Monday, May 03, 2010

On Track

I woke up Sunday morning with 2 flat tires. I thought all my preparation was complete. The guys even came and installed the gutters this past Friday so all home improvement projects are finished for the season!



















I spent quite some time Friday tuning up Andreas Top Fuel w/ new cables, housing, chains, and some new rubber. My bike was mostly ready to go, but I had to get back on the DT XR Carbon rear suspension. The FOX was just too squishy....


After a while I thought I had everything set, went for a good ride and all air held....of course Sunday morning my tires were flat. So I did something I haven't done in a long time...raced with tubes....


Iola 2010....I'm not in race shape that's for sure...I could only hang with the leaders for approx 7 minutes...I think Tristan went extra hard at the start just to drop me! After a solid 3 weeks riding in Tucson, it was back to Sheboygan for 6 weeks before the first race. The first 5 weeks was spent doing one run per week and one ride per week. Leading up to Iola was my first block of training. Tue, Wed, Thurs, I finally got some good solid rides in and by Thursday I wasn't bonking at the 1:40 mark.


The race was exactly what I thought would happen....get blown out by the top guys and hang with the second group and battle to the end. I was just hoping to stay with the top guys more than 7 minutes!

















It was great to see all the familiar WORS faces and even better to see a few MATTER SUPPORTER T-Shirts in the crowd...Thanks for cheering Superfans! Next time I'll have some more miles and be ready for at least 14 minutes w/ the leaders...that would mean I'm twice as fast right?


Check out the post race interview here.

7 comments:

Chris said...

I like the twice as fast math! You gotta do whatever you can to motivate!!

Anonymous said...

I'm curious on your tire setup. Looks like you had some pythons on there... tubeless ready version? How do you like those compared to what you ran last year?

b-matter said...

Last year I used a really nice Bontrager tire, that unfortunately that are not making anymore. This year I was in the process of trying the new tires from Bontrager, but they were both flat Sunday morning. I guess I need more Stans. So I used Andrea's old Pythons Air Light (not tubeless ready) w/ Tubes from last year. Overall Python is the best tire I have ever used, but the Bontrager are lighter. Right now Andrea is running the Air Light Python, but we have them set up Tubeless anyway...works great.

Anonymous said...

Those XR-1 tires are really hard to get to seal tubeless. Awesome tires though...

b-matter said...

'xr-1 really hard to seal' - for sure

Anonymous said...

I'm curious about your setup on the XR Carbon shock. I have one and can't seem to find the magic pressure to get it to stop bobbing. What percentage of your bodyweight pressure do you run?

b-matter said...

i weigh right around 150 lbs and am running around 90 psi in the rear shock...its not dialed in perfect yet, but after a few more rides and once the tires are properly set i will work on the rear suspension a little more. hope this helps