Singletrack Staff Blog

Just spent a whole 3 days riding bikes, which believe you me is some accomplishment for me just lately.

Friday saw a an early start down to Eastbourne for a good few hours around Friston Forest, a couple of miles across the downs and into the trees for lots of woody singletrack action, a traditional beer at the finish made for a great start to the weekend.

Friday night and over to the loval park for a roady crit, no I didnt ride it, its over 25 years since I raced a bike around a park and those 25 years are showing !, and boy those fellas go around corners fast.

Saturday and a ride along the downs from Brighton to Eastbourne, original plan was for an out and back epic, once again I was mixing my ambition with my ability, fortunately our host came to the rescue and provided both beer and barbecue and then a lift home.

Sunday saw a later start (legs were a little weary now) and after a full english breakfast there was more of those sunblasted trails, up and down, up and down, up and down.

The trails were in fabulous condition, dry and dusty.

 All that can only mean one thing, this week is summer, make the most of it

Due to the delights of BT, we’ve had a couple of days sans internet in the office. Add to that Ben and Sim in Europe for the GT and DT launches and Matt and Mark putting in sporadic appearances in the office and it was a pretty dull couple of days with just me there. It did mean that I got a good amount of writing done, some stuff boxed up and tidied and even saw my desk. But where’s the fun if you can’t distract yourself by checking your email every five minutes…

Had a call from Pat Adams yesterday too, he’s back home and taking things easy having been taken ill just before Mayhem. Nevertheless he sounded cheery and, despite assurances that he was going to rest up, was already planning for Sleepless… Some people just can’t slow down.

Once again, Mountain Mayhem brought out the worst of the British Summer weather: wind, rain and slippery trails - but it was still fun - and still the biggest gathering of mountain bike racers in the country. And, just like last year (and many more, in fact) the sun came out in the end and dried the course out for a rock solid and almost dusty final lap. Needless to say, Sunday evening and Monday were sunny, warm and still… Nevertheless, and once again, Mayhem 2008 will have been great when we look back on it. Now, hopefully I can resist the draw of doing a 12th one next year… Or maybe I can’t.

I’m back from a few days holiday with my family in the hills near Annecy in France. I had a great time, didn’t ride any bikes and had a great amount of cheese (mainly Reblochon). I’m now back and packing tonight for my 11th Mountain Mayhem. I had decided to ‘retire’ last year, but I got caught up in the fuss again and find myself with a team. Besides, I have some spiffy new test bikes to try out. Plus the Yeti ARC, which was made for days like these. I may not be in tip-top condition and the weather looks like being the usual damp-fest, but I’m excited to be out there again. It’s all good…

That’s the tariff we’ve set ourselves here in the office for how much we pay for every tonne of carbon we produce through traveling about to make the mag.

It’s an arbitrary figure to a large extent because we aren’t paying in to any existing offset schemes. Instead we are saving up the cash ourselves and then inviting worthy bike related environmental projects to apply for the cash at the end of the year.

I came up with that number by essentially googling for the top ten most popular offset schemes and then averaging out the cost per tonne that they charge. And we will be using the carbon calculator at www.climatecare.org to work out how much carbon we use on every trip we make. For example, Matt and Sim travelled up to Fort William from the office in Todmorden last weekend and racked up 642 miles all in. Based on Matt’s best guess that his old Diesel VW van gets 35 mpg that works out at £3.30 in the pot.

Considering that it is now press launch season proper and various office members will be jetting off hither and thither to get the latest skinny on next years products between now and October, we expect our Carbon Guilt fund to be quite flush by the end of the year.

And did surprisingly well.. 125th from 240 starters.. Knocked 2 minutes off my fastest time for the swim, clearly powered by adrenalin. Did a middle of the pack 55 minute ride followed by the most uncomfortable run I’ve ever done. Really enjoyed it and will be back next year to beat my time.

Who’d av thunk it! Mark in triathlon is fun shocker!

I popped round to the corner shop for some bread and discovered that it comes straight from the bakers every morning - hot and crusty! Warm bread, fresh coffee and blue skies makes it feel more like Europe this morning. Combined with a warm, sunny ride yesterday with Nick Craig and everything is all good.
Now I just need to crack on with all that writing that needs doing… Oh well.

Did anyone see the new iPhone launch? Having decided I didn’t want one, I found this great series of videos made by a blender company to show how good their blenders are. And one features an iPhone…

My race bike for the summer is built! Based on a lovely Yeti ARC frame, I’ve gone uncharacteristically to town with trying to get everything to match. And, with white being this year’s ‘hot’ colour, we’ve also had some test products sent in in the right colour too. Brakes are Avid Ultimates, which go rather well with our test pair of the new SID forks, if not with the Centre-lock splined XTR hubs, but that’s something to upgrade in the future, eh?

Syncros make the white stem and bars (a little too upright for my racer-boy ambitions for the bike, so the bars have already been swapped out for some ‘What’s the point’ 1/4in Truvative risers. I’ll give the stem a little longer though). The white saddle and black post are Syncros too.

Seeing as all the weight-weenie racers still go for Gripshift, I thought I would too and, as a user of Gripshift since they were the size of tennis balls, I’ve had no problem adapting. We even had some short LizardSkins lock-on grips left over from our grip test to match. Cranks are the wonderfully crisp looking Race Face Deus XC

I happened to have an old white SP 9.0 mech lying around too, which looks great on the bent tubes of the turquoise back end

It all looks pretty neat and the shake-down road ride went well too. The real test will be tomorrow at the Bristol BikeFest, where I’m racing in a team of four. At least the bike’s going to look good, even if the rider is red and puffing.

Well preparation has gone… er out the window really. At the start of this week I came down with one of those awful bloody colds that make you leak from every hole in your head. It’s on the way out now but I’m still blowing green snot.. So ‘training’ has been sparse the last few days. I’ve pushed myself out the door though and managed a bit of pootling and walk/jogging..

Last night I was talking with Carvel (He’s the so called ‘friend’ who talked me into this ) about the likely times and possible targets for Sunday. Looking at last years results and split times it’s clear I’m going to be one of the slowest in the water, but possibly able to catch up on the bike.. The run is the big mystery though. I’ve just not had the chance to go out and ride for a bit and then run 3 miles. Judging by some of last years splits I should be looking at half an hour for the run. Last night I went out to simply try and run for half an hour.. My legs this morning are like lead! and I didn’t even do that after a swim and ride!

So, upshot is I have a target of 1h 30m in my head. It’s not hard and fast but if I manage that I shouldn’t come last. Hmmm.

To liven up my commute I’ve been using a Garmin Edge 305 which gives the pleasure of racing against my previous efforts.

All went well this morning, zipped up the valley, sun shining, humming along to 65days on my ipod. 42 minutes later I’m at work and in a fine mood ( I’m not letting the near death lorry incident spoil it).
Tonight though it all went wrong, strong headwind and I started to cramp on the second climb, and as I slowed to stretch it out my virtual self was off. I tried to reel myself in on the descent but the damage was done, every time I pressed harder on the pedals I could feel the knot get tighter in my calf. By the end I was still 200 metres up on myself and had to face defeat.
Next time though I going to kick my arse.