NAMRITA K. O'DEA

I finally got to ride my 2010 Rotwild yesterday. It's been a long process getting everything together between the build-up, tuning, and fitting everything to the Wobble-naught specs...all while there has been a lot of travel and work craziness going on.

Alas..here it is

I took it out on the first trail ride yesterday. Even though we applied my fit to the new bike, it handles quite differently. There have been some geometry changes but I like them.

cockpit

The countdown is on..my race bikes are still not 100% done because my Wobble-naught fit called for 70mm stems..which we don't have. I'm trying not to stress out over such a detail (ok, significant detail)..I am still trying to kick this cold I've had for OVER A WEEK and stressing out won't help that. I am blaming this cold on a cute little innocent baby. Eddie went to visit our friend (and his baby) in DC a couple weeks ago while he was up there and caught a cold..now I have it and can't get rid of it. Those babies carry some nasty stuff.

Attn: Burn 24 hour racers! Details here.

Brushy Mountain Bicycles in Wilkesboro, NC will be having an open house from 4 to 7 on Friday May, 28th with light refreshments and cheap beer. From 5 to 6, SRAM will on hand to talk about their new Sram XX 2 x 10 drivetrain. Then, Eddie O'Dea and I, representing Team Topeak-Ergon USA, will be fielding your inquiries about preparing for a 24 hour mountain bike race. We'll cover 24-hour race equipment and gear, bike fit, 24 hour race nutrition and any other relevant questions you may have. Plan on heading over for that last minute tune up or just stop by because you can.

This past weekend I thought it would be a good idea to do some cross-country racing. I've only ever done two of them and actually like them. It's becoming more and more apparent, every month that goes by, that regardless of how much I WANT to ride, I just don't have the hours to put in on the bike to do well at the longer races that I really love. In light of this, I think the rest of my season will have to include short races. No, Lumberjack 100 doesn't really qualify as short but it will be a really fun trip so I'm going to go anyway.

Last week I was on a post-PMBAR race high and frantically trying to cram for final exams. The good thing was that all three finals were on Tuesday after the race so I got them over with all at once. The bad thing was that they were all on Tuesday after the race.

Ah, well. School is over until August and I am just happy that I survived the first year. Only 3+ more years to go.

..if I have to set an alarm, mark my calendar and CLEAR my calendar for 9 am CST on the 6th of every month to get one.

Of course, I am talking about the Twin Six T-shirt of the Month (ToTM).

Yep, I just got my May shirt..the Dicky edition

You better go now if you want one..or forever regret it.

Continued from here.

I debated on the title of this post. I was either going to call it, "Why I love my 26er" or "Pilot Rock, I think I love you". I settled on the latter, obviously, because I didn't want to upset the 29er elitists too much. Oh yeah, I used to be one, too.

We passed Gear Check with an "A" --all that old adventure racing mandatory gear really came in handy! At 8:00 am, after the mandatory racer meeting, Eric and Erinna handed out the maps with the checkpoints already labeled. The two circled CPs were mandatory and we had to get 4 to finish. If you got 5 CPs you got a 3 hour time bonus. I was not really interested in that. As I already said, my goal was an 8 hour day of riding followed by one or more burritos and one or more cold IPAs while cheering on the rest of the finishers.