Running a two sport peak and taper is not an easy thing to do. It’s nice that training for hiking necessitates vastly less acute fitness demands. Nonetheless, Saturday will be a 15 or so hour day, and that demands a good reservoir, which can only be had my rest. Sunday I got in a really, really high quality interval session on the bike, Monday a good hike, yesterday lots of recovery work, and today a final high intensity bike workout. Easy toodling for the next two days, race Saturday, then recover, with one or maybe two good intensity rides next week before I hit the road south. I’m happy with my plans and how they are going.
Of course, between the short training hours and generally lacksidaisical employment situation, I’ve been a bit twitchy, and when I’m like that things tend to HAPPEN, for better or worse.
Two days ago I attacked the bike situation. Since the Lenz arrived two years ago, I’ve never actually gotten a proper mountain wheelset for the Karate Monkey. The rear wheel has been the Open Sport-Surly flip flop I originally got for my fixie commuter. When, last month, my shitty, redished 27″ commuter rear wheel died (it worked for 10 months while massively out of true), I was back in the almost perpetual state of having one more bike total than I had functional bikes. The road rim has held up amazingly to all the abuse of the past two years, but it leaves a lot to be desired. It’s also no longer ok to not have a humble, not expensive and obviously so townie bike for Missoula (it was when I was walking everywhere as training), so the Open Sport went back on the Takara fixie/townie/commuter, and the Karate Monkey is a sad frame with parts hanging in the basement.
Why?
The next major purchase will be a proper singlespeed wheelset. But what to get? Ideally I’ll delace and use the front Surly hub I’ve got on an A719 now. Rear will take a freewheel, and bolt on with a hex wrench. Likely a Paul, though Phils are hard to pass up. Should the rims be tubeless? Fat? Light? Really, really fat? Overkill and bulletproof? Flows? Kris Holm?
I also had a nice tubeless misadventure. I like to learn by doing. Doh.
To keep myself out of trouble, and in addition to geeking on Tour media, I’ve been surfing the net in the classic, aimless fashion, finding some relevant things, and some that are a bit less so:
Life. Ahh.
Bedrock & Paradox 
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