Saturday Ride

40 miles on Saturday.  The early afternoon session had me looking for a way to get out to Hwy KK and back home.  Quick showered and jumped back on the bike to meet up with John at Sprocketz and headed over to Red Eye for some beer, food, and good conversation with new and old friends alike.  What a fantastic weekend.  Even with USA losing gold to Canada hockey.  Now get out there and bring some rukus.

Energy Bars at Home

I found this in an issue of Bike Magazine while cleaning up man cave/spare bedroom.

Dry Ingredients
1 Cup Whole Wheat Flour
2 Cups Rolled Oats
1/2 Cup Oat Bran
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup shredded coconut (unsweetend)
1 Cup Lightly Salted Chopped Nuts
1/2 Cup Dried Fruit

Wet Ingredients:
2/3 Cup Peanut Butter
1/2 Cup Milk
2 eggs
1/2 Cup Honey
1/2 Cup Brown Sugar

Line a 9"x13" Baking pan with plastic wrap and coat with cooking spray.
Mix together the dry ingredients, then usa a mixer to blend well with wet ingredients.
Press the uber-sticky mixture into the pan.
Cool for 30 minutes in the fridge.
After cooling, remove the concoction from the pan and cut into bars.
Place bars on a greased baking sheet and bake at 300 degrees for 20 minutes, or until firm to the touch.
Let cool, then chow down before during and after your ride.

Pump It Up!!

I would be a dead man if I ever tried it but damn would it be worth it.

The Week In Review

This week it was pretty damn warm for January.  I decided to take full advantage of it and why not?  It is looking as though the following week is going to struggle out of negative temperatures.

Monday: 2.5 hour skate ski at nine mile beating my previous record of 6 and did 8 night laps.
Tuesday: 1.25 hours at the gym
Wednesday: 2 hours on the skate skis
Thursday: 1.5 hours at the gym
Friday: Rest
Saturday: 3 hours of skate skiing at nine mile
Sunday: 2 hours of snowshoe hiking/running
Total Workout Time: 12.25 hours

Last year at this time I was close to 158lbs with about 14% body fat.....ooops!

This year I am a robust 161lbs with about 8% body fat....

I love it when a plan comes together.   I can't wait to get on the bike.

Maybe I'll have some B.A.L.L.S come April!!!!

Also, see the new link at the right www.gravelgrindernews.com

A Little Spice In Life Never Hurts

I was able to pick up Salsa this weekend and I love it already.  The paint is cool and the lettering isn't the run of the mill decals like other bikes I've owned, plus the carbon rear seatstays are nicely detailed as well.

My first impressions were that this is a damn cool looking rig.  After further examination you can see a pivot point at the bottom of the seatstays by the dropouts.  This bike is designed to be a little forgiving and all of that energy needs to be dampened somewhere right??? I could see this being a big advantage in the kind of racing we do in this area as we don't necessarily have to "huck" anything (right Nate?).  Another thing I liked right off the bat was the inclusion of reuseable cable routers (see seat stay) these little black wonders are so small in the broad scheme of things but just the attention to detail and the non-use of zip ties made me pretty happy.

This bike came with a full Shimano XT group minus the crank in which that was a Raceface DeusXC (heavy is a nice way to put it).  A Salsa stem, bars, grips, and seatpost also came with.  I quickly got rid of that stuff and replaced with Titec Ti 118 bar, Titec Pluto Prolite Stem, Titec Duke Carbon seatpost and prolite gel saddle.  I also swapped out the xt brakes for my Hayes Stroker Trail brakes.  I added a little weight with the addition of some Ergon GX2 grips but they are a must have on all of my bikes.

What's next for the Mamasita diet?  Well Starting with the wheels I am going to lace up my American classic hubs to some of Stans NEW ZTR Crest 29er hoops with DT Revolution Spokes and Prolock nipples should come out to around 1400g for the set which is damn good for a set of 29er wheels.  The crank comes next.  Rotor Bike has a killer crankset called Agilis and I am going to go the route of 2x9 40t/27t.  Really once those two things are done I would imagine the final weight would be somewhere between 21-23lbs depending on what tires I use.   I do like the wtb prowlers it came with cause of treat pattern, but they are pretty heavy.  I could drop about a half pound just by switching to some Maxxis tires.

Other than that I have just been skiing whenever I get a chance.  This week will be a tough one as I have no weekend plans so skiing will reign supreme and I am back in the weight room again this week after missing last week due to meetings and not feeling good for a little bit.  There is a long time before the first race of the year and I can't wait to ditch the skis and heat up the trails with a little Salsa action, until then I ski till my legs fall off then I ski some more.

Birthday Crosstraining "Ride"

2009 Yamaha Apex GT = Fast!!!

Well with this weekend being the first of many 29th birthdays I decided to get out on the snowmobile with some friends one of which having a prominent stable of very high quality sleds.  We started out with a quick ride to Rick's parents house to swap sleds and from there we rode the twisty stuff which would compare to mtb singletrack.  Diving into corners and opening it up on the wide open double track and finally squeezing the throttle to bar and seeing how fast you shoot across a frozen lake and on the sled above it was extremely fast in the respect that going 70 felt comfortable I didn't care to look down on the lakes but 100mph couldn't have been out of the question.  The end of the ride led us to a local bar/campground for pizza and soda (no really, soda, I don't drink on the sled).  What a ride,  What a weekend with great friends time to go to sheboygan this upcoming weekend to pick up a toy the people that typically follow this site are used to seeing.  The Salsa Mamasita!!!  Who wants to ski at the camp next weekend?

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