Skink, Viper, Salamandar at the Shed.

So I went up to the Shed, and did some new trials that Mike K. has been working on. The trails were nice, not my best terrain but It is good to go up there and get better at riding the rocks. I finally saw mike break his chain so that was kinda cool after him harassing me so much. I rode up with Matty so it was good to catch up with him. The proud moment of the ride, was when I was in front after the pit and going towards Rock Candy I was riding stuff pretty well. I had Pos, Mike, Matty behind so I knew I needed to get going cause those guys can rock the technical stuff. So the trail had big air stuff and ride arounds, which were not easy mind you(through rocks still). I went over the things I had to and then there was a Rock skinny that went through a big ditch. I just made it over that so it was my shinning moment! I think the Skinny work at Fountain Head helped. We didn't get to Iceburg the weather was getting worse so Matty and I climbed to Sand Flats. We got mexican afterwards which was good for the system. The ride and weather got me sickly so I went home and slept 2.5 hours. I am going to map that whole place out and do some big rides up there.

Finally did the Skinny

So last week I was able to get a mid week ride in at fountainhead. I think that fountainhead is one of the best training rides you can do. The trails have technical, have enough up and downs, and it is a good length to measure a lap time. I did two laps with the first being slower and the second a faster pace. What I have found out is I am so far behind the curve right now. I mean I know my fastest time out on the trail was 42:30 and I once did a three lap test at 50min. per lap. So I think I got a 55 or so on my second lap, now I wasn't totally killing it, but you can see that I am way off what I need to be at. I think I will do another test in June. The big news for the ride for me was I finally did the skinny forward, and backward. I am not the best technical rider, but I feel I am usually able to hold my own. One area that has been getting me is these skinnies. Most rides you don't need to ride a log to get over something, but I did use the skill gained here on a some rockwalks in the shed. On my second lap I chased down some guys that went in before me, and then afterward got to talking to Adolfo who was a nice dude. Should see him again at the Bakers Dozen race.

GamJams Reviews: The Wheels I Want - 3 pairs

I ride/race allot of different bikes road, mountain, and cross. So here are the wheels I would like for each........

What I have Xaero lite:
For the road I have been riding these wheels for 8 years and never broken a spoke!!!!! Now wheels with J spokes I have popped countless ones of those. Now my wheels are just like these but have the yellow carbon spokes. These wheels were great with my Aluminum Bianchi, but with my new carbon bike I think a stiffer wheelset would do me good.

What I want:So the Wheels I would like to go to our this wheels cousin

Spinergy Stealth FCC

I think with these wheels I would get the stiffness I am looking for along with super strong spokes that I like.





























ZTR 355 29'er Wheelset
My next wheel is an idea that I think I am actually going to buy well not the full blown Idea. I am going to race the SS division at Wednesday @ Wakefield this year so I was thinking of getting some No Tubes Stans wheels to lighten it up and to run tubeless. I was also thinking to then use these same wheels for cross season. The version I will get will be built up with the WTB Lite hubs but if I had the $$ I would get DT Swiss 190 for a 1500 gram 29er/cyclocross wheelset!

Fixies are not crit bikes....

I have been taking a true off season, and part of that off-season is playing volleyball. I have been playing with the fairfax meetup group. I will be stopping soon so I can bike more, but I was still signed up for a couple of events. I decided to do a fixed gear ride after playing volleyball since it was in the high 60's. The good news was that the middle school where I was playing volley-ball was right near a bike route I do to work.
I changed up the ride a little by going down Holmes run to Eisenhower through Alexandria to the Mt. Vernon trail then to Shirlington and back on the bike route road to the middle school.

The Holmes run part was ok, but it is more of a walking path then a bike path. There were sections that were totally dirt so you wouldn't have been able to ride a race bike on it easily. Eisenhower ave was ok I took the new bike path until it got close to the metro then I was on the road cause it turned into a sidewalk path which is not conducive to bikes. There was some major traffic in Alexandria but that was ok since I was on a bike I was able to do some cut-throughs. Once I got on the Mt. Vernon trail I started to encounter the mass amounts of people. Trouble started when I went past a slow biker, and turned a corner and I had a pedal strike. My rear wheel jumped like a foot to the right and I almost wrecked. I was like,"that was a close call" So I was going fine until I came to a chicane under ridge road. I am going and I have another pedal strike, my rear wheel jumps like 2 feet to the right and my tire I think came off the rim cause I heard a loud BOOM of my tube exploding. Since I am on a fixed gear I am still pedaling and I know I am going to wreck. So I am not sure what happened next but I think I got bucked off the bike and hit the ground and rested into a wall. I think my pedal cage got a little bent in the first pedal strike, so that is why it kicked my bike up in the air so much. I was lucky and didn't get hurt too badly just my ego :-/
Well here is where I messed up... somehow my bike didn't have a tube or the wrench in the bike seat bag. So I didn't know what to do, luckly I know people. I called Mark who lives in Arlington about 3 miles from where I was. He was home, and he came to the rescue with a tube and a wrench. I was able to fix the bike and finish the ride. The other big highlight was being able to ride the new Glebe Rd/395 underpass that has taken like 15 years to get done!!! I went to some Arlington Bike meetings a couple years ago and the issue was that like 4 parties owned the land and they had a hard time getting the rights to build a path on that land. The ride up the hill in Shirlington, and some of the roads back to my car were a little steep for a fixie but I was able to tuff it out. First thing I did when I got home was take a hack saw to the pedals and cut off the "U" part of the platform side of the pedals(I use regular shoes on the is bike sometimes).

AZ trip a Bust!

Well, last year I put in like 400miles of Off road riding over 7 days This year did like 5.5 hours of riding during 1.5 days...... I had a 104/103 fever for two days, I mean I was riding in the upper 80's in the desert and was cold! I was able to get 1.5 rides in Tucson before I got sick with the Flu/sinuses. Spent the rest of the time resting in the hotel that Sara was staying at. I was well enough to do LA on the weekend, but my spring training camp was ruined.... Got pictures from the first day of riding. Thinking that August will be my peak time.

Ride with DCMTB

Sunday was the day or our annual team party kick-off to the season. We did a road ride, and 11 DCMTBers came out which was the most of my team I have ever rode with at one time. There were some other folks like Evan, Jud, Jed, and others. This ride was the revit for me. I was hanging on barely for a couple of the hills. Once on River road we kinda broke up for a bit, then got back together on MacArthur Blvd. Once Marc Gwadz left to go home, I was able to limp home in really nice 50+ degree weather.

Hellbent on Hills Jan 09'

This was the 5th year running this ride. Compared to last year there were allot less people which was fine by me. Kinda funny we had two ride leaders and only 5 riders total! So no one got lost. I have had an off season so this ride was harder then normal for me. The guys who came out were the usual PPTC crew I ride with, Rudi who is really strong but doing an off season himself, Jonathan, Chris, and Al. Al was riding the most consistent(commutes 30miles to work and back), but doesn't have the natural snap on the short hills in Arlington. I was riding ok, usually getting a good deal ahead of people on the downhills practicing some racing turns. I was was feeling a little tired during the ride so I switched it up and we took off like 7 miles off the ride. The last two hills WalterReed and Oxford were the bangers that they always are, Rudi crushed it up WalterReed and I was following but my calves were screaming at me. For Oxford hill I thought I might get him since I had just done this hill earlier in the week. I was going up spinning in a low gear, and he was in front of me, and he got out of the saddle. I was like well that is too early for me, Rudi was getting away from me, but I was slowly bringing him back. I then got to the part of the hill where I get out of the saddle, and that did it! So I got Rudi on the last climb, but that was the only one. Everyone seemed to have liked the ride, and I am sure I will do an impromtu version of it again sometime soon. Was out for over 2.5 hours on a cold day, only issue was it got nice and sunny at the end of the ride!

Hellbent on Hills

Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

COLD!-but the streets are empty

Today was a one of my harder rides, not sure if I am getting sick, just tired, or had to use allot more resources to keep my body warm. I rode from Sara's house since I will be there for the inauguration tomorrow, and Wednesday. I wanted to get a ride in today, because I am really behind where I need to be for this Feb. Arizona Biking trip. Well I took the normal downtown breakaway ride and the hills were really hurting, but I was chugging along. I then saw a water main break, nothing major but I slowed down and saw the ice. There was no easy way around and once I was on the ice-BAM! I went down. It could of been worse, I should of gotten off my bike before the sheet of ice.
I did the rest of the route until it got to MacArthur Blvd and took that west until 79th street, which I found on Google was a way to get to the C&O Canal. While I was riding in on the canal I saw people playing hockey on the Ice! I only seen that once before in the DC area. The views of the Potomac were nice with it being mostly frozen, it gave it an interesting mosiac quality.
The weather was cold though I had to wear my neck gator over my nose and face for the whole ride into the city. Now this snow should be interesting for the commute home....

First Ride of the New Year

I wanted to get out and ride New Years day cause I heard that the weather was to change, and I was going to be in the mountains without my bike.  I tried to get some DCMTB folk and was able to get Joel, and I believe future DCMTB member Kev to ride.  I have been trying to ride with Kev for awhile, we both work downtown and are able to have early days, and we should be able to get some rides in at Roseryville.  This that and the other got in the way, but now I think we will get ourselves alined correctly so we can ride.  It was a cold day less then 32, but nice and sunny.  I had the right gear for the day, sporting some booties(custom will talk about those in a future post) toe warmers, gloves(which got too hot) and long sleeve jersey with a vest. We started out and Joel was going a little too fast for me.   Usually I would be fine but I have been doing a true off season and we were riding SS which is Joels fortay.  We went around and we carving it up, I would jump ahead at some points, and was trying to talk with Joel as we road.  Kevin seemed to be still trying to get over NY eve and ended up bonking hard at the end of the ride.   On the Second lap, I wore some other gloves, and we went and tackled the inner trail which I usually can never find.  Now that I know where it is, I will be able to find it allot easier.  We did that and that last 3 miles of the trail I jumped ahead of Joel and tried to hold him off to the parking lot.  I had been wanting to ride Rosey on the Rigid SS and it delivered!  It was a blast on the bike, and it just felt right never too undergeared, or over(well maybe the one hill in reverse).  I think I would still be faster on my dual squishy there but would not be as fun.  For the other guys views check

Joel down a ways he writes allot!

Kevin

2008 Year End Totals and thoughts......

I have the totals for 2008 and they are looking interesting. I have many bikes so for me I have to total up the different bikes to get an idea of what kind of biking I did. I have a total of 5346 miles for all my bikes, I believe this to be the most I have ridden mileage wise in a year. In 2008 I had less mileage, but I had more Mt. biking mileage which should be counted more since it takes longer to do and is harder. I will be happy if I can have similar mileage for 2009, I will be concentrating my efforts to be in shape for summer/fall.

Rigid SS: 47 Miles

I had gotten this bike in September right before cross season, and I have put some miles on it, and I think it will be a bike a ride quite a bit. The bike is great at Roseryville, and Cross County Trail. I hope to ride it at Schaeffer in the coming year.

The Tandem: 307 Miles

I didn't get out on the tandem as much as I would have liked to. Sara had a knee issue that came up and she didn't want to ruin her running with the Tandem riding that was hurting her knee. Hopefully in the future we will get out there again.

Dual Suspension Mt. Bike: 644 Miles

I started the year off well with my AZ trip and then doing really well at the Bakers Dozen. I then hurt my back at Greenbrier and had a terrible 24hours of Big Bear where my bike’s chainstay cracked. I then laid off the mt. biking for a bit and got in some rides when I could.

CX Bike: 878 Miles

I road this some to work, and did my CX races on it, as well as my Ohio Road rides. I like this bike, but I don’t get the chance to ride on dirt roads enough.

Fixed Gear Bike: 1062 Miles

This is my go to bike for commuting in the off season, and for riding in the city. I like riding this bike have tried to get a 27inch fork for it, but have been having a hard time.

Road bike: 2408 Miles

I have had bigger seasons on the road bike like one year I did like 4000+ but this was before I did as much Mt. biking and I did not own a cross bike then. I rode the road bike allot this year cause of back issues and I found that the road bike let me able to keep riding when the mountain biking was hurting. Next year I hope to do the Mountain Momma century since this year I was not fit enough to do it.