Sick and Sidelined

Being sick sucks. I guess I am grateful that my sickness happens to coincide with Allison's regen week. I miss out on less awesome rides that way!

I have been doing some research and found some cool new products. Since it appears that Stans No-Tubes isn't making AL rotors anymore, the metal matrix rotors at www.scrubcomponents.com are the next best thing. As a mechanical engineer it is nice to see yet another aerospace technology leak over to mountain biking. I bet they are using Ceramet from Carpenter Technologies. There was a Formula SAE team that was sponsored by Carpenter that used this stuff liberally on their car. It gave them such a huge weight advantage that the next year a rule was instituted for a "maximum value" for the cars. With the cost of Ceramet and the amount that they used, the car was worth a fortune!

In any case I hope to get a set of those rotors for Allison's "Pimp Bike 09".

I have done a lot of examining of the bike and there are a few more places for me to cut weight, but nothing dramatic. I am going to see if I can obtain a second FD so that I can mill some weight off one without disassembling the bike.

I need to borrow a good scale and get a weight on the bike. It is pretty light right now. The tires aren't the lightest and the bike is under 22lbs with pedals.

According to her blog, the suspension works great. I am looking forward to the first race in about 6 weeks to see how the two of them perform. Lets hope she has some competition in Expert since USA Cycling denied her access to the Pro ranks. (those bastards!)

On the training front, things are going really well. I am down to 165lbs and would be doing better IF I WASN'T SICK! Allison is doing great and sticking to her regimen. I have put together a training analysis tool in Excel to track a bunch of parameters as she trains. Hopefully it helps us make changes for the future when we can connect the dots between training and race performance. It would be totally awesome to have power numbers to plug in there, but funding for a Powertap just isn't in the account. :(

So nice that while I am sick I can still geek out on training stuff and bike parts...