Here’s a tip: Your Trek TTX uses a mighty long rear derailleur cable. At least mine did.

I installed new cables in my bike in preparation for IM Wisconsin. It seemed like a good idea after watching (from 4 bike lengths behind, of course) my training partner, John Wilson, big ring it all the way back from Hawi in last year’s Ironman after he notice his front derailleur cable had frayed almost to the point of breaking.

Replacing the front cable is easy, just thread it through starting at the shifter. I removed the metal plate just below the front derailleur, but you don’t have to. There is a pocket behing the plate and the cable housing tucks in there, pretty neat, so the cable end pops out of the hole.

I tried the same thing on the rear derailleur cable but no shiny cable came out of the housing. I thought I’d miss-threaded. Then I saw just the tip of the cable sticking out; the housing was just as long as the cable, and this was a 2000 mm length cable. I solved the problem by cutting off 2″ of housing near the rear derailleur, it looked as if I had enough extra slack. You can see that the one derailleur housing in the picture is shorter…it’s all one piece, just push it through until there is enough coming out of the rear chain stay for a nice smooth loop behind the rear derailleur.

I ride a size small TTX, if you’re on a large, check with the mechanics, I don’t know if a 2000 mm cable will reach. Now if I could only figure out how to drop my fork out, I could change the housing. I’ll check in with Doug, the team wrench, at the race site.

Trek released a new singlespeed mountain bike this year. Since I’m taking a break from racing Xterra and focusing on endurance singlespeed mountain bike racing, this was the bike I selected for 2008. While there was a slight delay in receiving the bike, it was well worth the wait.
This singlespeed hardtail bike is called a 69er, since it has a 26” rear wheel, and a 29”front wheel. It was developed by mountain bike Olympian / alternative MTB legend Travis Brown, who I’ve had the misfortune of racing against at Sea Otter (there’s nothing quite like getting beaten by 4 minutes, well actually there is - more on that later). It’s the first of Trek’s 69er line, in 2008 they will be producing geared hardtail and full suspension versions as well. The original 69er will remain largely unchanged for 2008.
Frame: The frame is aluminum, which works great for this application. Since singlespeeders spend a lot of time climbing out of the saddle and reefing on the handlebars, a stiff frame is key. If I may dream for a minute, I’d love to see Trek make this in Carbon Fiber, especially since no other manufacturers are doing it…
It may sound strange to have a 29” front wheel and a 26” rear wheel, and the bike indeed looks different. However, there are sound reasons behind this, and after riding it all season, I’ve become a believer.

1. The 29” Front wheel rolls better. The larger contact area, and larger wheel diameter cause the wheel to roll faster and not get deflected as easily as a 26” wheel, most noticeable on rocky descents. The bike descends SO well, I feel almost as fast as I do on my full-suspension.
2. The 26” rear wheel accelerates faster than a 29” wheel and allows for shorter chainstays, which climb better (I’ve never ridden a full 29er, but both points sound reasonable).
3. The sliding dropouts are just about the coolest thing ever. They allow the user to run a standard quick release hub as well as a normal BB. This facilitates tire changes and chain adjustments. Speaking from experience with all singlespeed options, the sliding dropouts are so much better than horizontal dropouts or an eccentric BB that I can’t imagine either of those will be around for long..
4. The rootbeer brown color is terrific. It looks very cool. (though this year I’ve certainly done my best to scratch a tremendous amount of paint cartwheeling the bike across the rocks)
5. The geometry is perfect. Since I ride a medium, I was concerned the handlebar would be too high and it would be difficult to weight the wheels optimally while climbing. Turns out, it climbs as well as it descends.
6. It sure gets a lot of attention! It’s a unique and new design, and I get comments and questions on every ride and at every race.
7. The Bontrager Race X lite wheels are stiff and light. I don’t notice any wheel flex, whether climbing out of the saddle, or hard cornering on descents.

While I sincerely like the bike, I feel there are a few minor areas for improvement (of course I pretty much feel that way about everything in life:

1. The whole thing should be lighter. 25 lbs is too heavy for a singlespeed. It’s pretty easy to lighten it up, but it would be nice if it came that way, though that would make it more expensive…
2. The bike should be a little cheaper. I realize this is in direct contradiction to my quest for it to be lighter, and I understand this is surely a result of a small production run of a new product, but feasibly this will change when they start mass producing it.
3. As mentioned, the frame would be ridiculously cool if it were carbon, though I’m not sure how that would stand up to my recent rash of crashes…
4. The fork should be toned down (see pt 1). The bike comes with a 3.75lb Maverick dual-crown fork. While the travel is nice, as a traditionalist I find the thru-axle a little inconvenient and the double crown over spec’ed. A Rock Shox Reba Race would be 0.25lb lighter.
5. The rear disc rotor should either come spec’ed as 140mm, or allow an adapter. Most racers are running this to save weight, since most braking power comes from the front anyway.
6. It needs a second bottle cage mount. Since I train and race for the longer endurance events, I need to carry more fluids, and don’t want to carry a camelback.

Interestingly, the complaint I hear most from non-believers is you have to carry 2 tubes. Before I go any further on this, I should state that EVERYONE should be running tubeless. However, if you get a front flat, simply inflate your 26” tube to the point where it fits in the 29” tire, mount it the rest of way, and inflate it the rest of the way, and you’re good to go!

In conclusion, I really like the 69er’s ride, and definitely recommend this bike to anyone shopping for a singlespeed.

See that thing that looks like a single serve pizza in the middle of my wheel? It’s a 27 cog and mine is part of a Shimano 10 speed 12 X 27 cassette which replaced the 12 X 25 I’ve ridden for years. While Laura Tingle finds it so hard having enormous hair, I love having an enormous cog.

Western CT where I ride is hilly, but I didn’t get one because I was “paper-boying” up the hills here with a 25 cog. I got it because I run better after spinning up those hills with a 27 versus dancing on the peddles with a more manly gear. The jump between gears isn’t as great as I thought it would be, as this gear chart shows.

I’m swallowing my pride and packing up this super granny cassette for Ironman Wisconsin. Last time I raced there, a spectator dressed up as the devil taunted riders struggling up Stagecoach Rd with bacon stuck on the end of a pitchfork. This year I plan to be smiling when I pass him.

At the beginning of this year, I needed a new singlespeed for Sea Otter. Since I broke the frame I was riding last summer and didn’t have my new Timex Trek 69’er yet (since there was a delay in availability), I converted last year’s hardtail, and thought I should share this beautiful, sensual process with everyone. The process for creating a singlespeed is really quite simple and takes less than 30 minutes, “It’s breathtaking, I suggest you try it”. If you’re not ready to go buy your own, like the Trek 69er, this is a great way to get an inexpensive introduction to singlespeeding.
Take any currently functional hardtail mountain bike, that you most likely don’t ride anymore if you don’t race and have joined the rest of the 20th century with full suspension.

1. Remove all shifting related apparatus: shifters, cables, derailleurs
2. Remove big and small chain rings, move the middle 32 tooth ring to the outside position install with custom chainring bolts ($5)
3. Remove cassette, install single 18 tooth cog ($6) with spacers ($5)
4. Shorten chain, install surly singleator ($30) if necessary
5. Weigh bike and marvel at it’s light weight and simplicity (My temporary Giant = 19.5 lbs)
6. Ride & smile

Try it and have fun! Here are 2 pics: last year’s Kelly, and this year’s Trek.

This weekend I was out on the Lake Placid course, one of the advantages of living less than 2 hours away, and I had a solid weekend full of self inflicted pain! However, this was not a normal weekend training camp. My bike training (and hopefully racing) was totally revolutionized…why? For the first time ever I rode with a power tap . What an enlightening experience!! Now with a grand total of 3 rides under my belt with this tool I am still very much in the learning phase and, believe me, knowing the power you are producing minute to minute is awesome, but there is much, much more to training and racing with power than just watts.
There is a lot of science and theory that also must be incorporated into training with power. For example when I uploaded my file to my computer I was able to see histograms of my ride including power output (seen below), heart rate, cadence, speed as well as some estimates of the physiologic stress of my ride. The following chart was also spit out…Oh man do I have some learning to do.

Lake Placid Second Loop:
Duration: 2:35:14 (2:35:15)
Work: 2134 kJ
TSS: 140.8 (intensity factor 0.726)
Norm Power: 240
VI: 1.08
Distance: 56.14 mi
Min Max Avg
Power: 0 684 222 watts
Heart rate: 0 0 0 bpm
Cadence: 29 193 91 rpm
Speed: 0 54.5 21.0 mph
Pace 1:06 0:00 2:51 min/mi
Hub Torque: 0 297 85 lb-in
Crank Torque: 0 797 207 lb-in
Regardless of the fact that I am a newbie to power I am already aware of the amazing amount of information that can be gathered and analyzed using a Power Tap. My coach, Kurt Perham, is being very patient as I ask a million questions and begin to wrap my head around the power of this tool. Training with a Power Tap will definitely taking my training and as a result my racing to the next level!

Train Smart! Rest Hard!