We went to spend time with family for Christmas in Chilliwack/Abbotsford. I decided that while we were in Chilliwack to ride Vedder Mountain, one of my favorite shuttling places to ride. My brother didn’t want to get wet, so I was on my own. Surprisingly enough, I wasn’t the only one riding there. There were a few other guys skipping turkey to shred some trails. I guess I’m not the only weirdo who like to ride his bike no matter what day it is…
Dreamin’ of a white Christmas?
This is what our living room looks like. We have no garage or any other place to set up our “bike shop”, so my mom has let us take over the living room in our rental house. In my opinion, it looks a lot better than a regular living room anyways. What kind of mother would allow this? A mother who wants her children to follow their dreams and is willing to make sacrifices. We moved to another province just so that my brother and I could ride our bikes more often and be closer to the major spots. Sure it helps that BC is a beautiful, we don’t have to shovel snow every day in the winter, and we have lots of family close to us, but that’s still a major commitment.
Just this morning, my dad I talked about my plans after high school and he wanted to make sure that he wasn’t “pushing” me to follow my dreams of racing instead of going to university after high school. Who would ever want to go to university if they could ride their bike for a living? I realize that the journey to the World Cup won’t always be easy or comfortable and there will be times, probably while I’m sleeping on somebody’s couch, where I think that university would be the easier path. In those moments, I’ll just think of myself sitting behind a desk in a hot stuffy room with 300 other youngsters listening to a teacher in the perfect riding conditions and that should kick me back into the right way of mind. Reminding me of that just shows how much my parents care and how much they’re supporting me on my journey.
After a short downhill ride on Seymour, my dad, brother, and I went exploring for road biking trails that we could ride. I was finding that riding on the roads with all the vehicles wasn’t really my thing and that I wasn’t going about it the right way. I didn’t like the vehicles flying past me and the roads around our house aren’t the flattest. There are quite a few hills which isn’t good for what I want to do now, which is build a base endurance. I will achieve that by going for long “easy” rides on relatively flat terrain for long periods of time. Later on in the spring I’ll go riding on the hills and also do some sprint training.
We heard that there was a good road biking/walking path literally right behind our house, so after a short drive, we thought we found where it started. After we got home, I washed my DH bike, changed from my downhill gear to my road bike gear, and went out to try and see if it was what we were looking for. It was perfect. The trail is 10 kilometers long with only 2 or 3 minor climbs and I can do the full 20 kilometers (there and back) in under 50 minutes which means I can keep my average speed 23-24 Km/h. I am working up to being able to ride 50-60 kilometers in one ride, so this trail is the perfect road bike training ground. It is also a very beautiful ride which helps distract me from how cold it is.
I have recently finished reading the book Mindset by Carol Dweck. This chart explains pretty well what the whole book is about. Fixed mindset verses growth mindset. As you can see, having the fixed mindset isn’t going to be very good for racing downhill. I need to be open and ready to embrace challenges, learn from my mistakes, and learn from the success of others.
My dad and I were looking through off season training systems and we came across the James Wilson DB Combo’s Program. We decided it would be a good program because it covers the fundamentals. All it requires is your body weight, a set of dumbbells, and a chair. Since I’m still riding in the “off season” I am doing the 3X a week Optimal Off Season Schedule:
The workouts A and B are the weight training and the 15 M-TRTU is the core training.
2013 Zee
Pros:
Cons:
2013 Saint M820
Pros:
Cons:
Bottom Line
Both the Zee’s and Saint brakes work great. Bleeding is quick and easy, and they both come with Shimano’s new finned brake pads that distribute heat better than the standard pads. If you are an average rider who gets out to the park on weekends or even hard-core riders who race over the summer months, Shimano Zee brakes are an excellent choice. They are very adjustably and offer good stopping power. If you are racing every single weekend and are serious about it, then maybe spending the extra money to get the Saint M820’s might be worth it because of the increased consistency in power and strength.
In Depth Review
After opening the package from TBS Bike Parts, I was instantly excited to put my new Shimano Zee brakes on my bike. After riding a week or so with my old Avid Elixers, I realized that they weren’t giving me the stopping power that I needed. I had never really cared much about my brakes until this past year. As long as they worked moderately well, I was fine with it. Racing changed that though. As odd as it might seem to non-bikers, good brakes actually make you faster. It allows you to slow down quicker in turns and also makes it easier to drift in the steep corners. I wasn’t getting that luxury with the Elixers.
Zee First Impression: I put the Zee’s on my Demo 8 and they looked great. I couldn’t wait to hop on my bike and try them out. After riding around in the parking garage, I noticed that compared to the Elixers, they seemed to feel like they needed to be bled, but once you pulled the levers, they stopped quite quickly. My brother who had been using Shimano Saint since the beginning of the year assured me that it was just the way that Shimano brakes felt. I was quite annoyed that they didn’t feel like I Imagined or wanted them to feel, but I was still excited to actually use them on the trails.
Saint M820 First Impressions: I wouldn’t have gone with Shimano Saint brakes if they didn’t come on the bike that I’ve been riding for almost a month now. They felt quite similar to the Zee brakes, but they seemed to catch and lock quicker and easier than the Zee’s. I also didn’t have to take the brake off and pump the calipers together every day. For the most part, the levers stay where you leave them.
First Days With Zee’s: Unfortunately, we had a sudden down pour at Silverstar and my first day on these breaks were in muddy, cold, and wet conditions. After getting the first couple “adjustment runs” as I call them, I was ready to see what they could really do. My brother and I decided to go down one of the steeper trails on Silverstar called Downtown. The brakes worked great compared to the Elixers. They weren’t squeaky or loud in the rain, and my previous issues about them being soft and not being able to stop was put to rest. Compared to the Elixers, the bike stopped much quicker and there wasn’t as much of the tires slowing down before they started to skid. As the park dried out, the brakes continued to feel better and better as I got used to them.
First Days With Saints: The same was true with testing the Saint brakes at Whistler. It was muddy, really cold, and wet. I found that I couldn’t bring the levers in as much on the Saint’s as I could with the Zee’s, but It was far enough for me, plus didn’t need an Alen Key to do it. I found that the second adjustment, the free stroke, on the Saint that the Zee didn’t have didn’t actually do much. The Saint’s seemed to grab and stop quicker than the Zee’s and had equal if not more power.
Dislikes Zee: Over time, I noticed that every day I had to take the brake off the rotor and pump the lever to bring the lever out. Now I like the lever pretty close to the handlebars unlike most people. If you like your brakes close, you’ll have this problem. Even after multiple bleeds, the calipers seem to push themselves back into the brake housing if you like your brakes close to the handlebars. If you keep the levers out, they work great and you don’t need to do this.
Dislikes Saint: Unlike the Zee’s, taking the brake off the rotor and pumping the lever to bring the calipers closer together didn’t work. I read on a forum that you had to bleed them without the bleed block and the calipers pushed slightly together or shave down your bleed block. I tried doing this and it worked. The brakes were perfectly set up how I wanted them. I have also just recently broke (ie: hitting a tree at high speed) my rear brake lever and unfortunately, I have to buy a whole new brake. Nobody sells the individual lever assembly.
In conclusion, both the Zee’s and Saint brakes work great. Bleeding is quick and easy and isn’t required as often as Avid brakes. I will have a video showing you how to bleed Saint brakes, but the procedure is exactly the same on the Zee’s. Both Zee’s and Saint M820’s come with Shimano’s new finned brake pads that distribute heat better than the standard ones, but they are quite a bit more expensive. I have also been experimenting with Brake Authority brake pads and I will soon be comparing those to the standard Shimano pads in a future post. If you are just a normal rider who gets out to the park on weekends or even hard-core riders who race over the summer months, Shimano Zee brakes are an excellent choice. They have great power, good adjustably, and they have good stopping power. If you are racing every single weekend and are serious about it, then maybe spending the extra money to get the Saint M820’s might be worth it because of the increased consistency in power and strength.
I recently got a road bike! Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Levi, you ride downhill. What the heck do you need a road bike for? You should be ashamed of yourself. You can’t get better at riding over rocks and roots on a skimpy road bike! Are you gonna wear the funny lookin’ spandex suit too? Downhill kits look way better! Don’t even get me started on the wheel size. 29ers? Psh!! You might as well ride cross country. DH all the way!” Well, if it was a few years ago, I probably would have agreed with you, but road biking is one of the best ways to build my base endurance for downhill biking.
Notice the cute lookin’ spandex?
After changing the pedals to Shimano SPD’s and adjusting the seat height, I hopped on and went on my first road ride. I decided that I would try to go to my friends house who lived relatively close, plus it was the only place I really knew how to get to. I never realized how much I took an engine for granted. There is a long hill not too far from our house, and I decided that it would be a good thing to train on. I made it about 3/4 of the way up before I had to stop. The second time, I broke it up into “stages” where it got steep and where if flattened out. I also tried to go slower and put my multiple gears to use. I made it all the way up the second time without stopping. That hill has been a necessity in my daily rides and I ride it faster every time. I actually have found that it’s harder to come down because some idiot decided that it would be a good idea to put a stop sign at the bottom, so I can’t just let the brakes go. Oh, well, I guess I’ll just try my luck and hope I don’t become a hood ornament.
Yesterday, a few friends and I and took the forty minute drive to Squamish to do some shuttling. They had been there before, but my brother and I never have. We met up with some other people from Whistler and started driving up the road past Quest University.
It was about 10 minutes to the top of the our warm up run called Cake Walk. It was a nice easy technical run with a couple drops and jumps. Some parts of the trail didn’t drain well and there was quite a lot of water, but for the most part, the conditions were good.
After dumping out of Cake Walk, we made the 8-10 minute hike to Full Nelson, a trail used in the film Strength In Numbers. That was probably my favorite overall run of the day, even though we only did it once. It was smooth and had lots of good berms and jumps. I did find that you really had to keep your speed up or you’d have to pedal to keep a good flow, which didn’t happen because there were four people ahead of me and only one of them had ever ridden that trail. Full Nelson dumped right into Half Nelson which was pretty much just a smaller version of Full Nelson, hence the name. That dumped us out onto a parking lot about a third up the mountain.
We shuttled the bumpy road all the way to the top to get to a trail called Grin and Holler. About 500 Meters from the trailhead, we hit snow. I had never ridden in the snow on my DH bike so I was kind of excited. We pushed up to the trail and found that it had been ridden a little bit so at least we could see where we were suppose to go. It was quite steep and technical and me being new to clipless shoes didn’t help much. The trail had two mandatory high skinnies that you couldn’t ride around, one of which I fell off (walking it). After that, the trail seemed to get easier and less steep.
Right at the end of the trail was the best part of my day. Big manmade jumps. There were four wooden lipped gaps that I couldn’t wait to put my tires on them. After walking down and looking at all of them, the only one I was really worried about was the first one because it had a wood landing which was almost as high as the take off. First jump was about 15-18 feet, second was about 22′ third was at least 27′ and the last one, depending where you landed was 35+. I dropped in, hitting all of them the first go, which I didn’t think I’d do, but the jumps were built perfectly and judging the speed was easy. I overshot the last one by quite a bit, but It wasn’t a big deal because the landing was so long. Only three out of the six of us did them and we pushed back up three more times because they were so much fun.
The last trail of the day we decided to do all of Half Nelson because we had only done half of it when we did Full Nelson. The top half of the trail is pretty much the same as the bottom. The top was a little more technical, but it turned into smooth flowy goodness real fast. Again, I was behind two people, so I couldn’t go as fast and keep a good flow going. You’d think I would have learned by now, eh? Everybody was too tired to do another run, so we rode down the road back to Squamish. It wasn’t as steep as we had thought so we actually did a lot of pedaling (oops).
The thing I learned about riding Squamish is that you’re going to have to hike up no matter what trail you do, so if you’re used to riding park, you’re not gonna like it. It is DEFINITELY worth the hike, though. Just make sure to bring lots of water.
Last jump on Grin And Holler. It’s a biggie!
Todd Schumlick the PerformX coach has been encouraging me to work on the mental or psychological part of racing and to do so he has recommended that I start reading and research sports psychology.
The following is the list of books that I will be reading in preparation for the 2014 race season:
Mindset: New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck
In Pursuit of Excellence – 4th Edition by Terry Orlick
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly, Csikszentmihalyi
The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
A little while ago, I ran across a post on a website that had a height-to-size chart of the 2012 Demo 8 and I saw that the size of bike that I was riding was way too small. A medium frame is suppose to work for a rider who was up to 5’11” and not me who’s around 6’2″. I thought about this for a while and realized that a longer bike would help with stability at high speeds and help me not be so “over the bars”. I sort of started looking for a larger bike on the Buy and Sell page of Pinkbike. My brother actually sent me a link to a Commencal race bike which I had researched a little bit. I messaged the owner asking about sizes and when I could possibly take a look at the bike.
Kyle Sangers
On Friday, I went to look at it. A Commencal Supreme DH World Cup. Pretty long name, eh? The person selling it and he told me he was the owner/manager of Perform X Racing. Little did I know that the bike that I would be looking at would be used by Kyle Sanger on two UCI Downhill World Cup races.
I went to parking lot 4 here in Whistler on a rainy and cold friday and connected with Todd Schumlick, who I had previously read about in an article on Pinkbike. I didn’t recognize him at first and only did because he talked about that article. He pulled the beautiful looking bike out of his van and proceeded to tell me pretty much EVERYTHING about it, which was good. I asked some questions about the bike and about his team and I told him I’d talk to my dad about the bike when he came up from Vancouver that night. Surprisingly when I talked with my Dad, he said we should go for it (which made me very happy and unable to sleep that night). We stopped by the bank on the way to Pemberton early Saturday morning to go and meet Todd at his house. After a couple hours of very helpful advise and conversation (enough to fill an entire blog post), we walked away with the bike, as well as extra parts.
We made the drive back to Whistler and started to move all of the parts off of my brother’s bike to my Demo which he is now using. The process, I thought, would only take a couple of hours. We ended up being in the underground parking garage for over 6 hours swapping parts, bleeding brakes, and setting up the bikes. We had a small collection of tools in our apartment that we used, but my Dad had to make around 7 or 8 trips to the trailer on the other side of the village for parts and tools that we needed. Luckily, he saw this as exercise and didn’t mind it. After bleeding the new Saint Brakes and changing out the expensive and super tacky Schwalbe race tires with Maxxis Minions, the new bike was finished.
