Capital Punishment

Capital Punishment

Well I was going to do my normal write up but given how epic this event turned out I really don't think power numbers are going to cut it.

Basically the day went like this, early start-> coffee & food-> drive to race. try and not get car bogged in farmers paddock nor parked in. Unload then try and find shelter for 15 minutes before the start.

Start race, hit out too hard, hit first single track then into a world of pain for the next 4.5hrs. Explode with not eating enough, about the 50k mark before entering Majura.
Pull the pin at the exit through Majura after struggling with no brakes (see last post for pictures)

And that was my day in a nut shell.

Couple of pictures below that do it more justice.

The Damage Toll

Well Saturday was Capital Punishment...and well boy did me & the bike get punished here are a couple of photos till I can get my head together to right a full report of the torture session.

Brake Pads. Swiss Stop Formula Oro. As you can see I pushed them way past where a maybe a more sensible person would stop. Note the middle one has half the backing gone!


Pile of dead parts. Rear derailleur, chain, and bottom bracket. Rear derailleur was half dead anyway so not crying over that.


Note the teeth on the bottom pulley...maybe this is why the shifting sucked?

Current damage bill $300....
-rear dearailleur
-bottom bracket
-chain
-new cables
-new brake pads

Thank god I do all my own repairs. Otherwise I think there would be another $80-$100 for labour on top of that!

Not good for your lungs or bike

One of the parting comments after finishing the Nowra 8hr was how bad the dust was and how it had stuck to everything.

Me somewhere later in the race, notice the grime.
Copyright Kelvin

During the race my rear shock never felt right and while I had a fiddle with the rebound it just wasn't happening. So after the 8hr I sent it back to Dirtworks for them to have a look at and they discovered something like this...



The oil in the shock was black and used as though it hadn't been serviced for a couple of years, not 3 months ago. Also it was in a sealed portion of the shock this crap shouldn't have been able to get to.

So Dirtworks are going to re-service the shock as in there opinion something weird has happened to it and I a bit happier knowing that it wasn't me making things up because I was tired and getting sloppy during the race.

Nowra 8 and a bit hr

Well better late then never...
Last sunday was the second in the NSW enduro series an 8hr event at Nowra on the Coast(not that I saw any water).

I had another early start to get down there and setup before the 8am kick off. The drive down was uneventful and I got to drive through Kangaroo Valley I place I haven't visited before with some interesting roads.

I got to the course about 6.45am am and after being directed to park as far away from transition as posible hauled my crap all the way back. Going for the simple setup of multiple bottles and gel flasks I was soon good to go. Off to registration, where I realised wifey still had my licence from the race the previous week. But the cool people at rego let me through because I did the rego on-line through MTBA.

The race briefing was at 7.45 before we were directed back down the fire road for the start. Getting all lined up before told that we needed to move then not making it back to the front when the organised suddenly screamed go wasn't really the best way to start the race.

Frmo here it would take be till the fourth lap or 2hrs to clear traffic (this was probably) a good thing and settle in for the long haul. Sometime about the 4hr mark I had an incident passing a slower rider due to hitting something hidden off the side of the track and going over the bars.

Again mid-race I went through a couple of laps where I was just generally hating life and would have been quite happy to pull the pin but again things picked up at the 6hr mark as everything was starting to wind down.

Somewhere in here I worked out there was a big plasma to see my on track placing and I found out I was sitting in about 15th spot, and started to seriously work on moving up.... (well it only took me a few hours!)

So come 7.4hr mark I knew I had at least one more lap to do and maybe a spare as well. I asked Jase's wife Kylie to try and work out whether I needed to do the spare to keep my position of 14th or whether I could wind the clock down as it would be close to the 8hr mark.

I roll in at 7.56hr and Kylie lets me know that on the previous lap the gap to 15th was maybe 3.5 minutes but the gap to guy in front was only a minute...also she wasn;t sure whether he and gone out on another. After about 10seconds thinking I clip back in and am off on the final final lap of the day...and trying to hunt down the rider in front.

After half the lap I realise that he mustn't have gone out on the lap and only need to make sure that the guy behind doesn't get me.

So after 8.5hrs riding I cross for 13th place on the day amongest a field that was more stacked then the previous race.

All up I'm happy with the result given the limited amount of training over the last couple of months...but a top 10 would have been nice.


Data

So looking at the numbers from the day, showns that the course required alot more pedalling than the previous round. Also I put out ~3w(yes standing ovation required!) more than the last race despite riding for an extra 15 minutes.




As well the MMP curve was alot flatter than the previous race showing improvement over the longer time periods.



Also this previous week I learn't this ltttle trick of creating a MFA of laps within a workout for comparsion. So below is the data for the 15 laps completed on the day.



So overall, despite my currently lower training load (through work constraints, and placing driver with wifey) I am actually showing some progress.

Wrong Wrong Wrong

Another horrible setup spied via the internet



(And yes I do need to do the write up for last week)

Worst Bike Setups Continued

I was probably a bit harsh on Ben Day in my previous post... its' bad but not the worst.
Yes folks, here it is, the thing that should never be!



Steve Bauer's "funny bike"

And yes this has not been stretched in photoshop. He somehow thought this was a good idea???

The Wost Pro Setup

And the award goes to....


Ben Day

(For the MTber's who can't work out the problem look at his levers!)