My Side Door

The Kona 24 hours in the Old Pueblo is a 24 hour mountain bike race down near Tuscon that is on February 16, 2008.  Robert, Chris Z, and I have agreed we’re doing the event together as a team.  We need to find a 4th (at least, it would be a good idea if we did), but otherwise, we are all committed.  When doing the event as a team, the event takes on a relay format.  One rider does a lap, and hands the baton to the next rider, and so on. 

Having done it before as a 4-man team, I’m going to guess we’ll probably do around 16 laps.  It’s tough to say though, as when I did this event before, the course was 17 miles long, and now it’s been shortened a bit to 15 miles.  And not knowing who our 4th rider will be (assuming we get one), doesn’t make this guessing game any easier.  Robert will definitely learn a lot about himself in the event, as he’s never really done any type of distance racing.  Knowing what it feels like to be running on pure cardio, because you’ve burned every last bit of quick energy out of your system is what this type of event is all about.  That and riding at 2 am, when it’s 30 degrees outside, and your cold, tired, and it’s pitch black outside.

My last entry into the event was back in 2004.  Our 4-man team completed 18 laps to finish in 12th place out of 86 teams, so we were pretty happy with our results.

Robert needs to get busy getting some miles in so that the event doesn’t kill him, but I think Chris and I are already in good enough shape that we can each complete at least 4 decent laps without much worry.  Should be a good time, but we have lots to do to get ready for this event in less than 4 months.

Chris Z has been prodding me a bit to consider entering the 25th Annual El Tour de Tuscon, which is coming up on November 17th.  He’s planning to do the 109 mile length, which will be his personal longest ever ride in one day.  I think he’s done the MS 150 a number of times, but that’s a 2 day event.

We rode together on Sunday, doing 45 miles or so, and felt pretty good doing it.  I don’t think either felt significantly faster than the other, as we stayed together easily, and for the most part just moved along at a comfortable pace for each of us.  I felt reasonably good at the end of Sunday’s ride, so I’m giving the Tour de Tuscon some serious consideration.  109 miles in one stretch on a road bike would be similar to the 52 miles in one stretch I did for the Tour of the White Mountains on my mountain bike.  I’d probably finish the 109 miles in a very similar time, and feel about the same when I was done…dog tired, but alive.  And since my mountain bike is currently out of commission, this would give me even more encouragement to ride my road bike, with a bit of a very near term goal.

I dunno.  I’m thinking about it is about all I can say right now.

Regardless, we’re loosely planning some more training rides this weekend, and that’ll probably help me decide how strong I feel.  I’ll have to get a feel from Jan whether she wants to take a weekender to Tuscon, as that would definitely help if she could be there.

Over on MTBR I posted this ride report.  There’s no sense in re-hashing the whole thing here, so just click on over.  Yesterrday (and why I’ve waited this long to post here), they posted the results. Of 30 finishers in my category, I finished 27th.  That doesn’t sound great, until you consider how many DNFs there had to have been.  I mean look at the pre-race photo with nearly everyone starting.  I figure close to 100 started, so that means something like 50  or so must have DNFed.

That makes me a feel a little better.  I’m still pretty stoked to have finished.  That was a tough ride.  I’m somewhat glad my friend Chris didn’t go with me.  He wasthinking the 41 might be all he could handle, and I’d have done that with him.  The 41 would have been no challenge (at least to finish), while the 52 had me concerned through the first quarter of the race that I might not finish.  Plus, the only part I got lost in was a section that the 52 does differently than the 41.  What fun would it have been, if I didn’t get lost like everyone else?

My bike, on the other hand, is feeling the effects of age.  Both my front and rear wheel are basically shot.  So this week, I did some research and settled on a set of Industry Nine wheels.  These are the new “latest thing” in chi-chi things for your bike, and so, of course, I need a set.  Unfortunately it’s going to be a while.  Speedgoat says 6-8 weeks before they are in. 

To the untrained eye, these probably don’t look all that special (aside from the red color), but looking closely, you’ll notice that the spokes attach to the hub in a very different and unique way.  Well, not that unique, because the Mavic CrossMax wheels attach similarly, but compared to a “standard” hub, these spokes are unique.  A standard spoke attaches to the hub via an eyelet that requires the spoke to have a J-bend at the end.  The spoke slides through the eyelet, and the J-bend allows the spoke to make the 90 degree turn it needs to.  In order for the spoke to be strong enough to be bent and still take all of the stress it has to, the spoke is thicker.  High end spokes are thicker at the ends, and then thinner in the middle, but they still suffer from breakage at the ends, due to the bend.

An advantage with the Industry Nine hub, is in the weight savings they can have, at the same or even higher strength, in comparison to a traditional hub.  With no J-bend, the spokes can be a bit thinner, making each spoke lighter, while still providing the same or higher strength.  That alone is a huge benefit.  But another benefit of the Industry Nine hub is in how quickly they engage thanks to their internal pawl design.  My CrossMax’s engage after about 8 degrees of wheel rotation.  On technical climbing sections, that’s very noticable, and at times a bit frustrating, as you lose some of your stomping power waiting for the hub to engage, especially while trying to get over a tricky rock or ledge.  If you wanted better, Chris King makes beautiful hubs with engagement in 5 degrees.  For over a decade, they were indeed the King.  But now Industry Nine has come along and done them 2 degrees better, with engagement in just 3 degrees.  Oh, and these new hubs are even lighter than the King hubs…simply amazing.

My only concern about the new hubs is that I can’t get the rim I wanted to lace them to.  That would have been a Mavic XM 819.  Why that rim?  Because it’s a UST rim, and thus well suited to going tubeless.  Instead, I’ll be learning how to get the equipped DT XR 4.1 to hold air without tubes.  DT provides a tubeless kit, which I’m getting, and hopefully it works better than I’ve read from some reports.

The final bit of fun, required by the new wheelset, is that these are disc brake wheels.  My bike has always had V-Brakes, so along with the new wheels comes new disc brakes.  I chose the Formula Oro Puro disc brakes, because they are light weight, and they have received nearly perfect reviews from everyone that’s ever used them and offered up an opinion.  The Formula’s are a relative newcomer, just like Industry Nine, so I guess I’m on the bleeding edge with regard to my new brakes as well.  Hopefully all installs well, here in a month or two.

For now, I’m going to focus on a bit more road riding.  I took the Orbea out for 45 miles yesterday, and a brief 26 miler today.  I like riding my road bike, I just don’t like riding it while having to share the road with cars.  Yesterday’s ride felt very good.  Much better than the same ride from 3 weeks ago, so it looks like I must be getting a little bit more fitness, which is certainly nice.

If you are at all interested in what’s going on at Interbike this year, the guys at Speedgoat have got a spectacular blog running this year.  I’m subscribed to their blog, and have been blown away with all of the great industry info they’ve been publishing.  I think I’m most interested in more news about the new Pivot, which is a new bike built by Chris Cocalis formerly of Titus.  Since I ride a Titus Racer-X, custom designed by Chris himself, what he’s doing with the Pivot has definitely caught my attention.

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I had intended a nice long mountain bike ride today, until I went into the garage and realized my mountain bike was still over at Robert’s house after he took it up to Pinetop and back for me last weekend.  Unable to give up the notion of riding today, and unwilling to go over at 6:30am and potentially wake Robert up, I broke out my road bike.  It needed some dusting off (literally).

It took a few minutes to find a spare tube, inflate the tires, lube the chain, and generally feel like it was a good idea to ride I bike I hadn’t ridden in over a year.  In the end, I wasn’t on the road until after 7:30.

I decided to ride the ride I almost always ride on the weekend with my road bike.  Up to Cave Creek and back.  Google maps says the route was 43 miles.  If you haven’t used Google Maps lately, you should.  It’s become a sweet tool, and I think it’s now better than Mapquest.  Mapquest had some extra features for a while (like having multiple stops), but Google Maps is all the way there, and then some.  The feature I like the best is the ability to drag a section of the route around.  It’s hard to describe, so just go to Google Maps and play with it.

43 miles on a road bike isn’t supposed to be that hard…especially for someone planning to do 52 miles on a mountain bike in a month.  I finished the ride, but at the end, I was definitely spent.  What I learned today is that I’ve got a fair bit of work to do in just 30 days, if I want to complete the Tour of the White Mountains.  Lofty goals are a good thing, right?