I went to Sugar Bottom couple of days ago in preparation for Sugar Bottom Scramble (I plan to run in Beginner category). I took my video camera with me, mounted remote on my sun glasses and off I went. Unfortunately everything looks much different when you stand straight so the camera pretty much looks into the ground, but we’ll get there next time :-)
Short two loops done this morning to warm things up before so boring day at the office. Each of them covered 2.5 miles of hilly gravel road and 1.7 mile of paved one treated mostly as recovery part :-). Main focus was placed on keeping cadence on the steady level around 80 rpm. As you can see average cadence of 81 pretty much nailed it down.
Click on the image to see full version.
Today we went to Cedar Rapids to finally do some riding. At least that was the plan. When we parked and started to take bikes out of the rack I couldn’t believe what I saw:
The tire was obviously flat. But that wasn’t all - when I looked at it closely I discovered that it was totally fried in one spot:
Then I recalled that on our way here I heard loud pop while driving on the interstate. It intrigued me a little bit, but as the car was driving OK I simply forgot about it. Now I know that it apparently was the moment when the tire blew up. Closer inspection revealed, that while on the rack the front wheel was just merely 10 inches away and straight in the stream of exhaust gases. I didn’t think they can be so hot (look how rim tape got fried) to put the tire on fire, but here it was - smoked tire in my hand. Interesting thing is that we were driving with bikes previously, but apparently I got lucky and always put the bike the other way around when back wheel was on the exhaust side - it hangs much higher - out of the gases’ way.
Funny thing - when I went to the Dick’s sport store in Cedar Rapids and asked guy about 29″ tire he asked me “how old the bike is”. Fortunately they had WTB Nano Raptors in Scheels :-)
