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Since the last race of the year a few weeks back, I have been resetting the training cycle by mixing it up and generally riding a lot less. In fact, I pretty much have been just playing around during the week and only riding hard on Saturday at the Trinity ride.

Part of the playing around has been on a mountain bike. I have never really owned a mountain bike (just borrowed one for one winter back in 2001-2002). Matt from RB’s is similar body type to me (tall and skinny) and he was looking to sell his Titus. I rode it a handful of times and then bought it from him. So now I am the owner of Titus 29′er (Racer X) full suspension kitted out with Deore XT.

Also, I am gearing up for the upcoming cyclocross season. I decided to buy another set of aluminum tubular wheels. Since it was sort of last minute decision, I opted to have Excel Sports build me up a set of tank wheels (heavy bombproof wheels). I also purchased a trio of Vittoria Cross Evo tires to put on these. I decided to get these after continuing to have problems with my cyclocross tubeless setup. I am not sure it is the tire (likely) or the rim, but for now, I put a tube in and will have to run ~40# on the rear wheel of my formerly tubeless Kenda Kommander tires on some basic Velomax wheels (heavy). So far, I have just stretched on the tires and will start the gluing process this afternoon.

Today has me home alone waiting for Andrea to come back from Little Rock (area?). She is racing a long 8-12 hour adventure race with a team. Last night she found out that the race started at 5:30am. I’ll get all the details when she gets home tonight (and she will undoubtedly blog it). The plan is to get up early tomorrow and daytrip the Clear Creek MTB race down in Oxford. If we go (and I do say “if” since this long race may very well break her physically or her bike or something….), it will be my first mountain bike race. As a unlicensed racer, I will be a beginner (cat 3 in the new system), but I want to try racing off road once or twice before the end of the year to be able to make the call at USAC license renewal time if I want to pick up a MTB license for an extra $20 (and if I want to go ahead an upgrade to MTB-2 straight away).

My plan is to straighten up the house (especially the bike repair area) and do some wrenching this afternoon (tubular gluing, installing new SS chain tensioner). I need to put together a mountain bike seat back and recommission my Camelback (it looks like it will be pretty muddy down at Oxford due to all the rain we have been getting lately). Next weekend is the first race of the TBRA CX schedule: Beat the Freak #1 and #2. I booked a room and at this point plan on going with Andrea. This year I could potentially triple up (35+, CX3, and S/S). Probably won’t do that, but will probably at least double up (CX3 and SS).

Here are some good shots I took of our cat hanging out in my paper basket (with my new NightRider HID light in the foreground)… Enjoy.