This spring, like most, has been up and down.  What started out as late-breaking then very warm and dry season turned back into cool and rainy weather like we’d expect in April.

Last week got off to a decent enough start with a couple light days on the bike before Wednesday’s Catamount training race.  After rounding up all of my gear and hoping for a dry course the skies opened up and it absolutely poured for almost an hour starting at about 3.  Somehow that passed and then it lightened up enough for me to consider making the trek north, but a second passing shower ended any hopes of getting out on the course.  Slightly dejected and frustrated a poured myself a drink and sat down on the couch to catch up on some television (I found out later that it had been canceled anyway so I made the right call).

Thursday was another strange day because it was mostly clear through the whole day before another deluge hit just after dark.  I snuck in a dry 45 minute trail ride before my chiropractic appointment but had a very slow, treacherous drive home.  It was raining so hard that I could only muster a safe speed around 40 mph and was very rapidly overtaking other vehicles at that pace.

Friday (as you may recall from my previous post) was my planned trip to Highland.  With more rain in the forecast I was skeptical about hurtling myself down slick expert trails on an unfamiliar bike but fortunately my fears were unfounded.  The trail builders at Highland have done a great job and with well constructed features and the natural advantage of New Hampshire’s sandy soil the trails were in great shape.  With the exception of some slick roots and rocks my experience was otherwise unaffected by the weather.  I’ll have a formal, in-depth write-up ready after I get some of the photos back, but the short version is that I had a great time.  Highland runs a first-class operation top-to-bottom and with some quality instruction from their head camp instructor Chris Chmliewski I was bombing down the steeps on a Cannondale Claymore.  Over the course of a few runs I talked myself into demoing a Transition TR 250 which they had in the fleet.  That was a good and bad thing.  It was good because I realized those bikes are awesome and my 250 lust is well founded.  It was bad because I re-aggravated my slow-healing back injury and stacked my ribs on the handlebar in a stupid, low speed bobble.  Turns out big bikes need to be ridden fast, and at normal XC pick your way through pace they’re sluggish and unwieldy.  That’s not the bike’s fault, but as I was getting more fatigued after 3+ hours of DH runs I was worn out and while I lost precision I also started slipping into XC mode and learned very quickly that what works on a steep 4″ bike doesn’t work on low, slack 7″ travel monster.

So stoked but semi-hobbled I sat at home with Carrie drowning my sorrows in bourbon while tag teaming junk food.  Not normal for us to say the least, but given the circumstances and the high risk of flooding it became a very necessary coping mechanism.  Fortunately we escaped the torrents unscathed and both our home and our town were unaffected.  

When the rains passed and things dried out on Monday I was able to sneak out for a 50 mile road ride.  6 Hours of Pat’s Peak is 2 weeks so I need to keep up my mileage if I’m going to be competitive.  

This week it’s back to training and getting as lean possible before next weekend.  Jason is putting the finishing touches on my new race wheels so I’m hoping to get some time on them this weekend. My bags are packed and I’m ready to contest my first race of the season at Catamount tonight and hopefully my back will cooperate.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

When I look at the number of times I’ve used the Maxxis Aspen I think about how I could get more out of it.

The 29 x 2.1 size weighs a hair over 500 grams and fully measures its claimed width, so for all of those stats what’s the catch?  500 grams is light, especially for a 29er tire, so really that means that it’s built for racing- plain and simple.  The treads are a basic-looking ridge design with some trapezoidal arrowhead-looking blocks to keep it interesting (the overall pattern looks like a minimal version of the trail-centric Maxxis Ardent).  The casing shape is fairly square so a wide contact patch puts a surprising amount of tread in contact with the ground.

Overall tread height it pretty minimal to keep rolling resistance down, but the real story here is the cornering knobs.  The tire itself is designed like any good race tire to roll fast in a straight line and even with a wide contact patch the tire does just that.  As the tire is leaned over in loose sand or gravel it can skate around for a split second before the side knobs dig in to provide cornering stability.  On a few occasions I started to slide through some sandy corners and every time the tire slipped until the side knobs started to bite- and no further.   

The light weight and fast rolling come at a cost and that is overall volume; in order to make the casing tough enough to withstand normal trail conditions it has to smaller in circumference to keep the weight down.  As with any low tread tire most of the weight is in the casing since the minimal treads provide little in the way of protection from sharp objects.  For this reason I prefer the Aspen to the Ikon in places where sidewall cuts and damage are a concern.

This lack of volume can be seen on the trail when hitting square-edged rocks and tall roots at speed.  While the Aspen won’t unceremoniously toss you over the bars when you get off of your line it will not offer the reassuring centering bounce of a higher volume tire.

The Aspen and Ikon are similar options that can often be used interchangeably and Maxxis sponsored pro riders will often be split between the two models at any given race.  The difference is that the Ikon has a taller tread, squarer profile and higher volume that does well when the ground is soft.  The Ikon is by no means a slow rolling tire, but the Aspen is appreciably faster.  On very firm ground where the Ikon’s taller knobs can squirm the Aspen is more solid as the barred tread is much shorter.  The Aspen is also less expensive and wears longer.  Many racers will run the Aspen almost exclusively, but with my skillset I tend to prefer the Ikon.  If there’s any doubt about what conditions I may encounter the Ikon is more predictable and versatile in soft terrain since it can handle all but the worst mud.

Overall the Aspen is a great tire and it is far more versatile than other fast rolling dry condition options like the Small Block 8.  In the sandy washout anecdote mentioned above I would have surely crashed had I been riding the SB8 instead of the Aspen since the SB8 has no cornering knobs to speak of.  The Aspen also outperforms its counterparts in light mud since its flat-ish profile means a stable transition from edge to edge, and where it does slip it quickly and predictably catches hold again as soon as the cornering lugs hook up.

For more information visit www.maxxis.com.

Although I haven’t cranked out a ton of wordy posts recently I have been very busy riding, training and working on blog-related materials.

I’ve mentioned the Pro-35 kit which will be rolling through production shortly, but before those land I’ll have the new 2013 version of the Pro-35 t-shirt.  Last year’s GTI design was a hit so with some subtle tweaks I’m running the GTI again for this round.

Here’s what the art will look like.

Some of my developer friends seem to think I can get paypal enabled for folks that would like to purchase one of these suckers, so I may get that running before too long as well.

In the meantime if you’re interested in one of these just holler via email, comment, or smoke signal.