Bike & Rider Update

Just got off the phone with Glenn at Ti-Cycles. He was able to all-too-easily replicate the problems I had during Sunday's race and confirmed that yes indeed, I do [already!] need new middle and small chainrings for my M960 XTR crankset. Two months and about 650 miles and in need of new rings already. This sucks! Usually you go through a couple cassettes and a few chains before needing to replace chainrings, but in my case I'm replacing the chainrings first. I'd love to bite the bullet and upgrade to the new M970 crankset which apparently has titanium teeth and addresses several of the issues people had with the M960 model, but at $700 just for the cranks and rings, there's simply no way I'm about to do that. He ordered me two small and middle rings so I will have replacements to swap in before heading to TransRockies in August.

As for the hub, Chris King's help desk people tried to pass my problem off as simply part of the break-in period on their hubs. Once it was made clear that smashing my balls on the top-tube of the bike should not be part of the break-in period for any product, they told Glenn to do a complete tear-down and rebuild of the hub which he started to do this morning. If the problem persists after that then I'll likely have an issue that would necessitate a warranty replacement. One way or the other, the Mooto-X should be back up and running as good as new next week.

In the meantime, I'm definitely suffering from rider burnout. I'm still riding 2 to 3 times a week to maintain fitness (and will be doing a very hilly 100-mile road ride this Saturday) but a combination of dreary weather, mechanical issues, and some really good videogaming to be had has kept me off the bike much of this week and last. I'm not beating myself up about it, though. Instead, I'm going to continue to take it a bit easier through the early part of next week to recharge my batteries sort of speak. Then, starting next Thursday I will re-invest my energy and focus my time on the final training push towards TransRockies. I've got some big weekends planned for late June and much of July so I'm really not worried about not being ready for TR. On the other hand, if I force myself to continue riding now I'm only going to completely lose interest and fall apart before TR, just like I did before last year's Mountains to Sound adventure race, in which I went an entire month before the race without running, kayaking, or cycling even once. I'm not going to let that happen this time.