Vamos pa' México hermano

Mumonkan said:
you should be fine with an edge, has great navigation, but it needs more power, so think about charging
etrex uses regular batteries that last a hell of a lot longer, but the navigation leaves something to be desired

i was planning on getting these color coded elevation cues w/ bear density graphs printed on waterproof paper, they might be of interest to you or that might be the exact information youd like to ignore, lol
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I did a bit more research on bike packing and mtbr and there seems to be a lot of reliability issues with the Edge 1000. Plus, people report the the battery lasts much less than the claimed time. On the other hand, people are happy with the reliability of the eTrex and report they are getting longer time between battery sets/charges using the lithium ones, so I decided on the Edge 35t (I also got a goo deal on it).

Thank you for the link to the maps! And you're exactly right 🙂
 
jimvreeland said:
The sooner you can get the bags and ride the bike weighed down, the better. You can borrow my stuff for the time being if you want, I'm not going to need it for a while.

Doing Centuries on a 50 pound bike is much more difficult than doing them on your normal bike and will take some getting used to.
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Thank you Jim! I know, I want to see what if feels like to ride with all that weight! I'm used to remove everything I can from the bike for short races and even for riding in general. The first ride will be interesting 🙂 I also want to get used to ride with stuff dangling from the bike everywhere... I might take you on your offer since it's going to take me some time to get the bike I'll use up and running. In the mean time I'll use the Fatboy. BTW, if you still have those shoes, I'll pick those up too 😳
 
Getting Fat & Heavy
Following @jimvreeland advice to start riding with a loaded bike ASAP, I switched from my son's Air 9 to my Fatboy, and I put some weights on it since I still didn't have the bags.

[GALLERY=media, 881]IMG_5672 by Pampa posted Apr 10, 2016 at 8:38 PM[/GALLERY]

Rode for a week like this (17 lb added in weights) and felt the difference immediately. Unfortunately, one of my carbon rims too. I threw the bike at speed onto a rock garden I even though I had pumped the tires pretty good, the front one bottomed hard and broke the rim on the outside. I the bead is fine though so for now I put tape on that until I see how (or if)I can repair it well.

In the mean time, I got almost all the parts to convert my SS to gears:

[GALLERY=media, 884]IMG_5906 by Pampa posted Apr 10, 2016 at 8:50 PM[/GALLERY]


Humbled by the Hundo
This weekend I wanted to do my first really long ride. Until today the longest I did was 3:25 hr/ 30 miles and in Columbia Trail (flat as a pancake). I stole an idea for a tough ride from @jimvreeland & @Mumonkan and decided to go and try to do the course of the Lu Lucka Wyco Hundo race solo (the race is next Sunday), which is 105 miles.

For this ride I changed way too many things at the same time, but I don't have much time so desperate times, desperate measures. I took the weights off the Fatboy, changed the saddle (I carried my previous saddle in my Camelback just in case 🙂), added aerobars, a few bags, a new GPS (eTrex 35t), which I never used before and headed to Jenkins Township, PA.

I started the ride and 2 miles out I had to come back for clothes as I was freezing. The new GPS (or the track I loaded in it - also first time using Garmin Bootcamp to create a track) send me into all kinds of weird places to get out of town. Finally I hooked the right road I got into a rhythm. Everything was going well until I hit a water crossing on top of a road. I wasn't careful I the splash got all my (summer!) shoes wet. That haunted me for a good while.

Anyway, I was plowing along with a couple of missed turns and then my eTrex battery died (shoot I forgot to bring spare batteries for it). I had a Garmin 800 as backup with 1/4 of the screen was unreadable and the cue sheets. I continued util I hit a town (Dalton) and stopped at the Fire Station to get water 😀 (I saw a guy smoking outside so I asked him).

After that stop I lost the course and couldn't get the 800 to pick it up. I asked a local to help me w/ the cue sheets and she didn't know any of the roads in there?! After trying different roads I run into a rodie that gave me directions to get back to the course. At the end he tells me, this will get you to mile 25 of the 100 miles course. What? I already did 50!

Then I decided to track back and complete the 100 that way but after a few miles the 800 would not display my outbound track (maybe b/c I stopped it?). At that point I was getting a bit worried so I use the option from the 800 to navigate back to the beginning of the course. I ended up with almost 74 miles and not sure how much climbing b/c I couldn't synchronize my garmins, but it sure felt like a lot!

EDIT: I got the climbing from the Garmin 5,500 ft. Not as much as it felt...

All in all a good day and tons of learnings.
 

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lol^

definitely get the full ACA mapset, even if you dont use them for live navigation theyll help you plan the next day and time/distance to towns, water, etc

this kinda stuff is why you play with all your toys and work out the kinks so youre doin a good job, and its great that youre not shy about asking locals for info
 
Getting used to sitting in the saddle for a long time on a heavy, loaded bike, takes some time. Keep chipping away at it. That loop is extremely hard for guys on 15 pound road bikes, so taking a fat bike out there will humble most folks. 2 weeks we'll go really long and try to get you prepared. With a buddy it'll be really hard to bail out.
 
jimvreeland said:
Getting used to sitting in the saddle for a long time on a heavy, loaded bike, takes some time. Keep chipping away at it. That loop is extremely hard for guys on 15 pound road bikes, so taking a fat bike out there will humble most folks. 2 weeks we'll go really long and try to get you prepared. With a buddy it'll be really hard to bail out.
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Jim is a solid coach and has pushed me many of times without me realizing it. Follow the man.
 
Mumonkan said:
lol^

definitely get the full ACA mapset, even if you dont use them for live navigation theyll help you plan the next day and time/distance to towns, water, etc

this kinda stuff is why you play with all your toys and work out the kinks so youre doin a good job, and its great that youre not shy about asking locals for info
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@pooriggy I might consider that 🙂

Yep. I got the ACA map set for the TD. I haven't had time to look at them (want to finish the bike and main gear first) but I'll get into them in a couple of weeks to do the race planning.

Thank you and @jimvreeland for all the tips btw. Keep them coming 🙂 They are helping me cut the learning curve big time!
 
jimvreeland said:
Getting used to sitting in the saddle for a long time on a heavy, loaded bike, takes some time. Keep chipping away at it. That loop is extremely hard for guys on 15 pound road bikes, so taking a fat bike out there will humble most folks. 2 weeks we'll go really long and try to get you prepared. With a buddy it'll be really hard to bail out.
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Thank you for the encouragement Jim. Question on training. I wanted to do one ride a week focused on climbing. I did that a couple of times in single track and I found I had too much recovery, and that the technical stuff was in the way of getting the best effort/training. What I did last time was to replace that with a tempo ride in Columbia Trail - basically, pedaling hard for 2 hrs -but it doesn't feel the same effort as climbing. I guess another option is the dreaded trainer. What would be best? I guess another option is to go to Round Valley. Haven't been there in ages but I remember some long, tough climbs there...
 
@Johnny Utah That sounds like a good, big stretch for me. Let me see what I can do this coming weekend. Are going to do it in a fatbike/ mtn bike?
 
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1sh0t1b33r said:
Do you road bike? Climb Bear Mt. a few times.😛
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No road bike for me. My road bike (a 2002 Cervelo One) has not left the trainer since 2009! I hate riding in the street. It's mostly because I don't know where to find good quiet routes. The one I did yesterday for example was pretty good. On the other hand, I had to drive 90 miles to get to that place...
 
Pampa said:
Thank you for the encouragement Jim. Question on training. I wanted to do one ride a week focused on climbing. I did that a couple of times in single track and I found I had too much recovery, and that the technical stuff was in the way of getting the best effort/training. What I did last time was to replace that with a tempo ride in Columbia Trail - basically, pedaling hard for 2 hrs -but it doesn't feel the same effort as climbing. I guess another option is the dreaded trainer. What would be best? I guess another option is to go to Round Valley. Haven't been there in ages but I remember some long, tough climbs there...
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Not sure there, I'm terrible at going uphill so I wouldn't take any advice from me. The only experience I have even remotely close was when I did the Blue Ridge a few years back. The climbs were so long that it didn't feel like you were climbing, it felt like riding tempo slowly. The short punchy climbs we have around here hurt more IMO.
 
definitely hit bear as much as possible, the climbs out there are long and thats the longest thing we got in earshot (that i know of) maybe skyline dr and scope out the thread in the road forum for the climbs list

my buddy that did TD twice would go up bear every weekend fully loaded to prep, he said that was chumpstyle compared to some of the stuff on the route

pacing is key, youll probably blow up the first time just like most of us did going up there
 
If I made Bear Mt. in one shot without stopping my first time, I have full confidence Segundo would demolish it! I mean it wasn't fast paced, but I made it. Maybe one of these days we can do Bear Mt. hill repeats together. By repeats I mean I'll do it once, and you can keep going.
 
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