David Singlespeed Unrau

For Canada Day weekend, fireworks over Ottawa on Canada Day a few years back.  Happy holiday weekend everyone.

Sweat can destroy your bike and your components pretty quickly - we had a good example of this in the shop today that I though I would share. We see lots of sweat-based corrosion damage to bikes, especially in the spring, after a compulsive winter of spinning on the trainer. Bathing your bike in salt water and then leaving it in the heat destroys cables, shifters, frames and components. Here are the results of one winter of spinning on the trainer:

The white is salt and aluminum oxide dust.  The dark in the centre is a where the handlebar is completely eaten away.  Before the tape was removed, the bike looked completely clean and to be in tip-top shape.  This handlebar was completely destroyed - I could easily rip the end of the handlebar right off.  Good thing this did not fail while riding!  What should you do about this?  Make sure you get your bike tuned up by professionals at least once a year, even if your bike looks like it is in good shape.  Stay off the trainer unless you have to - cross train or get a winter bike.  The funny thing is, winter riding does not normally cause this amount of damage, this quickly, so by staying in on the trainer, especially if you are a heavy sweater, you may be causing more harm than good.  Finally, make sure you protect your bike from sweat with towels, and wash your bike regularly if you are riding indoors!

This last weekend, my mom competed in ‘Emilie’s Run‘ - the Emilie Mondor Memorial 5k Run for Women. The race was in Ottawa. To my knowledge, this is the first running competition my mom has ever done. Not only did she have a great time, she placed 3rd in her age group!  I think that it is awesome that she is out there pushing herself, knowing how busy she is running Cosray Labs.  Way to go Mom!

This image is from ZoomPhoto.ca, and was shot by none other than my friend Joe Elliot of MTBKanata fame. It’s a small world.

We’re back from a great weekend at the Chico Racing 24 Hours of Summer Solstice. The weather was great. Lots of sun, but not too hot, and a bit of a breeze most of the time. It was very dry however, so lots of dust. As expected, the course was very fast. The fastest lap of the race was around 43 minutes. Laps on our team, ‘True North 5×1,’ ranged from 46 minutes up to 58 minutes, so the rotation was very fast - not a lot of time off between laps. We managed to put in 28 laps in 24 hours and 1 minute, which was good enough for 2nd place in our catagory of 56 teams. Eva’s singlespeed all women’s team also managed to pull in 2nd in the women’s catagory.

The race went just about prefectly for our team. We doubled up laps through the night - laps 11 through 20. This gave us twice as long off the bike so everybody got a bit of a snooze in, and definitely helped our Sunday lap times. Dave Dermont had the fastest lap at 46:35. The best I could pull off was a 47:36, and this was the second lap of the race, when I had a wide open course with no traffic to contend with.

We were all riding our custom True North Cycles rigid 29er singlespeeds. I was riding my normal race bike with 34:19 gearing and WTB NanoRaptor tires at around 27 psi. Dave Dermont was racing on his geared bike with a tensioner and the gears stripped off. I think he was running 34:18. Erik was riding his brand new True North with 32:16 gearing. Andrew was riding his singlespeed and flipped between 34:18 and 34:17 for gearing. Sean was running 34:18 as well.

Racing the 5 person team was both harder and easier than racing tag team or solo. It was a lot easier on the nutrition and hydration side - the time between laps is more than enough to take down real food and replace fluids. I ate a couple of burgers and some Chico McMuffins in addition to the normal race foods like Boost and e-Load. Plus lots of chips, beef jerky, chocolate and fruit as the cravings dictate. On the flip side, I find it hurts a lot more to pull out a 50 minute lap on Sunday morning than it does to keep moving as a solo. Don’t get me wrong - lap 20 as a solo hurts a lot. However, sprinting up a hill pushing my anerobic threshold on lap 6 hurts me more, mainly because I know that if I backed off a little, it wouldn’t hurt at all! I guess a lot of this is mental. I’ve never had problems pushing myself to the threshold at long events, but I’m still figuring out what the threshold is for the shorter efforts!

Our team was awesome. Everybody played well together, and we were all well matched. I hope everyone else on the team had as much fun as I did!