That time of year when the bikes get broken down & either refurbed or in some cases replaced. Anyways, in the teardown process I got to evaluate the Enduro ceramic bearings I put in the BB last spring and man are they toast. Especially the drive side bearing. Click click click is what you want from your shifters not your bearings!

At this point I’ll probably revert to Phil Wood bearings although I am not certain, I hold out hope for ceramics but this first effort was a let down from a durability standpoint. You may recall from my earlier post I had issues with the seals that came with the bearings jacking up the friction, so I left them out and home engineered a low-friction solution. Maybe that was the issue but the bearings have literally never seen a rainy day so it is hard to imagine that poor seals caused the rapid wear.

If anyone else has experience with these or other ceramic back fits please post here, would love to compare notes on this technology. I’ll keep you posted as I learn more and do some homework at Interbike.

BTW my Tsunami aluminum hardtail was a big disappointment so it is on the auction block, if you want a cheap frame at a cheap price, $125 gets you the frame. $160 with an old Chris King headset in it. It has a 24.3″ TT and some extra standover, plus a nice rub spot on the right seatstay cuz the dropouts are crooked and the wheel sits funky in the frame so a few hours on a 2.3 tire rubbed a notch in it. Not broken but it is a weak point. So now you know why it is only $125. Matt black paint that chips off when you look at it funny. 3.5 lbs on my scale.

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Random post of the morning as I start calendar cleanup & Interbike prep.

Thanks to Matt Turgeon of Big Wheel Racing for pimping Ride424 on their sweet rasta looking jerseys!

Cheers
Karl

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Seven straight days of tackling gnarly terrain in BC merits a few comments on the gear I used and how it fared, happily I can say that I did not have a single bike glitch the entire week. Must be the phenomenal skills of my mechanic

1) Wobblenaught bike fit - Ok this is not really “equipment” but it pertains directly to the usability of the most important piece of equipment - the body. I continue to be amazed at how my legs are holding up in races this year, as well as the upper body. Why didn’t I fix my bike fit years ago? Chalk up one more endurance bike race success to WN (WN fit riders are all over MTB endurance race podiums these days). I believe in this system enough that I became a dealer for it so if you are in the Bay area and want a fit, email me.

2) Tires - I ran Kenda Nevegals (2.1 inch) with the Sidewall Shield and did not have one flat all week. I inspected the tires last night and other than the obvious tread wear they look marvelous. The more I ride these tires the more I like them - they were perfect on the singletrack and not overly draggy on the early stages of logging road and fast descents.

3) Shock & fork - I think I had to add air to the Velvet once all week, the 02-RC I never touched. Kept ‘em both cleaned and lubed each night and they gave me plenty of love, the steering on the Velvet was super stiff in the twisty rooted sections.

4) Nutrition - My daily regimen included the following from Hammer Nutrition:
Endurolytes

Whey Protein

Anti-Fatigue Caps

Race Caps

Premium Insurance Caps

For fuel on the bike:

Hammer Gel

Perpetuem

The legs felt stronger as the week wore on and I did not bonk or cramp once. Nuf’ said.

5) Wheels - Since the Spinergy Xyclones went on my bike last January I’ve done a 12 hour, a 24 hour, and the BCBR on them. Dropped them on the truing stand this week and the front was good as new, the rear needed 5 minutes of tension adjustments and it is ready for the second half of the season. Big thanks to Denton at Spinergy for getting some spare spokes in the mail to me on short notice before I left for Canada. They may be collecting dust for a while at the rate I’m going though…

6) Hydration packs - Stuck with my tried & true Hydrapak AS Trail, at 70 oz just the right capacity for the long days but not too bulky.

7) Ergons - I ran the race grips with bar ends think I finally have these figured out, next time I go to BC I’ll bring 2 sets of grips and switch to a narrower one when the singletrack kicks in. They are awesome on fire roads/doubletrack but when you need uber control the large grip just gets in the way for me. Maybe the GX series with the lower profile would work better. The bar ends were very comfy though and I like they shape on them, a thin wrap of sticky tape would help but the fit is right on.

All in all, the gear gets a 5 star rating for the week. Big thanks to all the sponsors for their support.

I monitored the week’s data with my Forerunner 305, I’ll get some of the data uploaded over the next few weeks to share a few thoughts.

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I am often asked how much one needs to train for 24’s, and of course the answer depends on many factors but I thought I would share what my training looked like in the 4 months leading up to the Coolest 24. I finished in 4th place, with 18 laps of 11 miles each. Here is a histogram of the training time for each workout in the 120 days in Jan-April:

Each column is the number of rides between the X-axis value and the value below it. So there were about 40+ days of 0 - 0.1 hrs (ie, no workout). 50+ days of 0.1 - 1 hr, etc.

First thing you’ll note is that I trained 2 days out of 3. Hardly ideal. Pretty much the entire month of February was a waste, due to a perfect storm of fatigue, work, and a home remodel that saw us packing up the family and moving to avoid the posionous fumes of a new hardwood floor. If we take out the big blocks of days off in February (but leave a week and a half of “normal” training) it looks like this:

My daily average improves only slightly from 1.4 to 1.46 hours but I am now riding 70% of the time, only a little better than before. Basically the distribution did not change a lot.

One thing you’ll notice is that I do very few workouts between 2 and 6 hours. For me they simply don’t make sense. A 4 hour ride is too long to be a good interval workout but too short to build any real endurance. So my rides are either intense, or long, but rarely in the middle. I cash in my chips with my wife for about one long ride (or race) per month, and that is it.

The other key is specificity. If I spin, I really spin - 100 rpm plus. If I mash, I really mash - 70 rpm tops. I have become a data slave, to the point where a bevy of naked coeds at the roadside would probably go unnoticed. I divert enough attention to stay safe in traffic, other than that I pretty much stare at the computer the whole ride. Is it fun? Nope. Riding a bike is fun. Training is work. This ride is a good example - note the 20 or so minutes of standing interval work, with an average cadence around 55 rpm:

Just like I try to stay out of the “duration dead zone” I also try to stay out of the cadence dead zone.

On my garage magtrainer workouts I have the advantage of never having to look up from the computer. Probably half my training volume is in the garage. It is wicked efficient - no flats, no red lights, and less effort to get dressed/clean up the bike. Plus I use these tools:

PowerCranks - they add no training time but do add a unique muscle / nervous system stimulation. I am still trying to optimize how much time I spend on these (I think you can do too much time on them) and have a lot left to learn, but so far they seem to really help my pedal stroke.

Here is my other new thing for ‘07 - an altitude generator. It is more or less free speed, from a time standpoint. Just put on the mask and the body adapts. At $1800 the Mag-5 is about the same price as a power meter, but a way better investment of time. It is generally true in life that you have plenty of time or plenty of money, but rarely plenty of both. When I was a starving grad student 300 mile weeks were common. At this juncture in my career I am short on time so I spend the loot to get the tools to help me along.

I keep the generator by the door to the garage so I can use it either on the trainer or sleep with the mask on in the guest room. It makes a slightly funky sound so I don’t schlep it into the house where it will keep my wife awake and the dog spooled up.

The combination of training at altitude, and using the PC’s, is what I call the pain cave. It’s this corner of the garage where I can apply very specific stimuli to the body in search of very specific responses/adaptations. It’s also a mental state, one in which every thought is focused on the day’s stressor, whether it is breathing technique, pedaling technique, power or whatever. It is a far cry from rolling singletrack and enjoying nature, but it is a whorthwhile compromise to be able to ride reasonably well on an average of 8-10 hours per week of training. It ensures that when I do get away, whether for exploration or racing, I get the most out of it.

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Here is the link to my MB upload from the race this weekend -

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/3004637

Did not capture all my laps after the first 7 I was doggin it enough to just hang it up.

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Ok chalk one up as operator error, a few weeks back I was lamenting that only the last 4 hours of a 6 hour ride got captured on the Forerunner 305. Turns out I had the data recording set to every second, and the 4 hour record time is exactly what I should have expected. There is a SmartRecording option that does a better job of only remembering the data that is needed (for example, reducing sample rate for variables that stay constant over a period). That extends the data capture time by a lot although I am not sure yet how long, it is somewhat dependent on your route and how much change is happening as you pedal.

On the MotionBased upload side I corrected the problem it gave me last time, did another upload, and was still told the workout is unviewable due to “system error”, a more generic but equally annoying problem compared to what I got last time. I did it a second time and it worked, here is a look at the output you can get from MB -

Unfortunately I still seem to be getting bogus elevation gain numbers, according to MB I climbed 13K feet in this workout. Not quite. More like 3-4K whic is clear from the charts so I dont know why the output number is so far off.

Here is the chart output from MB. It is static so you can’t home in on part of the workout but that is ok, I have Cyclingpeaks for that.

There may be other ways to slice the data, I think there is a lot left in MB that I have not yet explored. Will keep you posted. I am pretty sure that this ride is publicly viewable if you click here.

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Been waiting on these goodies for a bit, it was Christmas at Ride424 headquarters last night.

I managed to accidentally delete the photo of the Racer X on the scale but take my word for it, it was 6.06 lbs (size large). If that travel on the Velvet looks long, it is. I need to reset the fork down to 100 mm from the current 130. I think that is why the Velvet runs a little heavy - the adjustability requires extra material. Once X-Fusion sees their volume pick up (and it will, this fork is super plush) I suspect they’ll have dedicated travel builds that are a bit lighter. I run the R version, with no stable platform and no on the fly travel adjust. This is the “set it and forget it” version. There are 4 flavors of Velvet, check ‘em out.

More to come as the build continues. If all goes well, maiden voyage is Sunday at Demo Forest.

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Just a quick note following up on the Spinergy front wheel problem, they told me they had not heard of the issue before. Looking at my older Marzocchi Marathon I can see that fork does not have the ridge that the Fox does, so maybe I should have put that one on the Tsunami. Oh well. Should be an easy swap although the Fox is certainly more plush.

After 24 hours on the Kenda Small Block Eights I can say I really like these tires. They hooked up beautifully on the fast course at Cool and were super predictable. Even as the steep climb coming out of the big stream crossing got gooey from all the racers splashing through they never let loose.

I should also show you something fun, the Nevegals with the Sidewall Shield (SWS) have reflective material built in so you look all disco rolling along in the dark.

Our affiliate partner Jenson USA carries both of these tires at around $35, a great deal. Just click the respective text links above. The SWS looks like it is not in the catalog yet as that is a new thing for ‘07.

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Besides being the title of a grooving tune from Garbage this describes my state prior to the Coolest 24. I give up caffeine in the weeks before a 24 to give myself an extra punch at around 1 am when I start using it again. A week before the race, these 2 things showed up in the mail.

It was all I could do not to bust out the grinder and start imbibing.

I met Anthony from Venture Design Works at Interbike a few years back and finally picked up one of their Press Bots. Man what a splendid idea - a gizmo that turns a Lexan Nalgene bottle into a coffee press. The backpacker in me was thrilled, the manic minimalist 24 hr racer in me happy to have gear doing double duty. I tested it out with some 53×11 organic coffee from the folks at Hammer and it brewed up a wonderful cup of coffee - rich, dark, and the press screen did a better job of keeping the grounds out of my mug than many home coffee presses. If you want to buy a Press Bot with a 10% discount just enter “ride424″ as the coupon code when you head over to their online store. If you are a first time Hammer customer click the text link above for your product discount when you order 53×11 coffee. The guys behind the coffee it also run the cycling house.

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Just a quick post on my first experience trying to upload data to Motion Based, as you may know I’ve been using a Forerunner for training data this year (love the device, btw) and I wanted to record the race course at Cool this weekend to share with you.

Well it was a dud, after creating an account (for free) at MB and downloading the MB application, I sync’d to the Forerunner, uploaded the data only to be told that my file was too big and was rejected. I’ll have to dig further into how to make this work but so far it is a shining example of why average consumers reject new technology - stuff that is supposed to work together is in fact too complicated. Motion Based is owned by Garmin! It ought to be plug it in, upload it, view your workout. If the file resolution is too high the server ought to filter it in the background to pare down the data set, then just give advanced users a note to let them know. I also have a hangup about installing MORE software on my laptop after already going through 2 installs (one for the Garmin performance monitor software and another app to detect when the device is plugged in). That is 3 software installs to get data from one GPS unit to the web. AGGHH!!!!

In case you are wondering here is the Cyclingpeaks version of the wrokout in question - somehow the first 2 hours were chopped (first time the Forerunner has misbehaved). This is a great 6 hour ride from my house to Soquel Demo forest, doing Sawpit, Tractor, and Braille Trail:

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