Monday, November 16, 2009

If one bike is good and two bikes is better...

...then heed the lessons learned at Lock 4: always bring 2 bikes if you have the room in the back of your vehicle (one does no good when your bike breaks down and the other is an hour away) and always have spare parts (or rely on the generosity of strangers)!

Jason and I headed out to Lock 4 yesterday morning. I was excited about getting back out there on the Mary SS again to see if I could do two laps without getting off the bike to push. We started in on BLT1 and maybe 2 minutes in my chain came off the rear cog. No big deal, flipped the bike upside down and the chain was back on. Unfortunately, this was a sign of things to come...once we crossed the road into BLT2 (maybe one mile into the nine mile course) I heard a loud noise and my chain came completely off.

When I looked down and saw the chain carnage I figured my day was done. I was running a couple of minutes late and decided I did not have time to throw another bike into the back of the Tahoe (I would have brought "Gary" the geared Mary XC). Single speed mountain bikes use a thicker chain than geared bikes and this kept the spare chain link that Jason wisely brought with him from being able to get me out of my predicament. After returning to the trailhead, another singlespeed rider kindly let me take a couple of links off a spare piece of chain he kept around (I will always bring some spare pieces of chain after this event) and I was back on the trail.

I learned a heck of a lot about the bike by going through this...adjusting the eccentric bottom bracket to maintain chain tension was the biggest lesson I learned. Additional pieces of chain, a good chain tool (not just one on a multi-tool), and the generosity of other riders are nice to rely on when you are riding.

Jason headed back to the trailhead about halfway through the loop trails and I continued to finish out the loop. All in all, a great day on the trail. The weather was great (almost hot), Lock 4 was in almost perfect condition and the ride was challenging. I did get off the bike to push at the very end.

So, in a previous post, I was proud of riding an entire loop without getting off to push. Well, it turns out I am not an animal. Saturday was the Lock 4 Challenge, an endurance race to see how many laps you (or your team) can complete in 6 hours. There are numerous categories, expert, clydesdale, singlespeed, beginner, teams, etc. The solo rider who completed the most laps (8) was riding a single speed! 8 laps of a 9-mile course is 72 miles...over 6 hours equals an average (AVERAGE) speed of 12 mph! And doing this on a single speed...wow! Very impressive...as were many of the other riders. The results are available here.

No comments:

Post a Comment