ride and trail maintenance

On Saturday some riding @ my new local trail network Gambrill park and the watershed… starting to find my way around a bit better… I rode with Jeff Dicky (also a UNH alumni) and some of his riding buddies… I think there was 7 of us and between all of us there was 5 flats and two torn off derailleurs. Most of the riding there isn’t too technical but there is a lot of sharp rocky sections that cause flats. I think every other ride I have been on up there so far I have got a flat tire... so the day before are ride I went to the local bike shop here in town Wheel Base to pick up some extra tubes and a mini-pump. I bought this topeak pump…

It was a petty reasonably priced pump and it was put through the test last weekend… It seems to work really well… I am happy with the investment

Then on Sunday I did some trial maintenance in Gambrill park. It was nice to meet some people. Their seems to be a pretty passionate group of mountain bikers in the area.

Move

Moved to Frederick MD… some good riding here... Gambrill State Park is about 7 miles from where I am living.

winter should be a bit less brutal here than Maine so hopefully i will be able to ride more...

The Trail of Two Lakes, SERIES FINAL, Mount Snow, W.Dover, VT

The Trail of Two Lakes, SERIES FINAL, Mount Snow, West Dover, VT

Sept 20, 2009


I thought I saw about 15 names on the registration but I must horrible at counting because I think only 7(?) of us were at the start line… officially the smallest turn out of the year (in the root 66 series pro /cat1)…

there were some huge turn outs in the beginning of the season...30+ feilds… some big names… regional fast guys…cycling dirt was doing interviews and race coverage…I was styked about the progress…and I thought the root 66 series was becoming a big deal and mountain biking was making a comeback… but progress really slowed down for these last few races…attendance got pretty low…but still progress I suppose because it was on average still better than previous years (@ least in the pro/cat1 category)…

anyways…. back to the race…

I liked the course…it was three, 6 mile laps... each lap was about twice as long as the east cup race I had raced earlier in the year...there were several new sections that I had never raced before at mount snow…the fact that the conditions were like perfect was probably a large factor in why I i enjoyed racing this course so much …it was just how I like it… dry and cool (65 degrees)… Most of the races this year have been supper muddy…I believe this is only the second race of the 13 races I did in the series that I didn’t get covered in mud …the other being fat tire classic…and that one was wicked hot.

I had an ok race...I was very close to getting a 3rd place and getting my first podium of the year… i had a 40 second gap on 4th place … but just before the last lap decent I got a flat and was passed by 3 or 4 guys…putting me in last or second to last….i was a bit of a bummed but I suppose not a big deal in the larger scheme of things.

Seamus Powell won the race

This was the last race of the root 66 series so the overall results and winners were determined…in my category(pro/cat1) here’s how it looked…

1 Seamus Powell
2 John Foley
3 Mike Mooradian
4 Mike Joos
5 Kevin Hines
6 Joshua Wilcox
7 Mike Rowell
8 Nathan Ringquist
9 Thom Parsons
10 Greg Carpenter

congratulations Seamus!!! he got really fast this year.

It’s the end of the racing season for me…but I still hope to do a lot more riding with friends and bike trips…next week I am going to WA DC to a wedding and bringing my bike along… hopefully their are some nice trails down there to rip.

Landmine Classic/GT Golden Bike , Hingham, MA

It was about 75 degrees and sunny….Trails were muddy and had some big puddles from the rain the previous day…

It was a GT golden bike race…there was the gold bike, a GT booth and a whole crew of cheer leaders who did a dance and cheer before the start of are race…Which felt a little bazaar to me…normally the only females you see at mountain bike races are the occasional girlfriend or wife of a male mountain bikers who might race themselves...but they rarely wear skimpy outfits or dance around.

I think 18 started in my category (pro/cat1…which is a little lower than average for this year)… I was expecting more considering that the race was so close to Boston, a central location for many.

i went from leading the race … then fell to 3rd… then fell to 6th and by about 3 miles in to the 26 mile race I was 7th... I think that is how I finished unless someone dropped out or got lost in front of me… which is a good possibility considering all the rocky fast sections and all the turns and overlapping the course did…more turns arrows and road crossings than any other race ive done.

the 49 year old x national chanp Kevin Hines won… my ex team mate and riding buddy Andrew Freye was in a close battle for 2nd with John Foley which he lost after a slip up on one of the wet bridges…team mate John Burns had a good race finished 5th?

The next race is the series finally and the last race I plan to do this year…it will be at mount snow again…it will be my 3rd time racing there this year… and with out Kabush and the 80% rule I will be able to do the whole race with out getting pulled …. Yay!!!

weekend at kingdonm trails

the parking lots were packed...it was crowded with mtn. bikers

Rode with Brent, John, Andrew on Saturday for 6 hours

Brent...the one in orange... we met up with him after he had just won and set a course record climbing the Burke mountain access road...congratulations!!!
Andrew
Burns

Then on Sunday i rode with Matt, Ryan, Shelia and lee for 6 hours

Matt
Ryan
Sheila
Lee

went in the river after both rides...


it was a fun weekend... hopefully i will be able to get up there once more before things start getting too cold

pads

Norcross Scurry race did a number on my break pads…

August 29 Norcross Scurry, Ashford, CT

Almost missed this race… I assumed it was on Sunday because most races are … I figured it out @ one AM the day of the race while reading Thom parson’s blog that the race was on Saturday (thanks for mentioning it Thom).

This was a new race in the series…I liked it ...it was windy and pretty fast with some rock gardens thrown in… well… it would have been fast if the trail wasn’t covered in a thick blanket of mud from the tropical storm that had been going on all day.

Turn out was the lowest I had seen all year…the rain I'm assuming was a large contributor to that…only 9 in the pro/cat1 open category… think all categories were low.

I was in 5th for the first lap then moved into 4th after John Foley flatted… I finished in 4th…

I think Mike Mooradian won again... Honorable mention to John Foley for getting two flats and not finishing far behind me in 6th… John is good at riding in mud… it seems like every muddy race we do he finished like 10 min in front of me…

I took a dip in this pond after the race…the water was surprisingly warm…it felt good

after the race.

Start/finish

I had made plans the day before with Andrew Freye to put up some of my art work in the Starbucks he works at but when I made the plans I didn’t know that I was going to be racing that day…so after the race I rushed home…took a quick shower …unloaded all the bike stuff packed all the art stuff…drove to Starbucks an hour north and had just enough time to get my artwork up before they closed at 8 pm.

I think it turned out good (thanks Andrew)

the case of the flat tires

Did some detective work to figure out why I had a flat issues at my last race…I checked the two tubes that went flat and discovered that one of them was from a puncture on the outside (thorn glass or sharp rock) and the other from the inside ( a problem with my rim or rim strip)… I thought I was dealing with one serial puncture…. but I was wrong….two puncture causers were working together to foil my race.

I did some more sleuthing to find a sharp area where the loop of the wheel came together…I sanded down the sharp spot. put a new rim strip on and checked for sharp objects in my tire

Hopefully this mystery is solved… if I get another flat at the Norcross Scurry race this weekend I will reopen the case.

Bike for Bovines moutain bike/day hike race

Stonewall Farm,
Keene, NH

I had heard bad things about this course so I wasn’t expecting much… but I think it was a pretty nice course… it kinda reminded me of races I’ve done out west in Colorado…long gradual climbs and decents but there was more roots and mud than the CO courses I had done.

We did 2 laps on a 13 mile course …I flatted on the first lap most of the way through… I had been doing ok up to that point I was in the top 5 (I think) … I fell to last after the flat…I fixed it and still had motivation to ride fast … I felt I might be able to pick off one or two other pros before finishing….then I flatted a second time half way through the second lap…I had used up my tube and co2’s so on the first flat so I was unable to fix it…there must have been something wrong with my rim strip because I had had a flat a few days before on the same wheel…

example of a messed up rim strip

I felt it was bad luck to get a flat in the dead center of the longest course I have done in years… if I had known a way to cut the course, dnf and get back to the start/finish faster I would have done that but I didn’t so I walked the course… I tried running a few times but its pretty annoying hitting the back of your leg on the pedal… the last few miles were on really flat old rail road trails that I felt comfortable slowly riding on with out messing up my rim.

I came in about 50 min after everyone else… as soon as I came through the finish officials announced that results were now posted for the men pro category… it was nice of them to wait for me...

i think 12 pros started , 3 DNFed, I came in 9th and Mike Mooradian won

Race Reports...why?

Race reports?

sometimes writing race-reports make me feel like a needy child ”hey mom look at me”…”look what I did, I finished 38th at a bike race” (said in a squeaky high pinched voice)…

I hope that one day i won’t be at the mercy of needing others approval… I will just be able to sit, naked, Indian style on top of a cliff all day and be happy with who I am and not feel any need to prove anything to anyone….because I don’t want to be doomed to a life of feeling the need to flex in the mirror and google myself all the time …i don't want to constancy feel the need to determine my self worth based on how popular i am or how fast of a bike rider i am.

for example...if I did have a lower back tat I would like to be in a metal place where I wouldn’t feel self conscious about it…that’s the type of attitude I want to have but I think I am still far from accomplishing that.

i’ve got this counter on this blog so I can check to what degree i am accepted on a daily basis … it is just another example of how I am at the mercy of others view of me.

my conclusion… race reports are cries for attention…personally I am using them like training wheels till I can accept myself with out the approval of others... but as i mentioned in a earlier post human are social animals so I'm not sure if it is possible to change the way we are wired...it would probably be easier to accept the fact that i need the approval and attention of others than it would be to learn to not need anyone's approval.