Mt. Bike Now

I did an interview with Tour Divide hopeful Scott Thigpen on his website…and I didn’t swear once!Check it out here: Driven2Divide interviewLook around at the rest of his site while you are there. Lot’s of good info and funny stuff.

Ahhh, the last Trans Iowa post…for now, anyway.

It was 8:45 PM when we left Checkpoint Bravo at 170 miles into Trans Iowa. Clouds overhead obscured whatever helpful moonlight and stars would have otherwise been out to illuminate the night. On went the lights. I usually run a super bright Ayup headlamp and [...]

Within a minute of my 2:30 A.M. alarm going off Saturday morning I was staring at the weather report. Still cold. Still windy. Still suck. Lots of suck. This is what I had planned for and it looked like we were gonna get it. I wolfed down some food and [...]

Last week at the Sunny King Crit Kyle Campbell posed a question to me that made me pause. “…so what made you want to do Trans Iowa?” he asked. This made me think hard and I quickly scurried away to the free beer tent with Tyree to ponder my friend’s question. I [...]

Race Updates : I don’t think there will be any Trans Iowa updates on the news round these parts but fortunately Guitar Ted is going to try and post some updates on his blog. Stay tuned to it HERE during the race if you are interested. I was planning on putting up one last post later this week but I [...]

Here is a quick update since I have not been posting much lately. This riding thing keeps getting in the way. Trans Iowa. Lee and I are still in. George is out…says he doesn’t feel motivated to train for it. Better to realize that now than in some ditch in Iowa in the middle of the night. Pete [...]

I have been mountain biking long enough at this point to develop some fairly strong opinions about what parts work and what sucks, as have most who have been riding for a decade or more.

…or something like that. Melissa went out of town to the beach with her mom this weekend which left me lots of bike, grill, and beer time. Care in prioritizing these three past times was crucial and I messed it up. I went to my buddy Danny’s Friday night for a St. Pattys party which is like every [...]

I took last weekend mostly off riding after a mini mental meltdown that could have been easily avoided. After Southern Cross, I immediately began some hard rides early in the week when I should have rested and come Friday I was beat. Exhausted. Live and learn. Instead of force myself to ride, I worked on some household [...]

The Nature Boy now completes my trifecta of bikes with what has become my favorite bar around – the Niner Flat Top 9. 710mm and 9 degrees sweep seems to be most agreeable to my upper limbs. The carbon one is the shit but I only have one on the mountain bike… The Nature Boy will be [...]

Another edition of Southern Cross is in the books. Here is the rundown of how my race went. This race was the final race of the American Ultra Cross Series with double points up for grabs to those who completed the other gravel endurance races around the country. This coupled with the quick growing reputation of the race brought [...]

People are goin’ nuts about Southern Cross around Birmingham right now and I think it is awesome. I cannot think of a race that so many people around town have been so excited about…I’m probably actually wrong about this and someone smarter than me will point out numerous races I forgot. Anyway. I’m so excited I made a [...]

I bought my 07 Hyundai Accent in 2007 and immediately got a Yakima roof rack for it with 2 King Cobra trays. It is a small car so it gets a roof rack, this is almost an understood thing in the bike world. Well, either that or go the cheap way and get a trunk rack [...]

In the new age of social media it is quite obvious that if you want to ride you also have to post pics before, during, and after, analyze all your data and post it to anyplace that will accept it. I think. I haven’t gone that far but I finally got a GPS, a Garmin Edge 500. It [...]

Racin’ time. Southern Cross 2012 is a mere two weeks away. This will be my first race of the season and man has it come up quick. I avoided the possibility of mental, physical, or emotional burnout by restricting my cyclocross season to only a couple races. Not that I had any sort of goal in mind [...]

EDIT: I am clearing some stuff our around the house and this frame, fork, and crank are for sale! Message me if interested: jkarrasch at hotmail dot com It has been a few weeks since I put up the initial build post for the Black Mountain but I didn’t want to put up the second part of [...]

For those of you not in the know, the Skyway Epic is a section of trail/ forest road in the Talladega National Forest that goes from Sylacauga to Adam’s Gap near Mount Cheaha in Anniston. This will be featured in the Skyway Epic race on May 20. Brent is still figuring out logistics but one can assume [...]

As I mentioned in a previous post there is some sponsor switching around happening this year. I wish I had a dramatic story about being fired or heavily recruited but it really isn’t like that! The Good People sidebar over there to your right (stage left) has dropped and added some names. Maxxis is a bit of a [...]