Another Hippy Crit in the books! This time the pack was tighter and I was in the front. Chris let me lead the "A" pack this time instead of sweep. I took a bunch of pics check em out!

I want to thank Chris and Ryan for letting me be a part of this project again.
​Big thanks to Rouler Brewing, Coffee Cycle, Iron Pig, and PB Bikes!

Coffee, bikes, and beer; the recipie for fun! Hippy Chris from @CoffeeCycle made a route on Strava years ago known as the Hippy Crit. Condensed training that starts and ends down the street from his house. I rode it for the first time May 19, 2014 so I am a four year veteran of these climbs. 11 miles with about 1800 feet of climbing.

There was a huge turnout, it was incredible. Hippy Chris volunteered me to be the group sweeper, aka the last rider. I didn't mind; honestly it was an honor to be singled out to be a ride leader. (even if I'm leading the back group)

Huge thanks to Rouleur Brewing, Iron Pig, and Coffee Cycle. I was stoked to see a ton great kits representing Eliel, GSAAB, Rouleur, Karissa was reppin Retrogression, and I had my VCVF/gym/c&t kit ✌️thanks for reading.

Life happened. July 11, 2017 I was involved in a 5 bike pile-up on the track that granted me a crushed T9 vertebrae. I remember laying there on my back yelling fuuuuuuuuuuck unable to catch my breath. I literally felt crushed, the weight of an elephant standing on my back. The road to recovery sucked. I stayed in bed for a month. During this time my girlfriend took excellent care of me. After 6 weeks I was stir crazy and started to make hour long field trips somewhere almost everyday. I slowly started getting back to normal life. Around this time I snuck back onto my bike and road up 5th Ave, I remember riding through the pain and not being able to breathe on that first ride. I went back to work because I love being there and my coworkers supported me heavily during this time. I was having a fiasco with my insurance to get approved to get a surgery that was highly recommended by my doctor. Finally on September 1, 2017 I had a vertebraplasti operation done by Dr. Kortman at Sharp Imaging near Mesa College. The operation took one afternoon, I went home that night with a new lump of glue in my back. The pressure I felt from the collapsed vertebrae was gone but I had a new pressure like I had a balloon in my back. For the following month my body was tight, I had medical remorse, the new pressure sucked. I was able to ride again but I felt that the bars were too long and low for me on my road bike now. I had an adjustment done my doctor and it felt like that was what needed to happen the whole time. I started doing Monday night training in the Velodrome again with Pam mid-September. Before the season was over I got back on and raced TNR October 23, 2017.


Flash forward to today, I feel pretty much normal! Although I do feel the barometer in my back when weather changes. I don't feel as limber and flexible as I was before, but I can happily ride for hours on end without my T9 hurting at all. Right now I feel like my fitness is skyrocketing!

Saturday, March 5 I got to go meet up with the Specialized roadshow and test out the new Roubaix. The meetup point was at Stone Brewery in Escondido, 30 miles north. I rolled up wearing my neon Specialized jacket I wore around three weeks at SBCU and was recognized by one of the designers that was down here to show off the bike on the ride.

I got sized up on a 58, excitedly I checked the storage box to find it fully loaded with all the emergency supplies. The 58cm model comes with 44 cm bars, I ride 40 cm bars so I was perfectly comfortable riding the pavement but that's personal, and that came in handy later.

I had ridden the new Roubaix before but not clipped in and just around Coronado alleyways, and never clipped in so this was going to be my real first good ride on one. I had also never ridden around Northern the county. The ad for the ride said we were going to do the elfin forest which I had heard of several times before but never ridden so I was excited to go. As soon as we hit the road I started testing the bike out. The new future shock on top of the steer tube under the stem really made a huge difference. We started coming down the hill and I tried hitting every man hole and pothole I could and it was amazing hits in pots that would normally jar and pump my wrists were absolutely nothing. Because of the rain everything was green and beautiful. After several miles of winding paved roads we wind up on a dirt road that eventually stopped at a gate, a few of us hopped the equestrian pass at the gate and continued up a dirt climb that had several features that I knew would making descending tricky. When we came to the end of the trail and regrouped. I was the second to descend the trail. This is when the wider bars came in handy. It really was a trail all the features I had a challenge climbing over became the parts the suspension just soaked up on the way down. It was incredible, it felt like I was mountain biking, there's no way I would have let the brakes go like that if I was on one of my road bikes, the constant tire patch made it feel like a samurai slash down the mountain. As we regrouped with the people that didn't want the extra credit climbing we started riding back and I continued to take the roughest path possible. When I was chatting with the designers I found out one of them was from San Diego, City Heights actually to be specific. Also he was a track cyclist whose favorite bike is one he got from a European olympic team frame builder that is basically one of the bikes raced in Rio, also he had a bunch of rad tattoos and I recognized him from my time at SBCU. On the ride back we took a slightly different way than before. A few times I stood up on the pedals in to climb and felt incredible responsiveness, it just does what I want. I noticed a positraction feeling when I was cornering that felt great, this bike is a game changer in everyway.

This is THE bike to have for putting in miles and an awesome all surface road bike. With the perfect fit you could ride this bike for hours on end. The shock is fully active so your constantly saving energy from fatigue on this platform versus any other road bike. There is room for much fatter tires on there but I was impressed how the 26c tire package off the shelf handled what I threw at it.

Here is the data from the ride, nothing crazy but a route I can't wait to take again!
https://www.strava.com/activities/887744676/

if you are looking for a new bike, test one of these out. Cheers!

I think that one of the best parts about this challenge is that it makes me my day off rides more of an adventure, I dedicate more hours this week to riding than most of my other training weeks. I quite enjoy pedaling without a destination. I've been caught thinking every afternoon about where exactly I am going to ride the next the morning. I always start by going north and go with the flow. At 347/500km I was planning my next day to crank out 80-100km (turned out to be 115km) leaving a little more mileage to squeak out Friday hoping to finish before the weekend. The forecast said rain so I layered up: base layer, jersey, bibs, leg warmers, wind shell, shoe covers, neck gaiter, loaded commuter backpack and commuted 33km in a downpour to get 495km/500km so leaving just 5k to go I finished easily with a wet commute home that afternoon but this time by taking the ferry instead of pedaling the 30km around the bay again

the bike
this year I road a steel track bike for my 500km. Fixed gear, brakeless, geared at a respectable 49x15 I turned the cranks 73,188 times in 6 days to complete the challenge. My beautiful bike was built by an underground frame builder in 1998 named Joe Starck while he worked in Bill Holland's shop in east county. The best way to describe Joe is he is an Artesian. He only put out badass work. The frame is literally perfect. I purchased the frame from a riding buddy's son who had it custom made. The paint job matches his custom road bike and I have taken quite a liking to the Emerald Green track machine. The frame is made of three different varietys of Columbus steel. Selected for weight and strength; the top tube and downtube are oversized but also the thinnest tubes I've ever ridden and the chain stays are the most robust. There is 1mm of tire clearance on either side of the 700x24c Specialized Turbo Cotton Tyres that are mounted to a Miche Pistard TR wheels. Turning the wheels is a Miche Primato crankset and a gold KMC 710sl chain. The Deda Velocidad handlebars weigh a little less than the frame does, but gives the light frame some front end stability.

I noticed on day 3 of the challenge that the added mileage is starting to take a toll on my equipment. Riding in less than ideal conditions there was mud on the seattube and the chain was pretty grimey. On day 5 I had to ride in a downpour that cleaned all the dirt off my bike but made my drive train very sad and actually filled my back wheel completely with water. Water was bleeding out of the spoke nipples so I spun the wheel to hear a slosh sound, to let it all out faster I unmounted the tire and unleashed atleast 12oz of water. I have been taggin my pics with #fixed500 #raphafestive500 because I think I am the only one who did all 500km on a fixed gear trackbike without brakes. Thanks for reading!

This past week I was at Specialized Bicycle University (SBCU) in Morgan Hill, California. I learned so much! It is incredible how much pain I tolerated before. To put it simply I feel like everything I thought a bike fit was got thrown out the window. My goal is to become the best bike fitter in San Diego. Enjoy these pics, please comment at the bottom if you have a question!!

I am so happy I had the opportunity to go to SBCU. It gave me a new direction to take my cycling career. I am going to focus on being the best fitter in San Diego. I am now Body Geometry Fit Level 1 specialist. In January I am going back for the level 2 class to learn more about mountain bike fitting and aero fitting. I am forever gratefull and want to give a huge thank you to Karl, Dale, and Thayne at HolLands for sending me to SBCU. Another huge thanks to my instructors Julie, Hugo, Andy, Joe, and Robert for an excellent experience and instructuon. Thank you, see you in Janurary!
​
The Body Geometry Fit process takes about two hours. The first hour is an 18 part body examination, followed by a 15 step fit process. It is an ultra premium service where I systematically custom tailor the bicycle to the rider. I am excited, I felt that I had plateaued as a salesman but now I have found a new calling as a Fit Specialist. 

Here is more info about Specialized Body Geometry Fit
#bodygeometryfit #SBCU #iamspecialized #gotmytopcap

Several awesome Tokidoki characters adorn this high quality Italian made jersey. If you want to stand out and make people smile then check this out!

Shipping was faster than expected. Shipped from Italy, my jerseys were delivered in only 2 days by DHL. Upon opening the package the jerseys were packed in celo wrap and placed in a neatly folded reusable tote.

Although the jersey is mostly black, the premium material breathes great and stays cool. This jersey is lightweight and the fit is super tight, I love it. I wear this jersey when I want to go fast and stand out.

I have two Bikeinside.cc jerseys and really like how hey fit and feel. I broke out a flexible ruler to size upto the chart and ordered size small. I am really happy I can confidently pack my pockets without worrying about my belongings bailing out. I highly recommend this jersey for the best fit and rad design. Get it here:
​http://bikeinside.cc/en/product/jersey-tokidoki-limited-edition/

Or find a route; good chance if your looking to ride the Great Western Loop you can find the route pretty easily. I like to use STRAVA or RIDE WITH GPS to make my routes because they're easy to use.

I just linked my Facebook account to sign up and when it asked me to sign up for some plan I didn't pick any. I just clicked "PLAN" and then started making my route. On Strava I used this feature from Strava Labs called GXP to Route to turn an activity I logged into a route I could tweak for 

On either website you choose, navigate to the ride you want to upload. Select "export" ride data. TCX files are a what I have had the best luck with. Save the ride  data somewhere easy to access.

Now plug your Garmin into your computer and open your file explorer. You need to go to the folder named "NewFiles" next is easy, just drag and drop the .TCX files into the NewFiles folder. Safely remove the usb device and you are done! 

It should take a little longer than usual to turn the unit on. Now on your unit navigate to the courses screen and your route should be there. On my Garmin 510 the route ques were awesome to help me stay on my planned route when riding in unfamiliar areas. 

My new Garmin 820 has a cool feature that will map me to the start of any route so if you have not invested in a Garmin yet, I highly recommend to splurge and get the 820. It has been an awesome training tool.

Here is my favorite training route on Mount Soledad. Thanks for reading!

Key features of this tool roll include easy access with the buckle and button snap, simple organization through three separated pockets, and versatility as a saddle bag or tool roll for your pocket/bag. The size of this bag is absolutely perfect. I can fit a tube, co2, inflator, 3wrencho (review to come), and multi tool. The sinch strap and buckle are strong. I feel like my stuff is safe when mounted on the bike. I know it is a snap to take my tools with me when I lockup. This little bag bleeds quality, I really like it.

Road Runner Bags products are handmade in Los Angeles by cyclists for cyclists. Support the people not the corporation! Get yours here for only $22. Well worth it.