Well how about I spent literally 4 hours on my bike Friday afternoon while frantically trying to pack to leave by 3:30pm for the mountains. What I thought was going to be a routine fork swap, tire mount, chain replacement, and seat post/saddle change turned out to be a full-time job. Let me start from the beginning…. I got some sweet new DT Swiss 1440 wheels and mounted Stans Crow 2.0 tires front and rear without an issue. I also needed a new fork since my other one was a few years old and I think needs to be serviced so I called up Magura for a new Durin Race 100mm fork with remote lockout. Removing my other fork would seem to be no problem for my mallet however the aluminum spacers for the stem were literally seized onto the forks steerer tube. Holy hell this was not easy to remove.

It was nearly 90 degrees outside and I was sweating my butt off trying to hammer that fork out… finally getting it down to the spacers and figuring out how to loosen the spacers enough to remove the fork! I put on the new fork, hooked up the remote lockout and quickly got myself some CARBON spacers… not sure if this make a difference. 1.5 hours into this I had to put on 2 new chains which take literally no less than 5 minutes with matching the length and such… well for some reason the supplied SRAM power links did NOT connect with each other. I tried different combination links from both chains and still a no go. I finally went back to the links off the old chain and voila!! 2 hours into this project comes the fun part. I wish I had pictures to share but didn’t think of it. All I wanted to do is put on a new seat post and seat and be done with it all.

The old seat post was a bit tough to slide out due to some friction so I wiped out the frame after removal and started to slide the new carbon post in. I’m not sure if the Titec carbon posts are a little ticker than most posts because of the high gloss or what but the post got stuck with a LONG way to go until it reached my height. I was twisting the seat trying to slide that post down further and used a little too much effort…. oops the seat clamp is now loosened from the post itself and would you look at that? The darn thing came right off the post! Now I have a carbon post stuck in my primary bike that I am determined to ride so I took to a metal object and started pounding the crap out of the post to get it seated into the frame. This baby is NEVER coming out now and even though I splintered the carbon a bit, I got it low enough to match my height however had to epoxy the seat clamp back into the post hoping it would withstand 24 hours of riding. Clint didn’t think it would hold one lap… but it held the entire race!

Okay enough talk about the bike repair. I got it fixed and we were headed up to the mountains to get there before dark so I can ride these tires that literally have no tread but are grippy as rock climbing shoes to see if they hold air. We got up there and my rear tire was flat but that’s because I didn’t ride them yet and they weren’t sealed.. Riding 20 minutes fixed this.

It’s now race morning with the usual race prep and nerves. There were a few names I know racing with me and know I would have a battle ahead based off last few years winning lap times. I ate breakfast and then some lasagna around 11am to hold me over for quite a few hours into the race and then lived off my special concoction of race fuel including many many Hammer Endurolytes & Anti Fatigue caps (miracle pills right there!), powedered drink mix, Ensure Plus Choc Shakes, 1 liter of coke + 2 cans in for the last 3 laps, 2 bite sized snickers bars for the last 2 laps, 4 red bulls, oat meal, watermelon, eggs, bacon, chicken soup, chicken meatballs… and that may be it.

This may be the first 24 hour race where I felt amazing the entire race minus the 2am lap. Greg in second place was chasing me down since the moment I passed him on the first lap and never let go of me, holding within 10 min of me for pretty much the entire race. I put a 25 min gap on him late at night but then I stopped for 15 min a few times to eat and use the potty. From there the race was back on and literally was racing at speeds close to a short-distance xc race towards the last 4 laps of this race. I was doing the math in my head while riding and had a feeling it would come down to 26 laps, but not 27. My last 3 laps got progressively faster as my gf kept telling me Greg was doing 49-50 min laps and trying to catch me. Does this guy know that I am not going to lose the lead now after having it for 23 hours?? I busted my butt around that course one last time running on pure adrenaline and made it in 49 minutes. I surely must have looked like a psycho going around the course the last few laps but crossing the finish line first was well worth it.

Perhaps me having a number 27 plate was ironic or foretelling my 27 lap future.. or maybe it had to do something with my birthday.

Here is a pic of me passing out on the ground after I came through… notice the accumulation of dirt on my legs from the past 24 hours.

Thanks to everyone who helped me out during the race including the racers I passed and the ones who passed me shouting out encouragement. My support crew was great even though I caught them sleeping around 3am but everything worked out as planned.

Results:
http://www.grannygear.com/realtime/public/gg_class.php?display_standings_flag=1&class=MZ

2010 Inaugural Transylvania Stage Race
written by: Karen Potter

First off I want to send out a big thank you to Mike Kuhn and Ray Adams for putting on a wonderful stage race. It was very well organized and everything ran smoothly as far as I could tell. The volunteers were great. Even Mike and Ray’s parents were instrumental in seeing this stage race come together. Their parents even made some of the prizes – like the very cool and unique handmade TSE coaster – I love it!

The photographer, A.E. Landes Photography was great too. Abe put together a slide show each evening of the day’s stage. Mike and Ray had some great schwag for prizes for everyone who finished as well as for daily stage winners. I hope they can continue to secure good sponsorship for this race, which I imagine they will be able too since it seemed to be a big hit this inaugural year.

The TSE was a great first stage race for me to enter into this new format of racing. Granted, half way through, I was thinking I wasn’t going to survive, but that had nothing to do with how the race was put on. It was tough but doable and with some really fun stages to boot.

There are some wonderful trail systems in PA. We got to ride lots of them in this race and hopefully even more of them next year. I won’t lie – it is rocky, but mostly it’s just purely true mountain biking in my book. And my competition was pretty tough but I was pleased to hang in there in 2nd place with some really experienced endurance racers, and make lots of new riding friends.

People have been asking about clothing and rather than putting together a huge order and try to make sense of everyone’s sizing.. etc, I have installed a shopping cart system on the web site that runs payment through PayPal or via check. We can order as little as one piece however we need to meet a $300 minimum order each time we order to avoid fees.

To order, please visit the store at www.mtbmind.com/store and simply drag what you want into the shopping bag (you can literally drag and drop) and buy it. I’ll print out the order and get it processed for print. Unfortunately I do not have pictures of all of the clothing, specifically the women’s since I do not have any to take pictures of,
but you all know what it looks like. I’ll get pics up for these soon.. perhaps some of you ladies want to send me a pic??

Thanks everyone. Let’s make this happen soon.

Chris

It’s been a few weeks since I have been able to start really getting a go at the design structure of the site, however the basics of the software for both the web site and forum are working flawlessly without any spam/hacker threats.

Some things I will be working on in order of first priority:
- Fixing the alignment of the login/registration buttons on the forum page as it’s masked by the background and hard to read until logged in.
- Linking the forum back over to the main web site
- Changing the layout of the actual web site to reflect more of a personal look rather than a generic blog. (The blog system works great and is the backbone of the site. All I have to do now is create new php files and assign pages to a respected file… not so easy).

Again any comments or suggestions are always welcome to better help me and everyone else who visits the site. I’ll be bringing back some of the old school web site pages as well.

Chris

At 26 years of age, James was the editor of Enduro magazine and had a positive outlook on life and the sport of mountain biking. Many of us spend years or an entire lifetime trying to find a single moment of accomplishment, however James had no doubt filled a book of accomplishments and died doing something he loved the most.

Like many racers, James kept a blog for you to follow up on his adventures.

Check out the pictures below to see how it fits my bald head and pick one up at www.e-rudy.com today!

My eyes are set for the solo version of the 30 Mile MTB Endurance relay set to take place the week after Great Glen on August 22nd.  I highly suggest signing up for this race, especially if you plan on doing the VT 50 in September.  They are looking for 150 competitors this year.

$40 entry fee and big cash payouts for everyone:

Expert/Pro
1st place male and female – $375.00 Each

Sport
1st place male and female – $75.00 Each

Beginner
1st Place male and female – $75.00 Each

Single Speed
1st Place male and female – $75.00 Each

King of the Hill
1st place male and female – $150.00 Each

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The Pittsfield Bike Club helps maintain multi use trails on Public(National Forest) and private land in Pittsfield, Stockbridge, and Chittenden Vermont.

We will be adding maps for the trails on National Forest land and will be updating the existing map as we get everything GPS’d.

Come on out for a ride or a hike or run!

www.greenmountaintrails.com

It was clear that DCR needs more comments submitted. This is important to DCR. They are counting them all up – they had nice bar charts summarizing emails.

Action Item: We need everyone who hasn’t sent comments to send them in. Keep them short and to the point. Here’s the original DCR source page:http://www.mass.gov/dcr/news/publicmeetings/greenwaysfellsusersurvey.htm

Some suggestions:

Simply state that you:

1. Support increased mountain biking opportunities.
2. Support a change to the winter closure policy.
3. Support increased NEMBA volunteerism
4. Support after dark riding.
5. Support separating loop trail overlaps
6. Support providing access to the reservoir trail systems
7. Support improved signage

You don’t need to answer all the questions — just the ones that are important to you.

There are some basic principles we hope riders will support:

1. Fair and equitable access policy
2. Access to singletrack
3. More marked loops
4. Positive use to replace illegitimate use

It’s even better if the comments are in your own voice and express your own concerns. We’re not trying to control the message — it’s the getting a message out to DCR that is really important.

If you are looking for other ideas, here’s some stuff that Greater Boston NEMBA has come up with (look at the bottom of the webpage):http://www.gbnemba.org/fells-action.html

Email your comments to: Paul.jahnige@state.ma.us

When you send them please also cc: fells@gbnemba.org