Fast Lap

Well, I just got home from a ride to set up the Fish for the race this weekend. The Bike is a Gary Fisher HiFi Carbon that Cahaba let me borrow while mine is being fixed. I seriously doubt I will have mine back by Friday, and I wanted to at least get a rough tune on the suspension before I end up in a pack of people trying to descend a technical section. I roughly set up the rear at 150psi and the front at 90 psi. I took off into the trail heading counter clockwise and don't know exactly what got into me, but I set off on a pretty good pace. The front was bouncing everywhere so I kept decreasing the rebound. I was relatively happy with the rear (a bit stiff but ok) with the rebound in the middle. I saw Omar and a few other serious racer types getting ready for Bump N Grind as they were all making good time going the opposite direction from me. I got to Blood rock a little before 30 minutes, so I knew this could be a decent lap, so I pushed myself a bit. I finally realized that the rebound became better by tuning the dial more toward the +. I still was not particularly fond of the shock as I headed down the Jeep trail. I just let the Titus go and point where i want to go. This bike would bounce around a lot and not absorb as much. I decided I needed less air in the shock, but I was not going to stop. I could have probably run this section at least 1-2 minutes faster on my bike as I was going pretty slow. I ended up slightly shouldering a tree between Chimney ad the BMX track as I was trying to go a little faster. I pushed myself and got back to the parking lot and I was amazed at the time. I had run a 1:27:12!! This is a good minute faster than my fastest recorded time so I a quite happy. Also my average heart rate was 177 with a max of 196. I tried to keep the max down a bit (i have seen as high as 202 when I was pushing really hard) and was surprised the average was so high. I think this is close to my max time as far as pedaling, so I have a ways to go to get in the hour teens. I am pretty happy but I just got through weighing this bike and it is ballpark 26 lbs even (on the bathroom scale) which is a little less than 2 lbs lighter than mine (27.8). I could feel a slight difference during the ride and it makes me want to lose a bit of weight off of mine.