Rudy Project Sterling Helmet- Update

There's a great special on the Rudy Project Sterling helmet on the Rudy Project e-commerce site, www.e-rudy.com. As I mentioned in my review this is an awesome helmet at any price, and on sale for $109 (down from a list of $225) is hard to beat.

http://www.e-rudy.com/index_inner_all_list.php?group_id=5

My review of the Sterling is posted here.

Pine Hill Park- Rutland's Hidden Gem

Over the weekend I made the trek to Rutland to ride in Pine Hill Park. If you're ever in the neighborhood I highly recommend checking it out. There are 16 miles of interconnected and well-marked trails that roll and flow over 300 acres of terrain.

Bridges like the one pictured above are commonplace on the trails, and the man-made centerpiece is the 100 ft long suspension bridge.


I make it a point to make the trip to ride these trails at least a couple times a year. They're fairly close to home and the combination of well-built trails and fast-draining soil means that it's accessible later into the fall and earlier in the spring. It's also town land so there's no hunting allowed.

For more information visit www.pinehillpark.org.

Julien Absalon, Part 2

I ran across this video whilst geeking out.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympic_games/world_olympic_dreams/8823051.stm

What strikes me is what his mechanic says about his tires- there are 10 different sets to choose from with varying widths and compounds. That's quite a tire quiver.

Shoulder Season Riding, or How to Avoid the Dreaded Muffin Top

The end of the cycling season is always an interesting time. Most recreational riders pick the end of their season based on when they decide that the weather has gotten too cold for them to ride comfortably outdoors. By November, you’re pretty likely to only see pretty serious riders out and about in New England.

Riding this time of year can be fun- it’s unstructured, flexible and entirely determined by what the most enjoyable option is. In my current mindset that’s mountain biking, and fortunately we’ve had a pretty snow-free November and I’ve been able to sneak in a few more rides.

For me (and this blog is after all, about me) this can be a tough time as it’s hard to find a groove or establish a routine when the weather is in transition. The shoulder seasons are brutal in Vermont because there’s often nothing to do outside since the conditions are often shitty for both riding and skiing. I’m also not very good at changing gears.

Somewhere in the bike-to-ski transition I always pick some extra ballast, usually because of my Grandmother’s excellent Christmas cookies or my mother-in-law's pecan pie. My rides this time of year are best described as obesity resistance intervals. There is no specific focus for each workout other than making sure I can button my pants throughout the holiday binge eating season.

Moots YBB X0 10 Speed

Here it is after I got the 10 speed kit installed. I went for the all black version of the X0 kit with the exception of the XX crank which I chose for its narrower 155 q factor. I also went for a KMC X10SL-Ti chain which has performed amazingly well in my brief tests.

The ti frame is very subtle, and the black gruppo adds to the understated nature of the bike. The two things that pop are the white Ergon GX1 grips and my gold KMC chain. I've also gone with some alt placement for my pro-35 stickers which hopefully doesn't make it look hokey or overdone.

My initial impressions of the group are very good. I went for a couple short rides over the weekend and had to relearn the gear spacing. The 2x is great for racing, but I'm still figuring out which gears to use when I would have normally been in the 32t middle ring up front but have to choose a 26 or 39 up front.

Moots YBB Post VT 50, Pre 10 Speed

For several weeks I've threatened to get my YBB cleaned up and rolling again so I can get some time on it before the snow flies. In true obsessive fashion it wasn't just cleaning and lubing the bike since that would have taken about ten minutes, but rather cleaning, lubing and installing a new 10 speed Sram X0 drivetrain.

Here's the starting point- dirty but well-functioning and still covered with a mix of dust, dirt and dried energy drink spatter. Regardless of what parts selection I run I've always been happy with this bike. It is the smoothest and most predictable mountain bike I've ever owned, and that group includes top-flight race machines from Specialized, Trek and Gary Fisher.

Since I was seventeen I've wanted a Moots YBB, and in 2007 I got one. It's been my number one mountain bike ever since, and I liked the brand enough to sell my Serotta Legend Ti and get a custom Vamoots CR built to replace it.

Julien Absalon

I took this picture of Julien Absalon at the Windham round of the World Cup. 4x World Champion, 2x Olympic Champion, 17 World Cup Wins and countless other cross country victories make him a living legend. In Windham he had a string of mechanicals and dropped out of contention, but he made a huge effort to climb back from the middle of the pack to the top 10 by the end of the day. He was in full flight and rode this short technical section with the remarkable skill you'd expect from a rider of his stature.

2010 Season Analysis: Power Output Part 2

The downside of ending your season on a low point is the lingering aftertaste of a poor performance. I won't race my mountain bike again until May, and that's six months away, so I have six months to let the memories of a poor last race rattle around in my head.

I've defined mountain bike racing as my primary goal, and my mountain bike results this year were pretty good. When I look at my season like that I feel like Al Franken's Stuart Smalley character from Saturday Night Live with his empty self-important affirmations like "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me!"

In previous posts I've mentioned my Powertap and there's no question that it's been a huge asset for me and has helped me improve over the last two seasons. The downside of having it on the road bike is that I get an incomplete picture of my summer fitness because 40-60% of my rides, most of my hard efforts and all of my races are on the mountain bike.

Looking back, I think my ride on September 11, ironically enough, was one of my best of the season. I stormed up the climb to Trapps and felt like I was flying. My plan was to race that weekend, but a mild concussion and a severely bruised nose earlier in the week derailed my plans. If I had made it out to the race I would have had incredible form, but that's still not a guarantee of performance since any number of external factors can keep an athlete from performing up to their potential on a given day.

Here's a look at my power graph for that day. You can see that I set a new record for 10 minute power which was recorded on the ascent of Trapp Hill Road.

When I compare those numbers to my earlier post you can see that my short term power output was way lower in November than it was in September. Considering that 'cross is all about short term power it's really no surprise that my results started to slide as well. This is only a piece of the puzzle, but it's interesting to note the difference in some fitness indicators before two very different performances. The 10 minute power output from that ride is also from the ascent of Trapp Hill Road and it's pretty far from my best.

The Best Part....

The best part of Saturday's race at the Harpoon Brewery was this after the finish.

Now I'm starting the beginning of a much needed rest period. One week of no exercise and completely off the dietary wagon. When bike geeks go off the wagon, look out- it's a blitzkrieg on whatever was off-limits during the season. The non-cyclists in our lives are always taken by surprise because we've conditioned them to expect salads, light beer and no desert, so when it's pizza, burritos, sundaes and pitchers (often at the same sitting) they don't know how to handle it. In the five years I've known my wife she's still surprised when I suggest pizza as a dinner option. To be fair there's Christmas, Thanksgiving, and a week of full-on binge eating, so 9 days out of 365 still makes salads and seltzer 97.5% of the time, so I can understand her thought process.

The week after I finished the Hampshire 100 I had a large cookie everyday for lunch for three days in a row. I didn't have it with my lunch, it was my lunch.

Anyone want to race to the bottom of a bag of Doritos? I've been doing sodium tolerance intervals and my MSG threshold is up 400 calories over last season.

Pulling the Plug

My vision for this weekend's races was this: Francis Mourey in full flight.

Instead I promptly made my way to the back of the field on the first lap and stayed there the whole race. I went flat out and was able to hold same consistent miserable gap the whole race.

In that 45 minutes of racing it all became clear: I'm burned out. I've been training seriously since June without more than 4 days off the bike in a row. This 'cross season I've been training well but I'm still going backwards with things progressively worse every race weekend.

The good news is I still love the sport, I'm just not into racing right now. I'll still ride until the snow flies, then throw myself into skiing with the myopic focus you'd expect from a true obsessive like myself.

A few weeks ago I had a conversation with my friend Jason about improving at endurance racing. His experience taught him that a break was critical to improving year over year. As I thought about the last few seasons I noticed a distinct pattern: that I get way into three sports (mtb, 'cross, and nordic) and end up not improving at any of them. There are guys that are good at mountain biking and 'cross, and there are guys that are mountain biking and skiing, but there aren't any guys that are good at mountain biking, 'cross and skiing. Winter here is way too long not to ski, so next year I'm going to do an abbreviated 'cross season like most normal people and hang it up in October before the weather goes completely pear shaped.

Endurance mountain bike racing is my primary goal, so I'm going to treat it that way and scale back everything else.

Maybe I should clean off my mountain bike and take it for a few rides before the snow flies. I've got that brand new 10 speed X0 group still sitting in a box just waiting for some attention...and I'm sorry to say that the YBB hasn't been ridden or even cleaned since the 50.