Mark's Blog

I now have a fork that doesn’t leak oil.  I just spent the afternoon taking the fork apart and putting some new seals in it.

The beginning of the project.

Bike without the fork.

The fork before being taken apart.

Part of the tool collection needed for taking it apart.

Halfway through the project.

Project complete, notice the new Enduro seals in the fork.

After a week on the Roubaix I am sold on the bike.  I am looking forward for next spring to be able to purchase the bike.  It rides SOOOO nice and it felt great on the rough roads from The Bike Hub’s ride.  Last night I got to see the 2010 stuff from Specialized.  The carbon hardtail 29er is going to be available along with the Epic 29er.  I would love to get a frameset of the Epic but we will have to see.  A lot of the high end bikes had the Sram XX stuff.  It would be interesting to see how that group works in the long run.  When the industry switched from 8 to 9 it was a huge controversy.  The 8 speeds in my opinion shifted a lot better when the conditions got bad.  But the nice thing about more gears is when it comes to racing you like to keep your cadence high because they usually add gears between other gears as in the new Campy 11 speed.

Today I get to take my Fox F29 apart and put some new seals in it so it doesn’t leak.  I got the instructions to do it and it doesn’t look too difficult, we will see.

It looks like this weekend I will be at 24-9 cheering some people on, riding and shooting.  I want to try some night stuff with my flash and long exposures.  I hope that I don’t bling anyone while riding their bike.  Good luck to everyone that is going to be racing in Wausau this weekend.

Later

Kewaskum is now in the books.  As soon as Don said go everything went according to plan.  I made it up the hill with a decent amount of energy left at the top.  I think that I was in 4th overall then I get stuck behind someone that didn’t know how to ride single track and then he came to a stop and I was forced to get off the bike.  When I got off the bike I had to back pedal and when that happened the chain came off of the chainring.  So I managed to lose a lot of places and enough time because I couldn’t get the chain back on the ring.  After I got that back together it was off to the races.  I managed to catch two clydes and continue to reel some more people in, but I couldn’t catch the leaders in the race.  Oh well, I guess you win some and you lose some.  I can tell that I haven’t been training as much as earlier this year.

Today, I went to go and get a demo bike from JB’s.  The bike that I got was the Specialized Roubaix Elite.  I can say that after a 3 hour ride tonight that the bike lives up to its reputation.  The bike absorbs a lot of the vibration in the road makes the longer rides easier.  I felt a lot better than I usually do after a 3 hour ride.  The bike is stiff enough that I didn’t notice any flex when I got up to hammer it.  My old LeMond that I rode for a while was the total opposite, when I stood up and hammered I could actually see the BB move left and right.

Later

Hey, it has been a while.  I have been busy with other things right now.  The weekend was fun, I went with Q, Jeff and one of Q’s coworkers to ride the last half of the race around the lake.  the wind decided to pick up for the last half of the ride.  It really got difficult in the last hour of the ride because of the wind.  I found out that I might want to do that race instead of the WORS race that weekend.

The biking front otherwise has been dwindling because of the other things going on.  I know that I will be suffering when it comes to the race this weekend if I decide to show up.  The upcoming course is one of my least favorites.

Later

I was just watching the news and they were talking about increasing the tuition that students pay to attend school.  I think that it is ridiculous that they continually raise the amount of money it takes to attend school.  I think that they should increase the tuition with the cost of living increases that occur.  It seems that lately they have been increasing it multiple times per year which seems ridiculous because you don’t get multiple raises in your income per year.

I hope to ride with the group on Saturday morning when they do half of the race the lake course.  The training that I have been doing is now taking a major back seat, there are more important things that are going on right now.

Later

On Friday Q, Nate, Steve and I went to Nine Mile for some riding.  We ended going out for 4 hours at the track.  Nate had a few problems with keeping the rubber side down on trail 11.  Q had some problems with his crank, as usual, on the trails.  Steve wanted to show me a part of trail 1 with a more difficult rocky decent.  I cleared it 2 times and on the second trip my chain ring got filled done on the rocks, I wanted to be a weight weeny and lose a little bit of weight in an effort to be faster.  After about 3.5 hours of riding my chain decided to fail on me on one of the rocky climbs that we had encountered.  Overall it was an awesome day worth of riding.

On Saturday it was off for Eau Claire.  I went to the race hoping that I could be recovered from my 4 hour ride from Friday.  Once I got ready on Sunday it was clear that the legs were recovered from the endurance ride.  I line up and bs with some people and then Don said, “GOOOO!” and then it was off.  My goal for the race was to hang with Fellows for the race since he killed me at the last two races.  The start to this race is super fast and I tried to make some places up by cranking it for the lead out.  I managed to make up some of the ground that I lost at the chute because I couldn’t get clipped in.  I was sitting behind Fellows as we come out of the first section of single track.  I managed to stay there for a little while then he got some people between him and I and then I started to lose sight of him.  The rest of the first lap I was trying to minimize the damage that was already inflicted.

I was following 2855 for the rest of the lap and then once we popped out of the trail by the fence I put down some power to get around him and then all of a sudden I got passed by 2857 and he was in my age group.  I thought that there wasn’t anyone else around us.  So once we were by the start area I made 2857 pull me around but at the last minute before the single track I got around him and was leading in the single track.  I tried to drop him in the single track, I was actually gapping him but then traffic caused me to slow down and then he was right on my wheel again.  Then Shawn appeared out of no where I started to talk to him and found out he fell down hard just minutes earlier.

After talking to Shawn he informed me that I was about 10 pull overall and that Fellows was less than a minute in front of me.  Shawn said that he would me back to the group and hopefully get in front.  Once we got to the double track Shawn started to fall back and the guy I wanted to hang with was leaving so I decided to go with the competition.  After I started to go I hear Shawn coming up on my left side and then I grab his wheel and then all of a sudden we started to reel in some of the competition.  I didn’t want to look down at my HR monitor because I knew it was HIGH as I was hauling down the trail.  Shawn managed to get me past 4 clydes overall and one of the was Fellows.  So then Shawn got behind me in the single track in an attempt to let me get away from Fellows.  I managed to gap them by a big margin.  Then traffic slowed me down again, same old story.

All of a sudden Fellows and the three other clydes are right behind me.  I wanted to beat him so I decided it was time to try and get some traffic between me and Fellows.  So I wanted to make Fellows work harder to catch me I put my single track skills to use, any bigger down hill I would ride as fast as possible in order to gap him and make him try to catch me.  So I managed to get a gap before the last section of single track and I then put two people between me and Fellows.  Then coming into the finish stretch I ended up losing my temper at these two guys because they were content to just ride in to the finish.  So I was yelling at them to go and then I managed to get one guy to put the power down and then I got around him and beat Fellows by 16 seconds.

Later

I have been trying to get photos of the 2010 line of bikes since next year I would like to get a new bike.  I like to upgrade every 2 years because of the abuse that my fat ass puts out on my bikes.  I came across this one and I am really  interested.  If I want to make the cross to the baby wheels again the 2010 Cannondale Scalpel is looking good. I know that we are not sponsored by a Cannondale dealership but I have had Cannondale in the past and have not had the problems that I am having with my GF a.k.a. Grand Faliure Paragon.

I am ready for the Bike Hub ride tomorrow night and then it is off with the “Roadie” Porkchop, Q and Fast Steve to Wausau for a nice endurance ride.  I hope that my training is going to pay off in the next couple of races.  I am trying something new so we will see if it is going to be a good thing or not.

Later