New Contacts.

I posted a while ago that the guys from Giant here in Queensland had set me up with new bars and a new seat post for my Anthem. I hadn't really had any time to put some miles in on the bike so I have waited this long to review my thoughts. Now after a 6 hour race, a couple of long rides and a short course XC race I think I can make some informed commentary.
The items in question are the Contact SLR versions which both happen to be carbon. There were a couple of reasons for wanting to try the carbon bars and post out and not the least of which was the weight savings so I'll address that first. The carbon post made a saving of 80 grams over the stock unit and that represented a saving of about 30%. Whether that is worth the $340 retail price is something only the individual can comment on. The finish and adjustment facilities on the post are fantastic, it looks hot and it is light. There is of course the fact that a 30% saving on any component would make most riders pretty bloody happy.

Now the bars. Wow. The stock units were 250 grams. The SLR's were 125 grams. Thats right, 50% lighter. Same width as my old bars, 31.8 clamp, half the weight. Again the finish on the bars is top notch with a nice textured area for the stem to clamp to and alloy turned bar ends to protect them from strikes or the odd bad leaning spot. The value is good with these too. $130 is the business. I run my bars at 620mm wide and luckily that is what the bars come as stock. So now to some performance notes.

The post does it's job. Whether or not the carbon offers the extra damping it is purported to in this application is impossible to say. It's a 4 inch travel 29er for farks sake. I can't tell the difference. As I said though, it is light and the adjustment functions well. And it's carbon. Cool.
The bars on the other hand have provided me some great results all round. I can definitely say that my wrists are not suffering from the soreness I have become used to on 4 plus hour rides. I swapped the grips straight across from my old bars and have been using the same gloves for some time. I can't say I feel any more flex than I did with the old alloy bars and I have certainly given them a good reefing during repeated sprints in the short course race I did last week. I'm not known for my finesse in these situations either. Rather I have been likened to a gorilla trying to open a jar of jam. No subtlety and often a messy result. I do really like the bars.... Now 620mm might not be wide enough for bigger guys. It just isn't that wide. These are firmly aimed at racer boy and girl though and lets be honest, they are all weedy little units with no shoulders. Just kiddin'.
So the wash up is that I knocked 205 grams off the bike. I am really happy with that and it gets me down to 11.6 kg ready to race. I will report on the longevity later in the year and give more thoughts on how the gear is holding up. With a 4 hour, a 6 hour, a 24 hour and a marathon all before the end of June it should show up any weaknesses. Lets hope the rider can keep up.

Summer Cup lovin'.

Yesterday I had a crack at my first ever short course cross country mountain bike race. Before this the shortest race I had done was a 6 hour race. It's a lot different.....
To start with you can just throw a few things together and head out to race. It isn't like the days of preparation for a 24 hour race and I found myself standing around before we left wondering what I had forgotten! Three water bottles, check. Spare tube, check. Helmet, gloves, lights (the race didn't start till 6:15pm), check. That can't be all I need, is it all I need? Crikey! This is easy!
The car was still chokkas though. Alison and the boys were coming with me and so there we had the boys bikes in the car, chairs, an esky with some snacks, aargh! It was easy. I love having them out with me though. There is nothing like the cheers your kids can give you. It got even better as the sun went down because they had glow sticks and so I was getting a light show each time I crossed the start finish line. Good stuff.
Anyway, so the race. I raced B grade which was 4 laps. My 2 goals for the day were to go as hard as I could for the whole 4 laps and treat the race as a maximum effort session and to not get lapped! I was seriously worried about going into  B grade as I am not that fast or strong at present. Usually it takes me the best part of 10k's to warm up and this race was only about 12k long. I lined up and waited while the A grade race was started, they were let go first to make sure there would be less traffic for them up front and to hopefully allow the B grade race to have a little less competition for track space. It worked pretty well n the whole and really the only problem was the first lap as is the case in every race I have ever done. The hooter went and we were off. There was a sprint into the first corner and really I should have gone harder there. There were few passing opportunities on the course and my first lap was really slow and when I got clear course my times reflected that. I slogged around in 13 minutes for 3k in amongst a big bunch of much slower riders. As I crossed the start/finish line though there is a short uphill where the track opens up and when I hit that I gassed it. I got 4 riders in that one move and managed to put my heart rate through the roof. The next section was a flowing descent through some switchbacks and into a slight rise to another short descent. Now this is racing and I would never ride like this otherwise but I sat so close to the rider in front of me I could hear him breathing. The pressure payed off and he binned it in a corner trying to stay ahead of me before the second of the passing chances in the back half of the course. It's only a tiny bit of fire trail again on a rise but I was in a prime position if I could gun it and get another two riders. I managed to get one of them.
I settled into a group of riders about the same pace as me for the next lap. I managed to keep connected and just stay smooth and get some breath back. It was a much quicker lap than my first one but took less out of me because I could keep a steady effort on rather than having to sprint every chance I got to make up places. The middle of the lap saw my best passing move though. I smacked it through a grassy section and out sprinted two guys and pulled a ballsy move over a drop off to beat a third rider into the corner at the start of a section of single track. He slowed to roll the drop and I launched it. I found out later it was someone who knew me. He tried for the rest of the race to catch me and only blew one corner to give me a bit of breathing space. Our times were almost identical. Onya Jeremy! It was fun and you kept me honest.
The last lap was just a case of keeping the work rate as high as I could manage and keep pushing. Once Jeremy had dropped back a bit I ended up behind the eventual winner of the B grade females race and while she was setting a great pace and there were no real passing opportunities I was happy to stay put. I must say her pace was excellent and she picked great lines. and she told jokes the whole way around! Nice.
So I finished the race in 44:14 and with an average speed of 16.28km/hr. The link shows the slow first lap and the much more respectable lap times after that. So my lessons are as follows for short course racing:

1. Sprint your guts out for the start. Hit the single track first or its a slow lap for you matey!
2. Pick good lines and stay smooth.
3. You don't need a water bottle for 12km races. Drink a bit before hand and you'll be sweet.
4. Have top cheer squad.
5. Smile, have fun and don't take it too seriously. It's a mountain bike race, you're not solving world hunger or curing cancer.

So here's the link to the results. I'll be back for more. It was a top event and the family had a great evening too.Well done Brisbane South Mountain Bike Club! A big thanks to Cyc'd for Bikes too for setting me up so well with bikes and kit. Well done Team Menzies! You lot rock.

http://www.bsmc.asn.au/images/stories/results/summer%20cup%202011%20race%201%20results.pdf

My first road bike ride in some months. There realy isn't anywhere to hide on a road bike. I can get lazy on the mountain bike as it is so familiar but when you get a 10% grade for a couple of K's on a road bike you are just there to haul. And haul I did! I am not unimpressed with the ride as there was just over 1000m of elevation gain and all of the roads I traveled were quite hilly with a few steep pinches of over 12%.
My humble opinion is that road riding is THE best way to get base fitness efficiently. If you throw hills into the mix it really pushes the cardiovascular system. Today I showed myself just how much fitness I have lost and just how hard I will need to work to get back to anything like the level I want. That said, it was a top ride today.
I left home and headed over what has been affectionately dubbed "The Teaser". Settlement Road is not that long or that steep but it really tells you how your day will pan out. If you struggle up Settlement, then any climbs after that will probably suck. Usually I would head up Mount Nebo after doing this climb but today I was keen to try the new road around the back of Coot-tha along Gap Creek Road. My plan then was to head up Waterworks Road and over Simpsons Road and then up Coot-tha.

Training face on..... I look serious don't I.

Once I got there it was a blast down the front side and over to the Western Freeway bike way and around to Mogill Road. That road really sucks. The traffic was pretty ordinary but Gap Creek Road made up for it in spades. It's special cruising along the road in amongst the trees and the traffic calming adds a bit of fun as you rip down the descents. have a drink, spin the legs over and all that is left is the reverse side of Settlement Road. The side from the Gap is twisty with a passing lane for cars which means that they try and fly over the hill with scant regard for cyclists. Most times I just hold my breath and count to ten. It's easier that way.
I even let out a little whoop of joy as I blasted down the other side and up to Samford Road. I was nearly home and I hadn't thrown up! A  cold ginger beer waited for me and some salty chips just topped it off. Yep, I'm happy.

It might be hot, but at least it is really humid......

Well after nearly 2 months of very sporadic riding (and blogging!) I manged to drag my sorry butt out for a mountain bike ride today. It is my lovely wifes birthday today so I had a couple of things to attend to before I was able to sneek out. So as 9:30am ticked over I got on the bike and left for a ride of indeterminate length. The first haul up a bitumen climb let me know this wasn't going to be fast or particularly pleasant. The heat off the road was already intense and after the rain we have had the humidity added a hammer blow right to the back of the head.
Now my fitness has always been a bit at the mercy of my work life and over the past couple of months this has never been more so the case. I have not had time to ride, and even when I have had time it is usually after some huge effort at work that leaves me with no energy. Today really put the fullstop on that sentence. Man I suffered. I took on Camp Mountain as it has been as gauge for me over the last 2 years as to how I am going fitness wise. If i make it up in middle ring on the long side I am going fine and if I don't then it is a sliding scale from there. Today was like pedaling with my tongue. I sat in my lowest gear and turned the pedals at a very uninspiring rate to torture myself to the top. Wow, I have gone to crap. I even felt sick once I got to the top.
I had a few internal battles at the lookout while deciding that I was heading straight home with no further riding for the rest of my life until a gentleman came over and asked if I had ridden up. I won't speculate as to how old he was exactly but I will say he was doing well for fifty. I answered yes and he then asked how often I do the ride up. I said not often enough! It was then that he gave me a fantastic piece of advice. He said "I bet it was hard to get to the top, but I bet it gets easier every time you do it." That's exercise for ya folks. It's starts hard, but it gets easier.
After that little ray of sunshine I decided to not let the day beat me quite so easily. It was still really hot so I wasn't going to go nuts with a monster ride but decided to head down to Bellbied Grove and add another 10k's to my reasonably pathetic effort. The trails down to the Grove haven't seen a lot of use with all  the rain and I got snagged in a dozen or so Golden Orb webs along the way. I had to back track over the steepest pinch on the trail due to a swarm of native bees that I only saw because a guy in his space suit came out and warned me off riding any further. Apparently they were swarming due to the rain and now fine weather. It was quite impressive apart from being a bit scary at first. There were literally clouds of bees.
Bellbird Grove was full of people celebrating Australia Day. The smell of sausages cooking on BBQ's was music to my nose! I cruised through and enjoyed watching the games of football and cricket on any open bit of ground and the sound of people just getting outdoors and having fun. It lasted all the way to the top of the climb out of Bellbird Grove in fact. I turned a corner having been lost in my own little world and there was the main fire road back over to the Macleans Road. Awesome. 3 little humps later and I was flying down the blacktop towards home. Only when I passed my favourite coffee shop and saw that it was open did I slow down and drop in for a brew. Perfect way to finish a ride.
I'll take it as far as a ride goes. Nothing mega or even that satisfying in terms of achievements but at least I didn't turn around at the top of Camp Mountain. Now I have 2 weeks of holidays starting on Friday and I hope to do some more riding, perhaps when it's a bit cooler. We'll see.

Cycling, not moving.

It has been raining in Brisbane for what feels like months. We have had an amazing amount of rain considering that only a short time ago, a little over a year, the whole state was in drought. I am now at a point where the last dry ride I had was over a month ago and that was a rare occurrence on it's own.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Not only did I go for a wet and soggy trail run to get some excercise but I also bought a fluid trainer. I have long resisted the need to have one of these cruel and evil devices around the home and always thought it was much better to get out on the bike and cop a hiding in the rain rather than sit on a trainer and go nowhere in the dry. I may have been a little wrong.
Hmm, so I set the thing up, got some gear on and went down for my first stint of cycling going nowhere. I set my self an hour time limit with the intention of a 20 minute spin to warm up and 3 sets of intervals with 2 minutes on and a 4 minute rest between each set and then a 20 minute spin down. It wasn't scientific but it should give me a bit of a burn to get me going. I was right! Crikey it hurt. I used my Garmin to track heart rate and cadence to keep a bit of science in it as well as act as the timer. It felt pretty natural and the bike is allowed to move around under you quite a bit. At the end of each interval I was begging for a rest and my legs were burning pretty bad. I definitely felt good for the hurt though.
I did a little research last night on the net and came across a way of adding a bit of motivation to the workouts. There is a site that sells worlkout videos for cycling on stationary trainers. It is spliced together from actual race footage and has prompts through the session to tell you what to do and at what effort. It is a cool interval tool and lets you race Contador, Schleck and a whole heap of others I will never get near in a bike race. Fun stuff. I watched the video this morning and it will get it's maiden tryout  tomorrow. Should be a real vomit fest by the looks of it.

Not glamorous, but it gets the job done......

My hope is that with the trainer I can get stronger. It should allow me to do some really good interval training no matter what the weather is like and no matter how crazy my schedule gets.