The Dirty Kanza 200 Chronicles; More On The Bike & More!

Updates To The Bike Set Up: This week saw a longer training ride in a pretty stiff head wind, (more on that in a bit), and some tweaks/additions to the bike were tried out. It is my belief that you need to train with the set up you will be running during the event, at least a few times, so you can "de-bug" anything that isn't quite working for you. In my case, I am going to train my race set up as much as possible this time.

Additions to the Black Mountain Cycles Monster Cross #42 are as follows:

1. Two Velocity Bottle Traps. I like these mostly because they hold a bottle well and it is virtually impossible to launch a bottle in the rough stuff. That they come in colors is a bonus. 
2. Revelate Designs tangle Bag. This one is the "Mountain" sized one. I can stuff all my repair gear in here and an extra water bottle. The contents of the bag are still "Under Construction", but I'll detail that out once I have settled on a set up. 
3. Geax Barro Race TNT 29"er tires. These are really 1.85-1.9"ers and not 2.0's as marked. They fit with about a couple millimeters clearance and more importantly, lend me more suspension with the higher volume. Barro Race TNT's also have stiffer, more resilient sidewalls, can be run at lower pressures with no detriment to tubes and rims, and of course, can be run tubeless, if I so choose to. These could be the "sleeper tire" of "monster cross". Weight is 630 grams each. I think they will be tough enough for Dirty Kanza, but light enough to still keep some snap in the wheels. 

More on the bike and how it is doing later.

Details On Training: I'm still sticking to the diet plan, and as expected, my body is not responding as quickly as others might. Just for reference, I practically have to stop eating at all, with detrimental effect to performance, to lose weight at a quick pace. My body just never has responded to increased levels of activity and less food intake like others do.  All that said, there has been a slight decrease in weight so far.

Training rides have been happening, albeit sporadically due to the wonky weather of late. Wednesday I got a great 30 miler in with some strong headwinds for good measure on half of that. Yesterday I participated in CIRREM down in the southwest  Des Moines area. Details on the ride will go up tomorrow, but here were my goals going in. #1- Finish, and #2 do it in less than six hours if possible. I met one goal and just missed the other. Finishing was awesome, but I had a bit of a frozen up left foot that put me behind schedule in the second half of the event. (Temps were low 20's F and there was about an inch to two inches of snow covering the roads depending on where you were at on course.) There also was freezing rain which made seeing through eyewear difficult and without eyewear it stung your eyes badly.  Under better conditions I may have had a much better chance at the time. As it was, I only missed it by about 15 minutes or so.

Okay, that's it for this week. As always, feel free to ask questions in the comments section. Look for a full CIRREM race report tomorrow.