2026 Race reports: Ft.Collins

As with any race reports, and this blog in general, I'm running behind once again. I didn't even post a follow up to my first race back in 2024 or anything from 2025! I think I'm going to try to get more organized, not only for anyone who may be interested, but maily for my own personal referance as the older you get, things become less sharp in the memory aspect, and things have been coming fast and wild this year so far! 

 Anyway, I'll make some kind of post about how I got to this point in the last few years, but the point of this post is Ft. Collins 2026. Saturday would be the CSU oval criterium and Sunday was the Cobb Lake road race. These would be my first race of the season. Some important factors to consider: I just turned 60. yep, I said it. It happens, and it happens to be true. Anyway, races in the masters catagory (the one I race in nowadays) seem to be all over the place. Last year it was in ten year age incraments (40+ category or 50+ category, then 60+ open and 70+ open). 

This year it's changed a little. I don't believe there is a Rocky Mountain Road Cup, rankings statewide for each age group to no Rocky Moumtain Road Cup this year. I was looking forward to it since I would be turning 60, but I guess it's not all bad. Some of the races this year are the same format as last year, but nothing in the masters category over 50. Others are 55+ and 65+, but I'll get to that later. This particular weekend, the criterium would be a 40+ 1-2-3 and 50+ 1-2-3 (combined, but scored seperately). The 1-2-3 is category as in race level - Cat 1 being the highest level of an amateur cyclist, like a black belt in karate, 2's are almost the same, and category 3's anr generally very strong, and smart as well. 

Anyway, onto the CSU Oval Criterium! It was tough! My nerves were shot leading up to this day. I'm sure my partner Tina would agree. I did a handful of races last year, but the first one is always a cause of much anxiousness for me. Once the race actually starts though, it's not a big deal.I knew the criterium would be tough, but going into it, I figured if I could hang and not get dropped, I'd be going pretty good fitness wise. 

The weather was cool but sunny. I got a pretty short warm up, and actually got a couple of laps on the course. It was pretty technical with lots of corners, very narrow sections, and the iconic oval on the end. I had a pretty lousy starting position due to getting that one last warm up lap, but after I got a few laps at speed, it wasn't too difficult to move up. We would be racing for 50 minutes, so I was looking at my timer now and again. Somewhere around 40 minutes in, I knew the 5 laps to go sign would be coming soon. Several guys tried to get away, but at this point, we were all still together. I was in a good position, probably 6th or 7th coming out of the oval, when a guy attacked, another guy went with him, so I was in the perfect position to go as well, so I made a go of it.

 We had a gap, but I was on my limit. The second guy counter attacked and I just didn't have anything to go with him. The first guy sat up, so I found myself winded and in no man's land. I was trying to keepmy momentum, but got swarmed by the main group and came very close to getting dropped. I hung in barely, and the next time through the start/finish line, we had 5 laps to go. It took me a couple of laps to recover, butafter that I was able to move back up into the top 10 oe so. I was trying to move up into a better position with 2 to go when I got caught up with another rider, had to unclip while trying not to crash and basically lost all my spots I had moved up. By this point, it was going super fast and I was only able to move up a couple more spots and finished 19th. I felt like I could have done better, but I was pretty satisfied overall. I'd rather take some chances and gamble on getting into a break and winning or getting a podium spot than racing super conservative and getting 15th or something.

Getting ready to race! All photos by Tina.

Racing along...Sitting behind Norm Alvis, The eventual winner of the 50+ group

The point where I was attempting to go with a late race move...

Another angle50+ race results
I don't have any photos of the Cobb Lake road race the next day, but it was pretty wild. I ended up 26th. almost got dropped several times, but stayed in it. Guys were getting dropped and getting flats like crazy! Going into the last half mile, everything was still together. There's a left hander following few miles on a dirt/gravel road, then it's maybe a kilometer to the finish. As we were turning, I could see the front of the group. Many years ago, this would have been a perfect set up as it was uphill to the finish line. I went as hard as I could, but both my legs started cramping, nooooooo!All in all, I felt pretty good for the weekend. I've still got work to do, but I'm glad to feel like I can go out and compete and not just be in survival mode all race. Next weekend, the infamous Boulder Roubaix!

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!

Semi-Annual Blog Posting..

So I guess it's high time I updated this thing with all the latest going ons.

Typically this is the time of year everyone who races bikes (myself included) starts getting excited about the upcoming season, so I'll start there. My motivation for racing bikes pretty much got really low as the season progressed earlier this year. I had been thinking about it off and on for the last couple years, so after the Tulsa Tough in June, I decided I was going to leave the Evoke/Undiscovered team that I had been on the last 5 years or so. There's really no one big reason, more like a lot of little nagging issues that kept adding up and eventually, personally for me, made it not any fun anymore.

Anyway, next year I'm going to be racing on the DNA Racing Team.  More on this later, but needless to say, I'm back to being excited for next year. So I got my training plan all lined out and started into the preparation phase, got a week into it, and then last week I got the worst case of the flu that I think I've ever had. I haven't done any exercise or riden my bike in over a week, but I should be good to ease back into it in a couple of days.

Another big "going on" so to speak, I started building my first bike frame from scratch in May and finally got it completed in September. It was a pretty fun project and I hope to do another one at some point soon. It's basically my commuter bike that I ride to work now and due to the fact that I've had to sell most of my other bikes to pay for the Trek Emonda I rode last season, It's currently my only bike.

I've got a 12 video series of the process on my youtube channel, but here's a quick video I made that skims through the whole thing-

Well, that's it for now. I think I can try a little harder to do more than 6 posts a year..

Wheeler crit #3 video

2015 Tall Chief Road Race and NWA plus the local stuff.

I started this post 3 weeks ago so I guess I'll finish it. I've got 2 road races in so far this year. This year so far has been a little weird in that a few of the races that were planned early on have been cancelled. Results wise things aren't going quite as well as last year, but not too bad. We've been in a position to win or get podium spots at the end of most of the races. There's lots of racing coming up, but I'm not sure what I want ones I'll be doing. For sure the crits around the pro-am and Tulsa tough, but everything else is just a week to week decision.

The last 2 wheeler crits have been fun. I'll probably do most of them through June before my schedule changes up. Anyway, here's my Wheeler highlight videos from the last 2 weeks.

 

2015 race season week 1

I guess there's not a whole lot to update personally this week. I decided to skip the race in Arkansas because of the bad weather. I don't have a problem riding and racing in any conditions, but I wasn't interested in a 12 hour+ white knuckle drive. Bob, Micah, Dylan and Rob all went and did really well. All the guys finished in the top 10 out of a pretty big field. Anyhow, next week is the Oklahoma season opener. Day one was canceled because of construction at the park the salt creek race is at, so it's the tall chief road race only. I'm really looking forward to finally racing, so next weeks post should be much more interesting.
I got some snow riding in Saturday and Sunday. Mostly just for fun, but I did do a few short intervals. Riding in the snow/ice is mainly just good practice for bike handling skill. There's a new website called Zwift that lets you ride your indoor trainer device and ride/race with other people in a video game format. I've been seeing a few pro's using it on Strava. I thought about giving it a try this weekend, but I didn't get invitation approved yet. It seems like all the guys on the team are pretty divided on the Zwift thing. most of the cat 4's think it's pretty cool and the 3's and up think it's the gayest thing ever. I guess without trying it, I'm in the middle somewhere. I don't really like stationary riding indoors, but it could be fun for the occasional indoor ride. We'll see...
Here's a few snow pictures I took:

2015 season primer

So it's almost time to get the season going. I haven't kept this thing up very well, but I've kinda made it a goal to post something each Sunday or Monday to keep the racing stuff updated. Hopefully more on board race videos too. The winter base phase has gone about as well as I could have hoped for. In fact, I think this may be the first base period where my power meter data looks about as textbook as it gets. Click on graphs to enlarge.

Weekly training stress in green and intensity factor in yellow.

A few years ago I switched from going off time and/or miles to using TSS to determine  my weekly training load. It's pretty easy to see the classic 3 weeks on - 1 week off base period. Historically, I've usually always gotten sick or something comes up or a bad weather week etc. that causes the schedule to get thrown off, so I'm pretty pleased with the winter so far. The tallest green bar was from our training camp week. I started my build phase a couple of weeks ago and this week was the first one that the weather and life shortened things, but this is the time of year when we generally start racing, so the weeks normally get shorter but harder. This past week was short but looking at the intensity factor dot, it was my hardest week intensity wise this season so far.

My Performance Manager Chart from last June until now.

I let my fitness dwindle pretty low last October, but I wanted to be as rested as possible when my base period started.  If you're not familiar with the PMC graph, the blue line is chronic training load =current fitness. The pink line is acute training load = current fatigue and the yellow section is training stress balance = current form. The black dots are my top 10 - 20 minute efforts and the orange dots are my to 10 - 60 minute efforts from last June until now.
I usually start feeling pretty good race wise once my chronic training load gets over 90ish or so. Right now it's just under 100. Rob and Micah have already raced a couple of races each. Hopefully next weekend we'll all get to race together next weekend in Arkansas. The weather is looking iffy right now, but either way, I'll update next week.

Pre 2015 preparation

Well, It's been a long while since I've updated this blog, so here's what's going on now. Normally after the Tulsa Tough I'll take a little break and then start the cyclocross season preparation. My typical CX plan is to re-establish some base fitness in July, then ramp it up in August, then full on CX stuff from then on. This year though I wasn't really super motivated to do the whole cross plan. I decided to keep doing the weekly wheeler crits until September, then maybe do a couple of CX races just for fun.

That didn't really go as planned. the closer the CX stuff got the more I wanted to focus on some other things. I've been basically doing the back to back road and CX seasons for the last 6 years, so I decided to skip it completely this fall and just get super recovered and fresh to start the 2015 road season right this go around. The plan was to do a FTP test on the 19th and actually start my preparation phase today. As luck would have it, I came down with a pretty wicked cold on Sunday, so the baseline testing didn't happen. Not a big deal. I'll try again soon. I'm pretty excited to get some miles in though. nothing like watching races you're not a part of to make you hungry to race again!

I got my welding table finished up and have a few projects going right now.

My custom home built welding table

I've been making lots of youtube videos also. I guess I've been doing that and working on welding projects with my small amount of free time instead of this blog, but I'll try to keep this updated more if possible. Time is super tight right now with Coatney going to school full time, but it's all working out. It's all about time management. Gotta use that time wisely if you want to get stuff done!

Anyhow, here's a couple of videos I've done in the last month or so that have been  doing well...

Pro-Am and Tulsa Tough recap

So I guess I'm in full on recovery mode for a while. I'm still riding some, but not racing for a few months or any structured training. The Pro-Am and the Tulsa Tough went ok. The results were so-so. I was hoping for a little better, but anytime you can do a huge criterium race block and not lose any skin is good thing.

This is the video I took from the Pro-Am. My co-worker Evan won. I ended up 17th. I felt pretty good the first hour, but struggled the last 15 minutes. I've slacked off on the training hours to go really well for 75 minutes.

The friday night race at the Tulsa Tough was my first ever Pro 1 race. This is a video someone posted on youtube. It's a pretty good representation of what the race felt like.

Saturday and Sunday
 I did the masters 40+ races. I got 6th and 15th. The following weekend was the Oklahoma state criterium championships. The 1/2 race on Saturday went pretty bad. Overheated and got dropped got 12th. Sunday went better. With the help of my team, I got the win in the masters race, plus won a bunch of primes.

I used my prize money from the past 2 weekends for supplies to build a welding table. It should be pretty cool once it's done.  Here's a quick video I made of part 1 of the project:

Major race block underway

I guess we're pretty much smack dab in the middle of the crit season. So far it's gone ok for me. The team in general is having our best season ever. This weekend is the OKC Pro-Am. I had originally planned on doubling up on Sat. and Sun, but that didn't/is not happening. 2 days down with 1 to go. I've been doing the pro 1/2 races and so far I got 21st on Friday and 19th yesterday. Not really what I was hoping for, but that's how it goes.
I'm planning on having my camera on board today, so that should be fun.

I made a little video with the windows movie maker thing. I plan on doing a few more. Mostly tutorial stuff. Anyway, this is it:

Local Racing

I remember way back in the day when I was into BMX there were several different types of races or events. In many ways it parallels what we have going on in the cycling scene now. Basically back then we didn't really "train", well, at least not in the real early days. We would just ride our bikes around for fun and go jump at the trails. On Wednesday nights there would be organized practice nights at the race tracks. They were generally free, but you had to be a member of the sanctioning body. The practice sessions were mainly just drag races from the starting gate to the first turn then coasting back to the starting gate to do it over and over. As far as the races went, the next thing in line was the single pointer race. These were your local guys from the area. You paid a small fee and could win a small trophy

. The next type race was the double pointer. These were a little more regional. Maybe some guys from Tulsa would show up or maybe even Texas. Normally you paid double the money, but you got double the points plus an even bigger trophy. Next in line were triple pointers or Gold Cup races. Almost a national type race, but not quite. Guys from several states, bigger rider counts and reaaly big trophies. You usually had to actually travel to these races. Nationals were the next step and the year end Grand Nationals were like the Tour de France. Guys from every state and some other countries would be there and the trophies were ginormous monsters!

It seems like times are changing as far as the road scene is going. There used to be free "practice crits" at the local industrial park on Wednesdays. Then they became a monthly series where you paid a small fee but you would get scored  and could win a little money. Gradually they got to the point where they are now, which in my opinion feels just like the old single point BMX races. It's mostly just the local guys. It's a small fee, but you can win some nice small prizes. I think the way all the social media is these days, they seem even bigger. Your double pointer would be like the regional races like the NWA road race in Arkansas this weekend. Double the entry fee, but double the prizes. Something like the Matrix in Dallas or the Pro Am here in OKC would be like a triple pointer, and the Tulsa Tough or the Joe Martin stage race are like national events.

I guess the point of this post is about the local race scene. It seems to be going well. Lots of strong riders seem to be emerging from the central Oklahoma area. The local Wheeler crit races have been really hard. In some ways they still have a practice feel to them where you can experiment and try things you wouldn't typically do in a bigger race, only to discover that sometimes you should. They're usually harder than a lot of bigger races for this reason. It's also a good chance to work on team tactics.

My buddies Biff, Andy, and the DNA guys made a short video of the race last Tuesday. It gives a pretty good feel of the evening action;

Wheeler Criterium Video

Rolling into the 2014 race season

 So far this season has been going pretty good. I guess as far as our race team is going, it's going very good. We've got a couple guys that moved up to category 2's (Micah and Dylan) and a cat 1 from Kansas (Bob aka "the motorcycle") on the team now and the results so far have gone very well. Lot's of wins and podiums already.

There's a new Tuesday night race series that's officially going on now through September at the old Downtown Air-park. I got second the first race after getting into a 3 man break early in the race. Here's a few pictures that Kyle Bybee took:

Jason Waddel 1st, me 2nd, and Evan Bybee 3rd

Time has been pretty tight lately, so I haven't had much time to keep this updated, but I've actually have a few random posts I've been working on. I'm also officially a cat 1 now. My team mate Rob and I requested our upgrades last week and we both got approved!

Yellow Bike Project

I pieced an old Diamond Back mountain bike together about a year ago. My wife needed a reliable yet inexpensive bike to use for commuting at school. She rode the bike for several months, but we had a few minor issues. One of the plastic fenders broke off from the bike being driven on the hitch rack down to Norman. Another issue was the ancient shimano derailleurs just weren't cutting it anymore. A couple of dropped chains/chain suck issues at inopportune times was getting old, so I started looking for something else.

We had a couple of bikes that Coatney's grandparents gave us a couple years ago. They had literally been sitting in a barn for 30+ years. At first I thought one of the bikes could work, then I thought it was too small. I originally thought it was a 24" wheel bike. I looked at it a little closer when I was looking for another school bike project and realized the wheels were 26 x 1 3/8", so I figured it would work.

The yellow bike pre- rebuild

I basically stripped the bike down to the bare frame, tore the wheels apart, and gave everything I would be reusing a good clean up. I wanted to do away with the 5-speed derailleur system and install a shimano nexus internally geared rear hub. I've had one stashed away for several years with the shifter/brake lever/and roller brake combo. Plus it was the correct spoke hole count to match the existing 36 hole rim.

There was a pretty big wasp nest under the saddle

I've saved up a ton of old stainless steel spokes from torn down road wheels, so I found enough that were long enough to cut and thread to the correct length to rebuild the wheels.

Rebuilt wheels looking like new!

Rear wheel installed with rear hub and brake set up.

Old school high flange shimano hub with wing nuts that I've had forever.

Crank pulled out of the trash that had a bent spider arm and an old BMX chainring and sedis chain from my BMX junk pile. Original chaingaurd and pedals.

The original seat post was way too short. The seat post, tires, tubes and rim strips were the only parts that I actually had to buy. The saddle is off my second road bike. 

The original aluminium fenders cleaned up real nice. The  chain guard looks good from a distance, but it's pretty pitted out from rust. 

I made a quill stem adapter from a chunk of aluminum 1 1/8" steerer tube and an old aluminum quill stem with the stem cut off. I was then able to use an old easton stem from one of my old mountain bikes that was the correct length and worked with the original handle bars. I stuck the head set spacers in there because I thought they looked kinda cool.

Slick original rear reflector still in tact.

The bike has been working great for several months now with no issues. I got rid of a few parts that have been lying around forever so - Double bonus!