I went on a nice ride Saturday. I took my mountain bike to some trails outside of cincy. It was my first ride at the park and my first MTB ride post mohican, cross is in full swing. I now have a Hopey steer damper on my Diamond back XR8. The first time out I ended up in the ER. Second time out was a ten hour stroll at Mohican. I wasn't that impressed due to having some big spills. My opinion changed Saturday at Harbin Park. I went with a friend breaking in her new MTB. I twisted the damper to the maximum stabilization position. There is a dial on the dampener that allows for adjustment from free to max. The trails were twisty and flow well. With minimal technical features it was a nice place to focus on the Hopey. I noticed my increased stability when I grabbed my hydration mouth piece and started to drink while riding down the trail. It was also effective when ride a rutted down hill section. I went slow trough a down hill section with loose sand a gravel that would, in the past, given me problems. I think the more I ride with it the more I will love it.

I have been having loads of fun at the cross time trials at Kings. Cross season is in full swing. I rode in the Frankenbike 50 last week and it was fun. I got lost ,but still had fun. I start with BEATS personal training on Tuesday. Very excited to step up my training regiment. I have a Road TT on the 30th of Sept.

It been a few since my last post. I crashed at Nationals on the first day. I didn't recover from the crash until a few weeks ago. I am back to training. I have also started riding my cross bike in Time Trials on Wednesday nights. I will be racing in a road time trial the 30th of September in WV. I have acquired a set of DT Swiss wheels for road training. They seem to be holding up well. I will post pics of them soon.

I leave today for the U.S. Para national championships in Augusta GA. I am racing the Time Trial and Road race. Should be lots of fun.

The next few days I will be getting ready for Nationals in Augusta. I will be riding my road bike in both the time trial and road race. I am going to forgo aero bars because I wont have mechanical support during the event. I am excited to get to use a set of Zipp 404's for nationals.

MH 100 Set up

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The steer damper is nice,but I need to get it dialed in. it seems to want to snap back past zero and is causing me some handling issues when I am not going over obstacles. The jury is still out ,but this could be a nice addition. although I see a lot more crashes in my future due to the speed I can carry on technical stuff. It was wet last night and I ended up in the ER getting stitches. Cant wait to try it out on a dry trail.

I am having a hopey steer damper put on my mtb. I am going to use it during mohican. I cant wait to give it a try on the trails

I had my mt bike built back up. It has hydraulic disk brakes an xt on the front and an Avid juicy on the back. I have the Avid on the back because the lever allows me to adjust on the fly. I like that a lot. it allows me to change my grip as needed.  I went to the same trails as I have been riding the cross bike on. I still like the larger wheels of the cross bike. I think I want my next mtb to be a 29er. my current mtb is a full suspension DBR XR8. It was nice to have suspension on some of the rocks and roots. I think my speed was faster, but a bit more squirelly than the cross bike. The kicker is the break setup on my mtb. The independent levers are nice as well as the one finger stopping power.
 I think if its dry I will go with the cross bike at Mohican 100. The dbr is 30+ lbs and the cross bike 10 pounds or more lighter. Its a tough choice. The DBR is like riding a couch. It may be a plus on a 100 mile ride.

I took out the X ride with my new single lever set up. I didn't like the first ride. I had trouble in rocky down hill sections. I like to slide the back wheel around things and my current set up wont allow for that. I did like the hand position. It was nice having more handlebar when going down hill,but if gets the least bit technical I get in to trouble. It was slick in spots yesterday and i had the bike slide out from under me a few to many times. I have to wonder if I would have had both levers would I have crashed as much. The set up also causes me to smash my hand on the shifter. That wont work on longer rides. After two hrs I have a sizable bruise on my thumb. Its getting to expensive to buy things just to try them out.

I think the helmet worked. With the lack of time on the bike I managed to hit 27:58. My time last week was 28 flat.

I will be taking on another Time Trial tonight. I now have an aero helmet. I am guessing the small amount of time I spent on the bike this week will have a larger impact than the helmet or the golf ball sperm thingy as my wife calls it.

I just received sponsorship from Rudy Project. I will be rocking the Wingspan aero helmet at Nationals in Augusta Georgia June 20-24. I did my first time trial last night at Cleve's. I finished in 28 min flat. I need to hit 1:22.9 per K to meet the national team standards. I was around 1:42 per K. I hope with more work and my new aero helmet I can hit standards!

This is my new set up for my cross bike. One brake lever. Can't wait to try it out. Zack @ resers set it up.

The quality of everything we do: our physical actions, our verbal actions, and even our mental actions, depends on our motivation. That's why it's important for us to examine our motivation in our day to day life. If we cultivate respect for others and our motivation is sincere, if we develop a genuine concern for others’ well-being, then all our actions will be positive. --Dalai Lama

Calvin’s was a good time. I clocked 167 miles in just over ten hours. I think my total official ride time was 9:39:00. I think I would have benefited from some aero bars. The wind was a factor all day. I even got blown off the road into a ditch when I was getting a water bottle out of my jersey. The new carbon fork, Rob from Cycling Sports Group sent me, helped a ton with hand fatigue. The roads were rough and bumpy. The fork seemed to soak a lot of it up. Now if I could just get a full carbon ride. I would love to see if that would help out my lower back. After the first century I have to stop and get a massage.

This weekend I will be riding at the Calvin’s Challenge on Saturday. I am in the 12 hour time trial. My goal is to crack a double century. If that happens or not I still will enjoy getting to spend the day on my bike. Looks like rain, wind and heat in the forecast. Joy!

I have just updated my brake lever on my Ridley X Ride. In the past I have flirted with single lever braking. I tried with a set of mechanical disk brakes on an old Diamond Back hard tail. At the time I was more concerned with handling the bike. I didn’t like my first attempt. I felt as if I was causing more problems than I was solving. The first issue was modulation. I had no way other than pad alignment to adjust my braking. I felt like in some tight downhill switch backs I was being forced off the trail when I would try to brake. I ditched the single lever idea for the best breaking solution I have had to date. I put on a set of Magura Race line D’s. The race line d’s are hydraulic rim brakes. I loved the race line d’s because one they have tremendous stopping power. Two, my favorite part, they allowed for modulation of braking on the fly. They have dials on the lever you can turn up or down the amount of fluid pressure. This allowed for me to go big on the back break and have less on the front when flying down a rocky section of single track. This allowed me to slide my back tire without going over the bars. It also gave me a more comfortable position with my only hand steering and braking at the same time. The d’s also reduced hand fatigue from long down hills. This was welcomed when I would compete in 24 hr races. I now have a bmx style lever that pulls both cables and allows for a small, very small amount of modulation. I have not had them on the trail yet, but plan to by next week. I will post an update after my ride, along with pictures. I hope to get my brakes worked out before I make my attempt at 100 miles at the Mohican 100 mtb race in Ohio in June.