Snake Creek Gap 2

This past weekend, I completed the second of three Snake Creek Gap Time Trial mountain bike races. Compared to my first try last month, this race went really well. In my first try, the 34 mile ride took 4 hours and 3 minutes. This time out, I dropped almost 35 minutes with a final time of 3 hours and 29 minutes! I attribute this huge drop in time to increased familiarity with the course, increased fitness, and new-bike-itis. One of the biggest difficulties of mountain biking is proper gear selection. Too large of a gear will cause early muscle fatigue and, at worst, coming to a dead stop on a climb. Too low of a gear will cause you to give up valuable time and even sacrifice stability in some cases. Ideally, you want to be in just the right gear to maintain a smooth pedal stroke over the terrain. Course familiarity plays a big part in this equation, in that you can better anticipate proper gear selection and energy requirements for different sections. Logging more than twice as many cycling miles this year vs. last year, my cycling fitness continues to make large gains. I have been very consistent so far this year with getting on the bike at least 4 times/week. Finally, I can't let this end without giving some props to the new Gary Fisher Superfly. While a new toy always seems to add a little excitement, this bike actually offered some real advantages over my previous rides. Specifically, the 29” wheels felt much more stable at all speeds and carried my momentum through the rough stuff with greater ease. Most importantly, the carbon frame didn't show any signs of weakness or flex. Unfortunately this led to its one shortcomming. After spending the last few years on full suspension bikes, and with only one week of riding the Superfly, my taint is still recovering from the three and a half hour epic. Despite the larger wheels, it is still a hardtail, and requires a different riding style than the full suspension rigs. However, I'm convinced that for cross country riding, this is one of the fastest rides around.