52/365 – Dirty Legs

8:33 pm, February 21st, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Posted in 365, bikes, boythings, photography by Jarod

Today I did the WSMTB Club’s 4 hour race. I got dirty legs and a crushed spirit.

Quite tired. Shall post a proper review in the coming days.

Dirtworks 2010

6:15 am, December 10th, 2009 | No Comments »
Posted in bikes, boythings by Jarod

It appears the pain from this year’s Dirtworks has been forgotten, as last week I signed up for the 2010 race.

I had a bit of indecision between the 50 & 100km events. The 50km appealed cause it can be treated like a short, sharp sprint. The 100km cause it’s epic and a helluva challenge. In the end I decided on the 50km so I could sleep in a bit longer.

With no training under my belt (yet) I’d be happy with anything under last year’s time. But if I’m being completely honest, I’d like to smash last year’s time. Whether that’ll happen or not is anyone’s guess at this stage.

Whitey Gets His Gears Back

6:52 am, November 22nd, 2009 | No Comments »
Posted in bikes, boythings, photography by Jarod

Sick of sore knees and having to set up the gearing for each trail I visited, I splurged and bought Whitey some new running gear. The vertical drop outs meant the single speed thing never did work quite right. Oh well, I might try single speeding again at some point in the future**.

Took him for a quick spin out at Appin yesterday and despite the different style of riding needed with gears, I’m quite a happy chappy. Single speeding for the last year made me want to grab a big gear and grind up Appin’s countless pinch climbs, but eventually I’ll relearn that cadence is king (and with that remember that cardio is queen).

SRAM x.9 Front Derailleur

SRAM x.9 Rear Derailleur

PG980 Cassette & PC991 Chain

SRAM x.0 Trigger Shifters

And the obligatory drive train side photo.

** And by, some point in the future, I actually mean, in a few weeks.

The Tale of the Giant Iguana Single Speed and the Salsa Casseroll Single Speed Commuter

7:57 am, November 4th, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Posted in bikes, boythings, photography by Jarod

Okay. Not so much a tale as a photo of each bike in it’s respective state.

That’s pretty much how Whitey will stay for the Highland Fling this weekend. Kinda not really especially looking forward to it. Which is to say that I’m nervous and wish it was over with already.

As for the Casseroll, damn I’m loving that bike. Knocked over a few kms on Sunday on it and you get out of it exactly what you put into it. Fun++

Whitey’s New Boots

6:05 pm, October 26th, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Posted in bikes, boythings, photography by Jarod

I recently treated whitey to a new set of boots… and in the process saved almost a kilo of weight. Crazy!

These were replaced:

With these:

Hubs are these:

Rims are these:

And they’re laced together with super light DT Swiss Revolution spokes and held in with super sexy red DT Swiss Alloy Nipples.

On the quick ride I took it for to bed them in, the wheels were nothing short of spectacular. The whole bike just felt so nimble.

Sadly, the same couldn’t be said for the cranks. They were extremely grindy and horrible sounding, so I’ll have to do something about that before the Fling. Which incidentally is in a week and a halfs time. Shit.

Manly Dam again

8:08 am, August 30th, 2009 | No Comments »
Posted in bikes, boythings, local by Jarod

Yesterday I rode Manly Dam for the first time since January. Man it’s easy to forget how technical that trail is!

The first lap we did was the normal one. That is to say, it has heartbreak hill in it. Despite having easier gearing than last time (32:18) I didn’t ride the whole way up in one hit. Instead when my rear wheel lost traction and spun out halfway up I decided that was a great excuse to have a break. A minute or two of breathing deeply, and I was back on the bike, successfully pedalling to the top.

On the second lap we did the outer Bantry Bay loop. Lead by the brilliant tour guide Ben, all the significant features (large drop off, creek gap jumps) were pointed out well before time so I could take the B or C line :D Tis very good out there on the outer lap. No heartbreak hill, plus more technical drop offs, tight single track, and all the other goodies you go to Manly Dam for.

All in all it was an excellent, but testing 25kms. My fitness is still not quite there, but hey, that’ll come.

Dirtworks is creeping up on me

7:09 am, April 11th, 2009 | No Comments »
Posted in bikes, boythings by Jarod

Dirtworks is 22 days away. Not overly sure how I’m going to go with the amount of training I’ve done. I can rattle off 20kms pretty comfortably, 30kms if I properly have to. But I kinda signed up for the 50km event….

Mmm. Now there’s motivation to be awake at 6am on the Saturday of a long weekend.

So if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a date with the Royal National Park.

Manly Dam with the Bikes Move Us Guys

7:46 pm, January 12th, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Posted in bikes, boythings, internets by Jarod

I woke up yesterday and chucked Liz’s Maxxis High Rollers onto the single speed in preparation for my first ride with the BMU guys. We all rocked up to Manly Dam and after a slightly delayed start, we were on our way and I was about to learn how much the Dam had changed.

Damn. The dam has changed a lot! It’s all still roughly what it was, just a whole bunch more refined. The technical stuff is all still there, possibly even more so than it was a few years ago. I’m still a big fan of being given a myriad of lines on a technical ascents/descents and being forced to choose the right one. Can’t say I got it right all that often yesterday, but hey, that’s what multiple laps are for.

Not so keen on what they’ve done to the back end. I like the flowing, slightly downhill single track, I don’t like the water gutters that seem to be strewn every 50-100 metres on it. It makes it difficult to get and keep speed through that section. You’re either flat out pedalling to jump and clear the gutters, or on the brakes to slow down and roll through them. Thankfully I chose the latter 100% of the time.

I didn’t overly like the sand and loose dirt on most of the corners either. Even with 2.1″ High Rollers, I was still washing out at speeds which I thought would be perfectly acceptable. I had a fair bit of pressure in my front tyre though, so perhaps that was the cause.

The only other slight niggle was the 50 odd metre section of rock garden. I mean, c’mon guys. That stuff hurts on a hard tail!

It was great. The single speed got well dirty from the dust kicked up by the other guys. A few notes about it’s performance are as follows.

I couldn’t be happier with the Manitou R7’s. I didn’t notice them until they bailed me out of trouble a few times. Either by soaking up a drop off I took the way wrong line on, or by having the steering response to miss a rock when I thought I was going to plough into it. I think that’s the best form of compliment I can give them.

The gearing I was running (32/16) was just right for a few of the uphills. Sadly it was slightly heavy for most of the ride. A 32/17 or 32/18 would be far better suited to Manly. But my golly… when I’ve got the legs to turn the pedals… and the gradient is accommodating… the single speed is a wickedly fast climbing bike.

A bit more of a disappointment were the Avid Codes. I’m putting it down to them not being quite bedded in yet, but they’re still squeaking/shuddering despite my best efforts to shut them up. They’re also fairly heavy on the fingers, but I guess that’s the trade off to having the stopping power (which they have oodles and oodles of).

Overall, despite my not liking sections of the track and the avid codes being a little temperamental… I had an absolute blast. Riding yesterday was heaps of fun and reminded me of the good old days were I wouldn’t ride to train for an event, but rather for the sheer enjoyment of it. Definitely looking to get out and hit the dirt more often!

Bikes Move Us

3:28 pm, January 10th, 2009 | No Comments »
Posted in bikes, geekery, internets by Jarod

A small plug for a forum I’ve been participating in for a lil while… Bikes Move Us. Very good bunch of guys which are mostly into the mountain biking scene, but there are a few road bike and single speed riders in there.

It’s a just a small but quality Australian Bike Forum. You know, for if you’re not a fan of the other juggernaut style bike forums.

My single speed bike frame gets a make over!

6:57 am, November 22nd, 2008 | No Comments »
Posted in bikes, boythings, local by Jarod

As previously mentioned, the Single Speed frame wasn’t playing nice with the paint I’d bought for it. Reluctantly, I took the advice that Beefy Steve gave me a few weeks back and took it to a professional painter to get all my blunders fixed.

A few searches for bike painters in Sydney Australia showed that there was only really one guy to go to… Peter from Star Enamellers. The single speed frame is now with him. I’ve gotta wait a few weeks cause his workload is that high, but if the quality is there, I’m happy to wait.

What am I getting done to it? The paint will be removed by giving it a bath in some chemical paint stripper then glass bead blasting it. This will also remove most of the small dings and scratches. The bigger dents will be filled in, then a few coats of matt black will be spray painted on. The result of all this is that what I’ll get back will be essentially a brand new frame.

I’m quite excited about the getting it back part. It’s just that the waiting game part sucks. Lets play hungry hungry hippos!