When you dont race bikes a ton...

So this year has been slow as far as bike racing. That is fine. I have a friend who used to race on the Kraynicks team. He got injured and put his energy into other things, namely family and house. There was a point where I was at his house and thought "is bike racing worth not having this?"... As his house was renovated and nice. I would like to think that I have the brains to do that if I had more time.
Anyway, we finally got around to doing our second floor. Half of it anyway.
Learned: Showering in the basement for 3 weeks sucks. Dont send your kids to college, make them an electrician or plumber. House parts are expensive.

This is a captive room on our second floor. It was crappy asbestos floor tiles and ceiling tiles. Took it down to the lathe. There was a weird room that you had to walk through to get to the second bedroom. It also led to the bathroom. We opened that up to make the bath bigger. In order to make it so people dont get trapped in the bedroom when somebody is in the bathroom we opened the original door up in the captive middle room.

This is a before and after. Wood paneling and sketchy wiring gone. Door on the right is now a pocket door into guest room. Also now a pocket door at top of stairs. There is a blanket hung to block dust from other room.

Finally the bathroom. Our bathroom was so jacked. I had an 9mm allen key with a thimble on it shoved inside of the spigot for like 6 years. We could not take baths. The floor was peeling up, as it was cheap vinyl. There was no exhaust fan. The wallpaper started falling down like 3 weeks after we moved in. Long time coming.
Friends - come visit.

An agreeable sound. Amy

Awhile I did a video like this. this is my wife's. pittsburgh people may recognize the cameo.

An Agreeable Sound : Amy from Matt Dayak on Vimeo.

So I deleted my Strava account...

I meant to post this the other day, and this news story reminded me to.Strava being sued over dude's death.

There used to be a bike shop at the bottom of a big climb around here. In the bike shop there was a chalk board with first names and times to the sign at the top of the climb. This was basically strava before Garmin existed. People would come test themselves against local fast times.

I won an account at a cross race for having the holeshot or something. I then emptied my entire Garmin 500 onto it. I immediately won a bunch of QOM's. I quickly realized that I signed up as a woman. I would be an awesome woman bike racer.

I switched it into dude mode and maintained a few KOMs. Neat. Whatever. Then it started happening, people were taking my KOMs. Hm. Id get an email from Strava saying "joe just beat your time up xyz." Most of the time I would have to click it to see what the heck they were talking about. Like I have Garmin stuff from all over the state and region from riding. A few of the emails were about local things that I did not know could have a KOM, like a road around a park with a stop sign.

So then it makes me wonder, did some dude put on his aero wheels and have a friend carry a spare tubular while he set out one day to break a record, or did he happen to feel good riding one day and hit a climb pretty hard? Maybe hill repeats? My worst fear was eventually confirmed by a third party. A climb that I went up with 28mm tires, a seat bag, frame pump, etc and got a KOM on apparently was beaten. A third party told me that somebody went out to "snipe" it.

So this puts me in a weird position. Do I play their game and go back and race up it and try to take back the KOM? Do I not care? In my mind I do not care. However I do not want some dude thinking that the terms were equal. In my mind I am like "pin a number on and lets race..." However I think by signing up for strava, you ARE kind of pinning a number on.

So basically dudes who use strava for fun, keep having fun. Dudes who use strava to "win," ... just go race. If you do race, race a harder category if you are winning. There is always going to be somebody faster than you. Race until you are racing a bunch of those people and learn to eat humble pie.

im not even going to talk about tail winds and drafting.

12 Hours of Granogue.

This was my first duo endurance race. Me and Bad Andy whimsically decided to go for it. Babik and Stubna were supposed to sign up to rival us, however Babik quickly remembered that nobody would be there to lead him out and bailed. It is fun to do something new. Drove to Lancaster to stay with Bad Andy and Bad Kat. We watched Tulsa Tough live streaming, which was pretty neat. Then we went to sleep.
Numbers: 35 minute laps. It was not enough time to really eat or do anything other than sit there.
9 laps for me. 10 for BA.
Distance: 59.79 mi
Time: 5:39:47
Avg Speed: 10.6 mph
Elevation Gain: 8,294 ft
Calories: 3,532 (garmin estimate..)
1 song in my head all freaking day. (under pressure... nothing to do with the race but had listened to it earlier in the week)
34:09 - I did two laps with this time!
40 seconds is how much faster BA's fast lap was than mine. dang.
2 weeks in a row that I went to freaking Delaware. That is far.

Food for a 12 hour race:
1 bagel with Peanutbutter
3 gu's
2 donuts
7 cans of coke
1 clif bar
Salt and vinegar chips
Handful of small cookies
5 bottles of secret drink mix
1 THREE TO GO 3musketeers bar.
1 soft pretzel
1 cinabon

My teeth were so slimy after the race that I stopped and bought a toothbrush after the race and brushed my teeth for 6 minutes while driving back. I cant believe people drink coke everyday and some drink that much. wow.
Garmin Link
I rocked a skinsuit all day, until I needed a pocket for my battery for my light. BA hooked me up with a speed sleeve. 20/20 cycling carries them apparently. It fits a tube, inflator, tire levers. It just chills there and is held on by velcro. Pretty clever. There is an under the seat version as well.

Mountain bike races...

So Brody and I headed out to Philly Saturday for the mass race at fairhill on Sunday. 10 hours of driving over two days for 90 mins of racing.

This was our first mass race. Brody's first USAC race. This is the problem with the USAC system. He had never done one so he was going to have to race beginner. He put a full day of phone calls in to get his cat 1 upgrade. He got 6th in the 1 race with one of the top 50 times all day. It would have been embarrassing to the sport if had to race beginner or sport or whatever numbers they are now.

Anyway, the weekend was rad. Stayed with gman and megs. They are old old friends who now race bikes. It is awesome.

The pro/1 race was stupid fast. This is two for two mountain bike races this year that have been pack riding. They are like road races. Yesterday the scott
kid and bad Andy attacked and there were like 3 Scott dudes around clogging it up after. It was like a crit. Andy rode well for second. I mistimed an effort for third and landed fourth.

The debate of the week was about skinsuits vs jerseys for a cool 90 min race. The solution will be posted shortly. I'm at work and this is from an iPhone.

Cool article..

Im always posting about my Somali buddies (not Somalian)... Somalian man evolves from civil war to crafting films This is Pittsburgh's big newspaper. Pretty cool.

First mountain bike race in 6 months or so.

Yesterday, I did my first mountain bike race since the 101 last August. ABRA had the first of their MTB series at WISP resort at Deep Creek MD. Mountain biking is tough. There was at least 3 points in the race that I kind of "quit." Like if it were a road race I would have just finished in the pack and called it a day, but on the mountain bike, you are either racing or quitting. Its also tough cause it destroys the bike. The course was rocky and had a lot of descending. I heard so many rocks banging off my bike, and at the two hour mark I would have paid money for chain lube. And it was like 85 degrees all day, with a sun exposed climb. I basically just followed wheels for the first lap. If somebody let gaps open or dabbed, I would go around them and aggressively prevent them from passing me later. I dont know what the mountain bike etiquette is. In my mind, in a cross or mtb race, if somebody is riding worse than you, they should be behind you. By the last lap it was just me and Dylan from the Scott Pro team. He is like 12 years old or something and literally weighs 120. It was possibly the first time I had to ride my brakes behind somebody on descents. I think I was out riding him a bit in the technical stuff, but I knew that I was in for it on the 2-3 mile climb up to the finish. With 3 miles to go the kid missed a turn. It was the THIRD TIME we went through that section. I called out and slowed down so he could catch back up. It would have been more embarrassing if he had missed a turn, turned around and still beat me, which was likely given that I couldnt climb out of the saddle on the hill. So he dug a bit and dropped me, built a good gap and held it. I rolled in for 2. I cant believe dudes race that hard every weekend, and do that much damage to their bikes every weekend. Mind blowing. Garmin Link to the race. It is neat to see the time splits on it. The first lap felt SOOOOO fast, but in retrospect it wasnt that much faster. I would really like to see the power file for a MTB race, I really think that I can suffer so much more.

Check out the temp. High at beginning is from being in the sun. The other spikes in the middle were the sun exposed climb, so the hottest points were also the slowest. Brutal.

Don't know

Yesterday I was trusted with a two-year old for five hours. I can't change a diaper and I have no experience but I got to hang out with the girl for the afternoon. I took her to a place in Pittsburgh has animals roaming around some buffalo a few caged animals in a big pond. There was a family there with a child who is probably my age who was a little bit physically handicapped and mentally slow. He couldn't speak the tried communicating with us and it seem like other kids were afraid of them as he was very social so I just told my little friend to talk to him. I think it made his day. A little while later we saw him again and his mom gave us five dollars for a pony ride for my little friend. I think it may have made her day seeing her son socialize somebody who just treated him normally.

Battenkill. Honest review of No Tubes wheels.

I woke up at 630 am with my legs pounding, so I might as well use the time. A week ago I got an email from Geronimo seeing if I wanted to guest ride with the Stans No Tubes/AXA team for Battenkill. Why not? I made my plans and made the trip up.

Geronimo lent me a set of the Alpha Team Wheels. More on that later. This was nice because it left out the week before stress about which tires to run, and the self blame afterward if the wrong choice was made.

Saturday's Pro/1 race was uneventful. It was predictable and I am mad at myself (this is rare after a race) but I know that I could have pulled out a result, and I know that I could have. I wasted a bit of energy early and was conscious of it while doing so. Ended up in a group sprinting for the top 10, did some team work and ended up at the back of that group in 22nd or so. Such is life.

Sunday was insane. it was like 30+mph from the gun and just pegged for the first hour. I found it hard to stay at the front as usual. There were dudes letting gaps open 10 miles in. The dirt sections were like Vietnam. Dozens of guys on the side of the road, screaming, dust, crashes, rocks flying. It was ridiculous.

At one point like 50 miles in Kelly went to the front and pegged it. I was in and out of the caravan until the end of the first lap, and that was my day. Props to farbaugh with a top 20. Sick.

Solo 9 hour drive home. Soundtrack: Crimpshrine, Hot Water Music, Danzig, Petrograd, Wait Wait dont tell me, Joy Division, Jawbreaker, Sloppy Seconds, Tragedy, His Hero is gone, Leatherface, Bad Religion. The trip home flew by. There is something cleansing about singing for 9 hours straight while driving.

NO TUBES REVIEW.
So this is an honest review of the Stans wheels / Hutchinson tires that I raced both days this weekend. I was skeptical of road tubeless. It is weird. I love Stans mountain bike stuff. It is probably up there with suspension and disc brakes as far as innovation go. The road thing scared me a bit for some reason. We put my front tire at 65psi and the rear at 67. yes 65/67. Bottom line is that they rode great. The feel is like riding cross tubulars. Not road tubulars which are always pumped up super high and kind of hard, but like when on a cross tubular you absorb the bumps. It is pretty cool. During the race Sunday, I did hit a rock that was big enough to dent the braking surface, my hands almost slipped off the bars and I leaned back assuming a flat. . However the tire did not lose air. By the end of the weekend I was asking what I could get a pair for.



Host housing was a 3 bed cabin with a full bathroom.


Real maple syrup at diners!

So I bought this.

There is this weird thing about people. They can live on nothing. Look at my little Somali buddies. Their parents ate sand for a few years, and now they have 62" plasma TVs, own homes and SUVs. Since getting a real job and making real money, I have contended that my overhead has only gone up the cost of the car and a few pairs of dress pants. This changed that.

We have been a single car family for a long time. Amy owned one for work and I generally only used it when it was super important. It wasnt the type of car that went out of the city in fear of breaking down. When I got my job, we got the Fit and it has been fine.

Recently however, I find myself scheduling around her schedule with teaching. I considered buying a crappy car for her, but they seem like a money pit. A few times I found myself riding my bike to my brother's house, borrowing his car and showing houses with that.

90mpg. Insurance is stupid cheap. It is crazy fun to ride. Less than a Caad10 with Dura Ace.