How about a 29er? Don't mind if I do.

After riding the Epica with four guys on 29ers I imagined that I was witnessing what all the fuss was about. I imagined that those bigger wheels, bigger everything, made riding the snow easier for them, which must have been why I had to work so hard to keep up (and upright) on my 26" (There were of course other, more significant reasons, but I needed a scapegoat). And having ruled out the other craze these dayz - the fatbike (just too one-ish dimensional for me) - I began dreaming. In fact I dreamed so hard, it came true, this week:

It's a 2013 Jamis Dragon Sport

I was determined that the frame would be steel, and that the bike would be purchased in whole or in part from the LBS. That and I wanted to order the parts and build it myself. Initially I was looking at the Karate Monkey frame, but the LBS couldn't bring that frame in. Bruce gave me a few options, one of which was that he'd bring in a Jamis Dragon Sport, strip it, and sell me the frame, which was pretty good of him, except that the price he quoted for the whole bike made it clear that I'd be spending a bunch more cash for about the same or lower quality components to build it myself.

Shimano hydraulic disc brakes, Deore, & reasonable Alex wheels

RockShox XC 32 and Ritchey cockpit: 90 mm stem & 725 mm bar

The steel is Reynolds 520, so the bike's not super light, but all this comes to me for a few bucks over a grand, before taxes. I added eggbeaters, a long Easton seatpost, and a fizik saddle to make things fit for me. I think it looks and feels pretty good. 

Today, in a March snowstorm (winds 30 to 50 km/h) I took it for a ride. Oh my. There were lots of drifts across the roads, and under that ice and ruts. This bike handles so well! The front wheel hardly deflects at all in snow, and it rolls over iced snow banks and ruts with the kind of certainty that really surprised me. I did not expect it to be so much different from the 26" bike, or from my 700c winter commuter (a cross bike). It just rolls over things. 

I did some reading today about bar width. I was thinking that I'd cut them down. After all, 29" wide bars for me (at just under 5'7") seemed ridiculous. But the online consensus was that wider meant more stable steering, and more control of the wheel's line. So I decided to ride it first, and I'm convinced. I will not cut them down. Between the big wheels and the wide bars you really feel confident. You feel large and in charge. 

Speaking of working on being large and in charge ... this kid did some fine riding this weekend at the Tucson Bicycling Challenge.

She's been upgraded to Cat 2, so she rides with Cat 1 and Pro riders. The field was pretty tough at this 3 stage event. On Friday she puked beets and other weird shit during the TT but still managed a 18th place finish. On Saturday she felt a bit better and raced to 13th in the road race. Today, she road the circuit race (a six mile loop - an extended criterium) and placed 7th, for a GC finish of 14th. Yeah. I'm proud. As of this May she will have been racing road for one year. She's doing okay.

Various vicarious things

It's been three weeks since the Epica and I'm still awfully fond of the memories. So fond that I remain convinced about doing it again next year. So convinced that I can do things differently that I've ordered a steel hardtail 29er (which is in the LBS just now, but I'm so taken up with the school theatre production that I won't have time to pick it up and put it together until the week after next (report and pics will be posted) ... which is another story about what could possibly be so demanding that I won't have time to pick up the new bike I've pining for ... which is a story about me and priorities ... which is about habits of mind that are hard to break). In the meantime I've returned to commuting with my crossbike commuter, a set-up that I'm convinced is best for commuting in all weather in and in all terrains. (If you regularly need a fatbike to commute, you're probably living somewhere North of 60'.)

Canadians training in California (l-r): Jason Wiebe, Karlee Gendron, Danick Vandale, GeeVs, Chris Prendergast. (pic by Jayson Gillespie)

On the vicarious front GeeVs has begun her racing season in the southern states. After training for about a month in California, in Oxnard just north of LA, she now lives with a teammate in Tucson, Arizona. Her first race was the Valley of Fire stage race, last weekend in Overton, Nevada. She raced in the Cat 1/2/3 Pro category, as a Cat 3 rider and placed 7th in the Time Trial, 24th in the Crit (she was ridden off the course by another rider and lost the main pack), and 5th in the Road Race (sprint finish with same time for places 2 through 7) for 9th place in the GC. Pretty good considering there were US pro cycling team members in the field.

Yesterday she road the Old Pueblo Grand Prix criterium in the Cat 1/2/3 Pro race (the only women's race). This race is a pretty big deal, since several pro teams compete: Optum, Vanderkitten, Colavita. GeeVs rode on her own, wearing the Manitoba colours, and placed 21st out of 36, a result that made her very happy. She was fully prepared to have her ass handed to her, but she felt strong and able to manage the pace of a 50 minute race averaging 38 km/h over a technical 6-corner course, all while racing without teammates.

Road racing on a bike is not a solo sport at the upper categories. If you consider that teams like Optum, et. al. have six or seven riders each in the field who all work together to pull their best rider into the best position to sprint to win at the finish (for example, Optum's Canadian Leah Kirchmann placed 3rd in this year's race - a race she won last year), riding alone in that pack could be daunting, but GeeVs stayed with them and learned a lot about racing in a pro peloton. And GeeVs does not consider Criterium-racing her strength - she's more likely to have success in the road-race and time-trial disciplines.

The end of all this is that GeeVs license has been upgraded from Cat 3 to Cat 2, which is exciting, especially after only 10 months of bike racing experience! Proud PauPs? Yes. Indeed.