Found some genius wisdom about doing hard long distance events from:

Charlie Farrow's Amateur Bike Racing Website

this guys blog is totally wierd and awesome. There is a whole subculture of Midwesterners doing crazy races like the Arrowhead 135 and many others....awesome! I used to think I could never ever live in the Midwest. As long as I got to hang out with these guys and do these types of things I think I could now!

http://cpfarrow.blogspot.com/2011/11/sage-lessons-for-everyones-favorite.html

Excerpts:

Lesson 2: Sell your rollers. Go outside. Ride in rain, sleet, snow, wind, and darkness. Ride on gravel, mud, snow, and ice. Run through mud and creeks, and over roots and rocks. Ski in the rain and on ice. Your races will be like this. When everybody else stays home or bails at the halfway point you will laugh and know that you've been through worse. 


Lesson 3: Eat food, drink water. There are lots of expensive gels, bars, and powders out there. You don't need them. Sure, they probably work, but there are tastier, cheaper options. Fig bars, peanut butter sandwiches, trail mix, pizza, cheese and sausage. Energy drink? Ensure, Carnation Instant Breakfast, and soy milk. Chocolate covered espresso beans can save a race. Eat! Drink! Use them! It is better to stop and pee than stop and pass out. 

Regression to Rigid

Just ordered this fork from Bikeman.com. Surly 1x1 100mm corrected rigid fork. Going to slap it on my hardtail crap bike and relive the glory days of pre-suspension riding. That bike has a old Marzocchi z1 on it, that was bent years ago in a crash and has never run the wheel straight since. It also barely moves anymore unless its a big bump, and it virtually useless on the vast amount of gravel roads I ride in the winter season. So it is going in the recycle bin and the rigid fork is going on. I really want to get a new hardtail 29er, but can't afford it at this point, so this will do for now.  Simplicity itself.  It's really about adapting your bike to the stuff you ride. Right now all I ride is dirt roads and some pavement. It will stay that way till some time in May when the snow melts out of the mountains enough to get on some real trails. I like it. I like this simplifying the machine. 

Better Than Not Riding

Made it out late last night for a tiny ride. It was 7pm and dark and cold out and I was not excited to do it. Figured it was better than not riding at all. It was chilly and windy and spitting snow. I hammered up the climb to the Circle House as hard as I have ridden in a long time knowing it was going to be a short ride. Strava is really causing me to step it up in intensity for things like this. Being able to see all your times for certain segments is awesome. I am thinking my training is going to be off the charts this year in comparison to last year. This means nothing but good things for my plans to beat my previous time at the Butte 50.

Winter in Montana this year has been incredibly mild, as it has across much of the Northcountry from what I can tell. This has been great for biking much more than I have in prior winters. I exclusively ride my hardtail mountain bike this time of year, even if I am riding on the roads. This is for a number of reasons. It goes slower which reduces wind chills. It is harder to pedal so for a given amount of time I am getting a harder workout compared to a road bike, which is important when I am racing the coldness of my toes to get a ride in.  I don't really care if it gets covered in frozen road slime since it is my beater bike. And it's got fenders and my lights all rigged up already.

I sometimes wonder if it is hard for everyone else that does these types of sports to get out and do the training as it sometimes is for me. I would guess it is easier for some because there are plenty of people out there who are doing amazing amounts of training. It has always been a little bit of a struggle for me. My inner lazy-ass does it's best to keep me sedentary.  Nights like tonight though are encouraging where I may not have made it out, but somehow managed to do a little something.

Randonneur Cycling?

Ever heard of randonneuring in a biking context? I hadn't, but I stumbled upon this guys site called Rando Montana yesterday. Very interesting. Riding long road distance, loosely organized, non competitive. Of course it is a Euro thing going back to some very old roots of cycling I am sure. In my search for good ways to get motivated and train for the Butte 50 again, these type of events would be pretty good. Only problem is they aren't on a mountain bike! I have some routes in mind for rides like this that would incorporate a significant amount of dirt, and would need to be done on a more off road setup. The concept is great though. I may need to try some of the rides this guy has planned. Nothing like a good reason to go out and ride a bike all day! Also check out RandonneurUSA site for more good info. I may just have to give this a try this year. 

Cheap-Ass Hardtail Beater Bike Love

Take one 89 dollar hardtail frame from Price Point.
Buy a new headset, one tire, some tubes, and some derailleur and brake cables.

Add spare parts and parts from older decommissioned bikes.
Result: Instant sub $200 training/beater/winter/dirt-road/nonracing mountain bike.

     

     I keep it in good enough tune to shift okay. The wheel bearings need help. Brakes pretty much suck. But after riding a lot of full suspension, nothing feels like hopping on the hardtail and pedaling hard and going nothing but forwards. So fast! It feels like this bike pedals itself up the hill compared to my now shelved 6" travel, 32lbs Santa Cruz Heckler.
     As a sidenote, I actually think some of the 29er hype is due to guys like me coming off years of riding 6" travel AM rigs, and getting a hardtail 29er and thinking it is magical, when the real magic is not the wheel size, but the newly discovered efficiency of a hardtail while pedaling. In fact, I suppose there are people who started mountain biking on full suspension and have never even ridden a hardtail. This would of course make the hardtail experience dramatic regardless of wheel size. I just don't really want to have multiple wheel sizes to take care of. Maybe some day.
     If it is between November and June, I run fenders on there to keep the crap off me. And a light if I have one that is working.

     Bar ends were added pretty quickly after I built it. Also there is a tube and tire lever strapped to the down tube, and a pump attached to the water bottle mounts. I run two bottle cages when I don't have the light on there, which means I can do a good ride with no camelbak in the summer. (I have become anti-backpack if at all possible.) It is great to have a bike that you really don't care about, that you don't have to baby, you don't have to wash if you don't feel like it.

     I figure as I replace parts on my nice bike I can give the hand-me-downs to this bike and it will be slowly upgraded over time. I like that the suspension fork is on there, as I like the more upright position the taller front end affords. But I have been thinking I may get a rigid fork to simplify the bike further. As long as I can find one with the axle-crown length close to what it is now I will do it.
     Then I will end up with Dual Rigid 26er, which isn't too hip these days, but about perfect for off season riding on dirt roads around here. My dad has been riding these types of bike with a vintage twist for years in Maine.