rode with a big group 4/4/07 out at Tabeguache. rode up eagles wing to widowmaker, up the road to eagles nest, right down singletrack and did a faceplant of some rocks. face hurts, teeth okay. 25 mi, 2 hr.

I rode again today. After looking at www.gjmountainbiking.com I decided to go try the GUNNISON BLUFFS / OLD SPANISH TRAIL since it seemed to be closer to the house than the lunch loops. I found that 29 road goes over the Colorado River, even though the map I have doesn’t show it. The Gunnison Bluffs trail is well marked. From the parking area I rode through the field to a road, made a left onto the next road following the signs, this road goes by some houses and then drops down between a row of fences, it then climbs up and heads toward the big tower. It goes by the tower and then loops around back to the left across a driveway (the road that you just turned off a few minutes ago), up another hill and continues on above the Gunnison river. Eventually it hooks left a bit down into a canyon and then back up, there are a few punchy steep climbs out here, the view is great, but the trail itself is very boring and doesn’t appear to be ridden much compared to the lunch loops area. It’s a great view for a nice stroll but overall just plain boring. After a mile or two more, the trail hooks left a bit and meets the Old Spanish Trail. I took a left here and then the Old Spanish trail follows along a fence on a less traveled trail, there is one that goes to the left also that looks like the main trail. I rode back up to the tower because on my way out I was having trouble following the directions…. in doing so, I found this trail marked “Trail” and it looked like a nice singletrack. I had ridden down it a bit but it seemd to go the wrong direction so I turned back but it looked good. I rode back over to it and rode it. It was the best part of the ride, very short section, maybe only 1/2 mile but nice fast singletrack with a good tailwind and a few steep climbs. It meets back up with the Gunnison Bluffs trail, I took a left and back home.

About 20 miles and 1 hour 45 minutes.

March 31st….. did my first ride in Grand Junction today. Rode from my house over to the Tabeguache trail system, also known as the lunch loops.

I rode the streets over there as if I was driving. On my way over, evidently a main road 4th st was closed and looked to have been closed for some time. I ended up going downtown and winding around downtown in every wrong direction there was. At one point I was nearly getting on the freeway, or at least it looked that way. Somehow after a few miles in circles I ended up at the right place, Broadway. From there it’s just maybe a mile up Monument Rd to the parking area.

I started off up the Tabeguache trail. I ran into a group of women, asked them what to ride…. they told me good trails all over, take this one…… I rode that trail, made a wrong turn and ended up right back on Tabeguache trail and ran into the group again. I kept riding up Tabeguache trail. Got to a flat area, the trail gets steep here, I found out this section is called the widowmaker. I rode about 1/3 way up and got stopped at this ledge. Walked up the rest. I stayed on Tabeguache for a few more miles until it seemed to end at a pile of rocks on top of the ridge above a canyon far below. I took a singletrack to the left and it seemd to be headed down to the road so I cut back on another trail and ended up back on Tabeguache. I rode back down Tabeguache trail. I ran into the women again and they told me go to the bottom of the widowmaker and there’s a good trail from there. I got there, made a left onto a bouldery trail and rode back uphill to a rock outcrop, hike a bike over the rocks and kept riding up the trail which eventually tops out at the same pile of rocks I was at earlier. I turned around and rode back on that trail and took a trail to the left at the base of the rock outcrop. This section was good and took me to Eagles Wing trail, which I rode to the left I believe over some interesting colored rocks and soil. Eagles wing dumped back to a flat area a bit below the widowmaker where I ran into the women again. They told me go take Holy Cross trail. I went up and found that at the base of the widowmaker. This trail is marked most difficult and sections of it are more like a trials course than xc. I ended up walking most of the rock sections, nearly endoed coming off this boulder which dropped off before I saw it. It was a good ride, but slow. Holy Cross dumped me onto the intersection of Gunny loop, I went down to the right and I think I missed a turn cause I think I ended up on private property which dumped out onto Redlands Rd. I rode that down and back to Monument, rode back up to the parking area and kept on riding, chasing a rodie up toward the monument…. realizing I was kindof tired for this effort, I turned back maybe a mile or 2 past the parking and rode home.

Riding home, I found the Colorado river trail, which took me most of the way home and much better than the crazy downtown mess of getting out to the trails.

Fun day, just over 30 miles and about 3 hours. The last time I’d been on a bike before this was March 16th, after which I had one of the worst flus I’d ever had.

I found this article which reviews the mountain bike cassettes:

Shimano XTR CS-M960
Shimano XT CS-M760
Sram PG990 (either red alloy or prior model)

Sram PG980
Sram PG970
Sram PG950

The problem is that certain mountain bike cassettes get stuck on the freehub because they have a poorly designed spider section (where the cassette contacts the freehub body). This article attempts to review the various readily available cassettes and recommends the Shimano XTR as the best cassette with the Shimano XT cassette second. Cassettes without a properly designed spider can get stuck on a freehub and may totally destroy it in the long term.

Note on Sram X.0 trigger shifters: Front cable is easy to replace. Rear cable is difficult. For best results, use cables that do not have to be cut (not the double ended cables where you have to cut one end off to use it). The cut end is difficult to keep from fraying when installing the cable.

To replace, take off black shifter cover by using pliers to turn the silver star shaped nut on top of the plastic, this will remove the cover. Do not use an allen wrench on any of the bolts or you will end up taking the shifter apart. For the rear, remove the spring. One end of the spring goes in the smaller rectangular hole in the circular tray, the other end goes between the post and end of shifter and sits up in a groove… it takes a little tension to get it into this position.

Use cables that do not have to be cut. If cable is the kind that has to be cut, paint the end with something to keep it from fraying, nail polish hardener, or clear coat of some kind and let it dry. Put shifter body into vise to hold it and have 2 hands free, insert rear cable into slot on round plactic tray and push around the corner, easing it around with the point of a small paperclip and trying to avoid fraying it, pull the cable through the tiny hole and bend it around the plastic tray to ease the pulling and pull the whole thing through, then shift the aluminum lever to turn the tray and insert the cable through the hole at the end of the shifter body and pull through.

Done.

I’m trying to plan for next year’s mountain bike race season by keeping track of good days vs bad days on the bike and what I’ve done that may have caused it to be a good day or bad day in the preceeding days/weeks.

To do this I’ve been keeping some cycling training logs that allow anyone to signup for free for cycling training logs. The logs feature color coded days so it is easy to visually pick out color coded trends and then read the corresponding data to see what may have caused the specific trend. With this I hope to be able to better plan out my good days on the bike for race day.

So far I have about 2 months of cycling log data collected and can’t draw any specific conclusions.

It seems for me that potatos lead to good performance, along with a good run 2 days before a big ride. My legs seem to perform better on the bike when they are sore from another non-cycling activity, like running, that I do not do that often.

It’s always hard to get much sleep the night before a race because for me it usually means getting up real early and driving an hour or 2 to arrive to the race an hour or 2 early. I’ve found that it’s best for if I get 9 hours of sleep 2 nights before and then the usual 4-5 hours the night before. 2 days in a row of 4-5 hours sleep make for a bad race day.

Try the logs out by creating your free cycling training log account.

I got a laugh out of this page titled “Target Heart Rate for Fat Burning”

http://xfile007.blogspot.com/2006/06/target-heart-rate-for-fat-burning.html

It has some basic heart rate info, but scroll down to the 4th picture.

I’ve noticed recently that I have more power than many people on the flats but when it comes to the climbs I am usually suffering as the same people start passing me. I wondered why and found this good article about it here:

http://www.flacyclist.com/content/perf/hi_pwr_hills_or_flats.html

From this it seems that because I have more power on the flats and less on the hills, I could get faster than the people passing me on the climbs by loosing weight. Problem is I don’t have any weight to loose. I’m already 15 pounds lighter than I was last year and that was all upper body muscle loss. Another thing that doesn’t make sense is the people that pass me on the hills who I in turn will pass on the flats, some of them are larger than me. If they were smaller I can attribute it to their weight but being larger and a better climber but not good on the flats doesn’t make sense according to this article and the physics involved.

Maybe I just suck at climbing.

Another interesting link is at

http://www.cptips.com/climb.htm