can I get a High-Five?

From High-Five

Late last night I finished building up my new cyclocross racing bike.  It is a High-Five frame/fork courtesy of Jason Prudhom and High-Five cycles.  The rest of the build is either parts I made or parts off my road bike.

The crankset is a FSA-SLK with big beefy external bearings on the bottom bracket and a single 42t chainring and a custom Ruckus Components chainguard.

The wheels are also courtesy of High-Five cycles and are a deep section carbon fiber tubular wheel with Grifo Challenges glued on them (courtesy of Ben's Cycle and Fitness).

The brakes are custom Ruckus Components carbon fiber brakes.

The stem/handlebars/brifters are from my road bike and a Ritchey WCS stem, Bontrager Race Lite bars, Shimano Ultegra brifters.

The seatpost is the original OEM seatpost, which will probably be the only part I would ever really legitimately change because changing that alone drops more than half a pound. And when you are forced to run with your bike on your back, weight matters.

The rear derailleur is a Shimano XT shadow.  I am really excited to be using this derailleur, it is a fairly light mountain bike derailluer (238 grams) with high spring tension.  Also since it is a Shadow series it sits more underneath the chainstay and doesn't stick out past the rear wheel quick release (very useful when crashing).  Aesthetically it is nice because with the rear derailleur cable/housing running straight down the seat stay it goes directly into the derailleur, no silly loops here folks.

From web

Overall it weighs in just over 17 lbs which is pretty impressive considering I have a really heavy seatpost, my unused left brifter, and my LOOK pedals still on there. By far the lightest bike I have ever owned, even my road bike weighed in around 21 lbs and that had road tires on it.

Today I took it out for the Monday lawyer ride. I put on an easy 30 mile (it is a recovery day after all) of good climbs and fast descents with tight turns. It handled marvelously, I was able to hang on the climbs with that 42:27 gearing, I think because it is lighter and a stiffer frame. The bike also handled all the speed bumps better than my steel/carbon road bike. The tracking on it is tight so that will need some getting used to, but it was my first ride after all.

Tomorrow is a day off from riding and then Wednesday it is cyclocross practice!!

The Battle of Barlow

I just got my new High-Five but didn't have time to finish building it before todays race, the Cross Crusade series doesn't start until next week, so I decided to take my mountain bike and enter the men's B/singlespeed event.  Now Rita is a nice bike about 22.5 lbs, 32/17 gearing, 29x2.3 tires, and midge drops bars, but she is certiainly no cross bike. I really had no idea what I had in store for myself today, being my first Portland cyclocross race, it was truly an interesting race.

There were maybe about 40 singlespeed riders and we had 45 minutes of work to do under the 80F sunshine. Hand-ups were not allowed (not sure why honestly) so I carried half a bottle of water (turned out to be the best decision I made all day).

I had lined up toward the rear of the pack, mainly because I was on a mountain bike and wasn't trying to prove anything besides just having fun.  The race started off in a flurry of speed.  Being a singlespeed only category you have riders of every different skill level out there.  Let me tell you there were some crushers on the front.  I just sat in and worked.

The course was intense, more intense than anything I have ever rode for cyclocross.  They threw everything at you in this order

1. Loose dirt off camber riding


2. Fast paced downhill pavement


3. a curb jump and then instantly a barrier that leads to an 270 degree off-camber uphill loose dirt turn


4. Lots of switchbacks


5. 10 foot long 8 inch deep sandpit (mountain bike very useful here)


6. A barrier and then a run-down that was terrifying (all rutted out and steep)


7. Run through a creekbed


8. the steepest cyclocross climb I have ever done that had railroads ties spaced far apart


9. lots of fast wooded singletrack


10. slight relaxing ride through a small vineyard


11. more woods singletrack


12. a 5 pack of barriers that destroyed many riders through-out the day


13. more woods

I am not sure on the total distance of this insane course, but we ended up doing 6 laps of it and I was very tired at the end.  But I had paced myself well for the entire race.  My major strengths of the days were definitely my mounts and dismounts all very clean.  My major problem of the day was anytime I should have have been shouldering my bike.  Rita's small front triangle makes it so I can't shoulder it.  My arms got very tired while doing the run-down and rup-up, I had to suitcase my bike.

I am looking foward to having a cross bike that only weighs 17 lbs and is easily shoulderable.  I am just looking forward to everything about riding a cross bike in the next race.  Overall I think the B category will be a good fit for me.  There are some cat A sandbaggers though,  but I m there to have fun.

Also I have never seen such an amazing amount of bike porn.  For the entire day there were only a few entry level cross bikes, it seemed like everyone was riding the best cross bikes.

A special thanks goes out to Vivian (for taking some photos), Andrew, and Zach for being the sideline cheerleaders and support.



apparently I got 26 out of 48 riders not bad

3/5 of a barrier set

From Battle of Barlow 9-28-08

right after the 5 pack

From Battle of Barlow 9-28-08

random fast guy

From Battle of Barlow 9-28-08

me running through the barriers, eventually caught that guy

From Battle of Barlow 9-28-08

real tired here, mountain bikes are a lot of work

From Battle of Barlow 9-28-08

fun footwork shot

From Battle of Barlow 9-28-08

the trail goes down there somewhere

From Battle of Barlow 9-28-08

the worst runup in existence (so far)

From Battle of Barlow 9-28-08

mens A stampede through a barrier set, small children might have died

From Battle of Barlow 9-28-08

more stampede

From Battle of Barlow 9-28-08

stampede up the horrible run-up, apparently spectators like to watch other people in agony

From Battle of Barlow 9-28-08

time lapse photo run up

From Movies

Portland is for climbers

not these guys



more of the cycling persuasion.

This morning Andrew and I took off around 8:15 am with the intention of heading west for some hill climbing.  Now being a recent transplant to Portland from the midwest means I haven't really experienced real hill climbing.

Once we got away from downtown, the climb began.   Steep switchbacks all the way to the top of a hill/mountain (?) for about 25 minutes.  I was in the small chain ring (34t) and my largest cog (25t) and crawling about 5~6 mph.  I would do various spurts of sit-down climbing and standing.  There were quite a few points where I wanted to get off and walk, but that isn't allowed in cycling.   My legs burned, but eventually we made it to the top and all those feelings were gone.

With every up there is a down (most of the time at least).  The downhill was fun and fast.  A 52 mph coast down winding roads.   This is why I love road biking, the pain and speed that are attainable by a single person powering this machine is incredible.

We got back to SE Portland and decided to do a climb up Mt. Tabor (bottom to the peak).  Which is still a pretty decent climb.  This last climb session tapped me.  We reached the top and spun home.

These hill climbs will kick me into shape fast.

Rough elevetation climb 1000 ft.

Vanilla Cycles Cyclocross Clinic

Speedvagens galore, well only really like 5.  But nonetheless they are a beautiful piece of bicycle machinery.

Tonight was night 1 of Team Vanilla Cyles cyclocross clinic series.  I was pretty excited to get out there and see who showed up.  While my High-Five is yet to come to america yet,  I was readying the On-One this afternoon.  I built up a single-speed tubular wheelset to race on.  Now there were a lot of little things I had to get done to transfer the On-One back into a racing bike and quite frankly I was running out of time.  So I took the "big girl" my 29'er mountain bike.  This isn't really that absurd because, the "big girl" is light (21 lbs) and has drop bars on it.   It would make a decent cross rig if I threw on a different wheelset,  I am keeping her in my back pocket for the cross series out here just in case it ever gets real crazy wet/muddy.

"Big  Girl" worked just fine all night.   The clinic was  mainly dealing with the technical aspects of mounting/dismounting/barriers/ect...  My mounts/dismounts and high speed turning are all in good shape, I just need to get into good shape.  Tonight was just the motivation I needed to kick my butt into gear.  Technical skill wise I was on par or slightly better than the group I was with (seasoned riders).  The first race is about one month and I am getting very very excited!!!