shake down

Wednesday last week I met up with Andrew at Bradbury State Park for some single track goodness. My first real goodness for the year. During the ride I was all asses and elbows and was a bit disheartened at how poorly I was riding. I figured some of it had to do with the fact that my fork seemed wonky and my brakes were sucking a high hard one but overall, I just found out of sorts on the bike. Not a good sign with my first mtb race of the year only 1 1/2 weeks away and on a tight & technical course to boot.

During this past week I finally found some time to do some much needed tlc on the Dos including tuning the fork, changine the brake cables/housing, adjusting the pedals etc.

On Sunday, I got a chance to test out the adjustments when I headed to the Camden Snow Bowl. My old stomping grounds. It was immediately clear that the adjustments I made had been sorely needed. I did more work to the fork than I ever have tune-wise and I think that for the first time since owning it (3 years) I had it set up correctly for me and it showed. It didn't dive into corners, bounce around, fling off of stuff. In short, it worked like a well tuned fork should. Mental note to myself to spend some time on the fork earlier when I get my next new one. Duh.

The brakes also worked well which helped with the whole downhill confidence thing so that was nice too.

I ended up getting in a hair over 2 hours at the bowl and then headed over to Maine Sport to do a quick pre-ride on next weeks race course, the Maine Sport Mayhem!!. It isn't marked out yet so it helped to have Mike there to show me around since he is the one who sets up the course. Typically, the Mayhem!! course is pretty muddy/greasy but yesterday it was almost 100% mud free which would be sweet for the race this weekend but, of course, they're calling for rain on Saturday and Sunday (drat!) so we'll see how things go.


View from near the top of the Snow Bowl.

A little closer to the top but not a nice of a view.

Mayhem!! trails.