A little Sunday Ride

Sunday I supposed was the day to make up for being lazy all week and not riding, so I trudged on out to Schaffer, where I had a very good time on my about 2 1/2 hour ride. I met someone I knew not long after getting on the trail; Mark, who was on his cross bike, a Surly Crosscheck I think? We decided to ride together, but I was fresh and he had a killer big ride yesterday on a fixie and wasn't quite able to keep up. After he popped a tube (and cut the tire) following me off a jump -- I guess you can't do that on skinny tires -- we parted ways. Funny thing is I slowed way down soon after we split. Must have used up the initial burst of energy and then had to rely on different stores, which I haven't been working on since the 100 really. So I was slow for a while. I picked it up again after about an hour when the body started to work like the well-honed engine I spent so much time developing this year. As I was heading back out to the trail for the third time, after my second trip to the car to pump up the leaking rear tire, I met Mark again, this time on his Kona rigid singlespeed. He was heading back to the car and home, but finding someone to ride with convinced him to go out for one more round. He let me lead, since I knew the trails better, and I took us pretty much straight out to the long yellow loop around the field, taking just one of the off-shoots to the left to make it a little longer. After crossing the four-way intersection on the way out where the yellow loop intersects with itself my legs were pretty much spent. I was having a lot of trouble getting up the hills with any speed, and the way back to the car was often unpleasant and Mark certainly wasn't having any problems keeping up with me; I'm sure I was slowing him down. But there was still a lot of fun to be had for sure. I don't think I've ever been so tired that I didn't enjoy going downhill or carving up some fast twisty section. I wimped out in the last mile and took all of the chicken-outs where they existed; I was just too tired to be bunny hopping anything unnecessarily. I can't wait to build up a dedicated hardtail singlespeed, something that will be a lot more efficient than my full suspension rig, as I found out previously on JoeP's Monkey.

I got to practice my superman impression right after getting on the trail the second time with Mark. A very wide stack which I didn't slow down for -- brought the front wheel up, fine. Coming off the back side, here's what I think happened. I pushed off to bring the rear up too late and it coincided with the rear tire hitting the first log of the stack. So the rear end came up with about double the energy I had intended and I landed nose first with my feet still coming around and over my head. As soon as I realized what was about to befall me I let go of the handle bars and braced for the impact with the ground. Which was quite jarring, and which I came away from with surprising little damage. A raspberry on my left knee on the outside, a little bit of pain in my wrists from breaking my fall with my hands, a bad habit I've been unable to break. Nothing serious, except the injury to my knee was exactly in the spot I've been having trouble with on longer rides, and getting back on the bike and riding I realized there was some internal pain there. I still think it's something to do with my Ilial Tibial Band, or maybe my Lateral Collateral Ligament -- or is it the Medial Collateral Ligament? And I still think it'll clear up eventually as my body adjusts. But it wasn't bad and I just put it out of my mind and kept riding and didn't think about it again until I got off the bike back at the car.

Singlespeed School Begins

Becoming Single

So, I finally decided to do it. I took all the gears off my bike. Not all at once, mind you -- I was a bit apprehensive. I had taken the big ring off months ago after talking to racing buddy Mike Scardaville about his setup and never missed it. Oh, okay, once or a few times during the Wilderness 101 while flying down some fireroad I wished I'd had it, but after upgrading to a 36 tooth middle ring it was the perfect setup.

But all the racing for the year was done after a long season that started in early April, and it was time to play around a bit. During the SM100 the left brake lever jammed open at a few critical moments (why brake if you don't absolutely have to?) on some of the downhills, giving me that "oh shit" feeling in the pit of my stomach while I contemplated how to avoid dying at that particular point in time. Luckily for me each jam was overcome by squeezing the lever with panic-stricken strength. However, that seemed to me like a really good excuse for taking the brake lever/shifter pod off for the front derailleur and brake and using only one chainring -- and I had just the chainring. A Surly 32 tooth stainless steel pinless and rampless. At the time I was thinking this was a setup I would keep for a while, after chasing friend JoeP up the first part of Hanky mountain 85 miles into the SM100 this year and realizing I could climb that in the middle ring even after being in the saddle all day. I liked the simpler look immediately; it was in some hard-to-define way very pleasing. The next day I took the bike to Avalon after work and... after the first downhill thought, "I wonder if I would be able to ride only in one gear." And that's what I did for the next 40 minutes, using the 17 tooth cog. To me, someone who had always been glad to have granny along, it was incredibly hard going up some of the hills that way -- but I did it. I only cheated on the flat road going from the Park & Ride side to the other.

With that positive experience I decided to make the leap and take all the rest of the gears off. In a flash of inspiration I had figured out a week earlier how it would be possible to keep the derailleur in position over one cog and use it to keep chain tension on what would become my full suspension singlespeed. The idea was just to take an old shifter cable and thread it through the part of the derailleur that the cable housing end goes into, with the hunk of metal on the end that would normally be in the shifter to keep the cable from pulling through. It worked perfectly, and with an 18 tooth cog and some aluminum spacers I had purchased some months ago I soon had a singlespeed. I was really surprised how much lighter the rear wheel felt even with that studly Novatec cog. The next day I took my new singlespeed for an hour long ride at Avalon and was immediately enjoying myself. I had a curious feeling of being unburdened, of feeling more free. It's difficult to capture with words, like fishing eggshell out of a cup with a spoon.

Some things were obvious even with that one ride. I would need some time for my body to adjust to the new stresses; my left leg was definitely weaker than the right, something that must have been masked previously by being able to sit and spin uphill; going up steep hills can become physically impossible, where they were possible with lower gearing; I was flowing better through transitions, probably for multiple reasons; I was faster in many situations, and slower in some; It was a new challenge and a lot of fun!

The annual MORE fall camping trip to Douthat was at the end of that week and I thought, "What the hell," and decided to take all one gears with me. I rode it an hour at Avalon, how much harder could the Douthat trails be, right? Actually what I was thinking was more like, "It's going to be a severely punishing and humbling experience." But I am stubborn in my own way, and as I suspect it is with a lot of us mountain bikers, driven to challenge myself. And besides, I figured a lot of people would get a kick out of seeing a cobbled together singlespeeded full suspension bike. I think JoeP did get a chuckle or two out of it; in return he became my first instructor in the school of singlespeed, though I don't know if he was aware of it.

To be continued...