First Race on the Epic & Misc. Crap

On Saturday, I had my first race with my new mountain bike. I was pretty excited to be at Fort Ord again, especially on my new super elite mountain bike! A couple weekends ago I had a couple mechanicals with my Schwinn. First, on Saturday's race, at Harvey Bear, my chain broke, which forced me to run, walk and coast with my bike for the final 6 miles and buy another chain for $30 bucks eventhough I would have my new bike in about weeks time. I was not to happy with that. Secondly, the next day I had a race at Fort Ord and I had major chain suck issues and ended up jamming my chain inbetween the chainring and the front derailleur, which ended up misaligning my front derailleur and making it impossible to shift or do anything, so I had to drop out of the race. That was a waste of gas money, 4 hours of driving and $35 dollar entry fee!! So by the end of the weekend I was pretty frustrated since the weekend could have been a busy but productive race weekend for me. So I felt like this race was redemption for a couple weeks ago since this race was in same general area and had some of the same trails as the other race.

I have also been busy with work the last couple weeks, staying late and getting up early to get into work by 7am. Due to this I have not been on my regular exercise routine which is usually going to the gym on Monday, Wednesday and sometimes Friday while biking home on Tuesday and Thursdays and racing weekends. I think I managed to bike home once in the 2 weeks, do one weekend ride and hit the gym twice. I also didn't go to a race last Saturday because I was too tired, that was a first! So lack of exercise, stress and sleep showed in my race performance this past Saturday.

I still had a blast, but I could definately tell I was tired compared to previous races of comparable length and steepness, so I hope this week I will get back on track in terms of exercise and sleep schedule. So far so good! I went to the gym Monday, I biked 31 miles yesterday and I plan on going to the gym today.

The bike handled great on the course, which consisted of some steep fireroad climbs and decents with a good amount of ruts due to the recent rain but it also had some fast flowy singletrack and corners. I felt faster definately on the downhills compared to my Schwinn thanks to the rear suspension and the full disc setup, which provided me with more confidence, comfort and handling than my Schwinn. The bike does seem to accelerate a little slower than the Schwinn but that is not suprising but I think overall the Specialized is just as fast on flats and uphills.

In the end, I had "only" THREE issues before/during/after the race. For starters while warming up I was coming down a hill and applying the front brake to break them in and I noticed my front tire started to rub against my fork and I soon realized my quick release skewers came loose. Apparently Mike's Bikes did not tighten them down that hard as required since they are lightweight skewers that have been machined down to NOTHING! So you need to tighten them so that the lever leaves an imprint on your palm after "wrenching" them down. I'm glad I caught this mistake before the race or my front tire might have fallen off haha! They were also on backwards (not sure if this matters) but everyone I saw had the skewer lever on the rotor side with the bolt on the other, so I also had to flip that around and I also retighten the rear to my liking as it was loose too, just to be safe.

Secondly, I had some chain suck issues about 2/3 of the way through the course, going up some of the steeper climbs (the ones where I had to shift into the granny gear). I don't see this as a chronic issue with the bike but just the chain not being lubricated enough. The course is pretty sandy and it was wet with some mud and water puddles which make your drivetrain sound crunchy and crappy after a while. It just sucked because going up these hills I would be grinding away and all of a sudden I could not pedal forward anymore and I would lose my momentum and would have to dismount and run up the hill. I'm just going to try to keep my chain more lubricated than the "norm" and pray.

Finally, the biggest potential problem I had was when I was cleaning the bike, I noticed a few spokes on my rear wheel and one spoke on the my front wheel were pretty loose. I was aware of the fact since they are new wheels that I would need to pay attention to the spokes loosening up over the next couple weeks but I was not expecting them to be that loose after one ride/race!! I'm glad my rim didn't taco during the race, ouch! So I took it to Mikes immediately and hopefully it was just that they came loose and not an issue with build quality or I will have to call Speedgoat (they built them) and complain to them that their wheel build sucks :)

Anyways, I'm still waiting on my new white grips, Hope Matchmakers and rear disc hose and I still have to order my stem and pay $120 for the 5 yr service. The new parts should be here today or tomorrow and maybe Sunday I will order the stem and service plan. The stem I'm borrowing seems like the right fit for me, but I think I will wait till after the next race, which is this Sunday, and then finally pull the trigger on a Syntace F109 110mm 17 degree stem.

I also bought this cleaning kit called "Muck-Off" (http://bikesmart.com/bikesmart/allen-keys/bike-cleaning/muckoff/) which consist of a chain scrubber (like the one Paul had a video of a couple posts ago) and some brushes, degreaser, sponge, and bucket. I used it on Sunday while cleaning my new bike and it worked great, looks brand new! I just used soap and water to scrub it down and some brushes to get to the harder to reach spots and then rinsed off the bike and dried with towel. The chain scrubber worked well to clean the chain. I used my bike rack, since it was still attached to my car, as my bike holder. It was an ingenious idea of mine and I think I will keep using it. Now, I just need to clean my road bike and stop neglecting it! It's so dirty from commuting over the winter with all the dirty and wet roads. Next Sunday I will clean both bikes, I promise and I hope to make this routine after each ride with my new mountain bike and periodically with the road bike.