Two of my three cycling goals were completed in the past few weeks. First, I rode Pedal The Cause 2017, the century again. I didn’t walk any this year, though I did leave out the Babler Beast loop this year. I was fighting a cold, and it was very warm, I knew if I attempted it I would struggle to finish the ride, so I cut it short and completed 93.4 miles with 4600’ of elevation gain on the route. A big thanks to everyone who helped me out this year with donations, I raised $650, bringing my lifetime PTC fundraising to $4,956.69.

The following is an update email that went out to everyone who has donated to my LIVESTRONG fundraising. Wait, you haven’t donated yet? That’s okay, there is still time, head on over to my Philanthropy page and get started.

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I wanted to send out a quick thank you to everyone who has donated to my ride for the 2012 Team LIVESTRONG Challenge in Davis. With your help I have already surpassed 50% of my initial goal for fundraising for the ride, I will likely be raising that goal to a larger amount here over the next few months, due in part to your very kind donations.

Year to date riding

I've been riding a lot here over the past couple of months as I try to get my body prepared for a 100 mile bike ride. I've been able to ride three, sometimes 4 days a week just about every week in 2012. In 2011 I rode around 580 miles total for the year, so far this year I am up to 458 miles, I should hit 500 before the end of the month, and if I keep this pace up (it will likely just increase) I should easily exceed 1000 miles before the Challenge on 6/24/2012.

Fundraising efforts

As part of my efforts to increase my fundraising for LIVESTRONG I have been making some changes to the Philanthropy page of my website (http://www.chrishammond.com/philanthropy.aspx) and have decided to include a list of everyone who has donated.

Your name in lights (get a link)

As an added bonus for donating, I am also adding a link with your name, pointing to the website of your choice (within reason of course). Please feel free to email me a link that you would like associated with your name on the Donor list and I will gladly add it to the site.

You've been ranked

On that Donor list I am currently listing of the donors in descending order of the donation amounts. If you are at the top, that's because you've donated the most. If you want to move to the top? Well, you could always donate more.

If you would rather not be included in that ranked list, or even included in the list of donors at all, please let me know and I will remove your name.

Tell a friend

Now that you've donated, perhaps you have a friend who might be interested in donating? If so, send them to the following website: http://www.chrishammond.com/philanthropy.aspx

Future emails

If you would rather not be included in future status emails please let me know, otherwise I will occasionally send out emails like this updating everyone on how things are progressing.

Once again, thank you for taking the time and effort to donate to the cause, no matter how little or big your donation is it is all greatly appreciated.

Chris Hammond

Last year I purchased a 2011 Cannondale Quick CX 1 to start riding on my quest to hit 500 miles for the year. I was able to do that fairly easily on the bike, it is a great machine.

As I am getting more into riding though I wanted to do longer distance road riding, and continue to use the Quick CX 1, but on a different basis than I did in 2011. I intended to take that bike, with the OEM wheels, and put a set of mountain bike tires on it and use it as a semi mountain bike trail bike.

My awesome brother sent me a set of 29x2.1” mountain bike tires, and I picked up some tubes at REI a few weeks ago. This evening I tried to put the tires on the rim, the first thing I ran into was thinking that there was no way the tire would mount to the rim, it looked huge with the likely hood of it fitting being very small.

Well I was wrong about that, the tire and tube went together well and everything fit on the rim nicely. That is when it went downhill though. I put the wheel on the bike and immediately noticed it wouldn’t rotate, I figured I had the quick release off and the disc brake was rubbing. Upon further inspection though, after resetting the quick release I noticed that the tire was actually rubbing on the top of the fork. Here’s a picture of the original tire and fork, taken after removing the MTB tire and tube.

So I guess the answer to the question, if the question is “Will a 29x2.1” tire fit on a 2011 Cannondale Quick CX 1?” is NO. Unfortunately it will not.

I’m still going to try to find something that will work on the bike though, I would like to use it off road more, though I don’t think I’m ready to invest in a full on mountain bike anytime soon as I still see putting in a lot more road miles this year.

For 2011 I personally set 3 goals, you can read about them fully on my post from 1/1/2011. Basically they were to lose 30 lbs (goal weight of 255, I’m a big guy), inline skate 100 miles (I do like me some skating, I’m a freak I know this) and ride a bike 500 miles. At the beginning of 2011 the bike I had was a 2004 Diamondback XTS Moto, not exactly something you could see yourself riding 500 miles on (at least not me). So in June I picked up a Cannondale Quick CX 1 and began my journey.

In the morning Natalie and I are planning on a bike ride. We’re going to ride in McNee Ranch State Park. We’re going to try to ride to the top of the mountain. Almost 1900’ from essentially sea level.

Here’s the writeup from BAHiker.com, though it appears to be about 10 years old now

I’m not sure how that is going to go over, but we are going to try! Wish us luck.

So I did it, (with the help of Natalie). I made it to 50 miles on the bike this week. Actually 52.36 miles according to Garmin Connect. I rode 4 out of the last 7 days, I hope to try to keep that up, at least 3 out of 7 days at minimum. My average speed for the 52 miles was 10mph, (including stops for photos) with an average heart rate of 159bpm. Read more ....

Natalie and I got to go on our second bike ride together tonight. My mother is in town (thanks mom!) and watched Jacqueline for us while we went for a brief ride.

That’s my goal for this week, to ride 50 miles. In all honesty, it isn’t that much, but I can with about 99% confidence say that I have never ridden a bike 50 miles in one week. Yesterday afternoon I went for a ride up Highway 1 to Moss Beach, and then over towards the ocean. My first time really climbing on a bike. It wasn’t much of a climb, but according to my Garmin I did gain 1,118ft in elevation, far more than any other ride as of late.