Colorado 2024

To the 3 or 4 people who might happen to come across this, it's been a while. A LONG while since I've written any blog postings, but I've been on a pretty epic journey, and I finally feel like I have a few updates to talk about without being overly emotionally influenced. I've officially been living in and around Denver Colorado for almost 6 years now. 10% of my life. I don't really know where to begin than at the present date I guess. I havent done an actual road race, criterium, Etc. since June of 2018. Anyway, I guess the main point here is that I've registered for my first road race in forever (at least that's how it feels)! Next weekend, April 6, the day after I turn 58, I'm going to be participating in the Boulder Roubaix "rough" road race! I say participating because I have no idea how things are going to go. I went and pre rode the course last weekend. It's a great course! It's been going on since 1992, so there's a bit of history with it. I'm sure lot's of iconic battles have gone down there that I have no idea about. The thing is, here in Colorado, compared to Oklahoma, from what I've found is that for every 1 elite bike racer there, there are 100 here, so I have no idea how things are going to shake out. But, you've gotta start somewhere to find out, right? Anyway, I've known about this event for a few years, but I'm finally excited to give it a go. I'm still riding my old rim brake road bike. I'd planned on getting a new bike at the beginning of the year, but that didn't pan out just yet, so I'm just going to roll with what I've got. I put the widest tires I've got that would fit on the bike, some Challange Paris Roubaix 27mm wide tires that are being borrowed from my old Rossin. There's a chance of rain the day of the race, so just in case, I,ve got my gravel bike set up with some wider gravel tires.

My green Garneau road bike is what I'm planning on riding, but the yellow bike is my back up. I'll definitely post an update with how things go down...

My latest project...

I recently acquired a bike a while back that I'm currently in the process of restoring. A little backstory first, I've always had a thing for older Italian road bikes. I cobbled together my first road bike in 1984 or so. It was a pink Tommasini with a random mix of parts I scraped up or got donated. I really loved that bike, but I ended up selling it around 1988ish to buy my first mountain bike.

The last few years, I'd been on the lookout for that bike or something similar. It seemed like everything was pretty expensive and way more than I was comfortable spending. Anyway, long story short, I ended up with a bike that was gifted to me.

The bike is either a 1983 or 84 Rossin Record.

I've purchased some replacement parts here and there. So far I have new tires and handlebar tape. Overall the bike is in really good condition. I basically stripped the bike down to the bare frame and disassembled the wheels as well. I didn't like the way the wheels were built, so I rebuilt them as well.

The bike is starting to come together really nicely!

I've got 4 videos so far with more detailed information about the whole process!
Be sure and check them out if you get a chance:

My old Webco

So, I picked up my bikes from being painted and they both look pretty sweet! I have the 650b klunker bike 99% finished, but I realized in building it up that the bottom bracket I have isn't going to fit, so I'm a few more days out till it's complete.

 These are a couple shots of the klunker bike mocked up before painting. I had just purchased tires and I wanted to see how it would look and fit .

The story of my Webco is pretty crazy. Around 1977 or so, I had been seeing kids riding around on these motocross type bikes. I previously had an AMF Superbee that was kind of a muscle type bike like a Schwinn stingray. It had the high rise bars and banana seat. At some point in the mid 70's, kids started modifying the bikes to a more BMX style. My AMF got stolen, and so after a year or so of not having a bike, I really wanted a BMX bike, preferably a Mongoose.
I remember my dad taking us around to some different bike shops. I saw lots of bikes I really liked, but everything was out of our price range.
One day, my dad came home with a used bike he bought from someone he worked with. I think it was my birthday, but I'm not 100% sure. The bike was a kind of rough, but it had been tricked out a little. It had Redline forks and Skyway tuff wheels! I thought it was awesome! It was the bike I learned how turn a wrench on. I tore it down to the bare frame at least 3 times to repaint it. It was also the bike I learned how to jump on, and start racing with.
Over the next few years I tricked it out even more adding Redline V-bars, Redline stem, Araya alloy wheels, MX-1000 brake, Takagi alloy cranks, KKT lightning pedals and a Kashimax seat. Eventually after we got more into racing, I got a Redline proline frame set and retired the old Webco. Honestly, it was beyond time. I had broken the frame and had it re-welded, as well as it looked like it had been broken and repaired twice before I got it.
We ended up selling it at our bike shop probably around 1983-84, but it was one of those sentimental things that I kind of wished I had held onto.

Anyway, fast forward to 2016. A friend of mine sent me some blurry photos of some frames he had just acquired, and wanted to know if I knew what kind of bikes they were.

 I told him the chrome one looked like an old Team Murray and the other was an old Webco. I asked if he could send some more pictures and if he would be interested in selling it. I had been somewhat looking to find an old Webco, mainly as a template to build a modern day cruiser type klunker frame that I had planned on building next. Upon looking at more pics, I thought there was a good chance this was my ACTUAL old bike due to the colors of the paint layers.I ended up trading him some old parts for the frame.

The bike was in pretty poor condition, but this is my old bike!

 I have no idea how this frame survived this long.

I found some reproduction decals on ebay that were just like the originals. I removed a seatpost that was broken off and stuck inside the frame, straightened and aligned the back end, welded the hole I drilled in the brake bridge, and cleaned up some of the ugly welds. After I got the Klunker build finished, I took both bikes in to my buddy Brent to be painted. He painted both frames the same color, which is very close to the original red that was on the Webco to start with.

I think it came out really nice! 

I may end up building it up as a complete someday, but for now it's just going to hang on the wall and look cool.

This is a short video I made. It's part 3 of the restoration process.

I've done a handful of the Wheeler crits so far this year. I finally got on the podium a couple of weeks ago in the masters category. This year has been all over the place as far as my fitness goes, but I'm trying to peak for the ProAm coming up in a few weeks.  

2018 updates and such...

Wow, I guess it's been over 2 years since I've added anything on here. Sorry about that. I've been mainly focused on my YouTube stuff for the most part, but let's do an update.

I've been working on building another bike frame. I guess I started it last summer, and the goal was to have it finished by the fall of 2017, but obviously that didn't happen.

Super sweet frame tubing kit!

The plan was for a bike that would essentially be like an adult sized version of my first BMX bike. Something to ride around the local mountain bike trails - pump track, or just cruise around the neighborhood with my kids. I actually found my first bike when I was planning out this build, and made a video about it...

Fast forward to today, I've got a frame and a fork built. I'm going to take the new frameset, and the old webco to get painted next week. I didn't get to build the new frame exactly as I had had envisioned, mainly because I had to rush the completion somewhat, but I still think it's going to be a really fun bike to ride and stuff.

The main reason I had to rush it along was the other latest big news...

We're moving!!

Yes we're moving to Colorado. Coatney was accepted to graduate school in Denver, so we're relocating in June of 2018. The past several months have been pretty crazy. A combination of getting our house ready to sell, selling it, finding a place to live, finding room for all our "stuff", getting rid of a lot of it, and finding a new job. So far, everything seems to be falling in place day by day. 

I'll try real hard to update this as it's all going down. If you're interested in the build up of my frame project, I have a playlist series on YouTube...

650b frame build series

Otherwise, until next time...

Tis the season..

Well, spring and the race season is definitely here. So far I've gotten a road race and a couple of practice crits in. It hasn't gone great results wise, but not horrible either. It feels like things are headed in the right direction. My overall fitness seems ok, but the higher intensity power from say 30 seconds to 5 minutes needs improvement. It's pretty much the same thing every year. Everything seems great until you get into an actual race situation and the painful truth comes out.

I've been playing around with the onboard video a little.  These are the last couple videos from the Wheeler crits-

I was planning on doing the crit yesterday, but I cut my finger pretty good, so I had to miss it. Chad had a helmet cam and I put the camera I was going to use on Andys bars. The race was pretty entertaining to watch, so it should make for a pretty sweet video! Hopefully I'll have it finished tonight or tomorrow this weekend is the NWA road race in Arkansas. We've got 5 or 6 of us going, so it should be fun. 

Turning the corner..

 Every time I start into a new season, it seems like the progress, for me anyway, is super slow. It's been months of getting up early, riding in the cold and dark sometimes, wondering if it's worth it, not seeing much improvement. It seems like lots of things go that way sometimes. You're in a dark place ready to give up, but you gotta keep plugging away. Just take it day by day, then BAM! You go out one day and notice the change. I think it's happened twice so far this season.

I'm not sure when it happens, but for me, it seems to be a noticeable difference the Tuesday or Wednesday after a recovery week. What I'm talking about is more of less a rise in fitness.

It's not something that occurs after every training block and recovery week, but if its going to happen, that's usually when it comes around. It happened on one of my last rides on my commuter bike, and yesterday.

 It's not necessarily something that's accompanied by high power numbers, although usually so, it's more a feeling of well being or feeling like you can keep punching it indefinitely or you're impervious to fatigue or something like that. 

Maybe it's just because the weather is getting nicer? Well, I'm sure it helps at least.

It's been a while since I've updated any data in my WKO software. I've been working on it, but I have a couple months worth of rides to manually estimate the power numbers and add to the calendar.

Anyhow, I have about an hour each Wednesday while my daughter is at an after school activity to work on this blog thing, but enough rambling for this week. Until next week..

Gearing up for getting down

So my winter "training plan" so far has been a little half baked. I guess really, you could say it's been pretty unstructured, at least less so than anytime I can remember in the last 10 years. Since I sold most all my bikes, I haven't had a bike with a power meter, just my heavy steel home built rain bike.

It wasn't too bad just riding to work, but doing our weekend group rides was definitely a challenge.
I've tried doing some longer intervals just riding on my way to work, which by the way, the new west river trail is great for. I've mainly been just going off feel and similar volume to what I've done in the past for a rough metric on how hard and long to ride.  Anyhow, I put about 2000 miles on the rain bike and have been riding my new race bike since January, which has been nice.

My new race bike

 In general, I think riding the heavy rain bike has paid off as far as a good base to start the season and be competitive.

We had our team training camp last weekend. I feel like it went really well, and I really like the direction the team is going in. I feel like I fit in well, and I'm pretty excited to go out and compete with these guys.

It was nice having a lead car, a follow van and a moto for a nice rolling enclosure.

The DNA team, the team I'm on, is kind of a junior varsity team to our big brother Arapahoe Resourses elite team

I think I'll try to get a FTP test in soon, just to get a clearer idea where I'm at fitness wise.  I've been slacking pretty bad lately keeping track of all the "fitness stuff", but I got reinterested after hearing guys talking about their numbers and such at camp. So, I guess since the first races are only a couple weeks out, it's time to get my training a little more focused and structured, which I'm pretty excited about as well!