It's getting closer

Today I stopped by the bike pedalers north to pick up my frame and wheels to take them out to the new store out south where I'm going to be building. It is finally going to happen. I placed the order last week for the rest of my components and I'm hoping to be starting the building process by the end of the week. I got a email saying that the stuff is shipped. I can't wait. I've been waiting to finish this for a while now.

On the mountain bike end though it seems like there is always something that needs to be replaced. Last week Paul was putting some major time into getting the rear der to shift properly and got it to work pretty good. When I was out on my ride yesterday towards the end of the ride the shifting was pretty worthless. When I took in today to get it tuned for this weeks race Paul and I started to look at other reasons why the shifting sucks. After measuring the chain to check it's wear it is pretty much finished. It needs to be replaced. Usually when we change out a chain we recommend changing the rear cassette to since they usually wear at about the same rate. My cassette looks pretty good but since this is my race bike I will probably end up dumping the cash in it and getting a new cassette to.

Along with the chain and cassette when we had the cranks off last week to clean them we noticed that I was missing a tooth in my large chain ring. It's not to big of a deal for now but it is going to have to be replaced eventually. I had kind of been planning an upgrading it anyways but after I bought some new wheels. I guess it is what it is. This is the bike that I spend most of my time on and with all the racing and training I shouldn't be surprised to have to be replacing parts. The bad thing is I like the really nice stuff and it's pricey.

Paul and I have been talking and he has been seeing some more about SRAM's mountain bike components and is thinks that they seem to work pretty well and may have some advantages over XTR. I need to use some of it to beleive it. I have been very happy with the Shimano XTR mountain bike group that I have but I never can say that something esle might not be better.

No riding for me tonight. I'm starting to taper for the week. Yesterday I tried to get out and get some intensity in but my legs weren't having it and I just pushed as hard as I could without getting to uncomfortable. Tomorrow is my all day and night Thursday at the college so Firday I will probably put in a good spin with a little intensity to open up the legs for Saturday.

Harp