Life Update: World on Fire Edition

Well its certainly been a strange (checks calendar) three and a half months hasn’t it? Between COVID-19, murder hornets, the Chatt tornadoes, and now protests and riots; I just haven’t felt like it was appropriate for me to work on my blog. Actually that’s not completely true…I’ve been lazy too. I’ve come to the realization that if I keep waiting for the perfect time to give an update that it’ll never happen, so here we are. How have the last few months treated me? Well….

Pandemic and Lockdown

I’m essential so I’ve been fortunate enough to keep working. Despite most of my company working being sent home, I’m still driving into work every day. Little has changed for me on that front apart from not being able to go out to lunch. That has forced me to start bringing lunch to work, which means that I’ve been making much healthier choices for the mid day meal. Which I suppose is a silver lining of sorts.

Training Schedule

While the lockdown certainly affected my ability to train , it was only a little bit. ESNP was still open as was 5-Points, and roads were briefly very empty; making for some relaxing road rides. So I’ve gotten some excellent training rides in and I’m starting to feel really good about how my overall fitness is progressing towards Shenandoah 100. Some of my rides have felt really good and I can feel my legs getting stronger little by little.

Jordan

Things between Jordan and I are going great…better then great even…amazing!!! We’ve managed to keep up our routine through lockdown, she bought a gravel bike, and we’ve been able to workout together quite often despite everything. We competed in the Virtual Rucking Hill Climb Series, which had its good and bad moments. This past weekend we packed up her son and we headed down to Florida to spend a long weekend with my Dad and Step-Mom and had an amazing time just chilling by the pool. This is, of course, when her boy wasn’t begging us to play with him in the pool…which of course we happily obliged.

Race Schedule

Everything hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows of course. The pandemic has forced three of my races to be rescheduled so far. Big Frog 65 (which was supposed to be a test run for Shenandoah) was moved to October, Dirty Spokes 6 Hour to November, and Bartram PM to August. For now it looks like my next race, Reclaimed, will proceed as scheduled on July 18th. The rest of the schedule is up in the air as the races are far enough out that they still have time to make a decision on them. For now I keep training as normal.

Body

This is where things get depressing…or good…or strange...or heck I don’t know. When I started this endeavor I had two major concerns:

Lower Back
Sciatica

If either or both of those gave me fits I knew I was going to have to make changes or bail completely. For awhile it looked like my back was going to be fine and that sciatica was going to be the limiting factor. Strangely, those have now flipped. The sciatica gives me occasional fits, but its gotten to the point where I barely notice it day to day and riding doesn’t bother it all that much. My lower back has been a different story. Its gotten progressively worse since February. To the point that I can barely do one lap at ESNP without pretty significant pain. Two laps and I’m moving gingerly the rest of the day and the day after that. Its forced me to make a decision that I long knew was going to come eventually, but I hoped to stave off for a few more years.

New Bike Day

I was faced with the choice of giving up on racing or transitioning to a new bike. Not being the type that gives up easily, I chose the latter. I didn’t make this choice lightly. I stewed on it for several weeks, messed with the fork settings, and tried taking smoother lines; but all were in vain. Part of me wanted to try the cheaper route and put gears and bigger tires on my Soma Juice, but I knew deep down that wasn’t going to work and I’d end up spending money in vain. I started making a list of what I wanted and how much I wanted to spend, then started researching full suspension bikes. Ultimately I landed on a 2020 Top Fuel 9.7 bought from the folks at Scott’s Bicycle Center in Cleveland, TN. This marks two firsts for me; first ever Trek product and first ever carbon fiber, full squish bike. Why did I land on a Top Fuel? Well that’s a question that will be answered in my next blog post.

The Remaining Race Season

Moving from SS to gears means swapping classes. I’ve already swapped my Shenandoah 100 entry into Men’s Open and intend to do the same for Big Frog 65. I’m still signed up SS for the remaining of the Chainbuster 6 Hour Series and I’m currently in second place in the overall standings for that class. However there are still 7 races remaining in the series and I only need 5 to qualify in the overall points standings, so I can move to Men’s Masters (40-49) and have a remote shot at doing some damage in the year end standings. I have yet to sign up for the rest of my race schedule and will probably hold off until I find out if they’re going to happen or not.

The Singlespeed

So does this mean that I’m giving up on singlespeeding? Hardly. I just had a “new” wheelset built for it using my old SS hubs and some new Crest MK3 rims, its got new tires sitting in a box, and I removed the SID fork in favor of a more plush Fox 32 CTD fork I had laying in the basement. I love my singlespeed far too much to just stop riding it. Rather its going to move into part time duty. I’ll stay off it for for the time being while I get adjusted to the new bike and get it dialed in. I’m not ruling out more races in the SS class in the future, but for now I’m going to focus on the geared class

So that’s the life update for better or worse. Things haven’t exactly gone the way that I intended, but they could always be worse. Tune in next week as I breakdown why I landed on the bike I did and what upgrades I hope to make to it.