pic post

why am i so happy?



100 miles in, 2 hours to go and not a drop of rain the entire day. sweet.



the tifosi optics pave - proving to be a very nice optic choice so far. very wide field of vision (no frame blocking side view) and the lens itself sits off your face so it doesn't fog up or collects sweat dripping off your face. comes with 3 lens options.



and a little better pic of the el mariachi. paint is incredible, and i am digging the matching stem and blue ano salsa seat collar and skewers. a lot of bike for not that much money. only thing i am going to switch out is the saddle as it is a ton wider then the concor's i have been running for the past 3 years.

and - another bonus is the fact that the MAXXIS tires comes stock.

stay tuned for updates on the bike, literally only rode it 5 minutes today as i just couldn't take an uncomfortable saddle - also, i was tempted to stop riding there was a hot pizza sitting in my kitchen and i rode all day.

that's it, gotta roll.

sologoat out

asylums now in my hands

random updates for ya. meet the new team vehicle. this is speedgoat owner chris's own personal ride that is being converted to use vegetable oil for gas. interestingly enough, the EPA says that using this type of fuel may do harm to the environment. hmmm...



akron is the home some tire company that i am not sponsored by that has a blimp. it was out for a joy ride in akron last night....



ah, and the asylum are now back in my hands - minus the ergon grips, new wheels, and seat/post. (better pic's up later!)



and, the el mariachi is finally in and converted to single speed use. was going to try and run it with the 1x9 setup, but going single seemed to be the thing to do. will be mostly using this bike for easy training days and for bonus hour rides on the weekends when i need to get some additional hours in.



and, just got in the super hot pink hammer nutrition arm warmers. they will totally clash against everything, so i am pretty stoked about that.

gotta run - work to do.

sologoat out.

recovery day ride

when you do a bunch of tempo work, sometimes two hours of easy riding is a lot harder then 6 hours at a hard pace.



so, one passes the time taking a ton of pictures.



new bikes will be in my hands tomorrow, hopefully fitted up soon.

sea otter is now all offically planned out. got a good deal on a car rental and it's looking to be a good trip. not racing out there as my race is later in the day on sunday and i would have to take another day of vacation for monday. no worries though as the main reason i am out there is for the 24 solo premier and to check out some west coast riding.

sologoat out

from bad to good

saturdays ride was a wet one - 55 degrees and rain for about 80% of my ride. a friend of a friend once said that bad weather riding either makes you or breaks you. i believe it.



ah, but with the bad comes the good. today warmed up to the high 60's with bright sunshine. half way through i hooked up with an old roommate of mine, tris h.

awhile back, we were neighbors with wobblenaught guru jim b. soon after riding and training a ton with jim, tris upgraded to cat 2 on the road. i upgraded to cat 2 on the road as well (cat 1/elite in cross) as two upgrades in mountain biking. first to semi-pro then to pro.

jim tends to bring out the best in us - check out his link/email on the wobblenaught site.

in bike news, my moots sl cross frame is in the works, and my salsa el mariachi is waiting at speedgoat along with my asylums.

ah, gotta love this addiction we call cycling.

sologoat out.

rainy weekend in ohio

rain and 55'ish degrees here in ohio this lovely spring morning.

not mucho to report on other then the 2007 asylums are near completion and will be picked up later on next week, minus the stupid light wheelsets. those will be built up and on the bikes by the end of april.

fitness is coming around, weight is going down, and i'll be getting re-wobblenaughted fitted once i get the bikes in. i sat a little more upright before, so now we are going to lower it to a more of an aggressive race position as we hope to tweak out a little more wattage.

more watts, lower weight for bikes and body - should equal out to a higher strength to weight ratio.

with that, gotta roll out for a rainy day saturday ride.

sologoat out

get yer moots today

just wanted to give a heads up to any fellow moots freaks out there - if you want to get an SL (super light) from moots, as of april 1 (no joke!) they will no longer offer sl tuubing.

the work thing has been keeping me super busy as of late, when i am not working, i am either sleeping or riding my bike.

not mucho going on right now, other then getting things ready for this year and trying to sneak in some more base miles. road racing should start up pretty soon, sea otter is coming up which should be super cool.

the 24 solo project from the gripped film guys is in the final stages of production. it will premier at sea otter on friday night, then have showings every night after. there is a handful of other venues showing the film after that, hopefully one of them being up in the cleveland area. CAMBA and gripped films are working out the details, so keep a look out for that.

that's it for tonight - meeting with my boss tomorrow so i gots to review a ton of stuff that i have been putting off for way too long.

hopefully we will be negotiating me working less and getting paid more....

ya, right.

sologoat out

windy days in ohio

the wind has been hellish the last few days in ohio, but at least it's starting to warm up a little. hit a high of around 42'ish today. i swear this weather is driving me nutz.

asylums are getting rebuilt so i am giving a shout out to all those who have stepped up and have helped getting things together:

dan the man
pretty much is the only person who has ever worked on my bikes and they have worked flawlessly throughout my 24 hour racing career with speedgoat. mucho thanko.

genuine george
has built all of wheels for the past 7 seasons - cross, road and mountain. he's currently in process working up some magic with some dt 190 hubs and stans rims for the 2007 bikes.

jeremy
has super rad tat's, mad skillz on a bike and a wealth of knowledge about the industry. he's also helped tracked down parts that were out of stock everywhere that we needed for the current builds, got my clothing in line and helped with sponsors for the past two seasons. he's pretty much the team director for the one man team of asylum cycles.



one of the new tifosi optics glasses i will trying out this year with be the
TIFOSOI KILO's. so far, they are working out great - removable lenses, nice wide glass with interchangeable lenses. retail price is 50 dollars which comes with 3 lenses and a case. sweet.

i'll be using the kilo's this year along with the quam 1.5's and my all time favorite the Q3's.

in training tools, i am debating on picking up a GARMIN EDGE 305. i'm hearing good stuff about it and i figure that it may be a good tool to use during my business travels - i can download training routes off the web making it a little easier to get a good ride in.

with that, gotta run.

sologoat out.

a day in the life of sologoat

6am
wake up in a holiday inn express in columbus ohio. eat some yummy cinnamon rolls, pack up and head out to a client office.

8am
for the next 8 hours, i teach 6 service tech administrators how to setup and workflow of their great plains wennsoft field service accounting system. what they will learn in the next two days will give the basics of what they will need to know to run their 100+ man service divsion.

4pm
start the drive home, planning out my route in my head.

6pm
arrive home. check emails, change into riding clothes, grab a little to eat, mix up some bottles.

6:45pm
i start my ride. thunderstorms are hitting north, i decide to chance it. it looks bad, so i turn around only to realize the storm is now blowing to the east and has missed me. i turn back north and wrap up my 3 hour ride.

9:45pm
at a time when most people are going to bed, i am just eating dinner.



11pm
after checking emails, checking out way too many blogs, cycling websites and ebay auctions, i head to bed.

just another day in the life.

sologoat out

greetings from columbus

probably one of the hardest things in my training schedule to figure out is trying to fit it in with a 40 hour week.

columbus ohio has been a common workplace for me for years and today i found a new training area - sunburry. nice rural area out of the city and i can ride out of the hotel.


got an ergon grip question the other day - his keen eye caught the fact that i am running the trigger styled grips with twist shifters. note, this is not by choice as they are setup on my winter training bike and that is the only type of shifter i have. and, the super light weight carbon grips are on their way -- i do believe mr. kerkove has got one pair of the new ones in his mits.

also in ergon news, keep an eye out for their new backpacks that has a pretty unique design that allows full access to your back jersey pockets.


that's it for tonight, tired beyond belief tonight.

sologoat out

weekend wrap up

was a hectic weekend last week - lots of miles and a trip out to the goat. very nice day out there on saturday, but my favorite climb had about 2 inches of ice on it half way up.

el mariachi comes in today, asylums are now in the hands of dan the man. we are swtiching some things up as far as the bikes go, most noteably is that i am going back to 3 rings up front. we were originally going to maybe switch out the middle ring with a slightly smaller ring depending on the course, but we decided against it to save the hassle of having to switch things around for each race.

and my wobblenaught fit will get slightly tweaked - we had my position dialed in, but i was sitting a tab more upright. we're hoping to get me down a little more to what my position is on my cross bikes - which, seeing as i had some good results last year during cross season is not a hard decision to make.

that's it - gotta run.

stay tuned this week - princeton tec and ergon updates are coming at ya.

sologoat out

it's friday night

and i am loving the 45 degree weather in ohio.

local yocal hike/bike trails somehow still have 2-3 inches of ice on them despite the warm weather, so i have said the hell with getting trashed this week and i rigged up the ultra night road riding rig. if you don't see the flashing lights from my bike a mile away, you have to be blind.

bikes and i are departing to speedgoat to meet up with dan the man. he'll strip down the bikes and all the new stuff is going on. should be interesting to run a full xtr group - haven't done that since about 8 or 9 years ago. gasp.

in single speed news, the el mariachi is on it's way. going to actually run the stock 1x9 setup for awhile - salsa has done a very good job setting up stock kick butt kind of bikes, so i am interested to checkout the overall setup before going single speed.

that's it - gotta run. early departure tomorrow to try and beat the rain.

sologoat out.

a cold ride and the handmade bike show

sundays adventure in 20 degree weather was quite a treat - 2 flats at the turn around point of 3 hours put me directly in the middle of nowhere. oh, the fun we have trying to change a flat in the middle of winter.

got home and checked out the homemade bike show pics from MTBR. honestly, i'm not really into a lot of what is out there in this area of the industry as i tend to look at a bike as to wether or not it functions in a race situation. but guys around like indy fab, castellano, vanilla - you are sure to see some really cool stuff.

here's my favorites... (all pics can be seen at FLICKR)



this is a shot of the vanilla stem that is actually the top cap for a king headset as well. saw a few of their frames out at cross nats - very pretty classic looking steel bikes. these guys do some nice work



wolfhound caught my eye with two crazy 29er designs - this is the first of them. note the internal cable routing on the top tube (reminds me of my old panasonic road frame from back in the days) and check out the crazy seat tube that splits into a "y" near the bottom bracket.



and this is off another rockhound. you heard of eccentric bottom brackets, right? well, how about an eccentric rear dropout?



then to top off rockhound's zaniness, check out this 29er frame. more curves then you know what to do with.



indy fab showed up with a 26 inch hardtail with a carbon lefty. too bad the wheels are the wrong size, or i would guess this one would be going to harlan.



and.... ah, the bow ti is back.



the bow ti in it's original design was built by ibis - now by castellano who also makes a 69er..

this frame is way cool, but i dig the old frame design better.


that's it - gotta get some asylums cleaned up to get ready to a speedgoat visit so dan the man can work some magic.

sologoat out

winter riding 101

yesterdays ride was a question of how much sliding around on ice covered bike trails i could take. the answer was about 2 1/2 hours, with another couple of hours on top of that.

not much to report on, other then my new ergon grips have found their way onto my soma juice winter bike. very nice grips, curves where they 'ought to be, soft material compared to some of the other lock on grip brands - sort of feels like the grip is really shaped to the palm of your hand. i have a tendency to just rest my hands on the bars without my thumb locked underneath when i don't need to (going up climbs, mostly - to save my hands over the next 24 hours), so these grips are working out really nice. and when you do stand up, it feels like the grips give you a little bit of extra leverage on the bars.

i am running the mens model, but i have heard from others that they are using the womens version as it is a little thinner/softer grip overall.

the maxxis ignitors are on the way and the maxxis crossmark's are not out yet, though i heard a rumor of availability some time this month.

thoughts of the salsa el mariachi are dancing in my head, but i don't know what gearing to run. any suggestions would be appreciated. offhand, was thinking of running something like a 32x18/19 and then having a 16 or 17 tooth cog for when i am riding the flatish paved hike/bike paths here in kent/cleveland area.

with that, gotta roll.

sologoat out

a few links to check out

here's a few pages worth reading today:

cycling news
has mountain bike updates at ya, including 12 hour razorback short write up with mentions of harlan and ernesto.

Summit Freewheelers
has their RATL races starting up soon if you are in the akron ohio area. also starting up again this year is the road races down in the valley, but i have yet to find the link to that site.

speedogoat.com blog
a post on this site brought up a comment in regards to 29er tubeless systems. and now speedgoat has a new blog entry up from chris in regards this.

i honestly have not ever ridden a tubeless system and after talking to chris at speedgoat, decided against it a long time ago.

check them out.

sologoat out.