Archive for April 4th, 2008

Apr 04 2008

We now return you to your regularly scheduled spring

Published by Mike under Beer, Bike (General), Brewing

As of 7 am this morning, there was a little squall moving in.  Looking out my window at work now (7:45), it looks like it’s here.  The forecast for the next week on NOAA has better than 50% chance of rain.  For those of you who were considering planting your tomatoes and basil this weekend, I’d reconsider.

Ingrid was barfy the past couple days, so it was my turn to stay home with her.  Apparently a bug has been going around her preschool.  Great.  I think I washed the top 3 layers of skin off my hands throughout the day.  She was mostly better yesterday so with the nice weather we went out to do some errands.

We ended up at River City to look for a tire for this weekend (Hornings).  I checked Fat Tire Farm earlier in the week.  They had a decent selection but nothing just right.  They had plenty of UST (which I don’t have), huge DH tires, and a small selection of 29′ers.  They had a bunch of straight 26″ but like I said, nothing really grabbed my eye.

Bike Gallery had maybe 8-10 tires total for anything resembling XC racing or training.  River City had a fair selection.  After a few minutes of comparing, I ended up with the Michelin A/T.  I was hoping for the Mud but they didn’t carry it.

Kris Schamp noted earlier in the week that the course wasn’t that muddy so I’m hoping the A/T’s work.  With rain in the forecast, who knows.  FR1 in Forest Park was fairly soft and loose on Tuesday.  I’ll bring a couple of my extras.  I’ve got a front Velociraptor lying around.  Not the fastest tire in the world but it works.  I forget the others.  Anyway, I’m going to try to get there early and look at the course.

So to finalize my prep for Sunday, I made sure my excuses were in order:

  1. Significant recent component change (switch from grip shifters to new SRAM X.9 trigger shifters): Check
  2. Erratic and slightly disorganized early-season training schedule: Check.
  3. First race of the year: Check.
  4. Upgrade to new category (sport to expert): Check.

I’d say everything is in order.  I’ll check back in Sunday or Monday with the details.

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