I'm a Little Excited

It's finally here! SRAM finally released the 20 speed mountain bike group set. I've been bitching to some riding buddies over the last few months about how I never use my "granny" gear and would love to see a "compact" style mountain grouppo. It just makes sense to me.

Available to the public in July.

http://velonews.com/article/92426/sram-launches-20-speed-mountain-bike-group

A Bit of Riding

Been doing a little riding lately. Last weekend I raced up in Boulder and after the race fellow Saluki cycling buddies Jeff and Brent and I did some mountain biking in Lyons, CO. The trail was rad, the weather was super hot.

Yesterday my newest roommate and recent SIU grad, Jeff and I headed up for the Koppenberg circuit that was rescheduled from March. We arrived in Superior, CO at about 7:30 to find the race director turning people away...again. You see, the Koppenberg is modeled after a European Roubaix race. A good portion of Colorado's Koppenberg is on gravel roads and the 3 straight days of rain prior to the event would've made the 17% grade on the gravel climb a little more than difficult. So, I think the race is officially canceled for the year.

We had planned on doing a little more riding after the race anyway so I wasn't totally disappointed that the race was canceled. We drove on into Boulder and headed up Left Hand Canyon. A group of 4 guys were time-trialing up the canyon and Jeff & I blew by them. We had no idea how far the canyon went or how steep it would get. We were just riding, having a good time. The 4 dudes caught up with us about 10 miles later in the climb. We sat in with them and it turned out they were doing some watt testing or some crap. They suggested a route and we decided to just ride the route with them....until I broke my chain. We fixed it and continued the climb up to Brainard Lake.

Jeff & I couldn't help but smile & laugh at the views. We were surrounded by 12,000+ foot mountains and the snow banks were still above our heads. The ride took us to over 10,000 feet and 24 miles of continuous climbing (over 5,000 feet) before we were greeted by deep snow. The weather turned cloudy and I knew I was in for a chilly ride back down to the car. With about 22 miles to go it started to rain. Hard. Then I started to freeze. I'm now convinced that I was in the early stages of hypothermia. I was shaking so bad at some points that I could barely stay on the road. There were also times when I felt like I just wanted to go to sleep....while traveling at 45 mph. I was out of it. And nauseous. When we finally got down to the car we went to a coffee shop. I couldn't get comfortable and 20 minutes after the ride I was still shaking uncontrollably.

While I was sipping on my coffee outside this guy was inside grabbing a coffee then came and sat at a table next to us. Boulder is kind of a big deal for American pro cyclists. Will Frischkorn was in the Pro/1/2 race in Boulder last weekend. He finished 14th.



Here's a ride we did on Tuesday: This was my first century. Total ride time was just over 5 and a half hours.