About 3 weeks ago I went for a cross country ride in the Chattahoochee National Forest along the Pinhoti trail. There was some awesome singletrack and it was a pretty challenging ride. Was great prep for the Snake Creek Gap Time Trial that I did last weekend. I’ll be going back one of the next two weekends to get more training. Zoey had a great time as well and rocked out for all 15 miles. She made fun of me the whole time for going so slow, running up and down the hills as I was pedaling my ass off. I only was able to outpace her on the fireroad descent on the way back to the car. I think her max speed is ~15mph and I was going 20+. Been uploading my rides to garmin connect. Pretty cool tool for mapping rides and especially useful to see how much of a better shape I’m in now. http://connect.garmin.com/activity/21292424

Did my first MTB race this morning. Damn it was fun. It was the Snake Creek Gap Time Trial run by the NWGA Sorba chapter. Snake Creek Gap is on the Pinhoti trail and the time trial is 17 miles of singletrack along the trail. The trail was everything from nice climbs to awesome downhills to crazy crazy rock gardens like I’ve never seen. About 2700ft vertical feet of climbing over the 17 miles.

The day started out way cold. 24 degree temperature with wind chill at 12. Brrr. The trail started with a fairly easy but long climb all the way to the top of the mountain. I didn’t push hard as I was unsure of myself over the distance, so I did a bunch of granny gear spinning, and I felt really good as we got to the top. Shitty news was that the GoPro screwed up again, so no video. Sending that thing back next week. There was some absolutely rocking downhill after this. Everything from a few switchbacks to rocks hidden under leaves. Wish I had the camera. After the downhill, climbed a rough fire road to the 1/2 way point and had some water and fig newtons.

From here, the trail got way hard. Rocks here, rocks there, rocks everywhere. Uphill on rocks, downhill on rocks, man lots of rocks I cleared a lot of the climbs and all of the downhills. Only had 1 fall and it was pretty much at no speed as I didn’t carry enough speed and the front tire got caught on a boulder. Again, did a lot of granny gear spinning instead of trying to push a lower gear, which was a great idea considering my current level of fitness. There was also a decent bit of hike a bike, including a big uphill section that was straight damn uphill. I got passed by a couple of the “money class” riders and even they walked it.

Got to the top of that climb, to the cell towers, and the rest of the way was downhill. Some gravel, some singletrack, and then the last mile was pavement. I pushed on these, and ended up with a 31.5mph top speed on the road.

My original goal was “to finish”. I finished in right under 3 hours, which isn’t bad at all. I’ll be back for the February time trial, and I’ll be able to push more on all the climbs. New Goal? 2:30, which would put me into the Top 3 in my class. We’ll see what happens!

I’ve been wanting a bike repair stand since I’ve gotten more into mountain biking. Makes no sense to send the bike off to the bike shop each time it needs some adjustments done, or even if it needs some more in depth service. The thing that is annoying is that a decent repair stand is $150 or so. Anything cheaper then that, and the clamp is going to suck and its going to be very unstable. Its not that I’m too cheap to spend $150, quite the contrary but its just a few pieces of metal and a clamp, and I’ve been itching to play with my welder anyways.

I got inspiration and the clamp design from Jake Khuon and his DIY repair stand but decided to change the stand part of it, as I have a welder and have been itching to use it. Instead of using a mounting flange and a big piece of wood, I used 2 45 degree bends and a T to make the feet for my stand. Ends up functioning just like the expensive store bought stands. Since everything is screwed together, I needed to make sure the T fitting didn’t rotate with the 45 degree fittings, as that is the main base of my stand. Here is where the welder came in. If you don’t have access to a welder, I bet that gooping JB weld onto the threads and all over that fitting would do the trick as well. I used some old radiator hose I had laying around to make the cushion for the seat post (instead of inner tube like Jake), as well as on the bottom of the stand to cushion it off the floor for stability. All I have left is to spray some flat black paint all over it, but I’ll do that when its sunny and nice outside one weekend.

Edit: I ended up using a piece of pipe and a rubber hose to make the clamp instead of the wood in the pictures. The wood was just ghetto, and the welded on piece of pipe functions perfectly, and I really like it. After using it for a while, I like my stand better then even the $150 stands, as it’s super stable. As stable as the bigass bike shop permanent stands.

I practiced some welds on pieces of scrap metal and then got to work on my pipe fittings. The welds came out pretty good. I haven’t bought the gas setup yet, so I was using Flux wire, which usually makes pretty ugly welds, but I was able to get some decent beads layed down. I’m looking forward to getting the gas setup and using the regular wire to get cleaner welds. Then it will be on to project #2 and #3, the fire system install in the race car, and a tire rack for my trailer.

The bike in the pics below is my old one, the new Trek is all packed up in the car ready for its night ride tomorrow, so I didn’t feel like busting it out just to get pics. I didn’t want to have my new $2k bike hanging on the bike rack in the work parking lot, so I took the wheels off and put it in the hatch. I’ll take some later once I get it dirty

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• View the pictures using a Picasa slideshow instead

So I decided to pull the trigger on my new mountain bike. I went to the local bike shop, Free Flite, and demoed the Trek Fuel EX8. It is a real nice bike, and a bit pricey, so I figured I might as well try it out for real before putting my $$ in. Took the demo to Blankets Creek and had some fun. The bike is a whole new ballgame coming from my Giant hardtail. The rear shock absorbs all the imacts, roots, rocks, etc that used to hit my butt. With that, I was way less tired after my normal Dwelling loop. I then got on my hardtail and did another loop just to see what the back to back differences were. I was nowhere near as fast on the Giant and sections I just breezed through in the middle of the rear ring on the Trek, I had to almost use the granny gear to get through. Wow! The brakes on the Trek are also incredible. I always thought the mechanical Avid disks that came on the Giant were awesome, but these Elixir brakes blow them away. There is almost no lever pressure to get them to stop, and the are nice and progressive.

I headed right back to the bike shop and bought my new bike; Got the satin black paint instead of white. I did have the shop install my new SLX crank, as well as the rear cassette as they were both upgrades over what came on the Trek. Might as well use those on the nicer bike instead of on my Giant. After bringing the bike home, I set the shock air pressures, made all the cockpit adjustments and made sure all the bolts were tight.

This morning I headed out for the bike’s maiden voyage at Blankets. I wanted to get some trail miles on it before I headed up to Pinhoti on monday. The brakes needed to get bedded in and I wanted to make sure all the cables were stretched out. Instead of taking it on the Advanced trails, I just did a loop through the Dwelling trail. I wanted to take it easy and rest up for monday. As I figured, everything was perfect and it was a fun, easy ride. http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=429441 Can’t wait for monday!