After a relatively mechanical-free rookie season, I'm now having the unavoidable bike-falling-apart season. Those of you who have been paying attention may remember that it started with losing one of the bolts holding my rear suspension at the Black Diamond race, an incident that could reasonably have been expected to lead me to check that all the other bolts on my bike were tight. And I thought I did so, but apparently I lack a bit of attention to detail, as shown by the fact that a couple of weeks ago I lost one of the bolts holding in my rear brake and one of my cranks came off. However, this last incident did lead me to consider that learning about all the bolts on my bike by dint of having them fall out was probably a rather painful way to go about things, so I did take half an hour last week to meticulously tighten everything I could find.
Given the incredible mechanical diligence I displayed by spending a whole 30 minutes on it, it's fair to say that I felt ill-rewarded when 20 minutes into a Saturday ride at Soaring Eagle my left crank came off once again. A bit of cursing later, the cause became clear: the threads in the crank were stripped, and no amount of tightening would help put this particular assembly of bits together again. This was all the more distressing because I needed a bike for the Steilacoom race, which was the following day. However, a quick phone call and a bit of hike-a-bike later, I was on my way to Raman's place to see whether my bike was fixable or whether we should finish putting together the Blur LT I'd started to build up the weekend before.
Given the choice between trying to fix up a slightly beat-up older bike and putting the finishing touches on a shiny new one, it was pretty clear which way to go, with the end result being this purty lil' thang:
So, equipped with a sweet new ride I headed down to the BuDu race at Fort Steilacoom. However, the bike wasn't quite complete yet; it still needed a touch of personalization, which was supplied in the form of this little custom sticker:
[Back story: Paul Midgen, one of the Project 529 folks, claims I look like this guy, and the name has stuck. As nicknames go, it could be worse. After all, who doesn't want to be The Man Your Man Could Smell Like ?]
... which brings us to the actual race. My plan was to stick with a guy I'll call Cowbell, since he has a little cowbell attached to his bike. At the Soaring Eagle race, I managed to keep him behind me for about a lap and a half until he got by me on a climb and disappeared. He ended up finishing 4th, so I figured sticking with him would allow me to get to that elusive mid-pack finish I've been aiming for this season.
That plan lasted until about 5 minutes into the race, which was when we hit the first steep climb. When the course goes uphill, my race goes dowhill, and so he cleared out and I lost sight of him. However, I did fixate on a couple of other folks in front of me and managed to mostly stick with them until the last climb on the course just broke me and I had to resort to a bit of pushing the bike uphill. The end result was a 6th place, out of 8. Not great, but at least I managed to not just totally lose touch with the folks in front of me, so overall I count it as reasonable progress. And the new bike was awesome -- while it's a little heavier than my Blur, it's much more planted on downhill bits, and so I could just let it roll and not worry about taking a tumble. [Well, I did take a dirt sample on the last downhill bit of the course -- there was a washed-out, sandy bit right before a sharp right turn.] The course itself was pretty fun [once you take out the uphill bits ...], with some nice bits of singletrack and some up-and-down through meadows. I also vaguely seem to recall seeing a lake off to the side somewhere through the tunnel vision induced by the acute cardiovascular stress I was experiencing.
After my race, I hung around to watch the rest of the Project 529 crew start the Sport race and then headed home.
Next up: Soaring Eagle, next weekend. Maybe I'll have the other bike put together again by then.
