It's just a training blog bro
- Thread starter Pearl
- Start date
Pearl
THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING
I ran Aspen 2.4 in the rear and Ardent Race 2.4 in the front, like 17-18 psi in the front and 20 in the rear. What really got me tripping is the brakes, I remember with my Guide RSCs they were strong as shit, these XTs did not like the descents at all
Also I didn't have to take a shit mid race, so that was a win
Also I didn't have to take a shit mid race, so that was a win
You should check things like this before a race...
Especially as there's a ton of braking in a race like that.
Pearl
THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING
I don't normally post after every single ride I do like the golden age of blogs, but it was one of those rides that I felt every ache and sore muscle from using my MTB muscles, but my roadie muscles felt pretty normal. As the easy ride went on, I felt better and better. At the 45 minute mark I felt like my normal self again. Amazing what a simple pedal can do for you, mentally and physically.
Also went to the LBS and put some new pads in the rear, chased doggo up and down the street to bed them in (half assed) and on the first lever pull it was like a light bulb went off... "OH THIS IS HOW BRAKES ARE SUPPOSED TO FEEL"
I still think I need to buy both sram/shimano bleed kits. I don't like to mess around with them for some reason.
Also went to the LBS and put some new pads in the rear, chased doggo up and down the street to bed them in (half assed) and on the first lever pull it was like a light bulb went off... "OH THIS IS HOW BRAKES ARE SUPPOSED TO FEEL"
I still think I need to buy both sram/shimano bleed kits. I don't like to mess around with them for some reason.
if you want to service both brands of brakes you definitely need to have both kits, they are not interchangeable (even neglecting the fluid incompatibility)
i will say for sram i was much happier with the sram official kit than i was with the cheap amazon knockoff.
Pearl
THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING
I'm starting to run out of things in this cycling game. I think I've gotten as fast I can get without drastic increase in hours to my riding, drastic changes to my eating habits, or drugs. I needed to find something to keep myself interested in riding more. Many moons ago, I drew up a loop from Charlotte to my parents house in Wilmington. I spent way too much time tweaking it and adjusting it to be the fastest, smoothest, and have enough gas stations to stop at to refuel. Never knew if I was going to do it, but I like maps, so I kept tinkering. Well this past weekend I had the chance to do it, as my parents were driving up to Charlotte on their way to Nashville, so I had a free "reverse shuttle" back home. The route I settled on was 201 miles, 5,400 feet of climbing, with 4,400 or so coming in the first 90 miles.
I'm far from an ultra ultra endurance junkie, but I have enough stuff dialed into get to at least 8 hours. After that, who knows what is going to happen. I packed enough sugar for 8 hours, two front lights, two blinkies, fully charged headphones, cash/credit cards, some co2/tubes and we were all packed for success.
I ate breakfast the night before at like 9pm and went to sleep, which was kind of useless because I don't think I ever fell asleep. Alarm set for 3AM and smash a Celsius, kids Clif bar and I'm pedaling at 3:30AM.
The bike all set to go.
I decided to raw dog the riding in the darkness to save my headphones for when I really needed them. It is really amazing how peaceful it is at this hour of the day. I scared many racoons and deer in the dark on my way east. I had a pace/effort I wanted to hold the whole time (the fastest way from point A to point B is a steady effort) and it almost seemed too easy in the beginning. I kept with it. The first 40 miles until my first stop were roads I knew, which made time fly by pretty quickly. I planned to have a spot to stop every 3 hours or so at the 17mph pace I wanted to do, but apparently gas stations in Norwood do not open at 6am. Which was fine, I could milk my last bottle another 30 minutes or so until my next stop. The cooler temps/no sun helped that.
Heading east means I got to see the sun come up right in front of me, which was pretty cool.
I see some eyes glowing in front of me and with the rolling roads, unsure if it's up farther ahead and a deer, or right in front of me and a racoon. As I get closer, I realize it's some crackhead dude walking in the street smoking a cigarette and scares the shit out of me, thankfully I hit him with a good morning and he was just as excited to see me. The sun comes up and the garmin switches from dark to night mode, phase 1 complete.
I knew the hardest part on paper would be mile 60 or so on Route 73, has the steepest and longest "climbs" on this route. I know it doesn't even register as a bump most places and is laughable. The biggest one is 250 feet of climbing or so? I knew I could push a little harder over those and coast/big gear it down the back side. It was a nice change of pace to have a steady effort uphill, kind of. This eventaully ends and I reach my 2nd stop on my map in Ellerbe.
Mile 68, 4 hours in.
I feel pretty refreshed, keeping my effort in check is really going well. Grab some water, a snickers, hang out for about 5 minutes. Take a pee on the side and roll out. These old towns are so strange, theres nothing in them, but tons of people around.
Next stop is 38 miles away and nothing too eventful here from my memory. It is starting to warm up and I'm enjoying the mostly rolling downhill towards the beach, cruising at the same power as before and now doing 18mph. Eating and fueling good. Thankfully the roads zig zag a little and makes things easier, only focusing on the road until the next turn. End up doing the first 100 miles in 6 hours elapsed, which is kind of confidence inspiring. Spirits are still high.
Get stuck at a train for what felt like 10 minutes (probably only 5) but felt the heat from the road warm me up.
This section between miles 100-130 is fairly built up before it goes into the country again. I have a 1 full bottle (90 minutes per bottle) but decide to stop and cool down a tad.
This pit stop I grabbed some caffeine for the mental boost that I'm hoping it brings me.
Beer caves are amazing. I browsed some beer as I had my snacks. Total life saver.
Every time I see Jim do these epic rides, I always laugh how he gets flats all the time. Like, what is he doing? I swear sometimes he is flatting the tire on purpose. Well, going through Lumberton I go over a set of railroad tracks that were made for tanks to go over and get a pinch flat in the rear. Thankfully it was right next to a abandoned gas station so I had some shade to make this repair.
Mile 129.
Swap this out pretty quick and was a welcome forced break. Going forward the roads were more popular, which meant long miles on straight stretches of roads, but also kept my speed closer to 19mph. Cool.
Between here and my next stop I'm mentally cracking. It's hot, the straight roads are mind numbing. Legs and body feel okay, but brain, not good.
At Mile 135, I don't need to stop but I see a hole in the store and stop for water. These stores are like seeing a mirage in the middle of a desert, I just get drawn into them and want to get something. Kind of breaks up the ride. I'm sort of doubting myself at this point, but I'm over halfway on my route, in the middle of nowhere where I would not want to hang out for a ride back home, so I keep pushing. I just keep moving forward and hopefully the miles keep rolling off on these flat, straight roads.
Mile 144, ~9 hours.
My Garmin 520 (yes it's that old) Is finally getting tired of navigating and gives me the low battery alert. I switch to my Fenix watch and it may have been better. Before I was staring at the purple line on my 520, watching time click by. Now I just see that I am on the line, no other info besides how many miles are left.
I have one more stop on my cheat sheet after this one. I grab a cup of ice and dump it down my back. I forgot to mention that the last 50 miles or so, I've been messaging Lou, AKA soulchild. Some of you may remember him. He lives down in Wilmington now too. I coaxed him into meeting me on the road and giving me a mental boost on the way in.
Mile 153. My stops are getting more often and not as long, but I'm really taking advantage of the beer caves. And $1 cups of ice that melt in 10 minutes. People at the gas stations have been asking me where I was going and obviously think I am crazy. Everyone is super friendly though.
I've been on this road 211, for the last 35-40 miles and it is draining on me. I see my last stop ahead and think one more cup of ice and some ice cold water would really hit the spot right now.
IT'S FUCKING CLOSED.
I have enough Formula369 to finish this, but really wanted some cold, refreshing water. I find a spicket on the side of the building and dump my helmet, rinse off my arms, all the things to cool my body down. Sadly it's so hot that the water isn't really cold, kind of like, the ice melted and sat in the sun for 30 minutes temperature. It was really a let down emotionally and put me in a bad spot.
I'm dying to see this left hand turn onto another road, Where I should run into Louis. Around 173 I see him riding at me, excited to have a person to talk with. Sadly my brain is excited to chat with him, but my legs and body are on fumes. Garmin says the temps are now in the 90s and being 10+ hours into this thing, my body is completely confused on WTF we are doing. It's only been about 10-15 minutes since i ran into him and I'm hoping we pass another store or anything with water. I keep looking around each corner and see nothing. Suddenly, what seems like 2 hours (but only 30) we see a church and I do the same thing, trying to get as cool as possible. Mile 180. I just need to keep moving.
About 12 minutes later we see a gas station and you know ya boy is stopping at it.
Lou looking for refreshments even though he looked very fresh.
Lou would be chatting and suddenly look around and see I am 5-10 bike lengths back, he found this humorous. At this point I'm pushing like 100 watts but it being so flat, we are still moving forward at around 16mph. A couple of overpasses, some more built up traffic and I finally see some single digit "miles to go" numbers. I keep rattling them off 1 mile at a time. I turn into my parents neighborhood, miss one of the pedestrian bridges and have to turn around, which was a chore in itself with my body being dead, but eventually I turn around and get to where I need to be. My folks welcome me and Lou with some cold water, an air horn and some chairs.
3:30AM in Charlotte to 4:30PM in Wilmington.
13 hours elapsed, 11:40 moving time. Pretty surprised with that.
This is probably something I won't do again, especially since I would either need to do it in a cooler time of the year, but would have less daylight to do it. Certainly wouldnt to Wilmington to Charlotte. But I can say I did a massive A to B ride, didn't die and I think I did it pretty well.
Surprisingly the next day I didn't feel completely dead. My body was certainly sore, but I didn't feel like I got hit by a train. I guess keeping the effort in check the whole time really went a long way.
I'm far from an ultra ultra endurance junkie, but I have enough stuff dialed into get to at least 8 hours. After that, who knows what is going to happen. I packed enough sugar for 8 hours, two front lights, two blinkies, fully charged headphones, cash/credit cards, some co2/tubes and we were all packed for success.
I ate breakfast the night before at like 9pm and went to sleep, which was kind of useless because I don't think I ever fell asleep. Alarm set for 3AM and smash a Celsius, kids Clif bar and I'm pedaling at 3:30AM.
The bike all set to go.
I decided to raw dog the riding in the darkness to save my headphones for when I really needed them. It is really amazing how peaceful it is at this hour of the day. I scared many racoons and deer in the dark on my way east. I had a pace/effort I wanted to hold the whole time (the fastest way from point A to point B is a steady effort) and it almost seemed too easy in the beginning. I kept with it. The first 40 miles until my first stop were roads I knew, which made time fly by pretty quickly. I planned to have a spot to stop every 3 hours or so at the 17mph pace I wanted to do, but apparently gas stations in Norwood do not open at 6am. Which was fine, I could milk my last bottle another 30 minutes or so until my next stop. The cooler temps/no sun helped that.
Heading east means I got to see the sun come up right in front of me, which was pretty cool.
I see some eyes glowing in front of me and with the rolling roads, unsure if it's up farther ahead and a deer, or right in front of me and a racoon. As I get closer, I realize it's some crackhead dude walking in the street smoking a cigarette and scares the shit out of me, thankfully I hit him with a good morning and he was just as excited to see me. The sun comes up and the garmin switches from dark to night mode, phase 1 complete.
I knew the hardest part on paper would be mile 60 or so on Route 73, has the steepest and longest "climbs" on this route. I know it doesn't even register as a bump most places and is laughable. The biggest one is 250 feet of climbing or so? I knew I could push a little harder over those and coast/big gear it down the back side. It was a nice change of pace to have a steady effort uphill, kind of. This eventaully ends and I reach my 2nd stop on my map in Ellerbe.
Mile 68, 4 hours in.
I feel pretty refreshed, keeping my effort in check is really going well. Grab some water, a snickers, hang out for about 5 minutes. Take a pee on the side and roll out. These old towns are so strange, theres nothing in them, but tons of people around.
Next stop is 38 miles away and nothing too eventful here from my memory. It is starting to warm up and I'm enjoying the mostly rolling downhill towards the beach, cruising at the same power as before and now doing 18mph. Eating and fueling good. Thankfully the roads zig zag a little and makes things easier, only focusing on the road until the next turn. End up doing the first 100 miles in 6 hours elapsed, which is kind of confidence inspiring. Spirits are still high.
Get stuck at a train for what felt like 10 minutes (probably only 5) but felt the heat from the road warm me up.
This section between miles 100-130 is fairly built up before it goes into the country again. I have a 1 full bottle (90 minutes per bottle) but decide to stop and cool down a tad.
This pit stop I grabbed some caffeine for the mental boost that I'm hoping it brings me.
Beer caves are amazing. I browsed some beer as I had my snacks. Total life saver.
Every time I see Jim do these epic rides, I always laugh how he gets flats all the time. Like, what is he doing? I swear sometimes he is flatting the tire on purpose. Well, going through Lumberton I go over a set of railroad tracks that were made for tanks to go over and get a pinch flat in the rear. Thankfully it was right next to a abandoned gas station so I had some shade to make this repair.
Mile 129.
Swap this out pretty quick and was a welcome forced break. Going forward the roads were more popular, which meant long miles on straight stretches of roads, but also kept my speed closer to 19mph. Cool.
Between here and my next stop I'm mentally cracking. It's hot, the straight roads are mind numbing. Legs and body feel okay, but brain, not good.
At Mile 135, I don't need to stop but I see a hole in the store and stop for water. These stores are like seeing a mirage in the middle of a desert, I just get drawn into them and want to get something. Kind of breaks up the ride. I'm sort of doubting myself at this point, but I'm over halfway on my route, in the middle of nowhere where I would not want to hang out for a ride back home, so I keep pushing. I just keep moving forward and hopefully the miles keep rolling off on these flat, straight roads.
Mile 144, ~9 hours.
My Garmin 520 (yes it's that old) Is finally getting tired of navigating and gives me the low battery alert. I switch to my Fenix watch and it may have been better. Before I was staring at the purple line on my 520, watching time click by. Now I just see that I am on the line, no other info besides how many miles are left.
I have one more stop on my cheat sheet after this one. I grab a cup of ice and dump it down my back. I forgot to mention that the last 50 miles or so, I've been messaging Lou, AKA soulchild. Some of you may remember him. He lives down in Wilmington now too. I coaxed him into meeting me on the road and giving me a mental boost on the way in.
Mile 153. My stops are getting more often and not as long, but I'm really taking advantage of the beer caves. And $1 cups of ice that melt in 10 minutes. People at the gas stations have been asking me where I was going and obviously think I am crazy. Everyone is super friendly though.
I've been on this road 211, for the last 35-40 miles and it is draining on me. I see my last stop ahead and think one more cup of ice and some ice cold water would really hit the spot right now.
IT'S FUCKING CLOSED.
I have enough Formula369 to finish this, but really wanted some cold, refreshing water. I find a spicket on the side of the building and dump my helmet, rinse off my arms, all the things to cool my body down. Sadly it's so hot that the water isn't really cold, kind of like, the ice melted and sat in the sun for 30 minutes temperature. It was really a let down emotionally and put me in a bad spot.
I'm dying to see this left hand turn onto another road, Where I should run into Louis. Around 173 I see him riding at me, excited to have a person to talk with. Sadly my brain is excited to chat with him, but my legs and body are on fumes. Garmin says the temps are now in the 90s and being 10+ hours into this thing, my body is completely confused on WTF we are doing. It's only been about 10-15 minutes since i ran into him and I'm hoping we pass another store or anything with water. I keep looking around each corner and see nothing. Suddenly, what seems like 2 hours (but only 30) we see a church and I do the same thing, trying to get as cool as possible. Mile 180. I just need to keep moving.
About 12 minutes later we see a gas station and you know ya boy is stopping at it.
Lou looking for refreshments even though he looked very fresh.
Lou would be chatting and suddenly look around and see I am 5-10 bike lengths back, he found this humorous. At this point I'm pushing like 100 watts but it being so flat, we are still moving forward at around 16mph. A couple of overpasses, some more built up traffic and I finally see some single digit "miles to go" numbers. I keep rattling them off 1 mile at a time. I turn into my parents neighborhood, miss one of the pedestrian bridges and have to turn around, which was a chore in itself with my body being dead, but eventually I turn around and get to where I need to be. My folks welcome me and Lou with some cold water, an air horn and some chairs.
3:30AM in Charlotte to 4:30PM in Wilmington.
13 hours elapsed, 11:40 moving time. Pretty surprised with that.
This is probably something I won't do again, especially since I would either need to do it in a cooler time of the year, but would have less daylight to do it. Certainly wouldnt to Wilmington to Charlotte. But I can say I did a massive A to B ride, didn't die and I think I did it pretty well.
Surprisingly the next day I didn't feel completely dead. My body was certainly sore, but I didn't feel like I got hit by a train. I guess keeping the effort in check the whole time really went a long way.
sundaydoug
Well-Known Member
This might be the motivation I need to start doing early morning rides. Awesome dude.
ChrisG
Unapologetic Lifer for Rock and Roll
Great stuff.
Your write ups are always a good read. Given all the potential variables, that ride went really well.
And the @soulchild sighting is the icing on the cake.
Your write ups are always a good read. Given all the potential variables, that ride went really well.
And the @soulchild sighting is the icing on the cake.
I was thinking about this today on my long (1:45) MTB ride.
Suppose you stopped at the halfway mark, and took a 30 minute break and ate a proper lunch. Like a legit turkey sandwich, chips, and a big ass fountain soda. Or whatever other else you would’ve found appealing that filled you up.
Do you think you would have finished stronger/ faster?
Pearl
THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING
for me i think it would have taken longer, i feel like if i stopped at mile 100, i would have felt like i did at mile 180 trying to get started again. also, the heat would have been that many minutes/hours hotter lol