Wielding Jehovah's Cyclocross Battleaxe

Wow, so a lot of stuff to cover here. I'm not going to bother touching all of this because there's no way I can squeeze it all in. I'll try to do this over the next few posts. I'm going to leave the Cyclocross discussion to tomorrow. I'm off the bike tomorrow so I should have some time, in between doing bike work.



I also won't really get into any of the riding of done this week until tomorrow or the next day. Or something.



The Weekend of No Biking



I didn't ride all weekend. I took Fri/Sat/Sun off because we were going away camping & Friday just didn't work out because Julia woke up with the ear thing going on again (in the end it turned out to be an outer ear infection, not an inner). So she was home with me, I needed to pack the car, and it rained half the day anyway so in the end I didn't even put the bikes on the car (well I did, but then took them off because of the rain).



So no bikes. This is good for me, taking time off the bike. Clearly I'm responding well to the rest.



Friday



As mentioned, packed the car with Julia hanging around the house, went to get Simon then Zac, then off to get D from work and straight to Swartzwood State Park for a weekend of camping. Weather was whatever. I've just pretty much taken to it being what it is. If it rains, you make the most of it. If it storms and fire-cats fall from the sky, well just go bowling or something.



So we get there first and start setting up camp. D started building the tent and I opened a beer and set wood on fire. So far, so good. I guess I did other things but beer & fire is about all I can come up with right now. Matty & family came shortly after and they jumped in, setting up their camp and also drinking beer. We made some random food for dinner, drank some beer, then sang happy birthday for Matty's daughter who turned 11 that day. We had cake then s'mores and beer & wine. Kids were very good at opening every tent & camper door and making sure all sleeping areas were loaded with mosquitoes.



Saturday



Banged out some pancakes and went for a walk on the Paulinskill Trail, which is like a trail apparently named for some dude named Paul, with skills. Saw some horses, a rooster, and an alpaca. Also nabbed 2 geocaches on the way. I find geocaching to be something that everyone enjoys. Random shit in the woods? Oh hell yes I'm in! Maybe we should revise our education system. Learning through Geocaching.



Went back to camp and Kirt & his daughter met us. Basic "whatever you see that's edible, eat it" kinda lunch then we hit the beach and we all worked on this bad boy for much of the day:



https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd....5_10203933488793571_2094804248922250067_o.jpg



This is almost done. And it's so big I want to leave it as a link instead of embedding it into the post and making your screen go double wide.



I find that a sand castle is the glue of any beach experience. Eventually, everyone finds something they like doing and they just do it to it's logical conclusion, which is usually the sand melting into the moat you feel the need to put around everything in sight. Matty has mad skills making those Dr. Suess/Tolkein-like sand-mush mounds. I tried to learn from the master but was only mildly successful.



After beach we went to camp and beer happened. Then Matty/Patty made some awesome sausage & peppers while D made some amazing camp potatoes. Then we drank more beer & wine and made more fire. Well, the fire was going the whole time, pretty much the whole weekend. When we would come back from wherever I would collect some twigs, then it would roar up again.



That night the kids went out early as they were boiled from staying up the night before. We polished off all the beer & wine.



Sunday



I cooked like 30 eggs and 2 pounds of bacon and almost all of it got eaten. Then Matty broke out some blueberry muffins and they disappeared too. We made coffee, bummed around, cleaned up camp, then packed it all up and took off. We hit the lake on the dock side where Matty/Patty caught some crayfish then we went to the beach for a last hit of some sand. Since we cannot just sit and do nothing, we built a plain old 4 foot tall mound of sand, then left for the day.



We drove home, and that was that.



In Summary



It was a great time. Matty/Patty & the kids are great camping companions and we will certainly hook up with them again. They're laid back, like to have a good time, and not afraid of catching crayfish with their bare hands and they add some style to the sand castle construction company. The kids got along great, and in all we couldn't have asked for a better bunch of people to hang with over the weekend.



Matty rode a bike. I did not.



The Battleaxe



See above. I left it home this weekend. Sometimes you gotta sit back, have a beer, and enjoy the fire. The Battleaxe may have gotten a bit wider this past weekend. But maybe we can say it's gonna be a more powerful swing now.
 
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Camping with great company. What more is there to say. Glad we aligned the stars to get er done. More beer next time

Swartswood !
 
After the weekend of beer & fire (and no biking) I hit the week full of piss & vinegar ready to hit 2 wheels. We had swung by Utah's house on the way home to pick up my Ted2 which is the replacement frame for the first one which cracked a few weeks earlier. Utah had also had the fork serviced, switched it to a 1x10, and who knows what else. But he said it was going to be like a new bike.

Monday - Chimney Rock

Late in the afternoon I got around to hitting up Chimney Rock. It was late afternoon and I knew I was going to have plenty of saddle time so I just got in a quick ride:
http://app.strava.com/activities/175498580

At first the ride seemed nice & smooth but soon the BB started creaking, which was more of a mental chore than anything. Since Ted was on the shelf I had been riding the SS which has the original bars from Ted. For some reason I had swapped these out and they are very narrow. So wow, I noticed this right away in the white section. I guess I have been riding enough these days that I note these things now? The bike was way twitchy, super over-reactive to everything I did. Utah had also put the saddle down to ride it and it was too low for me.

I tried for 3 different KOM segments, the biggest being the Big Red loop that Pearl & Clapper have been poking each other at. In my head I thought it was an 8 minute KOM so when I was rounding the top to start down, I felt like I was sucking ass. I rolled out the loop but the DH was crappy. The twitchy steering and mentally feeling like I was having a shitty run wasn't making me feel great. At the end I raised the saddle and crossed the road to blue.

Where I got a soft flat. I topped it off with CO2 and managed to hold. I rolled out some mroe red then back on white for a little. I tried another KOM that is some random thing on the way back to the ballfields before CR road, then another in the same direction after it,

Turns out that I managed 3rd on Big Red, just 2 seconds of the younger skinny one, and a 4th on the straight up red trail climb. The other 2 were a 2nd and a 5th. Right now, these KOM runs are the only thing I have to compare myself with. I've done these before so I know I'm getting stronger. The last time I did 2 of them I was significantly slower.

Tuesday Morning - Stephens

Rode this one with Kirt:
http://app.strava.com/activities/175892566

When I got home the day before I swapped out the bars to the original wide ones, almost 3 inches more width total. As an aside, does anyone have a nice wide pair of pars they would like to part with? I now need it for the SS, which has the carbon ones that I no longer like. I also raised the saddle to the proper height and tightened down the crank arm bolt, which was causing the BB creaking from the day before.

No KOM raids, just a solid pace with Kirt. I felt pretty good though hills are still an issue for me. In all it was a good ride, again we always have something to talk about. Nothing really of note. The loop Utah gave us was good, though following the GPS in there is kinda tough in spots just because the trails seem to randomly come & cross up. And a few of the trails they rode on are no longer used, so we sort of plowed through some dead trail for a bit.

But all in all, a solid loop. I think a 6 hour race here would make people very unhappy though. We did, however, come up with some great ideas for a shorter race, perhaps maybe even an H2H?

Tuesday Night - The WW B Ride

After the ride my legs were cooked, so I was a little worried how I would do on the Tuesday night ride. I picked a loop that went CCW through the swamp at first then ended with the big hill at the end. Like this:
http://app.strava.com/activities/176086233

The loop to start was terrible on Whitebridge, then on the far side there was some grooved out pavement where they're doing work. In the last few weeks, there has been a lot of repaving which is really nice. The down side is that when you hit that in mid-pave, it kinda sucks. Fortunately that wasn't all that long so no big deal.

The hill at the end was a bit of a group killer, but we rolled in to the end with a bunch pf the core B riders. In all, a good ride and my legs survived.

Wednesday - Around the Valley

Kirt wanted to do 3 more, so I agreed for 3 more though I warned him I would be cooked. I did better than expected but my legs were tired for sure:
http://app.strava.com/activities/176368681

Nothing much of note on this one. In all it takes almost a full hour to go around the reservoir but it would seem to be much shorter. It was almost an hour to the minute. The ride was a moderate pace and we talked about bikes and shit like we always do. But this one was it for me. No tomorrow on my plate.

Somehow I never get pics of any of these rides anymore.

Thursday - No Bikes

Well, I did bike stuff but it was building & maintenance related. First I did some tweaks to Pearl's cross bike because I had some stuff lying around that he needed. Then I finished building D's cross bike, which Pearl played a very nice part in helping put together. So the morning was used to finish up his bike, then the afternoon was spent building up D's bike. By the end of the day I had it just about tied up with the exception of the bar tape. I'm not great at this step so I'm going to wait until tomorrow when I'm less tired.

For some reason, I bought some V brakes for the Fuji and I put them on this bike, because they're brand new. Eric says I probably did this because I was going to build up the Fuji to be a road machine so these brakes, in theory, give you more stopping power. Well, when you add in the extra clearance you need to add for cross wheels plus the wobble of 5 year old rims, and the short pull of the Shimano levers, it's not the most confidence inspiring braking I've ever felt. I did ried it down the street and it feels decent. Shifting is awesome. I forget how awesome new cables & housing feels. I really need to do that for my road bike.

Anyway, that's about it.

Tomorrow

Not sure what my plans are. I'll get Julia at some point then watch the Amazing Race Canada with her. Zac came back from Canada with that in his head so we started watching it. It's a fun show and now Julia likes it too. We watched it tonight but I'll watch again tomorrow.

The Battleaxe

This week it was really me just kicking the tires at CR with the new bike build, then refining it and going to Stephens the next morning. Those would be my "organic" intervals so to speak. The Tuesday night ride was really just to add some load to my week and then Wednesday was the topper where I got my max endurance ride of the week. At this stage, 3 hours is about the most I want to ride.

Then today was rest. Not sure about tomorrow, the legs were toasty today. I do need to go out and take some local KOMs, particularly one that some dude took from me earlier in the week. I think I got that 2 months ago and 12 pounds heavier, so I should be able to knock that one off easily enough.

I think I may pair that with a tempo run to help train my race starts. I mean, when I eventually do that.
 
Speaking of KOM's, I think it is time for Iron Bridge again, which you apparently your fastest time is 2009 and you are basically a different person now:

Iron Bridge Steep

Kinda makes me wonder what I could do on this climb if it wasn't at MP 70 of a 130 mile loop 🙂
 
stb222 said:
Speaking of KOM's, I think it is time for Iron Bridge again, which you apparently your fastest time is 2009 and you are basically a different person now:

Iron Bridge Steep

Kinda makes me wonder what I could do on this climb if it wasn't at MP 70 of a 130 mile loop 🙂
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Took less than 24 hours for you to mention that ride huh? Lolz.

Surprised you don't talk about your rides in kilometers.
 
pearl said:
he texted me as soon as he finished
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LOL - He texted me as soon was he finished as well. Although we did go back and forth regarding route ideas the night before.
RIP - Kevin that rides every day. Won't be long till your goose is cooked buddy.

Camping with good company, poking a fire with a stick and an ample supply of spirits are what good times are made of!
 
jShort said:
Took less than 24 hours for you to mention that ride huh? Lolz.

Surprised you don't talk about your rides in kilometers.
Click to expand...

Haha, i was going to start a new thread with this being the kickoff, but that seemed like a lot of work
 
On Running

The following encompasses much what I will run for:

* a sale at Penny's
* free beer
* free tacos
* free taco beer
* bears, hungry ones, running at me

The following encompass things I do not run for:

* the border
* to the hills
* cross practice

So What is Running?

Running is to be taken in a broader context, such as "a beer run" or "a taco run" or "a taco beer run". Or, something similar to the movie Midnight Run. If you have never seen that movie, well I'm not going to tell you to go watch it, because it's like 25 years old and it's dated. So it probably wouldn't be that good now.

In any event, there was no real running in it, at least not enough to warrant such a movie title.

Friday

It's Friday so I'm not going to get into the stuff I need to cover regarding the cross comments the other day. We have next week for that. I will be getting on the cross bike this weekend though. So I got that going for me. Which is nice.

My legs are still tired. So my ride today will be just warming up the engines a bit for tomorrow, something like that. If I feel uber good maybe I'll take a stab at something but more than likely just try to spin them out for a little bit.

Have a good weekend, everyone.
 
so much hate on running here...i mean, i guess its to be expected on a MTB board.

there is definitely a larger hump to get over with running to get to the point where you find it enjoyable, than for mountainbiking or road biking. But it really does have its merits, especially in simplicity. It also helps if you find yourself traveling often for work. its always easy to pack running shoes
 
the only thing i really tried to like about running was you could run for 20 minutes and be spent, that is a huge perk. riding for 20 minutes, shit.. not even worth it
 
I ran for the first time in a longggg time (SSAP?) on Tuesday, and I still can't walk. That's the major thing that sucks about running for me. I know I have to build up to it, but holy crap I have to hold onto the toilet when I go to sit down. Thankfully we have that bar on the wall at work otherwise I'd collapse trying to hold myself up.

I'm running for the reason Aaron said: Simplicity. I can wake up early, get a good workout in before work, and then later on get my ride in. It's quick and the workout is great. Definitely don't see the point in running for CX unless you plan on flatting a lot and need to practice running around the course.

Hopefully I'll stop sucking sooner rather than later. Maybe I just need a new pair of shoes. I've noticed that the running world gets new sneakers a lot.
 
People just love to find something that they don't do or can't do and hate on it.
 
mandi said:
I'm running for the reason Aaron said: Simplicity. I can wake up early, get a good workout in before work, and then later on get my ride in. It's quick and the workout is great. Definitely don't see the point in running for CX unless you plan on flatting a lot and need to practice running around the course.
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I don't understand running for CX. You run for 50 feet in CX. It's like running for the bathroom after Chipotle without the danger of messy pants.

And seriously, does anyone who runs to practice for CX run with a 15lb weight over their shoulder? If not, wtf?

-Steve
 
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