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My regular bike, Specialized Stumpjumper Marathon 29er, is in the shop because of my lacking a front brake, but I still wanted to get my Wednesday ride in with my buddy who happens to ride with me, so there he is, on his C’Dale road bike, kind of setup racing style.  And me on my Specialized Hardrock Comp from 2002, which I converted to a single speed.

Let’s just say riding an SS mountain bike with a roadie, is not the most easy thing todo!  We went 10 miles, averaging around 10.5 mph (still working on figuring out my T6c! Too complicated!) in a temperature of around 50F if not below that.

The gearing on my bike is 32:16 for those who knows what that means.  So my cadence is hillarious when it comes time to pick up some speed, which I did manage to max out at 23 mph on that bike, but I think my cadence was around 50,000 rpm to reach that though! 

The SS needs some TLC, the chain is rusty, the brakes, are … Yeah not so much there, the tires probably need new tubes (I think those tubes in there are 2-3 years old.)  But she’s a good bike that is always ready for action.  So this weekend I think I will give her the once over and make her shiny and proud again!

As for the Marathon, she’s coming home from the shop tomorrow.  I asked about getting bigger chain rings, and it’s possible.  But that is something that I will wait on doing until after I get my road bike, as I will need to make sure I have that covered first, before upgrading it.  Looks like I will be going from 22/32/44 to 22/38or40?/48.  A friend also gave me the suggestion of swapping out the cassette to change up some gearing which might be cheaper.  We shall see!

I spent last night in Austin, watching a musical.  So rather than driving all the way back to Houston, I decided to find a place in La Grange, since at 8am I was going to be going to Warda to mountain bike.

It was about 2 am and I decided to just crash at the La Grange Hospital.  So, I parked, pulled out my beach towel and tried to sleep for the next 7 hours.  It wasn’t pleasant, but it was free and I got some sleep so I wasn’t completely trashed when it came to ride.

So, that was the stay at the La Grange Hospital (;

I waited on Helena and Mike to show up, they got there shortly after I did, so not much waiting around.  We geared up and headed on out!

This will be my first time on trails since I had my bike crash where I fractured my collar bone and separated my shoulder.  I was very much tentative out there.  So between that and having no fitness, I was slow.  I’ve lost my stamina to ride, and my technical abilities.  It was a bit … Scary I guess.  Oh yeah, and I had no front brake either.  So I was down a bit on the braking power for some of those back hills out there.

But, since when would any of that stop me, right?  So out we went!  I struggled to keep up with Mike and Helena.  But it was good to be pushed like that, helped me get over some of the tentativeness I had around some of the stuff I should have zero problems, but still thought about too much.

So about half way through the trails, we get out of the trees onto the fields.  There is a pond that you ride around, and you go between the pond and a fence.  The fence also has an electric line on it, to help keep the cows away from each other.  So we come around the pond, and there is a big puddle in the way, looking deep we decide to dismount and walk around it.  Helena walked around the left side which was pond side.  I decided to go around the right side, which was fence side.  I knew the fence was electric. I have touched them before, and been zapped.  So I (thought I) knew what to expect on the fence should I accidentally touch it.  But I wasn’t going to.  I grab ahold of the barb wired fence to steady myself, and start walking around the puddle.  And then my foot slipped and **ZAP** my hip touched the fence, and it felt like a wasp bite.  And there was also a popping/cracking/straightening in my spine as well when it happened.  WOW that was … Shocking!  I couldn’t do much but start laughing at it.  My life, the comic strip!

So my right leg feeling a little wonky from the zap, we get back on the bikes and head to the back forty! This is where I started to walk more than ride.  Because my front brake doesn’t work, I couldn’t go down the steep hills, so I walked them.   We finish up that lap, and take a breather, refuel, etc.  Then we head on out for a second lap.

This time I’m feeling a bit better on the trails, and have a bit of a warm up in my legs, so I go out and do some harder riding on the fun bit at the start… And proceed to wear myself out! HA!  So I’m slowing down but building up confidence at the same time.  Kind of a dangerous combination, especially with no front brake.  So we get through the first half of the trails… up to where we come back out on the fields and I decide I’m done.  I don’t want to do anything stupid.  So, I let the gang know I’m done but will wait  for them at the vehicles.

All in all it was a good ride today!  Very happy with it… Even with the zapping of the electric fence! Which, by the way I now have burn marks on hip where I touched the live wire.  Ouch!

My new toy showed up! The Suunto T6c Multi Sport Pack.  Basically, it’s the T6c and the GPS pod.  And of course I gave it a try tonight for my run.  But let’s go with the basic parts first, I did my normal 2.46 mile run around my house.  I did it in 23:26.9  First lap was 12:03.3 and the second one was 12:05.2.  It was slower than what I have been running it, but because I was trying to figure out what I was doing with the T6c.

So, other than slowing down my run, since I don’t know what I’m doing with it, it confused me.  At first I thought it was wrong. I was running along, and it was showing 7minutes… I was thinking, there is no way I’m running seven minute miles.. Then I thought maybe it was mph. But when I was sprinting across a street I noticed it went down to 3… So no way that could be mph!  I got home and it dawned on me!  It’s a Finnish device… It’s defaulted to metric! 7 minutes per km!  Now that makes a lot more sense! I still haven’t figured out how to figure out how to get the various stats from the watch. I played with the software a bit, but it’s slightly confusing as well.  Much more playing around required to fully understand it.  But no more time left tonight…

Time for bed… Night All!