Mammoth Looming

I heard local weatherman Dave Dahl on the radio and he said "If you haven't had enough, there's still more of this same bullshit to follow."

Next 5 Days

• Today

  Apr 16

  Chilly with sun and clouds48°Lo 33°

• Wed

  Apr 17

  Afternoon rain38°Lo 34°

  more

• Thu

  Apr 18

  A bit of snow and rain44°Lo 31°

  more

• Fri

  Apr 19

  Rather cloudy and chilly41°Lo 27°

  more

• Sat

  Apr 20

  Sun followed by some clouds46°Lo 37°

  mo

If there is any positive to all this, It looks like things might be alright for the Mammoth Classic (I know I missed the Gravel part, but I think they did too)

Now that I've had the GPS for over a year I can look back at what I did in years past. I completed the Mammoth last year in 4h14m. Not too shabby, but far from the best.


So, I've dragged myself, against my will out of the house for 3 possibly 4 rides in the past two weeks and they haven't gone half bad. I always start out feeling like shit around mile 5 and then remember that no matter how much I ride I always bad from mile 5-10. The numbers don't lie though. I've only lost about .5mph average from where I was last year. These are shorter rides though, so we'll see if I suffer in the long run.
By last years Dirt Bag I felt like I could go 75-80 miles before starting to feel real fatigue/pain. I'm guessing that I will dip into that zone around mile 50-55 at the Mammoth.

I have a quick route that gets in a fair amount of climbing without having to repeat sections or back track. It ends up being about 1,400ft in 19 miles. I am going to try and switch it up and hit some of the West St. Paul hills if I can get one more ride in this week.

I knew I was on to something special

Some good news on the home front. We got a nanny for the kids this summer. What does this mean? 1. Believe it or not, there will be more money in my pocket. Daycare is expensive, and there are not enough, so  that drives the weekly rates are sky high.
2. This also means that I should be able to ride my bike to work most days. This is going to be really nice. I have a few different routes in mind to keep things fresh.


When I was searching through pictures on my phone I came across this one, and since the last "guess what this is" contest went so well (0 guesses) I thought I'd throw this one up. Without further ado:

Where is this from?

I collected this myself.

Consolation Update

Well shit.

I've already heard whispers that this has the makings to be the most epic Consolation 86 ever. Snow covered roads. Peanut butter roads. Minimal training. A chill in the air. One person asked if I had a "Arrowhead type mandatory supply list."

Not needed

 I think that the gravel roads will be fairly hard pack to start out with, and once we get towards Wabasha we hit pavement for the next 30+ miles. Then on the way back, when the roads could (will?) be soft, there will only be about 15 miles of gravel.

So, it is what it is, if you don't want to ride gravel in the afternoon, take the pavement back to Lake City.

These hills in Nelson are no joke, be prepared for them. There's big climbs in other races, but no Cat. 3's like these that I see.

I'll probably do one more brief update Friday.

Sometimes, I ride them

Lately I've been feeling like I never get a chance to ride my bike. I feel like whenever I do I am "sneaking it in" between other activities. There is always something else going on, or, what seems to be a recurring theme this spring, whenever I do have something planned, the weather is shitty, and I would rather go grind away on a trainer than ride it rainy, wet weather unless I have to. I don't think there is anything to gain from it, and I'd end up spending a few hours cleaning my bike afterwards, which I would like to avoid. I've only ridden 180 miles so far in March and April. Pretty pathetic. I started looking at my "race" schedule and there are some big rides coming up very fast. 86 miles this Saturday, 100 at the Mammoth on the 20th, 120 on the 4th of May, 100 on the 19th. If I don't find some more time to ride these are going to be painful rides...

I did get a few bike related things accomplished this weekend. I bought the GF a new mountain bike frame and put it together for her. She was riding an old FS Iron Horse and the thing is a tank. It probably weighs 4-5 pounds and was too big for her. She only rides it on paths so I think this will be a little easier for her to ride. Her main concern was it had a water bottle holder, as the Iron Horse had a coil shock that ran through the middle of the frame, and she did not like the water bottle mounted on the bottom. Once she saw it all put together she was happy with it, so that's good.

Note the horn she thinks is so funny

A few posts back I asked for a guess on what this is:

Mystery revealed!!!

And I got 0 responses. It is homemade tire sealant. I dug around on the MTBR forum and found a thread that listed how to do it. There were a ton of variations. Most of them pretty complicated. I found one of the original recipe's and it stated that it was better than the Stan's sealant, but not the best home brew. Well, I've never had a problem with Stan's and I didn't want to buy 10 different ingedients to get a slightly better product so I went with 2 parts RV anti-freeze, 1 part liquid latex, and one part tire slime. It was very easy to make and mix. Now it was time to test it. I have been riding the Monocog with the Exiwolfs that it came with for the last 3 years and they were getting pretty well worn. My new bike came with some Small Block 8's, that I immediately changed out for Racing Ralph's, So I thought they would be a good new tire for the spring.

$24 in supplies

I used the "Ghetto" method as this has worked well for me in the past. I bought a roll of 1' gorilla tape and sealed up the inner part of the rim. I put the tire on and left and little open spot to pour the sealant in. Once sealed up I hooked up the air compressor (Side note: I don't have a presta specific chuck so I bought one of those adapters that makes it a schrader valve. I noticed that the end of the air gun was threaded on the inside and using another adapter I could hook the compressor directly up to the valve. This works better than using the standard tire chuck as all the air easily goes straight into the valve rather than seeping out the side if it's not on perfectly.)

Once it was ready to go I pulled the trigger and the tire inflated pretty easily. There was some air and sealant leaking out the side, but rolling the tire while giving it some air seated the bead quickly. There was some leaking fluid on the tire and rim, but it cleans up easily with a rag. Total time spent, maybe 45 minutes for 2 tires. While the tires are sealed and holding 50lbs of pressure, the true test will only come with regular use.

Finished Product

Consolation 86 Specifics

This is still going down for all interested.

The plan is to roll out of Patton Park in Lake City, MN at 8am sharp. If you are late, I hope you have the notes/gps.

The route will be a 50/50 mix of gravel and tar.

As stated in the previous post there are multiple gas station stops along the way.

Here is a map of the route:


And here is the link to the GPS file:

Garmin Connect - Consolation 86

I also have directions that I will email or bring with to the start. Unless I get an accurate number of people, there is no guarantee that there will be notes left though...

Please let me know in the comments or on Facebook if you will be able to make it.

-Brett

Ti 2-9

I got an email last week that my bike had showed up early. It wasn't supposed to ship until 4/19, so I was pretty excited that it would be arriving much earlier than expected. 

Light!!

Straight out of the box there was a decent amount of assembly that need to be done, plus I switched out the tires, seat post, seat, stem, and handlebars right away.

A  few highlights:
SRAM XO derailleurs and shifters
Bontrager XXX stem, handlebars, seat post, and bottle cage
Rockshox RL 29 fork

This is my first 2x10 drive train. It is going to be fun. I don't like switching big rings all that often so this should be a nice set up. The rear cassette has quite a range so hopefully I will always be able to find a comfortable gear.

I still need to bring it to the shop to get it set up properly as I don't trust my initial build, and its not worth breaking something because I didn't know what I was doing. It is going to be hard to just sit and stare at this bike for the next 5 or so weeks until the trail dry out. Oh well, gotta get the base miles in anyways...

Bonus! What is this?

L-M-L

This past Saturday was the Lakeville-Millville-Lakeville race, or, my return to riding a bike for more than 12 miles. I had heard grumblings about this race for a little over a year and was interested because I thought that it would be nice to get a race in before the Ragnarok. The race was supposed to have ditches, swamps, pastures, etc. but with the very long winter I don't think it is a possibility.
With the temperatures well below freezing in the mornings, and warming up in the afternoons I knew that the race was going to get sloppy at some point. I decided to ride my Monocog geared at 40x18. It proved to be a pretty good choice.

The start

The race was set for 80+ miles starting at Harry's Cafe in Lakeville. We started a little after 8 with a slow roll out. Once we hit the gravel it was still fairly slow. Over the first 4 miles I was still fairly close to the lead group, but I could tell that they were not pushing it, at all.

Right around mile 9 I started hearing a creaking noise coming from my drivetrain. I have taken the cranks off the bike the night before and cleaned, and re-greased them so my first thought was that I had somehow put them back on incorrectly. I pedaled on as it seemed to be just a noise. A mile later I felt a lot more tension as I was trying to pedal. Having not ridden much my first thought was that I just wasn't in great shape and that my body was already tiring. A long look back at mile 13 revealed that the lockring for my rear cog had some loose, causing the cog to slip all over the place and ruin the chain line. I stopped and spun it back on and tightened it with my hand the best I could and was back on my way. I worried about it coming loose again for the next 30 miles. I linked up with a couple guys shortly after that and we rode together into the checkpoint at Milltown Cycles. At Milltown they had bacon and donuts waiting for us, along with our second set of directions. I got Ben to tighten down my lockring and it was trouble free the remainder of the way. Milltown Cycles is a cool little shop that I have never been to before. I have heard many good things about it, but it is just too far away. After about a 10 minute break I was back on the road.

The second half started out pretty nice. There was some pavement and my water tube unfroze so I had something to drink. I recall about mile 50 the road started to get a little tacky. Dirt was starting to stick to the tired. At one point we went down closed dirt road that was muddy as shit. I made it though most of it, but had to stop and walk a small portion of it. Not fun. From there the roads were wet and icy. I just kept pushing towards the end. Mud was really starting to accumulate on the bike and myself. I wanted to be done. The miles seemed to be going by pretty quickly though despite my 11-13 mph pace. With 5 miles to go I passed 3 people and was determined to not let them catch me before the end. My legs were getting that warm tingly feeling that comes when they are too warm and starting to overheat. I would take a couple sips of water and that seemed to cool them down a bit.

I finished the race in 24th place out of 61 starters. Not too bad for the first long ride of the season. Afterwards in the swag box I picked up a set of Jagwire deraileur cables that I thought would look nice on the new bike. I donated two chains that I noticed had already been taken.

Afterwards I changed and went back into Harry's for a beer and a burger. It was nice to catch up with some people that I hadn't seen in a while as well.

It was a great race, well put on and organized, with the donations going to a great cause.

Thanks to Larry and all the volunteers that made it happen. I'll be back again next year.

My clothes looks worse.

Weekend Post

This weekend was shaping up to be pretty nice, and it just turned out OK.

Saturday morning I was going to ride 50 miles around Afton, but after getting on the SJ for the first time since November there was a strange clicking noise coming from the rear. At first I thought that my hub may have worn out, but decided that it had something to do with my rear brake. I tried to fix it work 15 minutes, but nothing I tried worked. The roads by that point were already pretty sloppy and I was getting cold so I decided to pack it in right away. Upon further examination I think that the rotor was pinging off of the brake adapter bolt. I think that I got the problem taken care of, but we'll see once the weather gets a little better to bring it back outside.

It was not all a loss though. I went to the gym and did an hours worth of intervals and then swam 600m. When I got back from the gym I noticed there was a package at the front door. The shape of it was very distinct and I knew what it was right away. I opened it up and the stuff looked great.

Probably too nice for me.

Now I just need to wait until the bike arrives to put it all together. I was kind of bummed that it wasn't going to arrive till mid April, but with the weather we are having there is really no chance of the trails being dry enough to ride anyways.

Sunday was St. Patrick's Day and I really could have cared less. It was so cold and everyone went out Saturday night anyways. Not a big deal. I went for a fat bike ride at Carver with Curt and Jose. We did 2 laps and the pace was pretty nice. Surprisingly, Curt only stopped once to adjust something. The trail was pretty hard packed with a few icy spots. you can't take the corners too fast out there because the surrounding snow is soft and deep. The bike will sink right in and send you OTB.

Next weekend is the LML. I am hoping for some colder weather, but it sounds like it is going to be 37 and sunny. That is going to make for a wet, sloppy day.