30two16

47 pound wheels!

2006-04-01T20:04:00.000-08:00

http://www.hedcycling.com/wheels/hedstalingrad.pdf

this needs no explination.

First post in forever

2006-03-30T05:59:00.000-08:00

I haven't had 2 seconds to update this thing. That's actually a good thing as it means I've been doing all the stuff that I was talking about during the harsh winter. Well its sunny and 60 degrees right now, so this won't be too long winded.

I won't try and right a massive update about everything from Old Pueblo until now, I'll just give the scrolling sports ticker a la ESPN:

Old Pueblo: team 16/100, me 7 laps/119 miles,7 hours + a little bit. If it rains or I am bored at night I will post a through update on this mess of an adventure. Saying it was ridicuilous doesn't even begin to do it justice.

Johy Cake nn1: CBRC rider Dan Owen gets in a 2 man break on the first lap. We never see him again. I led out Jay Thomas for the field sprint but he gets nipped at the line. Dog.

Johnny Cake 2: I attack on the 3 lap, the field splits in an attempt to catch me, I am caught by a group of 20 or so. We push the pace the rest of the way, I end up 11th in the field sprint. I've decided sprinting is not my deal, so this week its get a way or die trying.

Schenectady MTB Race: rode the single in a 2 hr endurance race the day after JC2. Not good thinking on my part results in crashing out half way through.

I now offically suck more at mountain bike racing than I do at road racing for the first time in my life.

The moral of the story is I can't wait for cross. I even here talk of a CBRC longsleve skin suit for the fall. Rad.

Time to ride my bike.

Have a nice day.

Arizona tomorrow

2006-02-14T20:50:00.000-08:00

I leave for AZ tomorrow. I've been putting in decent hours on the trainer/outside on a bicycle (imagine that), so I should be good for my share of the laps. I just hope my bike actually shows up.

In other news there's been a disastrous malfunction in scheduling and the ADK Empire qualies are now on the same day as race 1 in the NY 6 hr MTB series. The Capital Region RR is also on the same day as the 6hr Series finale. Now I have to actually decide whether to be a leg shaving roadie or a dirty mountain biker this year; my years of successfully walking the line are over. Its too bad because I really like 6hr racing, but at the same time I really like the idea of being a bad ass roadie (please note that I am not currently a bad ass roadie).

This is another short post as I have to make sure I've got everything I need for old pueblo. Look for a big update when I get back.

Have a nice day.

Addicted to Cytomax

2006-02-08T21:28:00.000-08:00

Hi, my name is Eric, and I'm addicted to Cytomax.

Cytomax is the best endurance sports drink ever. You should try some. It also makes an outstanding margarhita mix.

T-Minus 6 days until I leave for Phoneix and the 24 hours of the Old Pueblo. I hope my lights are charged.

Have a nice day.

Inadvertent copycat!

2006-02-05T21:31:00.000-08:00

Zoikes- I just learned that there is actually another single speed blog called www.32sixteen.com on the internet. As it turns out mine is actually the younger of the two, so I guess I copied him without knowing it. 32sixteen is in Great Britain and appears to be pretty cool. His blog has pictures which means it is higher tech than mine. Perhaps I will finally purchase a digital camera and include some images up here shortly so my colonial version can be as cool as his majesties.

This past week has involved a good amount of riding as I'm getting "ready" for the 24 hours of the Old Pueblo. We've had very unseasonal weather so I've actually been outside riding quite a bit. I still have no idea how I will fair in the desert, but I am certainly in better shape than I was this time last year.

Today for instance, I headed out with CBRC riders for about 55 miles of pretty chill riding. Some of the guys and girls contested various town line sprints and I generally found myself embarrassingly boxed in, not knowing where the line actually was. The final town line was sort of a different story. I was riding 3rd wheel in the group when ultra strong man Andy Ruiz drilled it. I figured there must be another town line coming up soon so, to my surprise I grabbed his wheel and hung on. With 200m to go he just stopped peddling, I got confused and slowed, then he drilled it again, which was an effective means of shaking me. Another CCB Rider and my mate Jay saw my lousy timing and also blew past me. This may sound like a disastrous sprint, but at least I wasn't boxed in or dropped by a girl (both of which happened earlier in the day). I was satisfied to see I had some leg speed and could hold 35 miles an hour for a decently long time. Maybe I'll take up crit racing and forget about riding mountain bikes for 6 hours at a time. Ironically not 5 minutes earlier Andy and I had been discussing the complexities of tactics and how to do things like line yourself or a teammate up for a sprint victory. I have a lot to learn.

In semi-non bike related news I went to visit Quinipiac Law School in Connecticut last week. The campus is great and their is a state park that looks like it has some solid possibilities for mountain biking right next door. I am currently in the nether world of not knowing where I will be living in 6 months and it is sort of nerve racking. I half don't want to bother moving, and I half need to get the hell out of dodge. We shall see...

That's all for now.

Have a nice day.

Rocket bikes and Cacti.

2006-01-25T20:17:00.000-08:00

First off, look at this:
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/how20/f5dec714c2648010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html.

Our team for 24 hours of dodging cacti, (formerly the 24 hours in the Old Pueblo) has been significantly modified to now be a coed 5-person geard bike team! Blasphemy you say? I must agree. Thinking about pushing my single speed around for 6-9 hours in February sounds rad. Realistically, having the aide of some suspension and hydraulic brakes will probably keep me out of the cactus and in the race. I know I could still ride my single, but if we're not a team of buffoons on one geared bikes than then we must be a team of guys drinking beer on geared bikes while our chick teammate posts the hot lap.

Secondly and even more importantly, there is an 06 cross calendar for NY/New England shaping up. I could post the whole thing here but instead I'll just say I recommend everyone takes August off, because there's not going to be any break from September through nationals. The east cost is hot.

I actually did a road ride of four hours and fifteen minutes Sunday with a group of about 25 CBRC and NAV brethren. I had the cross bike decked out with fenders and 25c road tires all euro style. It was a little portly but it will only make me appreciate my light bike more later. By the way I'm not selling the Professional after all. Fuji was out of stock on the Super Lights so I will stick with my manageable 18 pound 61cm bike. Maybe a pair of Ksyrium ES's would be cool though...

The hell with this myspace bar's notworking right.

Have a niceday.

The call it the Car Shot.

2006-01-19T20:58:00.000-08:00

Jay Peak is not like most ski resorts. Normal resorts have trails that you ski on, and ropes that discourage you from going into the woods and, especially, away from the resort and lifts. Jay actually encourages this. On Tuesday Jason and Kevin of High Adventure Ski, Board, Patio, and myself, of CK Cycles went to Jay and after seeing that most of the mountain was covered in a concrete like surface, decided we would go into the easterly woods and ski unmarked terrain that leads away from the mountain and to the road. During lunch Jason parked his car on the road near where we hoped to come out and hitched back up to the lifts.

Upon getting off the lift we went directly into the woods. Jason and Kevin have done this many times and were not concerned. I had never done this. After orienting ourselves and leting me know which way to go to avoid certain doom off we went.

The interesting thing about alpine skiing in the woods is that you stop making turns and start making all these jump stop/go moves that keep you from flying into and off of things. Some times you have to just point 'em and run with it. I managed to negotiate the run, but found myself on progressivly steeper and steeper terrain. The shot ends up dumping out on pretty aggressive pitch (I will guess 35 degrees or more) and all of a sudden you are on the road skiing along a snow bank back to a car stocked with coors light.

What more could you ask for! The next time they get a foot of snow I will hit this thing in all its glory.

I have much news from the world of bikes, but its time to go to bed so that will be a post for tomorrow or the next day.

Have a nice day.

Old Pueblo

2006-01-15T19:58:00.000-08:00

Its official. I am part of a four man single speed team competing in the 24 hrs in the Old Pueblo in Tuscan AZ one month from now. I can't decide if this is a bad idea or an awesome idea. It's probably both. All I know is that the course is in the desert and is 16 miles long. Luckily its been 50 degrees in Albany this past week and I actually got to ride outside a number of times. Imagine that in January.

Unfortunately I also trained my liver a bunch this weekend. Chis Jones of Geneseo infamy was in town and he, Matt, Becky and I decided to party like it was 1999. That resulted in consumption of far more New Castles than I typically do in one evening. I suppose if we truly partied like it was 1999 we would have been drinking Keystone Light but that's a whole other story. Man, I was a freshman in college 6 years ago.

Last week I became president of the local chapter of the Utica Club. For those of you unfamiliar with the Utica Club it was the first beer sold in the US after prohibition. It is also available for $2 a can at the Lark Tavern seven days per week. To join the club all you have to do is drink some UCs with your pals and encourage others to do the same. The presidency of the club is determined via Ms. Pac Man. Who ever nails the high score leads the club. I am the leader of our chapter with a Ms. Pac Man score of 22030. If no Ms. Pac Man machine is available standard Pac Man may be substituted. Just make sure all elections are held on the same machine.

I will be traveling to Jay Peak to huck myself off of some large snow covered obstacles tomorrow. Expect a snow covered post Wednesday.

Have a nice day.

ps. My Fuji Professional is up for sale. I am trying to build capital for a new Fuji Team Superlight. $900 bones takes the Pro. Email me or call CK if you're interested.

Troy Crit- On like Donkey Kong

2006-01-12T21:19:00.000-08:00

This will be a brief post and lack any substantive plot.

The Troy Crit is on. Looks like August 13 is the date. It will be part of Capital Region Race Weekend, which will involve the new CBRC Road Race on 8/12. The crit course is not finalized but you can expect it to be a pancake flat 8 corner 1.1k course. It should be the perfect complement to a road race that is rumored to involve Pinnacle Hill. NYCROSS.com is putting up a strong man bonus prize- if any rider succeeds in winning their category in both the RR and the Crit there will be a big cash prize. I will make sure this will be hard to do.

Speaking of NYCROSS.com the Eastern NY Cross series is in the works for 06. Expect 5 races with bigger and better prizes. The series finale will also be New York State Cross Championships. The series will still maintain its role as a complementary group of events and not conflict significantly with any major New England Series events. Series races will continue to take place in Troy and Schenectady, plus new venues in Stephentown, Bethlehem and the all mighty fifth location to be determined.

I have begun following Chris McB's training plan and I am starting to understand the difference between training and what I thought was training last year. I am working out far than ever before but in a structured low intensity type of way. If I could be 15 pounds lighter that would be nice but I keep saying I'm not going to sacrifice what I eat for racing. I like to cook to much riding should be a reason to eat whatever I want.

I would also like to announce my main goals for the season- making the Empire State Games Road Team, and finishing on the podium in the overall for the New York State Endurance Mountain Bike Series. Last year I was a painful fourth. One is not the loneliest number, 4 is. Finally I would like to actually make the upgrade to Cat 3. I've been racing in the 4 field for 18 months and its time to put up or shut up.

Does anyone read this stuff?

Mr. Five- Part Two: Oh Man this was a Long Trip

2006-01-05T22:55:00.000-08:00

The car is actually faster and more comfortable than expected. It will accelerate to 100 miles per hour without very little issue. One issue of critical importance is adjusting the seats however. The car has 10-way power adjustable seats. Unfortunately this is accomplished via the most complicated and unintelligible group of buttons and switches this side of Apollo 11. There are eight buttons with arrows pointing every which way on the center council, plus extra switches on the side of the seat to adjust the power adjustable headrest and knee bolster. Ridiculous. The car can do one-hundred and fifty miles per hour without thinking, but you need a mechanical engineering degree to move your seat back 2 inches.

My father, brother and I rolled in the M5 for roughly two hours and were near the Ohio-Indiana border when the real fun began.

The day we picked up the car was astoundingly cold, and for some reason the car had run a lower than what we deemed normal reading on the temperature gauge. Keep in mind we had no idea where the gauge should have been, but all agreed that "in the middle was where it belonged." Instead of sitting correctly in the middle, the needle on the M5's temperature gauge sat just above the left hand limit near the blue side. We assumed this was not a problem? After all whose ever had this conversation:
"What happened to the car?"
"The motor underheated and blew! Damn thing nearly went through the hood it was so cold!"

In the dark on some highway in cornfed Indiana the cars coolant light started blinking with all the fury of the lost in Space Robot yelling "Danger Will Robinson!" Swinging the car over to the rapidly approaching off ramp for examination revealed little- the temperature gauge was still strongly low, but there was the correct amount of coolant in the car's overflow reservoir and nothing appeared to be leaking. Also important to note- nothing was frozen solid! Assuming it would be hard to overheat the motor in -5 degrees Fahrenheit, we decided to roll on. Heck, maybe the car was just complaining that it was too cold. We agreed!

Entering Ohio around 9:30pm we made the tactical decision to not drive to Albany in one shot and thought Cleveland would make an outstanding end point for the first day's travel. Conveniently, my father has a good friend in Cleveland who could easily be convinced to provide shelter and beer to us in exchange for a short drive of the new old BMW. Navigating suburban Cleveland at midnight on hour number 16 of the trip resulted in no less than two erroneous exits being taken, and exactly three high speed U turns. Maybe this Five Series could make a good autocross vehicle after all.

We hit our nights destination just after midnight and proceeded to immediately consume copious amounts of popcorn and Samuel Adams Boston Lager. Our host had a beautiful black lab, which oddly enough had an insatiable addiction to popcorn. When I ate popcorn, it put its head on my lap and since I am basically very uncoordinated would eventually drop lots of popcorn in the couch cushions. Then the dog would bury its head in the cushions and devour all of the popcorn. This was hilarious to us after 17 hours of travel.

Next Stop- Sleeping.

Lotus vs Apache

2006-01-04T21:33:00.000-08:00

this rules:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9013803150737530875

06 Mayhem Kicks Off

2006-01-02T19:22:00.000-08:00

The new year was kicked off right in singlespeedtopia with a combination of rock-paper-scissors-whiskey and a bottle of seven dollar champagne. My friend Jon hosted a very well attended party. The DJ was my new Creative Zen Micro. Somehow the Zen used its budhist powers to summon Martin Sexton's "Things to Come" at precisely 12:01, 1/1/06.

I took credit for having planned it when the 2.7 people who recognized it asked me about it.

After getting roughly 5 hours of sleep, around 10am I headed over to the First Annual Bouncing Bumble presented by Chuck Quackenbush . This was an outstanding way to detox myself by riding on glare ice covered by snow in a group of ten guys. I was the only one sporting a single initially, but as the snow flew and the derailleurs froze shifting became less of an option for most individuals.

Thanks for putting on the ride Chuck! Chile and beverages were provided by the Q family, and plans were hatched to make 06 New York State Cyclocross Championships happen at the park. See nycross.com for updates on this craziness. On a side note- I am quite terrible at riding on glare ice but I am quite good at sliding on it while clipped in with the bike on top of me.

The holiday weekend was finished off today with about 15 runs at Mount Snow. I scored some new skis earlier this year and they shred stuff pretty well. On one of the last runs I swapped my fat and stable all mountain big GS turn skis for my buddy's rockstar slalom skis. I went roughly 400 meters, decided to shut it down for a second, edged over, and promptly made 17 quick turns. Stable? No. Fun? Absolutely.

If 06 keeps up this pace of ruling it will be an outstanding year.

Happy New Year.

Have a nice day.

The bike and the gym...

2005-12-30T20:11:00.000-08:00

I decided to join a gym about a month ago to do some lifting and get some muscular endurance and core strength for what we in the north call road season. It is called winter everywhere else. After doing a bunch of research I decided to join Best Fitness in Westgate Plaz today for many reasons:

1. They are willing to make shady deals and wave "membership" fees.
2. There are mad honeys.
3. They do not encourage power lifting and being macho.

I can only bench press about 92 pounds so this is the perfect atmosphere for me- there are girls there that are my equal in working out, and there are no guys who want to crush me for shaving my legs. The runner up in the 2005 what gym should Eric join competition was the YMCA, but I could never get a straight price on membership from the guy in the police outfit, and the dude dressed like and Indian told me I wasn't macho enough to work out there.

Luckily the gym is only a few minutes from my pad by bicycle and right along the way to work so I may also go there.

I realized today that applying to Law School must be made intentionally confusing to weed out the weakest individuals from the get go. I have only made 3 major errors in applying so far that's not too bad. Is it?

Mr Five part II is still in the works, if you actually look at this stuff and want to know how the story ends you will find out soon enough. In the mean time try to keep yourself occupied by knowing that I drove the car 300 meters last weekend and it was sideways for 250 of those meters.

I am going to go read the introduction in my new Joe Friel Training Diary that I will use to track how many minutes and miles I don't put in this winter.

Have a nice day.

Google Yourself!

2005-12-28T19:57:00.000-08:00

Today I googled myself to see what would come up and found out that there's some dude in Germany with my name. Check out his web site and give him a call to say hi for me if you speak German.

Today was day two of the slow crawl back to racing shape. I managed to ride the rollers for a total of one hour and one minute at a blistering average speed of 22.5 mph. I love having no resistance! I am trying to organize a local racing team and figure I better not be pathetic if I am on a team.

Tomorrow I was planning to go to Stowe but since its going to actually rain all day in northern VT I've opted not to go skiing and stay in the dry world of the bike store instead.

Check back tomorrow for the conclusion of Mr. Five, or don't- I have no idea if anyone actually looks at this stuff.

Have a nice day.

For those about to ride.

2005-12-27T22:04:00.000-08:00

Training for today:

I talked about training alot.
I ate some spaghetti.
I thought about training tomorrow.

Have a nice day.

Mr. Five, Part One

2005-12-27T20:04:00.000-08:00

My father has a habit.

He doesn't do drugs. He buys old BMWs. It started out as just talking about old BMWs. When I was in elementary school he tossed around the idea of buying/restoring a BMW 2002; preferably a fuel injected Tii model. He happened to drive this particular variant in and after college and for obvious reasons he believed getting another one was a fantastic idea. I agreed, as the Volvo station wagon after Volvo station wagon I'd been subjected too as an adolescent did not really do it for my fast and furious twelve-year-old self.

By the time I made it to high school the talking about 2002s transformed into looking for one, and in 1998 he actually, unbelievably purchased a 1973 2002 tii with a crank sunroof. By now I had my very own rock star hand me down Volvo wagon and was, gulp, licensed to drive. My dad effectively fostered the family lineage of obsession with the Bavarian Motor Werks in me and off we went.

Fast-forward 6 years, 16 thousand dollars and 106 million hours of work and my father has what can best be described as a completely mint 32 year old BMW. In his tenure as old car owner his team of crack mechanics (myself, brother and father) successfully learned such awesome things as:
1. Don't hook up the spark plug wires to the wrong spark plugs.
2. The best way to remove and/or install a heater core is by punching it.
3. When backing out of the garage do not under any circumstances drive into the wall.

Now that we were qualified car guys and had completely finished the old 02 it was obviously time to look for something else; maybe a newer, faster, more awesome old BMW. For some reason the 1988 M5 model perked my dad's interest, and off we went on another vigorous car search. Thanks to the glory of Ebay and martinis, on December 15 my dad's Ebay account (read: I) bid on and won a particularly fine looking example of the '88 M5. One catch, the car was in Indianapolis, Indiana.

This is the best thing about my dad- In the morning, seeing that his Ebay account had won a new old BMW he decided that the best thing to do would be to actually buy the car, book three flights to Indiana, and take the team of crack mechanics to Indy to get the car and drive it back.

Now let me say one thing about the car. In BMW nomenclature the letter M stands for Motosport Division. As you can imagine, subjecting a car to engineers working at M results in some pretty exciting automobile features. In the case of the ‘88 M5 this means a 300hp 3.5l 6-cylinder motor, competition clutch and shifter, and completely dialed race suspension. This is a 4-door sedan that can dust a Corvette. Best of all, it came in any color you wanted, as long as that color was black.

South West Airlines Flight 605 had the mechanics in Indianapolis by 11am on a blustery Tuesday in December. The team arrived at the car brokerage right after noon. The car’s condition was outstanding and we were ready to roll back to Albany.

Except one thing.
NO TIRES.

At this point the team of mechanics learned its first lesson from Mr. Five:

Guaranteed by noon delivery actually means guaranteed by 5pm delivery.

Let me explain. The car had some fittingly high performance very slick tires on it, which happened to be completely bald. Recognizing this beforehand my father ordered new all season tires to be delivered to the shop before the airline delivered us. The mechanic would put the new tires on the car and the new nobbys would get us from Indy to Albany in likely lake effect awesomeness. Since the old tires were already off the car, all we could do was wait while the car sat on a lift.

The tires showed at 4pm and we were on the road by 5pm. Not bad, but it did make us regret opting for the 6am flight out of Albany International. At 5:02pm the car’s headlights were switched on for the first time in roughly a dozen years, and we discovered that only one of four beams lit. Pulling back in the garage at 5:03pm we learned the broker didn’t have any appropriate bulbs. At 5:09pm we were back on the road Cyclops style. After hitting a NAAPA removing the car's grill and installing new bulbs, off we went, with the grill relocated to the trunk.

Next stop, not Indiana.

el posto numero uno.

2005-12-26T18:55:00.000-08:00

Be prepared, possible incoherent rambling and needless use of semicolons ahead:

In the fine tradition of using the internet to do stuff I proudly present 30two16, a piece of writing dedicated to single speed mountain bikes, and my attempts to ride and race them. I will warn you right away, I may at times also discuss riding and racing bikes that have gears, as well as things completely unrelated to bicycles. The common theme of this, like all other blogs will eventually become whatever the hell I did yesterday/last week/the amount of time since I last posted. Now that we've got that straight I'll move on to talking some more.

First off, the title of my blog "30two16" refers specifically to the gear ratio I choose to run on my single speed. Thirty-two teeth up front, and sixteen out at the wheel give me the standard two-to-one gear ratio generally considered kosher for single speed riding. Its not an easy gear, and its generally the wrong gear for most circumstances where I ride, but who cares, I didn't build a single speed to make riding easier.

Some people get all high and mighty about gear ratios like they're politics or religion or something. Some people consider running a gear lower than thirty-two by sixteen blasphemous. I do not. I got myself whooped by a chick riding a 32x20 set up at single speed worlds last year so obviously being "core" has its disadvantages and in reality its all just pedaling bikes. Use a high gear, use a low gear, use 30 freaking gears, just pedal your bike.

There are some inherent advantages to riding with one speed that are not readily apparent. Chief among them is the opportunity to participate in what I like to call, "NO GEARS AND BEERS." NGB is a standard single speed event in which participants ride bicycles with one speed throughout an urban environment, visiting local pubs and consuming beer. Typically mayhem ensues, and the night ends with a skid contest, followed by a flat tire, and finally by one of my roommates dancing on a glass table in honor of one of my other roommates girlfriend's birthday. Oddly enough none of the nine people in the room during the last part of NGB thought dancing on the glass table was a bad idea even after the glass top broke.

Since I also race bicycles I will from time to time update you regarding what type of racing and training I am doing. Since I am not a pro racer, and am in fact fairly slow, this will probably be a minimal part of this blog, as well as a minimal part of my daily schedule. For instance today I rode my road bike on rollers inside for 45 minutes. In that 45 minutes I went a simulated 16.08 miles at an average speed of 21.4mph.

See why I would rather write about not training.

Have a nice day.