Getting Ready for '11

Yesterday I decided to do some prep work for 2011.  Mostly get the MTB off the rack & get it ride-able.  Air up the tires, put the chain back on, & bleed the brakes.  Little did I know the brakes were going to eat my lunch & destroy a whole afternoon.  Four hours later, a lot of cussing, a few thoughts about killing a Hayes engineer, taking a shower in brake fluid, and I got the rear brake kinda workable.  Yes just one freaking brake in 4 hours!

After looking online it seems Hayes has the worst design for disc brakes on the market.  Turns out most shops won't even bleed them, they send them back to Hayes.  I did manage to find a feasible work around to keep me from having to pull them & send them in.  Luckily I don't mind a brake thats a little soft so I'm semi happy.  I'm a little leery about bleeding the front brake now, but will dive in to it perhaps this afternoon.

2011 will bring some changes for me.  Training with 2 kids will be the big one.  Not a huge problem in the winter since I ride so much on the trainer anyway.  Another big change will be my racing age is 40.  That means full on Masters racing for me. Road, MTB, & CX.  I'll probably do a few open CX races, & maybe a 1/2/3 crit or 2, but mostly racing with the old men.

My two readers may have noticed I pulled the SKC logo from the old blog.  SKC has decided not to sponsor a team anymore so I'm team-less for 2011.  Not that big a deal with my limited schedule anyway.  SKC will be around but mostly sponsoring rider participant events like the MS150.  I have a few options on the table but I may just get an all black get & race for Team Me.

2010 wasn't much of a racing year for me.  I had what I thought was a great spring of training.  Only to have crappy results in the few races I did.  Granted my TT at Hermann doesn't count since I was stopped by the semi.  I carried a huge fatigue load that I was writing off to working nights & all the training I was doing.  I had noticed last fall I was having trouble gaining any form, but figured it was getting used to racing 60 min in Opens & readjusting to nights.  Well not so.  I managed to get a medical explanation for it.  Hopefully now I know the problem I can control it.  As it stands not racing for most of the year may have helped from really burning me out chasing my tail to no avail.

K2 is due in less than 2 weeks so I'll have something good to blog about again.  Plus maybe a 5k race report or two.