Month: July 2017

Xert and Texas Mountain Biking, Part One

If you follow these posts, you know that I recently installed a power meter on my mountain bike, and began using it to study the demands that mountain biking requires for fitness. I installed it just before a trip to Arkansas, where my wife and I rode the Womble Trail, and I have since ridden […]

ShockWiz Tuning – A Video Discussion

Here’s another video highlighting my experiences with the ShockWiz Tuning System for mountain bikes. This is a tougher trail, with more rock and twists and lips, and I’m convinced that I’ll be faster, and smoother, because of this investment.

OH yeah—6 watts difference on my average power between the first and second lap, led to a 2.5 minute improvement over 4.8 miles. THAT IS HUGE!

Xert and Texas Mountain Biking, Part Two

If you haven’t read Part One already, you can do so here. Basically, I’m trying to puzzle out why I was getting such different time splits for the same wattage outputs.

Now think about it; this was ONE LAP that I was doing OVER and OVER (6 times in 2 days). The temps were roughly the same, the time of day was more or less the same, and the suspension changes were pretty minimal – they probably didn’t affect the power output all that much. I believe the important lesson here is that, for myself and my North Texas clients, it’s probably important to set our Xert Profiles at “Pursuiter”, or even “Road Sprinter”, and really work on developing the ability to hit MULTIPLE, HIGHLY INTENSE, SHORT Intervals, over and over again. In many ways, it confirms what I suspected, with clients Randy Gibson, Jason Johnson, Patrick Moneymaker, and others. I had them on rollers, with high drag, and I had them attempt Tabatas, 15-15’s, and no more than 30-30’s, all pre-season, to build up their anaerobic capacity. They responded with State Cups and wins.

Read on for details, including how to build workouts that can produce the same kind of results for you.

Studying Suspension With the Shockwiz

[caption id="attachment_969" align="aligncenter" width="525"] Air Pressure determines Sag and Compression, while the red ring sets rebound speed, and the black and blue dials help determine when the shock gets activated on bumps of different sizes.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_914" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Coach Wharton using a ShockWiz and a Power2Max to study mtb suspension on the Womble Trail in Arkansas.[/caption]

Mountain biking; nothing makes me happier on a moment-to-moment basis than riding a mountain bike. Mountain biking is where I began cycling, and its’ challenges continue to push me every time a throw a leg over and head down the trail. Mountain biking is fun, it’s something I can do with my wife and with friends, and the technology just continues to impress me, as suspension, geometry, wheel diameter, gear options, and brake technology improves in such a quantum way.

My first mountain bike was all steel, had eight  gears in the back, three up front, and no suspension. It also had 26″ wheels. That was in 1987. The next year, I was riding a bike that was half-carbon, half-aluminum, had a 2.5 inch house-brand front suspension, and weighed 4 lbs. less. By 1995 I had purchased an early dual-suspension Trek Y-bike, and by the time I pretty much quit racing in 2001, I had a titanium frame with a soft-rear suspension, 3 inches of travel up front, and one of the first PowerTap MTB hubs ever built.

[caption id="attachment_916" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Coach Wharton’s Trek SuperFly with Power2max, Shockwiz, and Garmin 1000.[/caption]

Now, I’m riding a 2012 Trek SuperFly 100, with 4 inches of travel up front and in the rear, hydraulic disc brakes, two rings up front and ten in the rear. The wheels are 29 inches in diameter. THE NEXT YEAR, SRAM and then Shimano, introduced Single-Ring front drivetrains, 11 gears in the back, with broader ranges than I’d ever seen before. I think front and rear suspension gains a technology flip EVERY TWO YEARS! My own rig (and that of my wife), now has an OBSOLETE front and rear suspension system, a rear linkage system that has not been used since 2013, and the tires are 3/4 of an inch TOO NARROW.

It’s incredible. Technology has literally transformed mountain biking. It’s safer, faster, more comfortable, and higher performing than I’ve ever seen before.

BUT IT STILL TAKES SOMEONE WITH AN ENGINEERING DOCTORATE TO EXPLAIN SUSPENSION TO ME! AAAUUUGGHHH!

[caption id="attachment_917" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Shockwiz Suspension Tuner on a Front XC Sid Fork. Richard Wharton,[/caption]

Enter the ShockWiz, by SRAM. It’s two little boxes that mount to your frame and fork, and then attach to the compression air ports, where they measure impact, rebound, and all sorts of things that I just can’t explain. I’ll let it do the work.

The ShockWiz started out as a GoFundMe project, and is the brainchild of an Australian mountain biker. It started out around 2014, if I recall correctly, and ended up going to market after SRAM and Quarq saw the opportunity, bought the concept, and got it to the finish line. I was a fascinated early investor, but sadly, my opportunity to do some REAL mountain biking, is usually limited to 3 or 4 days a year. I don’t compete, but when I’m out there, I love the challenge of every corner, every tree, every root, every rock garden, and every climb and descent. But I’m absolutely convinced that if I KNEW how to properly tune my suspension, I could improve my confidence, my competence, and the joy would compel me to do the simplest thing I can do – RIDE MORE OFTEN. I am convinced that the ShockWiz is doing that, right now.

[caption id="attachment_915" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Wombly Trail and Ouachita Lake, Highway 27, Arkansas[/caption]

I’m writing this from a remote fishing village in Arkansas that sits along the famous “Wombly Trail”. It’s almost 40 miles of singletrack along the Ouachita River, and for me, it’s Heaven! But it’s also a PERFECT place to put the ShockWiz to use, and I did that today.

My 2012 SID Air was the first component to get the treatment, and it started with a roughly 15-minute calibration procedure that allowed the ShockWiz app to figure out my baselines. I used a shock pump to set the manufacturer’s recommendations for the upper and lower chambers into the fork (as well as the rear shock), and then took off on my ride, with my wife not far behind. Over the course of the next twenty minutes, we rode, and when we pulled over for our first break, I consulted the app, which was reading the data behind-the-scenes, the entire time. It gave me recommendations for compression, rebound, ramp rate, preload…. all that stuff that is a mystery to me.

Read on (subscription required for this part) for a review of the initial recommendations…and step-by-step screencaps of how I worked through the process of getting the best suspension tune of my life.