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Lumberjack 100 Weekend

Published June 21, 2012

This past weekend was Lumberjack 100, the race that I signed up for back in March. For the past three months I’d been riding a lot to try and be ready for it, but I didn’t do enough. After two laps I felt rather beat, and despite Erik and I heading out together on a third lap I gave up about 4-5 miles in, just after all of the hard initial climbing. A light rain had also started at this point and it didn’t help my lack of interest in continuing.

I suspect that the dust, heat, and sandy trail played a part in making it hard, but I think that I just wasn’t properly prepared for what the race entailed. In the end I logged 73 miles, about 27 short of finishing. My quitting was almost entirely due to general fatigue, not any particular soreness. Even the day after the race my legs weren’t sore and just felt a bit tired, and three days later I had no problem riding hard on a single speed. The data from that day can be seen here.

Looking back on it I’m frustrated with myself for not carrying on, but at the time I felt amazingly tired and at the end of the previous lap I’d stopped having fun. Part of me thinks that I could have finished, while the other part of me really isn’t sure. I really wanted to finish, but I didn’t. Maybe I’ll give it another go next year… I’m just not sure I want to do the months of riding again to get ready. At least next time (if there is one) I’ll have a good idea of what I did wrong.

The weekend overall was a really nice time up north with Danielle, Nick, Marty, Erik, and Kristi. Without them I wouldn’t have even made it up there. From the super-fun long rides to keeping me excited about it, from cool weather dirt road rides to fat biking in the snow they, along with many other friends, played a huge part in keeping me going to even try the race. They are great.

The day after the race, after we’d all had breakfast at Dagmar’s Kozy Kitchen (yes, it looks weird, but they have good food) and parted ways, I took a few detours on the way home. My first stop was at the Mortimer E. Cooley Bridge over the Pine River along M-55 just east of Wellston. This somewhat historic bridge (seen above and also here) was quite nifty to see. I’d driven over it a number of times previously and realized just how high it was, but had neve stopped to look.

There are some rather nice wood and metal stairways leading down to platforms along and beneath the bridge, specifically to allow for easy viewing. While nicely maintained, the foliage along the stairways could use a bit of a trim as much of it was poison ivy growing up through the slats (photo). I had to tread carefully to avoid stepping on any, as squishing it against the metal grating would surely leave uruishol on my shoes, leading to it ending up all over the car, house, etc. That’d be bad.

Finally, after visiting the bridge I headed over to Cops & Doughnuts in Clare, a surprisingly good bakery from which I purchased a doughnut (apple fritter) and coffee for myself, and a cinnamon roll which I dropped off with my dad on the way home. Being Father’s Day I wanted to be sure to stop by there. It was surprisingly easy to get to their house on the way home, so that worked out well.

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Sweaty Shoulder Deposits

Published June 10, 2012

This is a detailed photo of sweaty deposits left on the shoulder strap of my hydration pack that I usually carry when riding. Due to the summer time heat and ingesting a bunch of electrolyte-laden sports drink while riding, the result is this: salty, crusty residue left on most everything that I wear while riding, particularly after long rides.

Note that this sticks off the fabric by roughly 1mm. I washed it (and a bunch of other crust) off tonight, so hopefully the bag will be a bit more pliable once it dries.

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How I Clean My Bicycle Chain

Published June 10, 2012

Here’s the steps that I use for cleaning my bicycle chain:

  1. Remove chain from bicycle. SRAM Powerlinks make this easy.
  2. Put chain and Powerlinks in a bottle (PETE or glass, not polycarbonate).
  3. Fill bottle roughly 1/4 full with Finish Line Citrus Degreaser (or any other strong citrus degreaser), place cap on bottle.
  4. Agitate (shake, rock, etc) bottle, then let it sit with the chain submerged in degreaser. Periodically agitate, letting it sit for half an hour or so.
  5. Remove the chain and Powerlinks from bottle using needle nose pliers.
  6. Put chain and Powerlinks in laundry tub and rinse with lots of hot water. Be sure to rinse inside the rollers, between plates, etc.
  7. If outer plates continue to be dirty, coil chain (as when originally packaged) and scrub using a toothbrush and a little bit of degreaser. Rinse again.
  8. Take chain outside, holding one end, and spin it above your head as if you are a wrestler in a video game. Do the same again holding the chain from the other end. This removes most of the lingering water.
  9. (Optional.) Place chain and Powerlinks on the rack in the oven. Set oven to 250°F. Remove oven from chain once oven is up to temperature. Place on a metal surface to cool. This removes the remaining water.
  10. Lay the chain out on a metal surface and put one drop of ProGold Xtreme Chain Lube (formerly known as Voyager) on each roller. Prolink is also a good lube, but it doesn’t last as long. Put a drop on the inner part of each half of the Powerlink.
  11. Pick up the chain by both ends and lift one then the other, allowing all the pivots to flex, working the lubricant into the chain.
  12. Lay the chain back down in the puddle of lubricant and let it sit for a while (30 minutes or so).
  13. Wipe the outside of the chain down with a paper towel. There is no benefit to having lubricate on the outside of the chain; it’ll only collect dust.
  14. Reinstall chain.

After cleaning the chain leave the degreaser in the bottle. Over the course of a few days the sediment will settle out, and the remaining (relatively) clean degreaser can be poured off of the top, the sediment rinsed out, and the clean degreaser returned to the bottle for the next time chain cleaning is needed.

When the chain starts making noise and more lubrication is needed I do follow-up applications by applying one drop per roller while the chain is on the bike, pedaling backwards for a while to work it in, then wiping the chain down with a paper towel.

Using ProGold Xtreme I can typically get around 200 miles of somewhat-dusty SE Michigan mountain bike riding out of an application. The regular Prolink is a bit less, maybe 50-70 miles before the chain starts making noise.

I also use this technique to remove the factory lube from chains. While it is a good lube it’s a bit sticky for my tastes, as it seems to pick up dirt and gunk rather quickly and leave a fair bit of greasy dirt residue on the drivetrain.

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MTB Trail Mapping Workflow with OpenStreetMaps

Published June 5, 2012

With recent map drawing activities (1, 2, 3) I’ve been asked about the process I use for creating maps. What follows here is the workflow I used with OpenStreetMap (OSM) for the CRAMBA Stony Creek MTB Trail Maps, and hopefully others will find it useful.

I expect I’ll be following this same workflow for the next maps created, and even possibly revising previous ones using this process because it provides more solid base data than my previous method which consisted of little more than manually tracing SVGs of GPS tracks in Illustrator. It also helps get more map data in OSM, which is basically the cartographic version of Wikipedia.

One note, using OSM data in your maps requires that the resulting map be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) license. This basically means that anyone else can redistribute and reuse the map (or portions thereof), as long as they provide appropriate attribution and license their version in a similar way. As I’m intending these maps to be freely used by the general public (as part of my work with CRAMBA) I’m happy to do so, but others should be aware of these restrictions before getting too far along in the process.

Here’s the workflow:

Continue readingMTB Trail Mapping Workflow with OpenStreetMaps
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New Stony Creek MTB Trail Maps

Published June 5, 2012

I’ve been unhappy with Stony Creek’s official mountain bike trail map for a while now, as its routing is a bit physically inaccurate and missing some trails used during races. This led me to want to draw my own, and with recent forays into OpenStreetMap proving quite successful I’ve been able to get working on the map itself.

Tonight everything came together and I was finally able to publish the maps, and as a bonus I also documented three of the more popular routes. The more-formal announcement for these was made over on CRAMBA.org, but each map can also be seen here:

· Regular Map
· Fun Promotions 6 & 12 Hour Race Route
· Tailwind XC Race Route
· Wednesday Night MMBA / CRAMBA Group Ride Route

I’m sure some changes will be needed down the line, but for now I’m quite happy with how they came out. Making maps is fun.

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Coat Hanger Muffler Hanger

Published June 3, 2012

After work on Friday I noticed that Danielle’s muffler was hanging off her car a bit more than normal and that the support strap had broken. I finally had a chance to take a look at it this evening, and I ended up hanging it back up using two extra thick coat hanger segments (from hangers for a comforter) to hold it up. I hope (and suspect) that this’ll hold until she gets a new car.

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Don’t Let Your Silverware Nestle

Published May 31, 2012

If you’ve ever pulled out a spoon out of the dishwasher that just didn’t seem like it got as clean as everything else there’s a good chance it had nested with an adjacent spoon, blocking the dirty part from being directly sprayed with water / cleaning solution.

When placing silverware in the basket in a dish washer, set pieces so they alternate back and forth in the tray and they will be highly resistant to nestling together when jostled around by water. The result? Cleaner silverware!

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100 Miles, Turtle Rescue, and Rain

Published May 27, 2012

In preparation for Lumberjack 100, the training plan that I’d been following dictated an 8 hour ride today. Erik also had to ride today (but only for seven hours), and we ended up planning to meet at the Clarkston Road crossing of the Paint Creek Trail at 6am. This got pushed to 6:20am as I had to run back home and pick up a forgotten bottle and my shoes (two separate return trips), but eventually we were on our way.

The ride involved laps of Bald Mountain, Addison Oaks, and the Four Corners (Indian Lake, Barr, Drahner, and Lake George), which worked out well and tended to put us back in Addison Oaks right around the times that we were due to mix up more drink stuff. Due to a bit of slacking (and frequent pee breaks) and talking with Shari at Addison we ended up with almost two hours of downtime during the ride, so it was good that we started out so early.

Just after the 7 hour (moving time) mark we were near the cabins at Bald Mountain and Erik headed back towards his car while I started thinking about what I wanted to do for the next hour. With my computer saying I’d already ridden ~82 miles, I got an itch to try and go for a full 100 miles (often referred to as a century). I finished up the lap of Bald Mountain then rode back over to Addison Oaks, as mental calculations told me this should put things at just past the goal.

Despite angry looking clouds and a beautiful front passing over us this morning, we missed getting rained on. Half-way through this final lap of Addison Oaks the skies once again darkened, but this time I wasn’t so fortunate. Heavy winds gave way to drips, and by the time I got back to Bald Mountain a solid rain was falling. This lasted throughout the rest of the trail and for most of my ride back, but ended just as I reached the parking lot, which was fortunate as it made putting things away and changing much easier.

All said, this was a really good ride. I ticked off just over 100 miles, for the first time ever. While tired I still could have ridden more, as my legs were (and still are) feeling pretty good and not too much of me is sore. Reviewing the post-ride data I think I should probably have kept my heart rate a little higher to conform to the training plan requirements, but hopefully things will be fine in a couple weeks.

One odd thing from today’s ride: we kept encountering turtles, some of whom needed a bit of help. Two of them were on roads (and bound to get hit), with one having clearly fallen down a dirt embankment which it wouldn’t been been able to climb. These were relocated off into the brush in the direction they had been going. Three more were found on trails where bikes could easily hit them, but only two of these were moved as one was a basketball-sized snapping turtle (seen above). Finally — and unfortunately — there was a sixth turtle on Indian Lake Road which had already been hit.

Now that I’m home and having finished a large meal from Khom Fai I think it’s time to consider a shower and then bed. I’ve been up since ~4:05am and sleep is sounding good.

Here is the GPS plot and stats for today’s ride: link.

Here’s some photos from today’s ride:

· Erik and the snapping turtle found along the two track at Addison Oaks.
· Detail of the snapping turtle found along the two track at Addison Oaks.
· Another view of Erik and the snapping turtle sitting along the side of the two track at Addison Oaks.
· 101 miles in 08:46:10 of moving time, shown on the Garmin Edge 500. My longest ride to date.
· Gang Gai (red curry) from Khom Fai, a nice post-bike-ride meal.

If you’re interested here’s a few more photos taken during yesterday’s ride on the dunes southeast of Sleeper State Park. This was a fun ride, but I found that I couldn’t keep going in sand over ~4″ deep:

·The Mukluk on some dunes just southeast of Sleeper State Park.
·Sand along the power lines just south of Sleeper State Park. This was too loose for me to ride.
·The Mukluk leaned against an old barbed wire fence somewhere southeast of Sleeper State Park.
·Somewhere along the way I picked up a stick.
·Closer view of the large stick in the frame. It was easy to remove and basically fell out.

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Down the OpenStreetMap Rabbit Hole

Published May 25, 2012

I’ve been interested in making mountain bike trail maps for a while now, resulting in my drawing the official River Bends and Addison Oaks maps. Stony Creek Metropark has some great trails as well, but it’s MTB trail map is unfortunately lacking. It is missing some segments used during races, has some one-way markings that don’t match what’s actually signed on the trail, and isn’t geographically accurate enough to be used for trail planning.

My original intention was to record all of the trail segments at Stony Creek myself using a GPS then draw a map similar to the ones for Addison Oaks and River Bends, but after looking on OpenStreetMap (OSM) I found that most of the trails at Stony Creek were already mapped. Thus if I am willing to license my map in an appropriately open manner I can use this data, saving myself a bunch of time.

Since a few small connectors that I wished to include were missing I headed out to Stony Creek this evening and recorded GPS data for only the missing segments. Most of these were connectors used primarily during races, but as they are passable throughout most of the year I wanted to include them. I then brought the GPX into JOSM, edited the map, and submitted the changes. This is a pretty easy task if one is familiar with basic CAD tools.

While the changes aren’t yet reflected in the main online map, the changes have been submitted and it does show when new data is manually downloaded, so I imagine it’s only a matter of time before it’s visible to the public. I will then use this OSM to make my MTB-specific map, complete with markers for things such as log piles, rock gardens, etc.

I suspect that this ease of editing is going to change my mapping workflow in the future. There’s a very good chance that any new maps which I do will first go into OSM, then this data will be pulled out to generate the actual map. Barring any license constraints, of course.

Looking further it appears that River Bends’ trails aren’t yet on OSM. Looks like I’ve got some work to do there as well…

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PLRA Is Finally Enjoyable To Me

Published May 22, 2012

This afternoon after work I finally headed out to Pontiac Lake Recreation Area to ride the trails by myself. While I’ve been there a few times before with people showing me around, something about the trails there had yet to click with me and I wasn’t sure if I liked them or not. After riding two laps today I was finally recognizing most of the route, and I even had a feel for what was coming up after some parts. With a bit more experience there I’ll be able to do a better job carrying momentum into more climbs and then it’ll likely end up being even more fun.

Today I ended up riding two laps without stepping off the bike, with a parking lot to parking lot time of 1:49:22. This includes all of the optional Hard segments that I know of: the switchbacks about half-way in and the tight / rooty area near the end. Even though I didn’t really feel warmed up until after the triple puke climb on lap two, this ride was really enjoyable. The weather was absolutely perfect, everyone I encountered on the trail was friendly, and it fit in nicely as a good after work ride. I need to head out there more often.

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