Fontana Pro XCT

Lene (Norway) did an amazing job taking the XC win. Mical Dyck (Canada) did a good write up on the XC race here. My race felt as she described her's, so I'll just link to it. The only difference was that I was about 5 spots behind her the entire race. The wind was nuts, I was literally blow from one side of the paved road to the other before I had time to process what was happening.  I saw Aleksandra (Poland) get blown over in the singletrack! It was a great weekend of race efforts and fun to see everyone. Lots more info on MTB Racenews

FRS Clinic, Scalpel

 

I am very thankful to FRS for helping me out with my clinics this year!! As well as all of my sponsors and non-sponsors that donate give-a-ways:

 Need a Stan's Solution top-off? 

Or a sample of CarboRocket?

Thursday's FRS Clinic at the new Incycle store was a lot of fun. 50 second video here. I will continue to provide clinics as I travel, please contact me if you are interested (see upper right side of blog for contact info).

A picture from the Bonelli race two weeks ago on the Cannondale Flash.

My Scalpel! (20.7lbs as raced)

This weekend I tried out the (small) Scalpel in the XC, then rode the (medium) Flash in ST and was back to the Scalpel for Super-D at Fontana. These are proving to be great bikes to choose from. I was a little nervous going to bikes I had never even ridden and I had a hard time deciding on sizes, but I made all the right decisions! Thanks to all the Cannondale, or former Cannondale, girls Sue, Nina, Cass and Jenna for answering all my questions, it really helped and I appreciate it! 

 Super-D (4th)

I am still working on locking-out and un-locking the Lefty, but the ride is awesome. The Flash rear end is so smooth, and the Scalpel can climb like a road bike, which allows some overlap on which bike to choose for a given course.  I un-knowingly chose color over Hi-Mod carbon on the Scalpel, apparently only the red version of the Flash is in the new lighter carbon. I still have a few parts to swap out, the Flash seat collar isn't really cutting it, and since the Flash is designed for 140 rotors I need to go to 140 on both rear ends. Saturday I raced the Scalpel set up with 160 rotors, but had my "spare" (Flash) rear wheel in the Tech Zone with a 140 rotor on it. Had I needed the spare it would have been a fun ride.

Check out some other racer's 2010 rides here.

Cannondale Flash. Oakley Split Jacket, facility, dirt track, and gloves

It has been a crazy two weeks in SoCal. I started receiving all of my 2010 products, built two new Cannondale bikes, found out what parts didn't work or were delayed, searched for replacement bits, met with many of my sponsors (got to ride with a few), trained and even did a couple races. And most of this without Todd!  He is now back and spent the entire last two days doing taxes, what fun.

My Flash! 17.75 lbs with everything (pedals, water bottle cages, bar ends, etc.)

Visit and ride at Oakley!

The facility is huge, thank you to Steve Blick for the personal tour and MTB ride! That was just amazing. This SoCal facility houses everything, from concept design and development including engineering, artistic expression, rapid prototyping, destructive and cycle testing, to the build and packaging of final products in the factory. I saw Oakley watches, shoes, grips, hats, clothing, bikes, and of course sunglasses.

The Oakley website describes the facility as "a place of reinforced blast walls, product torture chambers and the padded cells of mad science. Oakley design bunker is where inventions are conceived, developed, perfected and manufactured. In addition to the hidden catacombs of research labs and proving grounds, the architectural design of Oakley President Colin Baden includes a 400-seat amphitheater and absolutely no adult supervision."   I saw lots of bikes in offices and hallways throughout the day, a gym with a trainer-led boot-camp-style workout class, and a foosball table. I think the only thing that was missing was a Starbucks.

 Oh, and this was out back, just one small part of the new track.

My shades. top left: Enduring Edge, top right: Forsake and the not even on the website yet, I had to take the picture myself, brand new mini-Jawbone-like Split Jacket!

I didn't take a picture of my gloves but am digging the Oakley Factory MTB gloves, white with red of course.
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Last week I attended the grand opening party for the Incycle shop in Rancho Cucamonga, CA. This is the fourth Incycle shop, another huge store packed with anything you'll ever need. My not-quite finished Flash was on display during the party and Tinker and Jeremiah were there as well, go Cannondale!

Jim, Andy and Colin (Kenda)

The Bonelli race was a great time to catch up with even more sponsors and fellow racers. It was also a crash course on my new bikes, quite literally in fact.

I have one more training race in a couple weeks, after which it will be time to see if all this training and new super-sweet gear will pay off as my season will "officially" start.

I now have demo WTB saddles (10 different models). I will have these at next week's FRS clinic (at the new Incycle shop) if anyone wants to try them out. Details on the clinic to come.

Specialized M (17") Carbon S-Works for sale

Specialized M (17") Carbon S-Works for sale. Now has Carbon S-Works cranks, new in June (XTR cranks are also available). 7000 Series Stan's NoTubes Wheelset. New White Cables and Housings. New chain. 19-19.5lbs depending on tires, pedals, etc. New fork, except the uppers, crown and steerer which are almost a year old. All components and frame are less than a year old. More details later, headed to the shop to finish building up my new Flash and Scalpel... edit: $3500 cash. It has ~$6600 in it, all custom.

Leaving Tucson

The winter is over and we are moving on, however the cars did not want to leave Tucson!

Saturday we had a MTB ride planned with Scott Morris (our Tucson tour guide). Todd and I almost made it to the Starr Pass parking lot when the van decided it didn't want to go any further. It is now in the shop. In Tucson. But we did get the ride in thanks to Scott waiting on us, transferring all our junk into his car and giving us a ride home afterward. Thanks Scott!!

Sunday we had to pack up and head to CA. It rained all day and the truck decided it didn't want to go anywhere.

If the little 4WD pickup could sink into the mud what was the 32,000 lb RV going to do?  We finally decided to give it a shot, the trick was to just get going and not stop till we were clear of all the mud, a bit of an adrenaline rush trying to navigate the tackroom, branches, turns and gate with speed. We got everything on pavement, hooked up the truck and finally hit the road late Sunday night.

I dropped Todd off at the Onterio, Ca airport ~1.5 hours before his flight Monday morning. Whew.

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This afternoon I set up the house, had time for a nap then met the Incycle boys for dinner after their Monday night MTB ride.

 

Great photos of Saturday's ride by Scott, a camera quick draw artist.

Camera phone shot of Scott and Todd

Nick Rode Across the US

Okay this update is way late, but Nick made it to the east coast on Feb 13th (he started in LA, CA).  For more details visit his Spot page. Way to go Nick!

Nick is bringing back the postcards:

 

It was pretty cool getting postcards for updates! 

We were also included on the emails, the stories were pretty entertaining, one was talking about a "road" in NM to a town called Gleeson "...and the down was super sketchy, causing me to dab more than once.  And when you have the trailer on the back, high speed sand dabbing is less than ideal.  But, I made it across, and finally got to the pavement and that pretty funny sign."