Close of Thanksgiving Week..NO NET WEIGHTGAIN!!.....

This and Halloween have to be known as the beginning of weight gain. Every year for many years now, I've gained at least 10-15lbs during the holiday season, and a bunch of it has gone on during the Thanksgiving and Halloween weeks.

This year however has been a bit different. I managed to keep my weight even from start to finish. I started the season at 210 and have finished at 210. May not sound like a bunch, but to me this is a big thing.

This whole deal started a little over 2 years ago. I had some health problems and my doctor told me I needed to lose a serious amount of weight. I was just a hair under 240lbs at the time. When that happened, I got out my roadbike and built myself a new one from its parts. I decided on Jan 1 that I wanted to start the MS150 in September at a weight of under 200lbs. I made myself a little wager as well - If I lost that weight, I'd buy myself a set of really nice road wheels for my roadbike.

Well, I met the goal and bought the wheels. : ) I also finished the ride in full and in a better time than I ever had by over 2 hours!!!!

Unfortunately, I stopped riding as soon as the ride was over and ended up gaining 15lbs over the winter..... NOT COOL!!!!.

This year, I only managed to lose 5lbs heading into the MS150, but my time was significantly improved over previous years just by the fact I'd been training.

After the ride, I wanted to not gain any, so I finished out the road season on my roadbike and moved forward to the MTB winter season and began riding mountain. I also built my first real cyclocross bike and raced two races this year.

Flashforward to today- I did 63 offroad miles on my mountain bike in the past 7 days. I think if I can keep this up for the rest of the winter, I might actually come out of winter close to 200 again. Doing that will help me get even closer to my goal of hitting 180 for the MS ride this coming year.

I really think I can do it, and with a little luck, I will.

Getting Older SUCKS!!!

Getting older sucks......... Yeah, I know, I'm whinin......

One of the things I've noticed about myself over time is that it takes me a lot longer to get warmed up when I want to go for a ride. As far as I can tell, it generally takes me approximately 45 minutes to get warmed up and get my ticker moving at the right speed. From that point on, I'm usually pretty OK, but it definitely takes some time to get there.

To back up that idea, almost every MTN ride I've done out at Herbs was timed by my riding partners. Without fail, the second lap has always been faster than the first.

Maybe if I ever get to race seriously again, I'll have to consider that fact in my preparation.

22 Miles at Herbs and Some Flying Stuff

Managed to get out to Herbs today and put in around 22 miles. Got to ride the new loop at the RedOak sign that SteveK put in and its awesome. Was a very good ride overall. I really got into a good flow and dialed in the setup on my tubeless tires a bit. I felt like I could really 'rail the trail' through the corners and push it. I'm less beaten than I would have been on my tubed setup!

On the flying side of things, the Juka design is pushing forward with Fancy Foam. Mike is finishing up the details and it should get into production very quickly now. I'm proud of how that airplane came together and how it flies. I really think people will enjoy it.

Hopefully Thanksgiving week will go well. I'm sure it will go by slower than I'd like however!!!!!

Blast From the Past!!!!!

Well, yesterday, while talking with some guys at the shop I used to work at, they told me they had found a stash of old photos..... In it were a bunch of cool shots from races in years past.

I found a bunch of pics of friends I've not seen in 10 years, and pics of all my bikes that I built back in the day.......

This pic was from a training ride that one of my buddies tagged along on. He was trying different kinds of shots while we blasted past.....

Cellpro 10S f'in rocks!!!!

I bought myself a bit of an early B'day present last week.

I've had issues with charging my pattern plane batteries. None of my chargers were big enough to handle them. To get around this, I borrowed an Astroflight 109 and bought another. Between the two chargers, I made it through the Nats.

Unfortunately, they were not a great solution because they don't balance charge the packs. It did not make any sense to me to have expensive packs like that and charge them with inadequate chargers.

In the end, I bought the Cellpro 10s. I had borrowed one from my buddy Keith for one contest. The thing is great to use and FMA had an adapter already made for all of my packs. Truly plug and play. This weekend, I've been balancing my packs and getting them up to snuff. I'll take them all down to a storage charge later......

To race or not to race......

To race or not to race......

I got a flu shot a bit ago, and it appears I'm getting sick from it now. Spent the whole week coughing up nasty stuff and taking medicine to fight it off. Maybe with a little luck, I'll get over it Saturday.

I was going to head out to the Outdoors Inc. Cyclocross race on Mud Island, but now I'm not so sure. I have my bike setup and ready to go, but I'm afraid the motor is lacking.

On a positive note, I picked up a new saddle for the ride, as well as a new seatpost. I replaced the Kalloy junk post (from my junk stash) with a nice Ritchey post. Then, I replaced the crappy Trek saddle with the peeling cover for a nice Selle San Marco from the Peddler. Those two items took a half pound off my cross bike!!!

Gearing for the race is my question now. I'm thinking I'll end up going with a 39-18 as opposed to the 39-20 I have on there now..... We'll see.....

Went tubeless on the Ritchey!!!!!

The wheels I built so many years ago for my Ritchey were finally starting to come apart. I had purchased a set of tubeless Bontrager RaceLites for cheap from another rider. Then last night, I headed up to Peddler and asked Matt to tell me 'the setup'. I ended up with a set of Bontrager Jones tires and juice to go inside them.

Mounting these things was a bitch! I broke 3 tire levers and ended up getting a neighbor to help get them on finally.... Then I needed to seat the bead. The hand pump just was not doing the job. I ended up using a Presta valve adapter and a tire chuck hooked up to my compressor. I ran the compressor to full pressure (140lbs) and popped the tires into place with a blast of full pressure.

After the bead would pop on, I still only had about 10lbs of pressure in the tire, so I used a hand pump to drive them up to 60lbs to seat the beads. After letting them seat and spinning them to spread the goop around, I backed them off to 36lbs of pressure for riding tomorrow. Hopefully that will be a good setting.

The cool final result of mounting these things is that the new wheels and tires knocked 20 ozs off the weight of the bike!!!!!!!!!!!! Wow what a weight difference. Everyone tells me they ride sooooo much better than a tubed tire, and that fact will make a bigger difference than the weight.

Should be pretty cool......

A little Retro XTR Goodness on Singlespeed Cross Bike

I always wanted a set of XTR cantilever brakes when they were 'the thing' in mountainbiking. Unfortunately, I never had the dough for a set.

Fast forward to today, and I managed to pick up 3 wheels worth of XTR's, and 2 of the sets even came with new Ritchey Pads.

The new brakes are super solid and feel great through the levers. I absolutely cannot believe how flexible the cheaper brakes from the same era are.....

Gorgeous weekend at Herb's!

Managed to get out and put in a great ride out at Herb Parson's this weekend. Rode two laps each day for a total of just over 28 miles.

Weather was great and the bike was going well. Was definitely too beautiful to not be out there!