David Singlespeed Unrau

In spite of the hot weather, I just got in a great weekend of riding. It’s been in the low 30′s and very humid over the last couple of days, but I’ve been staying well hydrated and popping lots of Hammer Endurolite electrolytes while riding. I think I’m finally over whatever was dragging me down throughout the spring, and my chronic sore throat has finally gone away. It’s good to be getting lots of riding in, and to start catching up on my preparations for Crank the Shield this fall.

On Saturday, I got in a great 5 hour ride on my cyclocross bike. Right now it’s set up fixed (42:16) with Panaracer Pasela 700x32C tires. I rode down to Cambridge, where I met up with Dave Beer, then we headed south on the rail trail past Paris before looping back up on a mix of gravel and minor paved roads. The rail trail was pleasantly shady and cooler. The gravel roads were hot. The pavement sections were unbearably hot.

Sunday was the O-Cup at Kelso. I was not sure how this was going to go, given ~120km of gravel riding the day before and my less than stellar performance at the O-Cups so far. Well, things were grooving. Sunday was hotter I think, but at 9:30am it didn’t feel anything like the afternoon heat the day before. I took it easy on the big exposed climb then focused on turning the pedals over through the flats and technical sections. I ended up 8th, and only ~7min down from the leaders – by far my best result of the season. Kudos to Nick who ended up 2nd, and Dave Beer, who had a strong performance as well after braving the heat on Saturday with me.

The quote of the day goes to Dave Dermont, who raced to victory in Expert 45-49 in the 1:30pm heat:

Going up the climb, it felt like my head was going to explode like a piece of popcorn!

I commuted into True North’s new location in Guelph yesterday.  The distance is almost exactly 25km one way.  The trip there took around 45 minutes – with a 40 kph tailwind.  By the time I was heading home, the wind was 60kph gusting to 80.  I took the opportunity at the shop to change my 16T fixed gear into a 20T freewheel.  Even with this, it was a struggle to make headway at times.  It took about an hour and a half to get home.

We are working on an updated jersey design for 2008. To get a better idea of what the jerseys are going to look like, I ended up cutting the fabric patterns out of paper and taping them together:

Front, back and shoulder of the XXXXS version of the new True North Jersey. There should be a little tiny black collar going around the neck, but there is no way that is happening with my craft skills! This is the XS template, so there will be more green space on the larger sized jerseys, as the design is the same across all sizes of the jersey.

Here is one of the older jerseys for comparison.

I’ll get my Iron Cross race report up shortly, but for now, check out Fxdwhl’s blog. This guy rode his fixed gear to third place in the singlespeed category. With 2000m of vertical and no coasting – that’s a lot of spinning!!! Congratulations on your race, Fxdwhl!