Friday, August 29, 2008

Fat, fat tubes


No, not frame tubes. Eddie from J&B found me some sweet 700 gram 29er tubes!

Yes, I said "sweet". I want them for the DH sleds for Sarah and I. 3 times the rubber of a normal 29er tube would make a lot of people want to vomit - it makes me want to sing with joy.

Enjoy your labor day, everyone. I plan to test out these new tubes, myself...

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Bachelor party!


Erm, or maybe make and can applesauce all night. Yeah...

Sarah's out of town, and I'm going wild!

Monday, August 25, 2008

Another picture from RC


Very nice. Apparently this is after 3.5 hours of pushing to 13.1k feet. Ouch.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Race report: WP #6

No pictures today, kids. But I think the previous post made up for that, no? MC is going to submit some of those to Bike, DirtRag, and anywhere else he can think of. I think they're plenty good enough to get published.

Anyway, on to the race:

The team: Decimated (as an aside, check out the etymology of "decimate" - pretty crazy!) Fuentes was racing Eldora, Rusty has a slipped disc in his back, Miguel is gone to who knows where consulting on a water project, Jung's hand is still broken, and Eszter wants to "ride for fun" or some such pansy nonsense. So it was just me, Sarah, and Taryn representing.

The course: Technical. And by technical, I mean similar to operating a jackhammer for 90 minutes. We did three laps at the top of the mountain (accessed by the chairlift) which were some of the rootiest, rockiest singletrack I've ever seen. Then we descended a trail called Icarus, which featured a whole lot more rocks, as well as a couple of terrifying 40+ mph fire road sections. Throw in one last "f-you" climb just before the finish (which I think everyone walked at least some portion of) and you've got a really nice race course. I guess my description doesn't really make it sound that great, but in actuality it was fun - the mental focus required to hold the right line and hang on (no resting on these descents!) was crazy, though.

The start: As usual, I started at the very back. The opening climb was only about 3 minutes long, and it wasn't very steep, so I spun out and drifted backwards until things kicked up a bit. Managed to hit the singletrack in about 10th, though, and passed a couple riders on the first descent, then a few more on the climb.

The rest of the race: My good friend Paco (actually, Matt) and I rode together for most of the first and second laps, with him dropping me like a bad habit on the most technical bits, and me making the time back up on the smoother stuff and climbs. I finally managed to drop him halfway through lap 2 and I spent the rest of the race looking at the fabulous ass of my arch-nemesis Mike Mathers. And, as usual, while I was able to keep him in sight virtually the whole way to the finish, he prevailed again, by 10 seconds or something. I ended up 5th, not too shabby, but given the depleted field (Brian Head epic and Eldora MSC were on this weekend as well) I wasn't all that impressed with myself.

Final thoughts: Whereas at Crankworks I was able to really make myself go for it at the end of the race, today I felt distinctly unaggressive and really felt like I could have gone faster. Bummer. Maybe it was the roughness of the opening laps, maybe I've just given up on ever beating Mike, maybe I'm getting burned out and ready to spend the fall doing fun epic rides. Who knows. In any case, I'm in reasonably good shape for the series (I could conceivably be 2nd, and I have a good shot at 3rd), so hopefully King of the Rockies will go well for me next weekend.

Sarah was suffering today but riding well on the descents and finished mid-pack in the expert women's race. I don't yet know how Taryn did, and the WP website has yet to post any results, so hopefully she did well.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

A few more


These pictures are too good not to post. I'm hoping Chris and Mike will do a report on this ride (I don't know where it is) that I can pass along (edit, see below). In the meantime, enjoy the pictures. The bike Chris is riding is the second 29" long-travel (it's 5" front/6.5" rear) bike ever built - I made it for Sarah in 2005. The design evolved quite a bit since then - mainly in tube selection and a redesigned main pivot for better lateral stiffness. Still a great bike, though.

From Redcoat:
If there's one thing I've learnt in three years of playing in the mountains of Colorado, it's that getting above treeline rewards you with the greatest views, the sweetest (looking) trails, easily the best ski experiences and the worst weather. And if there's one thing I've learnt about capturing good shots on the camera in the mountains, it's that you need to be up there when the sun comes up. Since the powers-that-be decreed we have to reside in Mountain Time, it is with much annoyance that this occurs at 6 in the morning before anyone is awake, leaving the day to end all too early to get in long rides after work. But that's another story.

For once, I dragged my sorry, tired, self out of bed at silly-o-clock to join Chris for a photo shoot in the mountains of the Front Range. We'd managed to beg Walt and Sarah for their DH machines for our 5-day 'weekend' up in Winter Park, and Chris had the unenviable task of pushing what is apparently a light downhill ride up a 1000ft climb. I tagged along with two stills and one vid camera, a tripod and a lot of warm clothes. Chris was more than a willing subject... I only had to suggest he go and try something again and he booked it back up the mountain. It is substantially easier to get $$ photos when you have several chances, so cheers to Millatime for the efforts. We messed around with several different angles, lenses and so on, all the while Chris was learning the trail so he could make it look good for the video cam.

So if there's one thing I learnt from doing all this, it's that the likes of Sterling Lorence (google him) have the best friggin' job on the planet. I hope you enjoy the photos.

A great shot of Chris


He's riding Sarah's DH bike - sadly, our DH sleds have been getting more use by our friends this year than by us. Too much racing and travel to places like Crested Butte, where long travel is a waste of time. Maybe we'll get a couple of days in this fall, though. Thanks to RC for the photos!

It still mystifies me that nobody ever wants to buy a 29" long travel setup - everyone that rides them loves them. But I guess the lack of good tires (we've been running Nevegals with tubes glued inside them to armor them) and forks (Chris is using a WB F135 in this shot, which doesn't really qualify as a full-on DH fork) is making people hesitant. And I'm guessing most people think steel DH bikes are just weird, too. Not a problem for me, I've got plenty of hardtails to build.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Travel bike


Ruben forwarded me a couple of pictures of his completed travel S&S singlespeed. Pretty sweet (especially since it used to be mine!) Looks like old man winter is coming early this year - Ruben was up in the snow, and last weekend's Winter Park race had to be postponed due to snow as well. Crazy!

Friday, August 15, 2008

Famous people


I used to have posters of Bobbi Bensman (among other climbers) all over my walls in high school. And yesterday, I actually met her - pretty cool. She's an enduro mountain bike racer now and even knew who I was. Pretty exciting, at least to a former climbing geek like me.

Forecast for tomorrow's WP race is 45 degrees and rain. And that's at the base - the race is up over 10k feet the entire time. Can you say "epic"? Alternately, can you say "Walt is so screwed, because he can't ride mud to save his life"?

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Support the Valmont Bike Park!!

I bought a brick, you can too! The important thing right now isn't the amount that you donate - the grant that BMA is hoping to get depends on widespread community support - so $5 will help just as much as $5k for the grant proposal. Donate a few bucks, Boulderites!

Here's more info:

The future park is a partnership between the Boulder Mountainbike
Alliance and the City of Boulder Parks and Recreation Department.
Just recently the City Council unanimously approved the concept plan
and we hope to break ground second quarter 2009.

The city has budgeted to build the park, but we are raising more
money to make the park even better and to build bigger community buy-in.

We're applying for a $200,000 grant from Great Outdoors Colorado,
and applications that have strong community support score higher. So
we need as many individual donations as possible, before AUGUST 15th when
the grant application is due. Your donation helps us win that grant!
Individual bricks start at $100 and corproate bricks cost $1,000.
There are other donation options online.

The park will include a 3-4 mile system of interconnected trails,
terrain parks, skills practice areas, a race venue, clubhouse, jumps,
technical features, kid's zone, etc. It will be designed to host
cyclocross (yeah baby!) and mountain bike races, as well as clinics, group rides,
school events, and all-around great riding.

You can learn more about the park and donate online at:

http://bma-mtb.org/valmontbikepark/
there's also a blog to keep folks updated: http://bikevalmont.blogspot.com/
Attached is a graphic with a bit more contextual info.

Please spread the word.....we're trying to reach as many people and businesses as we can.

Sunday, August 03, 2008

Belt drive project - initial thoughts

I'll upload a few (not that exciting) pictures later tonight, but I'm icing my knee (my seatpost managed to slip during the race yesterday and I'm pretty sore on the left side) and have time to type this up right now before I get going packing my stuff for Vermont

Frank at Spot has graciously (albeit after quite a few delays, though I doubt that's his fault) gotten me some belt drive components, specifically:
-118t belt (I think, it might be 122, I didn't look closely yet)
-46t drive cog
-28t rear cog
-Spacer kit (which, to be honest, I didn't really need, but whatever)

Here are some initial impressions and thoughts, in no particular order:

-The packaging for the belt is VERY specific about how it must be handled - any kind of kinking, bending backwards, or twisting force will damage it. It seems that the belt, while very strong when used as intended, is also extremely sensitive to any kind of rough handling. Be forewarned!

-Cost is about 3-4 times that of a typical roller chain/chainring/cog setup. Assuming the longevity claims are true, though, this will pay for itself in a season or two. I usually kill a drivetrain every 18 months or so, I think. Some folks who ride in bad/wet conditions more may find the belt more economical than me.

-The drive cog/chainring is going to be a bit tricky to fit alongside the driveside chainstay - this is going to require some serious manipulation of tubes (ie, yoke) or else very long chainstays to fit big 2.3"+ tires, which is not necessarily a good thing for the 29er crowd. I'm not sure how a conventional chainstay setup (ie, no yoke, no elevated stays) could work out very well unless the chainstays were quite long - probably in the 460mm (ie 18") range. This is probably not going to make the singlespeeder crowd too happy. Using wide chainline Shimano XT M770 cranks, I can't put the drive cog on my current singlespeed at all, despite fairly long stay length (445mm) and smallish tire clearance (decent 2.1", no bigger). The Spot "Longboard" 29er frames that I've inspected that are set up for belts appear to use ~18.5" chainstays to solve this problem, as well as some aggressive dimpling of the driveside chainstay. Great for big folks, maybe not so hot for smaller humans.

-Gates' weight claims are a little dubious. The entire system (belt, both cogs, no spacers) weighs about 260 grams - nice and light. But I believe the site is currently claiming "Typical chain weights vary around 300 grams, and singlespeed systems are commonly upwards of 400g. The Gates Carbon Drive™ belt weighs just 70 grams and the entire system weighs a mere 220 grams." This is stretching the truth quite a bit - my scale reveals that my chain (long enough for a 34x20 29er drivetrain) weighs about 240 grams (it's a generic PC951) and my 34t downhill chainring weighs about 50g. Throw in 30g worth of steel rear cog and you've got a total system weight of 320 grams - using parts that are far from trick. A lightweight (ie, aluminum) 18t cog and lighter (ie, not downhill) chainring would probably take 25 or 30 grams off of that, if weight is your big concern. So the weight savings (not counting dropouts and chain tugs and such, which will almost certainly add quite a bit to the belt setup) is going to be about 60g, or two ounces. Picking lightweight parts for a chaindrive could easily cut that in half, so this really isn't as much of a weightweenies dream setup as it's been presented. Of course, if you're running a ginormous BMX chain, you'll save some weight.

It's a little annoying to read this kind of statement, too (again, from the CDS website) : "The entire system weighs in at over 226 grams lighter than an equivalent chain drive." Note the lack of the crucial comma between "grams" and "lighter". 226 grams, while not a completely accurate weight, is at least close, but the sentence as written seems intentionally ambiguous, so that the reader will assume the entire system is lighter than an equivalent chain drive by 226 grams (or half a pound). Is it lighter? Yes. Is it enough lighter to matter at all? No. In fact, I'm guessing the need for really beefy chain tugs to keep the tension high eliminate the weight advantage entirely.

-My plan, as of now, is to build a bike with these parts (I've got an idea for a dropout design that should be much better than what Gates is selling and that will allow easy wheel removal, no caliper realignments, etc) and test ride it over the fall/winter. I've got access to a powertap hub, so I'll also test the efficiency claims (though those seem to have disappeared from the CDS site) head to head with a roller chain setup.

-I'm bummed that I can't run my favorite setup - the 2x2 (34/38 rings in the front, 20/16 cogs in the rear), which is great for Boulder riding where there can be 8--10 miles of flat pavement between you and the trailhead - I just put the bike into the tall gear (swapping the chain by hand) and then swap back at the trailhead. There's no way to do that with the CDS setup - the beltline is crucial, so there's no way to even put 2 cogs on the rear and swap between them.

-There will be no retrofitting of existing frames. No freakin' way. The spacing requirements for the chainring make it totally impossible to fit onto any existing frame save perhaps an old Alpinestars or something else with elevated chainstays. So don't even ask me.

More info as things progress, but not until I get back from VT.

-Walt

Final short track report + Winter Park

Be forewarned, long racer-geek post. Minimal framebuilding content today, I will have something fairly interesting on that front tomorrow, though.

Wednesday was Sarah and I's final short track of the year, as we're headed to Vermont on monday morning and will miss the finals. Temps in Boulder have been running in the mid to high 90s for like 3 weeks now (no joke, it's cooler in Moab!) and I'd just had a cavity filled at the dentist (joy) so my enthusiasm wasn't high. I managed to talk myself into twist-tying on a number and rolling over to the course, thinking I'd probably just watch (a toothache plus race-pace suffering is a bad combo, methinks).

As usual, though, once I was at the race, I couldn't help but get excited about it, despite the dust, sun, and furnace-like air. Sarah raced the women's A race and did quite well, beating everyone but the pros, and doing some sweet jumps that none of the other girls would hit. She definitely had the game face on as well, and I gave her some good cheers from the gallery, since "warming up" seemed painful and redundant.

The guys race had about 30-35 - not a huge field, but a lot of fast folks were there. Because we're all so competitive, we had some fairly hilarious start-line creep (people kept trying to get in front of each other, and pushing forward) until we'd only left ourselves about 50 feet of doubletrack to the first (sharp, loose, horrible) turn. Nice work, everyone. The efforts of Abby the short-track goddess to get us to move back to the _original_ start line were unsuccessful, so the sprint to the corner was a little crazy. I had to lock up both wheels at one point, and I know there was some crashing behind me, though luckily no one went down in front.

I don't know what my story was, but I felt great - picked off rider after rider and moved up to 5th or 6th place by the end of the race. I was making tons of time on the steep downhills and hip jumps - which made me feel good about my bike handling. And I felt like I had power to spare - Brady and Fuentes (the lead group) finished only about 20 seconds ahead of me, whereas in a typical race, they'd have had put 2-3 minutes in by the end. So essentially my best short track race ever.

Eszter ripped it up in the women's A race and took 4th (and she's solidly on track to win the series) and Fuentes looks like a lock to win the men's series, so we're looking at a nice sweep by team Waltworks. Sweet!

I spent Thursday and Friday suffering in the heat in the shop and trying to get things wrapped up before Vermont (Lorne, if you don't email me your address, you're not getting your fork until I get back!) But we did a good job preparing for Saturday's Crankworx (gah, I hate substituting X for ks, don't you?) race - rode hard but not too long on Friday, drank lots of liquids, and stuffed ourselves with homemade lasagna (anyone want me to post a new recipe? Or is everyone glad that I don't do that anymore?) I was feeling confident after the short track success as well, and we even managed to make it to the start with 10 minutes to spare (I'm notorious for missing the starts of races that begin at the Frasier end of the valley)

The field, to be honest, was totally stacked. Jay Henry, Colin Cares, Rad Ross Schnell, and Andy Schultz were among the super-super fast pros that I was pretty sure would absolutely crush me. We had about 50 guys on the start line, and I was gunning to beat my 3 rivals for the final series podium - Brady, Mike, and Micah. The course was pretty brutal - 24 miles and a solid 4+k feet of climbing, including some nice steep technical stuff - WTB, upper Elk Creek, D4, etc. Here's a profile of the course (stolen from the WP race site).

The race started SUPER fast and I could see a lead group off the front immediately - though of course I was way at the back and could do nothing but watch in awe. I knew it was going to be a long race, though, so I kept it a bit below max and tried to really pace myself up the massive 2200 foot opening climb. That strategy paid off, as a big chunk of the field blew up and I rode into about 15th place by the top of the climb, passing both Brady and Micah (both of whom I would end up beating, albeit not by much) by the top. The descent was awesome and I caught a few more people, though they got me back on the flat/rolling descent of some fire road and the Zoom trail.

For most of the middle section of the race, Brady and I swapped places in around 12th position, with me passing him on the climbs and him getting me back on the flatter descents and road sections where I was spun out. At the bottom of Chickadee (the base of the final 1000 foot climb) I knew I had to go harder, so I attacked and quickly got a significant gap. Over the course of the climb, I caught up to another rider just before we turned onto singletrack to descend to the base, and I actually managed to outsprint him to the trail. Then I caught and passed a Tokyo Joes rider on the descent and came within 8 seconds of catching my arch-nemesis Mike. I was really letting it all hang out on the descent and even have a nice bruise on my shoulder from getting friendly with a tree, but it was worth it, as I snuck into the top 10 and finished 9th, probably the result I'm most proud of for the whole season. I only lost 7 minutes to the eventual winner Jay Henry, and I was within striking distance of a number of really fast guys, so I'm super happy. Might have to put some gears on next year... but I doubt I will. The singlespeed is way too fun.

Sarah also had an excellent race and finished 2nd in the expert women, and Eszter rocked it and took 2nd in pro (and I think she got a big fat check, too!) Rusty had a hard race and was 21st in sport, and I think Taryn was 7th or 8th in sport. Great racing all around!

I think they were paying out 10 deep, but I figured I'd only get $50 or something, so we ditched out just as the rain was starting to fall and the slopestyle comp was starting. Crankworx was really a great scene this year, with a HUGE crowd out to drink beer, eat brats, ride their bikes, and watch the pros throw backflips and tailwhips off of huge dirtjumps. Definitely something to check out in 2009 if you're in Colorado.

Tomorrow: belt drive first pictures!