Race Week

I am going to apologize in advance for the Cohutta heavy content of things for the next week or so.  With the race coming up this Saturday, I am going to be spending a good deal of my spare time preparing for the trip, the pre ride, and the race and all that goes into staying fueled for a 10 plus hour endurance event.  I have got to get the bike ready to go, get my nutrition stuff all sorted out with drop bags out on the course, as well as prepare for any mechanical issues that could arise.  I am pumped for the event to get here and definitely feel ready for it.  There are just 3 more training rides before the race and none of them will be high intensity of very long.  So I am on the home stretch so to speak and the hay is in the barn and all that so here goes!!  Today I started making lists of things I need to get done, packing, food stuff, all that kind of thing.  I get that from my mom I think, the making lists thing.  It helps me not get too pre occupied once I have things on paper.

Easter Weekend

Well, we headed over to my mother and father in laws place for Easter weekend and had a fantastic time with them and extended family.  It was just so good to gather and celebrate this time of year with friends and family.  The pictures from the weekend:

Got in a CX ride Saturday morning

The color purple?

egg artists at work

about half of the folks at the Easter meal!!  80 in all came!!!

brothers and sisters from oldest to youngest

training food, or what is left of it

swinging off a good meal with Poppi

good tired!!

Gear Choice has been made!!

I have been wrestling with my gear choice for Cohutta.  I have bordered on over thinking the whole thing but it isn't like I will be able to change gears during the race and we will be covering 100 miles and climbing some 14k feet of elevation.  I want to get it right.  After my trip up to the mountains I was leaning toward to 21T.  Not because I tried it up there because I did not, I ran the 20T on that trip, and we rode MTB the day after an epic road ride with tons of climbing and my legs were pretty toasted.  I was feeling like the 21 would be the way to go to survive the race after that day in the mountains.  I have since had a change of opinion and have decided, today, that I will run.......

untouched by human hands, this baby will be going on the bike for race day!!!

 ....... 34X20!!!!!  I know I can ride everything in this gear and I feel like with fresh legs going into the event I will be ready to do some damage with this gear.  Every once in a while I get to a point where I feel prepared for an event.  My first six gap several years ago, the Triathlon last year, and I feel like this year I am ready for Cohutta.  It is a different mental state kind of like operating out of confidence rather than being unsure, but not cocky.  I know there are no guarantees, and I am not going to make any predictions, but I am ready for the event and I will give it all I have.      

Brown

I am going to stick with the color theme for titles to my posts today and when you look at this picture you will see why.

We got the dogs groomed on Thursday and they look so different with short hair!!  These dogs are such wonderful pets, with personality plus.  It is amazing how much joy they bring to our family.  I guess you could say they got their Easter best on for the weekend with their new hair cuts, and new bandanas.

Green!

We got a shipment of new bikes in Wednesday morning and amongst them was this beauty!!  The color did not come out as well in the picture as I would have liked and I even tried to photo shop adjust the color settings and could not get it right, but trust me on this one..... it is very green!!  Despite the limey color, it looks cool with the black bags and accents.  It won't be here long before it goes home with someone I am sure.

Morning Ride

Got together with some of my training buds (Trav was MIA) this morning for a good road ride.  It was a perfect morning for a ride and we had a nice group.  Good fellowship, good conversations, good route,  some good efforts and a really good time!!

BT, Jimmy, Joel and Brecht 

Good Night

We had a glorious day of weather today and this evening was amazing.  When I goto home Bug and KK were out in the park doing homework under the shade of a tree.

After dinner we fired up the new mixer the Boo got for her birthday and made a very unique batch of chocolate chip cookies.  We got a new recipe off the internet.

It was a good night!

Blur

No, I am not referencing how quickly the weekend went by, I am talking about how all my photos from the weekend came out!  Blurry, like this one:

I must have some smudges on the lens and need to clean it because all of the shots are a bit on the fussy side.

It was a good weekend even though it did not go as originally planned.  We awoke to a major storm Saturday that changed our whole day around.  Rides and soccer games cancelled we all went to a 5K for Type 1 diabetes at TCC.  We all had a good run with KK finishing FIRST!!  The Bug came in 7th and Boo was not far behind her.  I was out-sprinted at the line by the winner!!  We all gave it everything we had and thus the afternoon was a little on the lazy side, thst is until the tiller and sod called us out to finish up the St Augustine sod planting as well as re planting the beds along the front walk.  We caught an early dinner at Kool Beanz and then came home and rented a movie and got to bed early.

Sunday morning I did my race simulation for Cohutta that I was going to do Saturday and got 6 1/2 hours in on the MTB and covered 75 miles!  I felt great and definitely feel as if I am physically prepared for the event.  It was the longest MTB ride I have ever done and I did it on my recently converted fully rigid no gears bike.  I must say that at mile 60 or so, I had visions of a full suspension bike running thru my head.  I tried to simulate the race as much as possible with the trail choices I made and the order I rode them.  I pretty much rode all the trails in the area and surprisingly got in 8500 vertical feet of climbing.

We closed out the weekend with a leader celebration party for the outgoing YL college leaders which is where the picture is from.  It was so good to be lifting up all of these guys and girls who have given so much to so many.  Blessings to all of them.  

 

First Impressions

Took a first ride this morning on the new fork.  No longer having suspension I was eager to see what it would be like so I headed to Red Bug, the rooty-est trail around.  I will give a more detailed "review" after the weekend but my first impression was that the bike handled 10 times better, climbed 10 times better and handled the bumps pretty well.  I really like it and given the choice for Cohutta between this fork or a front suspension I would choose this one hands down.

On the Silk trail heading to Red Bug, first ride

19.6 LBS!!!

The Niner carbon fork is on and my bike is now sub 20 lbs (yes, that is with pedals and bottle cages and my new mountain pump bracket)!!!  As it turns out, the squishy fork I took off was cut too short and, according to Tyler, not safe to run on my bike!!!  Now I am fully committed to a fully rigid Cohutta.  Thank you Lord for keeping me safe up till now with that old fork!!  I had been battling a persistent creaking from the head tube area and now I know why.  It is a long story as to why the steer tube was cut too short and I will take my share of the blame but not all of it.   After all, I did not do the cutting!!  Tyler also found that my chain ring bolts were sheering off and replaced them with steel bolts instead of aluminum for strength.  This sheering should not happen again.  I can just imagine being at mile 60 of Cohutta and having my chain ring come flying off!!  Wow!  DNF all over again.  While they had it there in the shop everything was checked out and is good to go.  I feel much better!!  Now if I can get the motor running good for this bike, there is a chance I can finish this race!!

This fuzzy picture is of one of the chain ring bolts that is almost snapped off!

The finished product, race ready

I am running a few extra spacers because I have another stem I may swap  on that is a little wider profile than this one.    Once I decide on the stem I will trim it down a bit.  

Secret Weapon

What you see here is a Niner carbon fork that is light as a feather and it will soon be on my bike thanks to my mom!  No, mom is not all that familiar with bike parts, but she does love me, and gave me a gift card to Higher Ground for my birthday a few weeks ago that I have redeemed for this awesome fork.  Everything I have read about it and everyone I have spoken to about them has me thinking this is going to be my Cohutta secret weapon.  The qualities of carbon fiber give it incredible stiffness to weight properties but there is also a kind of deadening affect it offers as well.  It is because of this stiffness my ride should climb much better in the mountains but the ride quality should take some of the chatter out of the trail.  All in all I am super excited to get the fork on the bike and ride it.  Everything should be ready to go tomorrow night and I will get a ride in on Friday and a 7 hour ride in Saturday(the longest of the training plan).  By then I should know how it feels and I will report on it then.  This fork is super popular and hard to get.  I have had my eye on one at the shop for a while but couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger on getting it.  When I got the gift card I called but the one at the shop had been sold and none will be available from Niner for months!!!  The Higher Ground crew found one (sweet!!) and Tyler is doing the install for me.  Super cool guy and he is an awesome bike mechanic to boot.  

Good Music

I have taken a quick snap shot of some of the tunes that have really hit me lately as I drive around (don't worry, I have waited till I get to a stop before I snap the shot).  If you get a chance check out these few... good!!!!

Weekend

Well, the weekend is becoming a distant memory and it has proven difficult to keep the blog updated on a daily basis with photos on the weekend so I am going to start a new technique and upload the photos from the weekend on Monday (or in this case on Tuesday), sort of like a post game or post race recap.  Here goes!

The weekend started off with a good greenway grinder with my buddy BT and then on Saturday a tough ride on the Big Loop with Bradley.

Saturday afternoon was spent putting down two pallets of sod with the help of the kids...... for a while, then their attention turned to playing in the pool with the new waterproof camera with the neighbors!

Monday the Bug got braces... here is the last picture of her non-braced smile and for the next 15 months or so she will have braces gracing this pretty smile.  She is amazing, and her attitude toward change and challenges is inspiring to me in my fight!

Lunch!!

We had a cook out today at the shop for all the employees to celebrate some recent successes that come from a lot of hard work by the whole crew.  I am blessed to have such  great group working with me and it is real fun to do a cook out like this every once in a while.  Yes, it was as good as it looks, and with all the trimmings, baked potatoes, beans, the works!!!  The biggest challenge after this was keeping everyone awake!

New Toy

For my birthday I got a new camera!!  What is really cool is that it is waterproof.  I wanted this particular camera so I could carry it in my cycling jersey without the need to keep it in a zip lock making it a snap to take pictures and video while on rides etc....  Last night I decided to test its claim to be waterproof to 3 meters by taking some pictures and video in the pool!!  Works like a champ.

Mountain Report cont....

Day 2 in the mountains had us traveling over to the YL camp we will be staying at for the event.

The camp is great and we toured the facilities and headed back to Dahlonega.  Along the way back we passed by the entrance to Bull Mountain and headed in for a MTB ride.  I had ridden here once before a long time back.  I was trying to remember how long ago, I know it was before we had the Bug, so that is going back some time!  It was weird how much of the area I remembered from one ride so long ago.  It was all I could do when I rode it the first time but this trip it was a breeze..... more or less!

leaving the parking lot

I don't remember this truck from my last ride, but I am sure it was there judging by the looks of it!

taking a quick break on the way up

at the top and looking forward to a nice long descent!

the end of  great ride

We finished the ride and got cleaned up and packed up and headed to meet a caterer about doing a post ride meal for us.  What do you serve a bunch of hungry cyclists after a big epic ride?

Bar B Q!!  We had to sample some as well, and it was good.  As to the name of the place, keep in mind that Dahlonega is famous for a gold rush that occurred at the turn of the century thus the Smokin Gold name!  After lunch we headed home.  When we got back I dropped Roger off at the shop and he put his MTB in there instead of taking it home.  It really looked bad parked next to all those clean new rides!!

 

Mountain Report

I am back from the Smokeys and had a great trip.  I went up there Sunday afternoon with my buddy Roger to scout out the Team YL bike ride that we are organizing for May 21.  We have 27 riders that are raising pledges for this ride up in the mountains of north Georgia.  Our job is to make sure everyone knows where they are going, make sure that they are as safe as possible, have well supported SAG stops where they need to be and provide a post ride celebration complete with lots of food for our hungry team that just had an epic ride.  Needless to say we had our work cut out for us to get this accomplished.  We had several conversations with various folks that would be helping from up in the area and Roger had made an earlier trip to re con the route somewhat but it was not finished.  As we drove up Sunday we discussed our to do list of sorts and decided the best course of action would be to ride the route the next day.  In doing this we would experience everything from the riders point of view and we could also gauge the difficulty of the route and fine tune our training for the team accordingly.

My gear loaded up for the trip

Hiker Hostel

We stayed at the Hiker Hostel in Dahlonega, home town of Zac Brown Band, and it was great.  We were centrally located for all that we had to do on our trip.  Monday morning was perfect weather and we got started on our ride at 9:00 after a great family style breakfast at the Hostel with all the AT hikers heading out to start their thru hike attempts.

Monday morning getting ready to head out.  In the background you can get a sense of the climbs.

 We covered about 7 miles to get to the camp where we may start the ride.  It is a Methodist Church Camp.  We had spoken to them about the ride and they were gracious enough offer up an area for us to stage the race from on the property.  We wanted to meet the folks there and get a lay of the land.  It is a beautiful camp with a river running right thru it.  There is a spectacular waterfall as well!!

waterfall at Camp Glisson

We started the route the riders would ride that culminates atop Woodys Gap.  Roger estimated the distance to the top of Woddys would be 30 miles from the camp.

summit of Woodys

The ride was tough.  There was really no flat places.  You are constantly climbing or descending.  When we got to the top my odometer read 30.2 miles!!  Roger has this area dialed in and knows his way around these hills.  From the top of Woodys we had to go down.  It was the same descent I had done in September and crashed on at 35 miles an hour.  Landing directly on my head and snapping my bicycle frame in two.  By God's grace I only had a small amount of road rash and a broken finger!  I was a little nervous coming down but it was great to get it behind me.  The winds were picking up by that time and that made it interesting as well.

more climbing

 We still had a good bit of riding to do and I was getting hungry!  We came across a great country store and stopped in to get some food and refill the water bottles.  We decided that this would make a great SAG stop and enjoyed some payday candy bars and pop tarts.  It was like someone turned on the lights and I felt great!

Great SAG stop

More climbing

Back at the Hostel

By the time we got back to the Hostel we had covered 75 miles and done 10010 feet of vertical!!  We were really tired and the legs were sore.  We also had the satisfaction of getting a great deal done towards getting this ride organized.  Tomorrow, I will share some shots of the mountain biking we did and some other cool pictures from the trip.

Bike rack like no other

So we had a training ride this morning for Team YL and we met up at Chaires.  When I pulled into the parking lot there was Chipper with his new to him Ducati with his bike on it!!  Crazy!  he said he had the idea and bought some aluminum and fab'd it up himself.  then he took it down to the welding shop and had it tig welded.  Finished product..... $65.00!!!  Awesome job Chip, and it is a one of a kind!

The ride was great and when we got back I snapped a few shots of the whole rig with the bike on the rack. It looks pretty good, it would be better looking if it was a Harley!