Project Rwanda

My favorite picture from the ride:



I'll write about the ride with more pics and wrap up the year soon ...

If I had a Hammer

(I didn't make the climb.)

This last Saturday I went on what was supposed to be a quick ride before I drove up to be with my family for Christmas. The quick ride turned into a 4 hour tour through Chiquita, Tijeras Creek, Coto and Riley.

I was hoping that the bike would be in perfect shape since I had just gotten it back from the shop. Wrong. The teeth on my middle ring are very worn down and I was unable to put any pressure on the cranks when I was in my middle ring.

Considering that the middle ring is my favorite, this made the day kind of frustrating. I tried to substitute by spending time in the big ring and the small ring and avoiding the middle entirely. It was hard to find a good balance in some sections of the ride, but it worked out.

The other note for this ride was the fact that I was sick. I thought I was healing well and that I was maybe a day away from being ok, but again I was wrong. I think the ride in the cold (it was 39 degress when we started the ride) actually made things worse.

I've been fighting a chest cold (bad cough and sore throat) ever since the ride and am only now feeling better. I've been coughing up a lot of stuff and am starting to feel stronger again. I can't believe the cold lasted almost two weeks. Just stupid.

It was good to ride 35 miles before going on vacation, but I can't help but feel like I've been off the bike too much in the past few weeks. December has been a very slow month for riding.

I'm looking forward though to finish the year with the Project Rwanda ride. I'm not going to under estimate it this year. I'm going to pace myself and eat and drink a lot so I can finish strong.


(Michael Jordan and I both use our tongues to raise our game.)

Album from the day:

Chiquita

Waving the White Flag

(Please Amy. Use your laser eyes to fix my bike.)



(Old derailleur. It had a cracked pulley wheel. I had been waiting for it to fail.)

Alright I give up. I surrender. I've had enough. All the tool buying, the reading about repairs, the hours and hours of pointless labor ... I'm done. I just want to ride my bike again.

All I wanted to do was replace my cassette and my chain. Here is a list of things now wrong with my bike (some problems I've introduced since trying to repair it myself):

- Rear wheel is not spinning true (in all fairness this is the shops fault, not mine)
- Rear derailleur is not set up correctly (I bought a new one)
- Shift indicators are broken (I have no idea what gear I'm in now. This was my fault)
- Screws on shifting housing are loose/threads are jacked up (Again, this is my fault)
- Cable connecting shifter to derailleur is not connected. (This was a nightmare for some reason)

That doesn't even get into the other issues with my bike - like how my stupid saddle squeaks and makes all this annoying noise.

Tools/parts I have purchased specifically to repair the bike:

- Chain whip
- Lock ring tool (to get the cassette off)
- Two sets of cable housing (one was too short - thanks Performance dude)
- Three cables
- Shimano XT rear derailleur
- SRAM cassette (11/34)
- SRAM chain
- Bike stand (which is unbelievably awesome)
- A huge WRENCH (300mm I believe at that maximum)
- Grease for the bike (Amy actually ate all of the grease on accident - thank God she didn't die)
- New rear hub

I think that's it. A very frustrating experience. Everything has just exploded in my face. I try to do one simple repair and it ends up causing other problems with the bike. I feel like I'm trying to save a 90 year old guy with cancer. I start to kill the cancer only to find he has a rotten liver. I fix the liver and then he has heart problems. I fix the heart and then ... well ... maybe it's best to just put a pillow over his face.

Matt wrote a limerick for me:

There once was a rider named Ryan
Whose mountain bike was nearly dyin'
He attempted repair
Which ended in despair
And now he's at Rock 'n' Road cryin'

So true.

Encouragement

Last Saturday on San Juan I finished the ride with an overall sense of discouragement. The ride had been pretty sloppy. I missed a lot of technical obstacles, fell all over the trail and didn't really feel like I had conquered anything. I may have made one or two switchbacks that I had never climbed before - but the general feeling was that I had regressed a bit in regards to ability.

Fast forward to this past Saturday. My geared bike was a mess and the scheduled ride was up Blackstar, over to Eagle, down Eagle, up Skyline and then back down Blackstar. 30 something miles and roughly 6,000 feet of climbing. Something I would be happy to tackle on the geared bike. But since it was in ruins, I had to use the singlespeed. I had very serious doubts about my ability to do that long of a ride on the SS.

Waking up at 6AM I was conflicted. I didn't think I could ride for the majority of the planned route and figured I'd have to do a lot of walking. I didn't want to hold people back so I considered going back to bed and then riding later by myself. I was planning on maybe doing Blackstar-Skyline as a compromise.

I eventually got up out of bed and decided to show up with the SS and see what would happen. Maybe I'd go down Skyline while everyone else went to Eagle or maybe I'd go to Sierra. I had major doubts about making it back up Skyline after going to Eagle so I figured I'd ride with the group for a while and then take an alternate route.

To wrap it up, I ended up doing the entire ride on the SS and I was very encouraged by the ride as a whole. It was one of those rides where I felt like I bit off more than I could chew, but I seemed to be up for it.

I made all the climbs except for the three B's between Beek's and Eagle. I walked up all three because I didn't want to waste energy trying to clear them. I'm sure that if I was doing a shorter ride that I could make at least two of them, but I had made up my mind that it wasn't worth the energy to try and ride them. Better to walk and save the energy for later.

I was very happy to clear:

- The climb after Beek's to the "ball"
- The climb after the ball that is steep and fairly long (before the first B)
- The climb after the second B (kind of long - we took a break at the top of this climb)
- All of Skyline (no stopping)

Usually when I ride the SS I have these dramatic moments on the ride where I push super hard and get sick and dizzy. Not on this ride. I tried to pace myself and it paid off. I've become pretty good at knowing when a bonk is coming and I managed to stay strong all day by eating a lot and by eating at the right time. I had started to feel dizzy and weak after walking the first B, but took a break to eat and I'm pretty sure that saved me.

So the trend of feeling unprepared for Vision Quest has been reversed. I now feel confident and happy with my general progress.

Definitely a good ride.

(P.S. The start of this ride was freezing. 39 degrees at the start. I could not feel my hands for the first 20 minutes. It was painfully cold.)

Wear and Tear

Saturday was a group ride up San Juan to Viejo Tie to Blue Jay and then back via Old San Juan. A pretty good route and ... I believe 100% singletrack. Of course that is a huge plus.

The group consisted of me, Matt, Troy, Mark and Jason. I called this post "Wear and Tear" because on the ride my bike and I both suffered a bit. The bike wasn't shifting well and it couldn't stay in certain gears without ghost shifting and skipping. Whenever I would stop the chain would go in between the rings in the front and several times I thought I had actually broken my chain. So the bike wasn't in great shape.

When I cruised into Cocktail I noticed some pain in my right knee. I still can't remember how it got hurt. I don't think I banged it on anything and I didn't fall, so I'm not sure why it was hurting. At first I thought it was maybe a muscle/ligament issue. I tried stretching at Cocktail and it seemed to help a little. I stood on just my right leg and that made the knee hurt a lot.

Over the course of the ride I just tried to keep it loose and that seemed to help. The more active I was the less it hurt. When we would stop for a break it would get stiff and start hurting again.

After the ride when I got home I was limping around just a tiny bit due to the knee. It got pretty stiff after I had cooled down from the ride. I'm pretty sure I bruised it somehow because the damage seems to be on top of the knee and not inside (on top of the kneecap, not underneath). It felt fine the next day, so who knows.

The second injury happened on Viejo Tie. There is this short and steep uphill section about one third of the way through the entire loop, which is followed by a steep downhill with a little rock drop. The two times prior on this loop I had walked this downhill section so I figured I'd man up and ride it for a change.

I made the drop and hit the bottom more or less ok, but I was heading for a small tree so I went to lay the bike down and ended up crushing the family jewels on the back of my saddle. Both jewels took a beating and it hurt _REALLY_ bad. If the knee hurt bad at Cocktail, this was maybe 20x more painful. I got back on the bike after a bit of grunting and rode on. After 10 minutes the pain was gone. I can still feel it a little bit here and there, but it's nowhere near as bad as the Los Pinos disaster.

The final minor disaster happened after Cocktail on the trip down. I've always wondered what it would be like to miss a short section of singletrack on San Juan and then to go tumbling down the slope on the side of the trail. Well, now I know.

I came across a narrow banked section after a switchback and in the middle of riding across it I decided to put a foot down and walk instead. Dumb. Really dumb. You either ride something with confidence or you walk it. No half measures.

Obviously I wasn't able to get both feet out and on the trail before I tipped over and fell down the hill. Interestingly enough I was able to get both feet out after I hit the ground because I slid down into a small ravine about 4-5 feet below my bike. When I stopped sliding I realized that my right hand was grabbing a bunch of roots from a tree and I also realized that my left hamstring had cramped.

I rubbed out the cramp with my left hand while holding on to the roots with my right so that I wouldn't fall/slide any further. The ground was fairly flat but my instincts had kicked in and it took me a minute or so to realize I was ok and that I could let go of the roots.

I got up after the cramp died down and hiked back up to the bike and the trail. No damage done. Bike was fine and I was fine minus a few scrapes and bruises.

On a slope 4-5 feet isn't actually all that much. I've had this happen several times on other trails as well so it's not anything new to me. This just happened to be the farthest I've fallen down a slope after tipping over the edge. I know I've done this on Holy Jim twice and Viejo Tie once. Not as scary as you might think - just annoying.

(PS: It was NO HELMET DAY at San Juan as we were coming back from Cocktail. I will never understand why people ride without helmets - even on climbs. The worst accident I've ever had on a bike was when I was climbing. Helmet saved me for sure.)

Frustration

What is left of my rear hub:


Parts. Hopefully I can remember what goes where:


I've been having some trouble with my drivetrain for a while now and I decided last week that I would fix it myself. I described the symptoms to Matt and Andrew and we all figured the cassette needed to be replaced. So that meant buying a new chain as well since it is wise to replace both at the same time.

Not a big deal. I went out and bought a new cassette and chain and planned to do all the work myself over the weekend. I also had to buy a few tools like a chain whip, a lock ring tool and a huge wrench. The wrench is like something from the game Clue. It's huge and heavy and could easily take someone out. Anyways ...

I have to confess that I might have caused the problem myself. Before I bought the wrench I was trying to get the lock ring tool to turn so I could get the cassette off and it wasn't working. I needed something to turn the lock ring while I held the chain whip. I couldn't find anything large enough to fit the lock ring.

So I looked at my chain whip and realized the end of it fitted the lock ring perfectly. I thought that maybe I could just torque the heck out of it and get the cassette off that way. So I put everything I had into pushing the lock ring the WRONG WAY to get the cassette off. I heard a few pops but thought that it might be the cassette coming off. Wrong.

I eventually got the cassette off and found the external housing for my rear hub. I touched it and it fell apart. It was all cracked and a ton of ball bearings fell out all over the floor. A complete mess.

I'm not sure if it was already damaged and destroyed before I torqued the cassette the wrong way or not. The bike was behaving very strangely on San Juan on Saturday and so my hope is that it was already destroyed. I don't want to think that I made the situation that much worse.

I took the wheel into the shop and they suggested buying a new rear hub and just replacing the guts of the old one with the guts from the new one. I took the new hub home and attempted to do it on my own, but no luck. I don't think my existing hub can come apart the way the new one can. The big problem I'm having is that the one end is just destroyed and I have nothing to lock on to with my wrench. I put everything I had into trying to unscrew the hub on the cassette side, but couldn't get it.

At this point I'm just over it. My plan is to take the new hub back to the shop and have them re-lace the wheel around the new hub. I just want a wheel with a working rear hub.

After that I'll take the wheel home and put back on the rotor and the new cassette. At least I can do that on my own.

In addition I'm planning on replacing my rear derailleur and the housing and cables for it. Ugh. What a weekend.

Hoping that maybe while I'm at work Amy might fix the bike for me:


Tools and parts:

How to Make a Zombie

Recipe for Zombie Ryan:

1. Toss and turn all night in anticipation of beating Big Red.
2. Wake up at 6:20AM.
3. Ride for an hour on the singlespeed (making Big Red).
4. Hurry home and go to work.

So that's where the ride this morning has left me. I'm pretty much a zombie. I'm able to get some work done, but it's not my best.

Big Red:


I was excited to finally make it up Big Red on my SS. I remember stopping at the top and when I looked down I saw that my heart rate was hovering around 198 beats per minute. A little high. It took me several minutes to rest and relax before I was ready to continue, but I was pretty happy to finally make it.

I wish I had the right words to describe how draining of a climb it was for me. The best I could think of was imagine that you are perfectly healthy and happy and then in the course of about a minute you go from happy to a really bad flu. You feel very weak all of a sudden, your legs barely hold you up, your chest is tight and you can barely breath. You instinctively put your head down and then get dizzy. The next 10-15 minutes you can't catch your breath and your legs feel like they've been riding all day.

Anyways it was a good ride. Not a lot of climbing, but I'd like to think the climbing I did do was intense. I tried to clear this one section twice and just could not get it.

Tough Section:


I tried the right side first because I thought it was the widest and smoothest way up. The problem is that with the rigid fork I end up approaching the climb at a very slow speed. I have to ramp up really fast at the base of the climb and that never works. I only made it maybe halfway up before having to walk up in the mud. (The mud made it hard to climb as well.)

The second attempt was after I had done Big Red, but I felt like I was warm and could make it. I tried the left side. This approach was way worse than the first attempt. I basically started from a dead stop at the base. The stupid ruts and my rigid fork just don't allow for momentum to be carried.

I made it about 80% up before my foot came out of the pedal causing me to come off. I really think I actually pulled it _straight_ out. Normally you have to turn to the side to get out, but I think I was pulling so hard that I just yanked it out. I was bummed because I was pouring all I had into the climb. It was ugly though. My front wheel was popping up all over the place and I felt like I was doing push-ups trying to use my upper body to help get the cranks around.

All in all it was a good ride. It made me a zombie for a day, but what can you do? I hit my goal of 10mph, but I don't think it counts because there wasn't enough climbing.

(PS. I used GPS Racer on GeoLadders and it looks like I did Big Red in about 54 seconds. Sweet.)

You Should Sit Down

Going to Sierra Peak:



Last night was the fourth week in a row where I rode up Blackstar on a Tuesday night. The difference this time was that I rode my singlespeed. Our little group of four actually went all the way to Sierra Peak on what turned out to be a very warm night.

I was happy that I was able to sit down and pedal more than the last time I rode to Sierra on my singlespeed. My goal when I ride the SS is to sit as much as possible. It keeps my heart rate down and strengthens my legs. Standing is cool and it's a good workout, but I can't sustain it on longer climbs.

The most fun of the ride for me was passing a large group of riders that had started a little bit before our group. I love passing people. It doesn't happen all the time, but I cherish it when it does. It was extra special last night because I passed 3-4 other SS riders.

I also caught the leader of their group a little before Hidden Valley which felt great. Physically I was beat, but the mental high of catching their leader was enough to keep me going. I thought he was going to catch me again in Hidden Valley since he was on a geared bike - and he came pretty close. At the start of the climbing out of Hidden Valley he had closed in, but once the climbing started again he was left far behind. Felt good.

It might seem arrogant to always focus on passing people, but when you ride for an hour at night alone you have to get motivated somehow. Plus I always see it as motivation rather than an assertion that I'm a good rider while other guys suck. The goal is just to never get passed and to drag down anybody else I can find.

Time to Beek's sucked (1:01), but the overall time for the ride was good considering I was on the SS (2:09).

I felt great after the ride and realized it wasn't quite as difficult as it was the last time I did this route on the SS. Looking forward to more training on the SS.

(Note: It was super windy last night. Really annoying in a few spots. Oh well!)