After Chequamegon I definitely have mountain-bike racing back on the agenda. Monday was some time out at Pets where I strung a 7 mile loop out of the trails there. It’s definitely a ‘race ready’ course that takes around 37 minutes per lap and the exertion and recovery areas are spot. Effforts kept the average heart rate up and there were no repeated sections in each loop and no dismounts. I’m gonna go ahead and call this loop Iceman ready. 3 good loops for training and add a 4th if you’re feeling nasty.
Wednesday I ran my new fork up to Ben’s Cycle as they were working on the Swerks. They were digging the fork and went out of their way for Picco. I had plans on dropping the fork off and hitting up Crystal Ridge on the way home. They asked if I had a couple of hours cause they could get the fork on right away for me. Ef’n sweet. So I took off for Crystal Meth Ridge and mapped out a pretty good lap for the SASS. The trails were sooper tacky and way fast. Tires were biting as they were rolling effortlessly through the single track. i did a couple of laps at a medium pace and the third at a solid race pace effort. There were a couple of bikes starting to show up by the time I was on my third lap, I don’t think that I had much effort left in me to stick around even if I wanted too.
Get back over to Ben’s and the bike is stacked!!! Un gummed shifters, new chain to compliment the 11×32 sram that went on for Chuammy, 2 new xtr pully’s for the rear derailleur and of course the new Manitou MRD RSeven. I just gotta work on getting it dialed in today as it looks like I’m going to make it to Shawano this Sunday. That’s going to be a rough one as I’m scheduled to work until 4:00 AM on that Sunday so it’ll be a quick nappy nap nap and turn around and make the 3.2 hour drive to the north. I think that I got Malibu committed to wheeling.
Things are starting to wind down, what with only a handful of races left around here it has people antsy for cx, I’m not sold yet I guess. Here’s a look at the little kitten.
I like how they dumped a little blue on the steerer that matches the dial adjusters on the Strokers. Nice look.
In other news I heard that Lou Lou managed to go ahead and break a body part or something. I’ve managed to break a bone, break a mirror, break a motorcycle once, and I’ve even break out a ‘move’on occasion but I’ve never managed to outright break an organ before. Get well soon and I hope that you feel better.
