Singletrack Staff Blog

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.

I’ve finally started to cycle in to work. Well, cycle to the train station and then get on a train.

I’ve begun to cycle-train it in due toa combination of factors: getting bored of the M62, paying for car parking (and parking fines), being unable to booze after rides and Singletrack’s “trying to be greener” policies (see http://www.singletrackworld.com/article.php?sid=2839 for details).

Looking around at various bicycles for the job I ended up choosing a Merida S-Presso i8-D (see http://www2.merida-bikes.com/en_INT/Bikes.Category?category=Fitness%20Bike for details).

And I have to admit to really liking it - both the commuting and the bicycle. The commute takes about 15 minutes and the traffic at 9am isn’t too bad at all - even on Deansgate. The bike zips along but doesn’t feel overly roadie-twitchy, skittish or harsh.

The Shimano Alfine hub gear is doing okay. It’s useful to be able to change gear whilst not pedalling - if I have to stop at traffic lights or slow down for a car changing lanes etc. It doesn’t pick-up very quickly after freewheeling (it seems to take a quarter-pedal stroke before the gear fully engages) so it’s made me less keen on trying an Alfine-equipped MTB.

The disc brakes are great. I’m not keen on the Ergon-alike grips (it feels iffy not having my outer fingers fully wrapped around the bar) but I’ll persevere with them for a bit. And the pedal bearings feel notchy already so I’ll swap them ASAP. I flipped the stem upside down to get a slightly less “shopping bike” position.

I’ll do a proper review of the bike in a few months time. So far, so good.
Here’s a few pics…

The Merida S-Spresso i8-D.

The tensioner spoils the looks a bit but works fine.

Great brakes, iffy grips.

Nice gloss-on-matt graphics.

Unusual-but-good disc mount positioning.

* well, 30 miles is quite long in my book

Hi

Thanks for your online entry and payment.
I will process your entry shortly and eventually I will publish an entry list on my site.
Nothing will be sent by post - all information will either be on my site or the event site, www.rltrust.co.uk
You will be contacted further once race numbers and start times have been allocated (which cannot be until we have received most or all of the entries).

Regards
John Schofield
————–
ukresults.net

That’s my Triathlon entry confirmation.

This was me tonight after a went for a 6 mile road ride followed by a 3k

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so smug about a bank holiday weekend full of Scottish sunshine… It’s now grey and rainy here in Glasgow, but we’re off up north shortly to ride an enormous loop around Kinlochleven and to chase the sunshine in the hope of getting some good shots.

This is a pic from Monday’s ride along the Speyside Way. We took a steam train out of Aviemore and rode back. A great way to spend a sunny afternoon. I do believe that’s dust on the trail…

Today I rather rashly agreed to enter a triathlon. I’ve never done one before and my attempts at running to improve my fitness of late have been, shall we say, counter productive. I ran a couple of miles a few weeks ago and ended up so stiff I couldn’t ride a bike let alone do anything else to improve my fitness for four days!

Anyway, I guess all I need to do is keep doing it. Right?

Anyway, I went for a shorter run tonight and had to stop to take this picture. No.. it wasn’t because I was waiting for my lungs to catch up. In fact after I took this shot I felt really quite inspired and a little bit ‘lifted’. Funny how random stuff like this can change your whole perspective.

Oh, that triathlon is in two weeks.. Shit!

I’m off to Scotland this evening, yay! I’m doing the route guide this issue, based around Edinburgh, but with a cunning twist… (Which you’ll have to wait to find out about - as I’m not sure it’ll work yet…) Anyway, and then I’m going further north next week to do some more Big Hill riding… I’ve not been playing up there since Matt and I did our Glen Tilt adventure and I’m keen to go back. Scotland has a great appeal, with its big views and great people. Wish me luck…

But before I can go, I need to box up the Ibis Mojo (yes, that’s still around) so that it can go to Magura. It’s being loved up with 2009 stuff for their press launch in July, so they need the bike first so as to bolt on all the good stuff… OK, time to get the spanners out.

Hard to believe the sudden switch from cold to hot.

We headed out to Gisburn Forest for a spin to check out the trail pixies latest delights as well as a long overdue tasting of it’s old school offerings.

And we learnt it’s easy to break a black terrier in  hot conditions. Even throwing Pip in every stream we came across wasn’t enough to keep her cool enough to cover the miles in comfort. We need to plan in case we get  a proper summer….