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!

Big/Small

Taryn's bike is one of the smallest I've ever done, with a <21" toptube. Redcoats is one of the biggest (well, toptube-wise, anyway) at almost 27". Here's a nice comparison shot taken at the end of the Goonies annual Rollins Pass booze cruise, which Sarah and I unfortunately missed out on this year. Next year, Eszter, I promise...

Fox F120 29er fork for sale

I'm selling my Fox 29er fork. Lightly used - I decided I just didn't like this fork after 2 or 3 rides. Still in perfect shape. 120mm travel (can be reduced to 100mm with included spacer), steerer cut to about 9", ready to rock and roll. $400. Photos (of the actual fork, that is) upon request.

A bad photo of a non-photogenic racer

Not the best picture, I know. The anonymous culprit has this to say:

I was up in WP for a bachelor party and we were up most of the night drinking and telling ridiculous stories around the camp fire. Did you know that if you drink a bottle and a half of Bailey's you get a heck of a buzz, but the sugar seems to keep you going and prevent a hangover pretty nicely.

It turned out to be quite a bit of fun to be out there and cheer and heckle you racers. There were numerous nicknames for the racers, like "Mullet dude" and "Fanny Pack Guy" and at least 3 marriage proposals. 3 or 4 people demanding water (they must have thought we were an aide station) so we threw water on them (never ask some random drunk guy for his water). All in all I think everyone had a good time and no one came back up later to chop us up into little pieces, so we assumed no one was super pissed.

Winter Park race report, Crested Butte trip

This is going to be a long one, folks. There will be some pictures from CB; I didn't get any of the race (I was a bit busy, but Jay says he has some he's going to forward over)

Saturday's Winter Park series race was the dreaded "Valley Point to Point" - a race that's short (19 miles, 1:15 for the pro men's winner, which was not me) and relatively flat (for Colorado) with only 1500 feet or so of climbing. Needless to say, since I'm a geeky climber, and I'm riding a singlespeed, the course is decidedly sub-optimal. And things went about like I thought they would - I led the field out up the first 400 foot climb, got passed by 3 people on the first bigring-speed downhill, and then fought back and forth with 2 or 3 of the same folks for the entire remainder of the race - I'd drop them on the climbs and steeper descents, and they'd crush me like a bug on the flat and moderately downhill sections. C'est la vie. Unfortunately for me, the race ends with about 1.5 miles of flattish/slightly downhill rocky singletrack - the perfect terrain for, say, a geared, full suspension bike. Which of course, I had the opposite of. When all was said and done, I ended up 8th, a full 2:30 behind the winner. Since my goal in every race is to end up in the top 10, I felt ok about that, but I'm hoping for some better showings in the remaining races of the year (the next course has a nice solid 2000' climb to start things off!)

Sarah had no energy for the climbs but apparently descended like a bat out of hell, and finished the race with nothing left in the tank. I think she was 5th in the expert women's field.


And that was it - mechanicals, illness, a birthday, the Evans hillclimb, and a trip to Maine sidelined the rest of the WW team, so Sarah and I were the only finishers. Here's a picture of Rusty's "excuse". Pathetic. Needless to say, the WW team is falling rapidly in the team standings...get off your duffs, you slackers!

The next day we both raced the new Super-D event (new for the WP series, that is). Things did not go well from the beginning - we arrived at the top of the lift at 9:20, which given that the course would take 25 minutes, and the lift ride back up would take 15, was not a lot of extra time for a practice run, since my race started at 10 sharp. The choice between 2 runs and doing poorly, or standing around for 45 minutes to do slightly less poorly seemed like an easy one, though. In the end, I only missed the start by about 5 seconds, so it was just fine.

Due to being talked into a ride after the race on Saturday by Rusty (worst of all, we got lost and ended up back on the bloody race course!), as well as consumption of a great deal of beer and pizza and icecream, I almost barfed on the 2 minute opening climb, and went into the singletrack dead last. But I managed to pass 4 people (and several people crashed or flatted) and I ended up a respectable 10th out of about 20 riders. Sarah raged the course in a smoking 24:17 and beat all but two of the women who came out to race - on a hardtail with a rigid fork, no less - she even beat a decent number of sport and expert men! Lots of fun, and I hope they do it again next year (heck, I'd do a super-D every weekend if they had one...)

Having finished racing, we hopped in the car and drove to Crested Butte to meet up with our friends Erik and Natalie (aloha!) We arrived over Cottonwood pass in time to sneak in a ride on the Upper/Upper Upper loop, which was a rocky, rooty good time. I didn't take any pictures of this ride, as the light was fading and the bugs were pretty atrocious. We walked around in the little bouldering area on Upper as well, just near Tony's, but we didn't see much that we thought we could do - there was a lot of V10 looking craziness, but not much in the way of moderates. We'll have to check more carefully another time, though - we certainly didn't search exhaustively.

The next day (Monday) was the semi-epic. We rode up Gothic road to Snodgrass, across Snodgrass to Washington Gulch, up to 403, across 403, and then rode 401 and back down Gothic road into town. A solid 4.5 hours in the saddle (plus picture taking and snacking time) which finished with the mother of all hailstorms coming back on Gothic road. I was almost entirely coated in ice at once point, and we all narrowly avoided hypothermia, I think. But a hot shower and 4 beers cured my ailments. Here are some pictures from that ride:

Here's the crew on Snodgrass. This was a trail I'd never bothered to ride due to the description in books ("easy beginner cruise") but it proved to be a super fun classic!

Erik looks like the Crested Butte terminator, at least to me. Gotta love aspens!


Here's Sarah, with a view of the mountains to the west on the start of the 403. This is at about 11,000 feet - very nice temperatures, though there's not much O2 for breathing.


Looking south from the 403, Erik, Natalie, and yours truly.


Another shot looking south. This is about the highest point on the 403, from here it drops about 1,500' into the Gothic campground site.


We had to tackle a few small snowdrifts - it's good that we didn't come a week earlier. Apparently Crested Butte had a record snowpack this year, and some trails up high are *still* not dry!


Here's the descent into Gothic CG - yes, it's very steep. The wildflowers were overgrowing the trail so much that it was hard to even see where it went in some places!


Sarah heated up her brake rotor quite nicely on the descent, and then made a bit of a tactical blunder. Can anyone guess what rotor it was?

Looking south from near the top of the climb on Teocali. At this point we had been riding (with no rest days) for something like 10 days, including 3 races, so the steep Teocali climb was quite a sufferfest.


Here's Sarah, looking north from the start of the descent on Teocali. We were told that Teocali is VERY technical and challenging, and while I'd agree that it's not a beginner trail, we weren't too impressed with the difficulty of the descent - it was pretty steep, yes, but without much in the way of difficult drops or loose soil or what have you. Still very fun, though.

Vacation time!

I'm headed out of town to Crested Butte, to return sometime in the middle of next week. Folks who are waiting on stuff: I will be shipping a PILE of things next Thursday. I'll also be in Vermont from August 4th-13th, so don't expect any work to get done during that time period.

I will be out of email and phone contact for most of the time on both trips, so don't expect quick responses.

Here are some pictures from the short track to make this post a little more interesting. Well, maybe.

Some random junk for sale

Email me with questions, or for a picture. If you're outside the US, you'll have to pay for shipping, otherwise it's included in all prices.

-Nearly new (2 rides) Sidi Toscana women's mountain bike shoes. Size 41. Silver/yellow/black color. Very nice shoes, but they hurt Sarah's feet. I think retail is about $200, I'll take $100, including shipping.

-Brand new Shimano XTR "shadow" SGS (long cage) rear derailleur. Sanford needed a medium cage, and they sent a long cage. Easier to sell it off than return it - $130, shipping included.

-Kenda Nevegal 29x2.2 tires (brand new). I have one pair of these sitting here, they're great for aggro XC or moderate freeride use. $65 including shipping for the pair.

Another east coast race report!

From C$:

Hey Everyone,

I thought I would give a quick update from the East Coast. Today I did my fourth race of the season. The previous two races I didn't report on, namely because they were both so freaking hot that my brain melted in my skull and my memory of the events have been erased forever. I'm serious, so hot, that even when you go downhill, it feels like someone is blasting the air from a furnace in your face. But in truth, the trails are still really cool and the races really well-run. The people out here are super nice. I'd like to really thank the visitPa.com team for hosting me in an in-laws RV and for being super cool in general.

The race today would have been great for any colorado racer. The climbs were short, but the trails were super smooth with only a few roots and rocks. Stevens would have liked it because, as I found out, it was perfect to "fake" your true fitness. The soil was nice and tacky, the temperature was manageable as long as you dumped some water over your head every so often. The ride was super fast too, we did 27 miles in just over 2 hours. As per usual, no license was necessary, the entry fee was day-of only and was $40 (the most expensive fee I have paid so far), and there were aid stations every 5 miles with iced water bottles awaiting you. Pretty much paradise for a bike racer. I finally had a decent race, and a fun one with 6 of us being right together nearly the entire 2 hour race, making for some fun and strategically stimulating racing.

At the end of it all I was fourth and I received a paper certificate saying how good I did (unlike Colorado this one had a dollar sign and a bank account attached to it). I saw that other categories got some really good schwag. It's cool to see how people know which races will pay out the best and in turn they come out and support the race. Each race here is put on by a different club/team so I think there is some good business competition that keeps the races fun and well supported. Granted, I miss the views, climbs, buff singletrack, dry and cool air of Colorado, but from a racer's standpoint, you can't beat it here.

Fillet brazing fun and a *job opening*

First off, no, the job opening isn't working for me. If anything, it's cooler - Avery is looking for a beer-geek lady to run the tasting room. You need to be friendly and knowledgeable about beer, and probably also able to fend off a lot of annoying beer geek guys (or not fend them off, it's up to you, I guess). Email me and I'll put you in touch with the relevant folks if you're interested. Sorry, guys, they're looking specifically for a woman.



Next up, a few random pictures of fillet brazing. I'm getting better at it (since the only things I ever fillet braze are brake bosses and bridges, it's not something I get a ton of practice with) and I was pretty happy with this set of bosses - really minimal filing required to make them nice and smooth. The second picture is after maybe 30 seconds of filing - I'll do a little more to smooth out the tiny pits and it'll be good to go.

Short track race report

I'm hoping to have pictures later today (edit: here you go). I'm told I got some sweet air off of a jump. I'll believe it when I see it.

Finally healthy, so I rolled over to the research park to inhale some dust and try not to get lapped by Jeremy.

Taryn managed to avert her eyes from a horrific crash (broken handlebar) in the women's B race. I'm told it was *really* bad, and that the person left in an ambulance, which I think is a first for the short track series.

In the men's Bs, Boardman and Ian looked to be rocking it, but I don't know how they did. Boardman had a bad start, which is unusual for him, but he reports that he still managed his traditional midrace blowup. Nice work, B!

Women's A was stacked, with Del Starr, Heather Irmiger, Ann Trombley, and a host of other big names lined up. Probably 20-25 racers! Eszter rocked it and battled it out with Ann for the whole race and was finally 6th or so.

Men's A was a smallish field of 35 or so (I think) with all the local big guns out there - JHK, Brady Kappius, Fuentes, Colby Pierce, Ward Baker, and Brian Alders, among others. Probably a solid 10 real pros, and then a host of wannabe pros and semipros to fill things out. The start was a little crazy - I nearly crashed in the first corner, as we went into it about 3 riders abreast, with loose cobbles flying under people's wheels. But I managed not to go down and settled into about 15th place, which is an above average start for me.



This is by far the best picture ever taken of me trying to catch a grape in my mouth while going off a jump. Oh, wait, I just have my mouth hanging open for no reason...rad. Anyone who suggests I'm screaming in terror and/or about to crap my pants (this is just the takeoff...) doesn't know what they're talking about. Seriously.

The course was fantastic, with lots of twisty singletrack, jumps, and loose offcamber turns. A real mountain biker's course. I could see Yuki about 5 riders ahead of me and managed to get up to him about halfway through the race. We actually took turns pulling and were reeling people in pretty nicely - with 3 or 4 laps to go, we were 7th/8th. Unfortunately, something put a nice slash in the sidewall of my rear tire, and I was reduced to *crawling* through all the corners (and crashing hard in one of them) to try to keep enough air in to finish the race. With 1 to go, I finally couldn't ride the bike anymore and ran into the pits to pump it up. Of course, I lost about 10 places while doing that, but the tire held air long enough for me to finish my last lap and make it home afterwards. All in all, a great race and a fun evening. I'm still coughing up dust this morning, but that's bike racing for you!

Brief Firecracker wrapup

Sarah was sick, so we didn't race.
Fuentes and Megan won the duo, Nick and Shannon were 3rd.
Miguel was 2nd in Maverick men.
Eszter was 5th in Pro women and got to stand on the podium!
Ian finished, but suffered like a dog.
Taryn elected to call it a day after about 35 miles, and vows to return as part of a duo team next year.
Yuki flatted 3 times and finally dropped out.

No caption needed

Eszter chose to do something cool instead of paying good money to suffer on Saturday. I'll let you be the judge of whether or not it was worth it.

FYI, for those who have asked, the food poisoning was either from a malt shop in Empire (unlikely, IMO) or from the pile of veggies we got from our neighbor's farmshare while they were out of town. At least it's organic e-coli, right?

Out of the frying pan...

Well, I went on my first post-sickness ride this morning and got a horrible cramp in my guts. Got home, hung out in the bathroom for a while, and barfed up a bunch of stuff that looked like stringy green seaweed. I haven't been able to keep down food (I can drink water, luckily) all day, so my diagnosis: food poisoning.

Lovely. I'm sure a lot will get accomplished. Maybe I can bring a bucket out into the shop with me so I don't make too much of a mess.

Sarah has now caught my original illness, as well. It's a lovely day at casa Walt.

From Boardman...

WW riders took the holeshot in 3 of the races on Wednesday. Here's Boardman. Yes, he later blew up. That's ok, though.

Sick!

Apologies for the lack of bloggage, loyal readers. Or possibly loyal reader. I managed to come down with some kind of awful sinus infection/head cold type of ailment which has left me groggy and irritable, and totally unable to ride my bike.

A few notes on the interesting things that have transpired since I last blogged:

-I got to watch a $50k prototype electric car catch on fire and burn at its debut. Sad, yet also a little bit funny. Especially when they had to call the fire department. Folks, if you want to build an electric car, an actual electrical engineer (rather than some crazed inventor type) might be a good bet. Fuses are also good things, so that your super-expensive Li-Ion batteries don't short out and burn. Quote of the day: "I guess we should have tested it."

-Team Waltworks/Fuentesdesign had another fine Wednesday of racing at the Boulder short track. We were missing 3 (Yuki, Chris, Sarah) due to injuries, and I was sick, so the turnout wasn't great. Eszter went out hard as usual and dragged a bunch of fast ladies around for a few laps before holding on for 5th, Fuentes duked it out with JHK until the last 2 laps and lost by 8 seconds, and Rusty completed his first short track in fine style. Miguel had the worst start in history but finished strong and caught several riders. I didn't see Taryn's race, but reports are that she did quite well.

-Solar panel system has failed the city of Boulder inspection twice now, due to what I can only assume is some kind of incompetence on the part of the installers. They keep coming and making corrections, so hopefully we'll be officially approved soon.

I'm working on a variety of projects, but not all that quickly - it's hard to work fast when you're sick. So hopefully I won't get too far behind and will be healthy for the Winter Park race on Sunday - I'm hopeful that I can make the series podium, but it's going to be hard if I miss any races.

My new babies

I am VERY excited about both of these new apples of my eye. In fact, I'm having a hard time deciding which one to write about first.

I guess I'll start with the less-attractive picture. No, I am not wearing a shirt. Luckily for you, I have cropped the photo for safe viewing at work - and no, it's not my farmer's tan I'm proud of (though I kind of am...) Ladies: I am happily married, and my supply of dainty undergarments is more than adequate for my needs - please think before you throw and/or mail your unmentionables at/to me.

Actually, it's our new 2.5kW solar cell array - our house and the Waltworks shop are now 100% solar powered. Not a single nugget of coal or drop of oil or, um, glosh of water through a hydroelectic dam is required for me to run my milling machine, lathe, welding stuff, etc. Of course, I do still drive a car to transport your frame to the powdercoater, and DHL probably burns a few gallons of fuel along the way as well, but I'm still pretty pleased to be powered (at least in the shop) entirely by the sun. As well as good old human muscles (which in turn are powered by tamales and beer. Mostly beer.) I'm not sure that anyone will be rushing to buy a bike because it's built with solar power, but as a long-term investment, I like it.

Also, it tells you how much power you're generating in real time (as well as how much you've generated for the day). Thus far today I have stood outside staring at it for about a total of an hour. Sarah laughs at me every time I walk outside.

Second, though also close to my heart, is my new cyclocross bike. Yes, I'm aware that CX season is about 6 months away. I'm also aware that I'm about as good at cyclocross as I am at, say, tango dancing, or playing the cello, or making up dirty limericks. Which is to say very, very bad. In the one case that I did well in a cyclocross race, I was on my singlespeed town bike, and the mud proved to be so sticky that 90% of the field quit in disgust, leaving me to ride to a (last place) 8th place finish, from a starting field of something like 60 guys. Nice. So I didn't build this bike to race on. No sir. I built it to toodle around the roads (and dirt roads) of Boulder whenever the urge strikes me.

Now here are the geeky details:
-Custom steel frame/fork, of course. I did use a funky (now discontinued) super thin seat tube and reinforced it with a custom-made lug/sleeve. Came out pretty nice, I think. Frame/fork weigh something like 5 pounds total.
-Old road wheels of Sarah's. The hubs make horrible noises and the rims are full of dings and gouges, but I really can't justify buying new wheels for myself when we just bought the solar panels (ouch!) MC, I'm sure I'll be getting those wheels from you someday.
-SRAM Rival drivetrain and shifters, 105 compact crankset. FWIW, I've not had a bike with dropbars, or a bike with gears, in at least 5 years. So my ability to analyze how well any of this stuff works is pretty limited. Seems to shift nice, pedals nice, etc. The SRAM hoods seem kinda small and uncomfortable to me, but maybe I'll get used to them.
-Old bonty saddle and thomson post. Grabbed these from my travel bike. I'll have to get a post that's <410mm at some point, there's so much seatpost in the frame it's ridiculous.
-EC70 handlebar and WCS stem. I thought these were a good deal, and the bar seems pretty comfy. I like the flat part on top - that hadn't been invented whence I last threw a leg over a road bike.
-Paul touring cantilevers. These are the best canti brakes on earth. I can't believe I ever used those craptacular Avid shorties - the Paul brakes kick the living snot out of them, and best of all, I don't see any way they can fall apart like the Avids do every season or so. Then again, they cost 3x as much. Thanks to Nick for the snazzy cable hangers.

The whole bike weighs like 18 pounds (and I wasn't even trying to make it that light!) and it feels (after years of riding singlespeeds with 2.5" tires) like, as the bike snob would say, a bicycle particle inside a particle accelerator, which is ITSELF just a particle inside an even bigger particle accelerator. It's probably dirt slow as road/cross bikes go, but I wouldn't know. My Flagstaff record is going to be dropping considerably, methinks.

Stand by for tomorrow's snide restaurant review: The Kitchen (aka Shoney's)

Short track week 3

Briefly, Fuentes won, Nick was third, Yuki and Miguel were somewhere in the teens, and Eszter was 5th (I think). The bad news is that Sarah had back spasms and had to drop out, I went home with her and didn't race, and Jung (see the picture of his nice tire) crashed and broke his wrist. He'll be off the bike for 4-8 weeks. Doh!

Still, a good evening with nice weather and good racing.

We're famous!

Ok, so they got my name wrong... but still. Eszter and I are in Velonews!

I should tell my dad. He'll be psyched.

Fox!

So, this is exciting to me, anyway. I finally jumped through all the hoops (this took me 6 months) to get a Fox Racing Shox OEM account. Which totally rules, because they also just started selling the 29" fork to folks whose names aren't Gary Fisher.

Long story short, you have to buy a COMPLETE BIKE (that means all the parts) to get a Fox fork (their rules, not mine), but the prices are pretty stellar. Check out the pricing page for details (scroll way down to the forks).

Shocks available too - the WW/Ventana custom full suspension bikes now include an RP23 for a very fair $50 upcharge.

And yes, 26" forks are available too.

Race report!

The first semi-legit (meaning, not shortrack) race of the year went off at Winter Park yesterday - the opening hillclimb. Shortest, but most painful race of the year. And best of all the singletrack is all still snowed in, so when you get done flogging yourself up 2000 feet, you get to ride right back down the dirt road.

The picture has nothing to do with the race, but I thought it was cool, a stream-vaulting action shot.

In any case, the team did great:
-Eszter chased the very quick Judy Freeman all the way up but could never quite catch her and was 2nd in the pro women's race. She also took 9 full minutes off her old best time from 3 years ago!
-Sarah suffered like a dog, but stayed strong for 3rd in expert women, and was within 2 minutes of her best-ever time.
-Taryn did quite respectably in her first sport race and finished 17th.
-Rusty did his *first race ever* and was 13th out of an unbelieveable 63 riders in Sport 40-44! Nice job Rusty!
-Miguel was a solid 19th in the big (40 riders) pro men's field.
-Jung began his season, as always, by suffering like crazy and was 36th in pro men.

We had an interesting field for the pro men's race - there was a serious racer from the past (Jimi Killen), a roadie pro (Slipstream's Jason Donald, ON A ROAD BIKE, no less), and the usual front range suspects. The race was fast from the gun, and I was off the back on the 34x20 in notime as folks bigringed it up the first bit of climbing on pure adrenaline. But pure adrenaline isn't a great way to do a 30+ minute uphill effort, so I started catching riders left and right pretty quickly. After about 10 minutes, I was in the lead group of 5 or 6 riders. Slim Shady (Mike Mathers) made a move with about 2 miles to go that I only partially followed - after my massive blowup last year, I had no interest in trying to close the 30' gap immediately, so I figured I'd save it and attack on the final steep section. No such luck, though, as Mike had enough juice (and I ran out of traction with my 'cross tires on the gravel) to hold me off by 12 seconds. Tokyo Joe's rider and all-around fast young punk Brady Kappius was right behind me for a solid 3rd.

Jeremy's course record is 31:14, and I managed a 33:24 (the 5th fastest recorded time), so I think it might be conceiveable to break the record at some point - I finished the race with gas left in the tank, and I haven't been riding or training all that much, so maybe next year...

The WW/Fuentes team currently sits in 11th in the team standings as well. Nice work everyone!

Short track photos

Enjoy! Thanks to Redcoat for the fine camera work.

Elis's new fork

Quick shot of the fork and bike courtesy of Eli. I've been building a TON of forks lately - including quite a few for other builders and bike companies. That always makes me feel good about myself.

Boulder short track (the first of the year, not counting the biblical-level deluge-cancelled one last week) started yesterday. The team did well; Eszter and Sarah were 1st and 6th or 7th in the Women's A race, Fuentes, Nick, and yours truly were 2nd, 8th, and something like 12th in the Men's A. I had a pretty awful race, personally, and got confused by the lap count - thought we had one to go, then wondered why everyone was sitting up. C'est la vie. A good field though - the women had about 15, men must have had 35 or 40. Pictures later if Millertime sends them to me.

Weekend report

Eszter, Yuki, and Fuentes (on the podium, sort of) raced Teva on Saturday (see the pics) while Sarah and I did the Avery ride (and suffered like dogs - we averaged something like 23mph when we were actually rolling). Then the crew hopped on the 10:10 Ned bus on Sunday. Eszter amazed everyone by apparently not feeling a thing from her race the previous day, and we got to get shot at with paintballs. Joy. More and more trails in Ned are getting closed by angry rednecks, but on the plus side, I saw a moose for the first time in my life (no, I didn't get a picture, sorry).

Benefit for a fallen rider AKA All you can drink beer!

Here's the dealio (direct from the boys at Avery):

Benefit for Ryan Barnett - 11AM to 5PM - Saturday, June 14th

As those of you who have joined the brewing staff for runs and rides know, we like to play as hard as we like to party. Well, unfortunately, a Cat 1 racer friend of the brewery was involved in an accident and is in serious condition. During an early morning training ride, Ryan was run over by a truck's trailer. He fractured his skull, pelvis, vertabrae, some ribs and is currently undergoing massive amounts of surgery, still in the hospital, and facing lower body paralysis. Ryan's hospital bills are mounting up and we would like to help him out by throwing a benefit in his honor and for his wife and two little girls. There will be food and beer, but also raffle and silent auction items from incredible vendors such as Blue Competition Cycles, Spuik, Helly Hansen, Deuter, and many others. We will also be doing free bike tune ups! We are asking for a $20 donation, but we will not discourage anyone from giving more.. So please, enjoy a run or a ride in the morning and then come by the brewery for lunch and a few beers and a chance to win helmets, sunglasses, clothing and even a full carbon road bike in the size of your choice.

Not sure how to find the brewery? Just Click here for a helpful map.

You can follow Ryan's progress here.

2 Weird Ones

First up, a very hard to see shot of Tobias' post mount setup. I tried to make it look snazzy with a bit of disc rotor. It'll look a lot nicer after the powdercoat - hopefully he'll like it. I'll try to get a picture of the frame/fork after powdercoat next week, it's a pretty interesting project.

Next up, Brett's humongous (the picture does NOT do it justice) snowbike fork. 4+" of tire clearance, dude! Plus a thru-axle. It's surprisingly not that heavy - right around 1100 grams.

Tomorrow: 650b full suspension madness!

Waltworks in the Big Apple

We're on an east coast kick the last few weeks!

Thanks to Miguel for the pic, and a big shout out to my boys Kevin and Jeff!