Category: cycling

I’ve dropped the chain on my single speed a few times lately, noticing that the chain has become more and more slack. Since I’m not noticing any dropout/wheel slipping since sorting out the sliding dropout issue I decided to measure the chain. Lo and behold, when using my trusty Park CC-3 I found that it’s stretched .75% in some places, 1.0% in others. When I went to swap the chain tonight I decided to clean the chainring, only to find the telltale burrs and hooked tooth pattern indicating it’s time to replace the chainring. Being aluminum this Spot chainring was bound to

I think I’ll just get a nice stainless steel Surly 104mm BCD x 34t then reassemble it all without the Salsa bash guard, although the bash guard may be worth keeping just to protect everything. Hopefully between with the new chainring, proper tensioning, and a new chain everything will stay in place and the chain will remain nicely tensioned.

At least these aren’t the kind of problems that I’d have with carbon fiber chainrings.

Today after work I couldn’t decide where to go ride, but eventually I settled on heading up from Oakview Middle School to the Polly Ann Trail to see if I could make it to I-69, roughly 16 miles away, in an hour. Leaving the school’s parking lot at 6:00pm I decided to turn around at 7:00pm, giving myself roughly 1:20 to get back to the parking lot before the sun set. I wasn’t quite prepared for this endeavor, but it worked out well.

I ended up only making it as far as the ditch pictured here, as when I rolled up to this area my clock ticked over to 7:00pm exactly. As opposed to last time I’d ridden this when the ditch was passable and fairly easy to climb it’s now much more eroded, and the far side is overgrown to the point where riding it would have been a slow go; definitely not something to do at 7:00pm on a late August evening without a set of head and tail lights.

All done, I ended up riding 27.7 miles with a moving time of 1:46:42, for an average of 15.58 MPH. Despite having some decent hills (particularly along Lake George Road) and terrible path surface (large gravel at times, or just grass) north of the Lapeer / Oakland county line this is the fastest average speed I’ve had on a ride. It even surpasses mostly-pavement rides with smooth tires to and from work or around local paved paths.

Upon returning to the car I felt very worn out and right on the edge of bonking which I’d thankfully staved off by consuming two Hammer Gels (vanilla and chocolate) while riding. I found myself wanting for a some Recoverite, chocolate milk, or maybe a banana upon returning to the parking lot, but I just had to settle for a few handfuls of granola. Oh well. At least it was a fun, hard ride.

Just before turning back I started recording the route via my phone’s GPS. If you’d like to see a copy of this GPS plot, it can be found here: 24-Aug-2010_PollyAnnBacktoOakview.kmz

Here is a photo of a dusty Kenda Small Block 8 from the rear of my Titus after doing two laps of Maybury State Park with Erik and Kristi on Sunday.

This has been a nice weekend for riding, with things working out so I could rack up 40.31 miles on Saturday (Home to Stony Creek, River Bends, then back), 29.09 miles yesterday (2x Maybury, 2x Addison Oaks), and 20.1 miles today (Home to Sherwood Brewery, River Bends, Sherwood, then Home). I’d like to continue this throughout the week, but I suspect that weather and other obligations will preclude this.

Today some friends (who are also team mates) and I made a four-person go at Fun Promotions’ 8 Hours of Bloomer race, another one of the Michigan Cup Endurance Racing series which also included the 6 & 12 Hours of Stony Creek race from back in May. Our team ended up placing second out of a pool of two, coming in only a couple minutes behind the winning team. I started out the race, then Erik followed, with Marty and then Nick taking their turns. All of us got in four laps, save for Nick who only ended up with three due to rain starting up just before Marty’s final lap and the cutoff time for leaving on a final lap being pushed back half an hour.

This was my first long ride at Bloomer, and I found this route to be rather enjoyable. I’d previously visited the park, but didn’t like it either of those times. One time was with an MMBA group, and the riding of a (very eroded) trail along the upper part of a very steep ridge (photo) scared me so much that I stopped tens of feet into it. The second time was with Derek, the guy currently responsible for overseeing trail maintenance at the park, and the route he took us on was very difficult and simply not much fun. This time the route was a bit shorter, but quite enjoyable. It also included the chute / switchbacks mentioned here (that photo doesn’t do it justice) which were a bit intimidating at first, but were much better after a few goes.

In the end with my four laps I racked up 23.15 miles over 2:00:32, for an average speed of 11.52 MPH. At some point I hit a max of 21.95 MPH, which isn’t particularly quick. Also, that total mileage is easily eclipsed by what Joe, Kelly, and Bill did during their solo races, with Joe approaching 100 miles, Kelly at 80-some, and Bill with a bit less than that.