brakes are the best cantis I have ridden. Nose wheelies on pavement no prob, ya know, cos thats an important element of cross racing.

Hard Nox 50 Race Report

The weather for the 2011 edition of the Skool of Hard Nox 50 miler looked pretty grim on Thursday...and equally grim each of the forty times I checked over the next 3 days leading up to the race. Tropical Storm Lee was meandering up from the gulf towards Mississippi with 8 inches or so of rain predicted over the weekend.

This really threw a kink into the cost benefit analysis I had done of my 3 racing options for Labor Day weekend:

1. Trans North Georgia - 350 miles, mucho climbing, high potential to get lost, high commitment level.
2. Shenandoah 100 - Expensive, 9 hour drive, expensive. BUT I want to do it.
3. Hard Nox 50 - Cheap, close to home, good promoters, blah, blah, blah. Winner winner chicken dinner.

Boris, Jacob, and myself had already registered so off we went, ready for the worst. Boris wanted a good showing at his first endurance race. Jacob wanted redemption from a cramp filled suffer fest last year. I wanted to get the Dirty Kanza DNF monkey off my back and see what racing with a rigid fork on unseen trails was like for the first time.

Backcountry Reserach TULBAG - Worked great

  I didn't want to preride but joined in anyway after killing an entire plate of mac and cheese. Thanks Charlotte! We did a proper preride, meaning we got lost until after dark and rode 20 miles 12 hours before the race start. Oops. It drizzled through the night and then quit right before we crawled out of the tent. There was no wind. God obviously wanted us to go suffer in the woods for five or so hours, time to get it on.

The Nox 50 course has two slightly different 25 mile loops with the majority of the race being twisty steep singletrack with most of the climbs clocking in around 2 or 3 minutes. I took a look around at the start before our beloved LeMans sprint to the bikes. I saw one other singlespeeder I knew, Old Faithful - Hardwick Gregg. This made me sad. Don't get me wrong, Hardwick is a nice guy and a good rider. Problem is he is old and has been kicking my ass by a small margin for years. I wanted to pace myself to not die on the second lap but promised to keep an eye on Hardwick and any other singlespeedy people.

On the gravel climb to the trail entrance I was feeling the effects of the ride Saturday night and not in a good way. I weighed my options and made it up to the top twenty only to have my efforts negated by a slight downhill leading to the Rabbits Run trail entrance. The trail was slippery, steep, and for the most part cambered in an unfavorable direction to my goal of staying upright. About halfway into this lap I could feel a rider coming up quick and did the automatic thing.

I moved aside, let the fast guy pass, and said, "Good job, go get 'em man."

I then realized he was also on a bike with a single cog. Yes, I felt dumb. I would later find out this was Boomer Leopold from Team Locos. Strong.

The rest of the loop was uneventful and I ended up in small group with David Darden from the Ham and one of my singlespeed competitors - Drew from Mobile. Drew was good to ride with so we agreed to work together. Hmmm. This happens on road bikes and in gravel races but never in a mountain bike race. You just cannot work together. It does not make sense. Instead of pleading my case, I simply said, "okay," and pedaled on. We came out of the woods to see the lake that the start/finish is on. To get across part of the lake we rode on these old boardwalks that were slimy from the rain.

Ever the cautious and helpful racer, I advised Drew we should be careful. As we came up on a right hand turn ON the bridge I saw Drew's tire slide out in slow motion and him slide halfway off the bridge. I immediately followed suit but time failed to slow for me and I ate it also. What the hell? Easily the most violent, abrupt crash I have ever had. At least I slid a long way on my right hip for style points. We came into the pit area together and Joseph Dabbs told us we were near the front of the SS race. Great, now I had to figure out how to get away from my riding company.

I waited for a chance to get away and at some point waited on Drew to fix his saddlebag. I certainly wasn't going to attack a man fumbling with tubes and CO2 cartridges on the side of the trail. Now a man whose tire slips off a root on a climb? Fair game. With twenty miles to go I decided I should probably start racing at a less casual pace if I wanted to avoid another Hardwick beatdown.

I finally got into some sort of good riding zone and began to ride the downhills and singletrack well. The Niner fork was performing well and I was feeling good. I came into the 37 mile aid station and put two Nuun tablets in a bottle, making sure to put the lid on gooood and tight so none of my precious electrolytes would escape. Tropical Storm Lee had created a nice cloud cover for us and it felt great in the woods. The steep climbs were beginning to hurt me. I had been on a mission of pride and foolishness to not hike ANY climbs during the race and my forearms began to cramp, putting me in a posture that was more velociraptor than mountain biker. I spent the the next two miles of fire road doing a brachioradialis deep tissue massage rather than eating or trying to go fast. Gotta have priorities, I suppose. Side note: Nuun gets close to combustion level when left tightly sealed due to the carbonation. Lets just say my sinuses and eyes were well rinsed when I finished the race...

The massage worked and I was back on my game until I began the ill advised practice of asking aid station workers how far to the finish.

"Seven miles!"

Ten minutes later - "About six miles..."

Three miles later - "Six miles."

Argh. I had to get out of the self induced mental block from the time estimates and turned my clock where I couldn't see it and resigned myself to riding as hard as I could until I saw those wonderful slippery boardwalks again. Once I was able to focus on riding again I had a blast on the trail and was soon rolling through the campground. Thank God, I could finally quit pedalling. These races are like self serve yogurt, a good portion makes sense but why do that when you can fill it to overflowing and forge ahead til you feel like death?

Anyway, race was done and so was I. Boris handed me half a Bud Light of unknown origin and I got the rundown from Dabbs. Bici Coop had done well.

Second place singlespeed and ninth overall in 4:34. I finally took down Hardwick and won a cool ceramic mug.

SS podium

Boris got fourth in Men Under 40, fourth overall, and fastest second lap of the race. Good enough for a first effort, I guess. Here is the Strava of his race and "preride".

Jacob had a deja vu from last year, cramped up in a ball, but managed to avoid death and finish with the help of some pickles.

Awesome race, awesome promoters. DO IT if you get the chance. Glad I made it to this one.