2008 12 Hours of Lodi Farm: a dcmtb.com Update

[ed note -- this post was sitting in blogger post drydock while i was luxuriating in honeymoon bliss, so it's pretty untimely. But as every maniacal cabbie in St. Lucia told me, "no preshah." Like a more empathetic twist on Jamaica's ubiquitous "no problem." Anyway, onto the race action...]

Howdy. Mike here...

It's hard for me to personally overstate the drama that was the 2008 12 Hours of Lodi... Weather threatened, Kent was out then in, teammates were dropping like flies...On the grenade I jumped, volunteering for the first lap. Kent and Matty allowed me to set the strategy for the race: double laps for one full rotation then back to singles for the rest of the race.I lined up for the pre-race meeting towards the beginning of the prologue loop from last year (hint, hint). Another quick parade loop through the singletrack was announced and I was in the cat-bird seat. I allowed a skinner-lookin' dude to get in front of me as a way to show others that I was in the front and solidifying my #2-into-the-woods plan. We cruised through the end of the course for a solid 1/2 mile prologue then past the start finish. I was #2 into the woods. After the beginning of the first section of trails (before the field traverse), I took a few wrong turns (bad course markings) and I managed to stay in 8th by the end of the first lap. Tom 'Young Buck' from Family Bikes and Mikey 'Cargo' Pearce came by me as did a few other studs. No worries, I had another lap to catch somebody. The course was very different at the top and in the middle. I was lost as usual and confused, to be sure. Lodi has some turns in it, if you didn't know. I passed two people on my next lap and came in a little before 2am in 4th overall, second Expert.To sleep...Through the night, we went back and forth with the Troegenator's team. Their ringer was going against Kent and kept catching him, which is crazy because Mr Baake is quick.Through the final set of laps, we were behind them. Matty went out a few minutes behing the Troegenators. Matty was riding HARD! Roid-rage hard. He was the only guy coming through our campsite HAMMERING! That boy is dedicated. Matty made up the time plus some (hard to do on that course) and he handed off to me with a 2.5 minute advantage. I climbed into the hurt locker that was inside the pain cave at the urging of my wife ('leave it all out on the course!') and DRILLED myself into the ground. I was tired then pushed harder then pushed even harder... I knew I had to kill those little hills, the only straight-aways in the course. Susan was at the end of my lap with the kids, urging me on. I came in to the start/finish fast and handed to Kent, managing to blurt out 'GO! GO!' The kids were stoked.Kent Baake HAMMERED his lap and stayed out in front of Zach from the Troegenators. We managed a win. Zach came in hard and tired. We got him some fluids and did what we could to make him comfortable but that kid REALLY pushed that last lap. They were hard to beat. I would have been fine with losing to those guys. Great guys...I would like to nominate Matty as MVP for the race. Inspirational... Between Susan's words and Matty's determination, I couldn't slow down. Our last three laps were 50, 50 and 51. Fastest lap of the day was 49.1st overall, first expert. My immense respect for our dcmtb team continues to grow, especially Matty, Kent and Mr Fastest Lap, Mike Pearce!Oh, and '70% chance of showers' in Spring in the Mid-Atlantic region means cloudy, dry and WONDERFUL weather... Pics to come later...

DCMTB.com/City Bikes Enjoys Success at Baker's Dozen

Darren Biggs of dcmtb.com/City Bikes made plans to arrive at the race a day early to ensure a prime campsite location for the rest of his team members set to arrive on Saturday morning for the 11AM start of the second annual Baker’s Dozen 13 hour mountain bike race hosted by Plum Grove Cyclery.

‘I wanted to make sure we had a location big enough for my DCMTB/City Bikes teammates,’ Darren said.

18 members of DCMTB/City Bikes made the trip out to race in Leesburg in picture-perfect conditions.

‘The weather turned out to be amazing with bright sunshine in the morning followed by a nice breeze and some clouds to cool things off,’ said Kent Baake, a DCMTB/City Bikes racer and member of the 3-person Men’s class team Solar Ring Blingers.

‘We had no idea that the race would be as successful as it turned out to be,’ said Plum Grove Cyclery’s Rob Harrington, the Race Director for the event. ‘We’ve had incredible support from the race community and we are excited about 2009!’

With over 375 participants registered for the event, the Baker’s Dozen represents one of the largest mountain bike relay races in the DC region. For an event only in its second year, the success is a testament to the quality of the race organization and the course itself, an exciting combination of logs, rocks, drops and fast corners.

‘Our team had a great time out there and managed to secure third place behind our other 3-man entry,’ said Matt Donahue, DCMTB/City Bikes President. ‘There’s nothing better than racing with, and against, your friends.’

Members of DCMTB/City Bikes secured 1st in Women’s Solo, 2nd and 3rd in 3-person Men, 3rd in 3-person Open and fielded additional teams including the duo of brother’s Joe and 19-year-old JJ ‘Prince Harry’ Foley.

DCMTB/City Bikes is a grass-root team of urban mountain bikers. Since 1997 they’ve been ripping it up on the mid-Atlantic race scene! But they’re not just about riding and racing, over the years the team has put in hundreds of hours on behalf of bicycle advocacy groups in Washington, DC. Sponsors include City Bikes Merkle, Continuum Energy Solutions, Whole Foods P Street, the Looking Glass Lounge, Deuter, Serfas, SRAM, WTB. Check out www.dcmtb.com.

Since evolving from an old gas station in 1987, City Bikes has made thousands of people happy with their bike - for fun, fitness and transportation. City Bikes' vision is for Washington DC to flow freely with the clean, friendly motion of bicycles. Check out www.citybikes.com.

[ed note -- the Darren tearing up the race course is not the same Darren who writes this crap blog. Quite plainly.]

Moots and Demo Fleet Complete!

After rolling through our last few Moots bikes, we brought in some freshies. 2008 MootoX-YBB and YBB plus a 56cm Compact VaMoots. The VaMoots is still just a frame. We have a SRAM Force group sitting around waiting to tacked on.

Here's Philly-Boy holding the 29r MootoX-YBB. Smart build with pink headset, Juicys, Reba 80-100, Thomson, WTB... Pretty bike with SUPERHOT test-ride pedals! That Devo saddle is sexy. The 26r has one, too! I should have weighed the bike but I didn't.

We also have the 26r YBB. This is our best-seller. Such a fun bike. Even though 1/2 of Moots mountain bike business is 29rs, we still sell plenty of 26rs. See? Look how happy Phil is, just TOUCHING the Moots. Imagine what it feels like when you sit on it! How's that for graphic!?

We have some Easton EA90sl wheels coming in for the Compact VaMoots road bike. I think it's getting a Ouzo Pro fork, carbon bar and the new Cinch post from Moots when it comes out next month.

When Jon from Moots was here, he promised me a demo of the 4" travel 29r, the MootoXZ. Also on the way will be a Cinco. I'll let you know.

All of our bikes are available for test-rides. Ya gotta ride it to love it! There's no other way around it!

In other news, we got the Dakar XCR Pro bikes in for the demo fleet. 4" travel of carbon xc love. We are waiting on the 21" (so is Welp!) but our demo fleet is almost complete! We are picking up the trailer for the vinyl decal application on it and the van next week. It should be sweet. We'll be driving that sucker around to the local races (and some not-so-local) so just let us know if you need a ride!

08 Specialized Bikes - posted by CityBikesMike

Langsters in city-based paint schemes (why no DC 'No Taxation Without Representation' model?), new TT bikes that are HOT, a HotWalk for my son, 2 Rockhopper 29'ers under $1k... exciting stuff in the middle of the season.

I'm going to actually call Bob and suggest that they look at making a DC-based model. Everyone should know what is going on with the statehood push. I'm not sure how much people out in the world actually know that the good people of Washington, DC, don't get a vote in Congress. Talk about a rad bike. We could sell those suckers hand over fist! Here's hoping. The red and white with DC flag would be pretty hot looking, I think...

On the right, we have the sock Langster, the Langster Boston, Langster London and Langster Chicago. Below that is the new TT bike. Horizontal drops, center-pull front brake, vertical seat mast with removable seat clamp that provides 40mm of fore-aft adjustment, a second seatpost with 35mm of setback, team paint schemes, full carbon, prices down below $3k, fully super aero design with a frontal area less than one inch throughout the ENTIRE BIKE, new chainrings (good thing), SRAM TT carbon group and Red components, new Tri-specific saddle with two different NOSE widths. I almost wish I rode a TT or two during the year. Oh, and I wish I could afford it! The bike with Zipp 404 wheels, fully dialed is close to $8k. There's a good chance that that price will change but not much.

The Langsters will be priced just $50 over the stock pricing. What you can't see is the colored chains and paint details.

On the left, we have the Langster Seattle (with plastic fenders with wood-grain treatment), Langster NY (cabby paint scheme, 16" wide bars and 'rider carries less than $20 cash' decal on the drive-side chainstay) and the two Rockhopper 29'ers. The Rockhopper Comp Disc 29'er and the Rockhopper Disc 29'er.

All the Langsters are aluminum frame with steel fork so it's just the parts that are switched up. When you put these together with the new Tricross Single (below), you've got a solid onespeed lineup for the boys and girls.

Oh, the Langster Chicago has a decal that looks like there's a sticker over top of the 'L' and it spells 'Gangster.' Pretty funny stuff.

The HotWalk is a teaching bike for the little ones. Instead of training wheels, you get a bike that the kids learn balance on, as opposed to pedaling. Emma is still training-wheel-dependent and I should have gotten something like this for her. We won't make the same mistake with Jeremy. We'll see how Emma takes to this as well. She'll probably want to play with it as well.

I wish I had some high-res pics to show y'all, but all I have is the pics from the .pdf Specialized sent out. The good news is that these are not renderings, but actual pics of actual bikes.

These bikes are real, they are on the water already and your local Spec'd shop will see them in the next month or so (if they are smart and order them). Check out the pics, go ask your local bike shop to get you one or two and hold on for the full 08 roll-out in mid-July. Rumor has it that there's a 29'er Stumpjumper in testing right now with an enduro sl-style frame. Maybe I've seen it, maybe I haven't... Also, maybe the stump fsr bikes are going from 120 to 130 next year (like my 06 carbon stump fsr).

As soon as I saw these bikes, I realized that Specialized was trying to eat Bianchi's lunch. Bianchi hired Spec'd central-region guy about a year ago to be their national sales manager. This guy Mark has come out of the gate REALLY hard, pushing Bianchi to grow (without adequate systems support, if you ask me) and A LOT of people got pushed out of Bianchi dealerships because they (we) didn't want to play ball. I'll spare you the details, but I think that Spec'd has rolled out models to push Bianchi out of their super-established niche (29'ers, onespeed 'cross bikes, fixies). I've been given a few 'wink wink, nod nod' looks when I've mentioned this to a few people in the know so I might actually be on to something. I'd rather ride a Specialized anyway in case something goes wrong as I know that Specialized will take care of the product. I don't have that confidence about Bianchi. If you look around, you'll see a lot of new Bianchi dealers this year as they move into one shop after they got spit out of a different shop. More power to the shops who have gotten good service from Bianchi.

So, check out the bikes and let me know what you think. We'll be ordering next week fo sho. I'm most excited about the HotWalk for Jeremy. This is a RAD idea and I'm glad that they are pulling through on this model. I may be accused of being a Specialized nut, but it's stuff like this that makes me really like this company. I can rock their sub-30lb 6" travel bike and my boy can ride his rad little balance-teacher...

Thanks to Brandon, Andy, Bob, Jason, Luke, Deacon and the rest of the Specialized bike teams for pushing through some really rad stuff mid-year.