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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 several times at a local trail in Dallas, named Boulder Park. I’ve been riding with a Shockwiz Suspension Tuning device, front and rear, which has helped my comfort and confidence tremendously, but this weekend was the first time in a very long period, that I’ve gotten to ride for fitness and exertion, instead of just as a “Trail Tourist”. With the power meter and Xert on my Garmin 1000, I got some exciting insights, which I’ll be sharing.

Trails in Dallas resemble a small intestine; fit as many kilometers of trail in to the available acres or hectares. There’s little public land, and the trails are highly maintained by a responsible group of trail stewards under the leadership of DORBA.ORG. The trails are twisty, turny, curvy, with short sight-lines and lots of accelerations and braking. For this weekend of testing and tuning, I chose the “A” loop, with all of the “Red” options, which is found below on Strava.

Let’s first use Strava, since it breaks down the segments better than I can on Xert at this time. Here’s a block of my recent efforts over a known segment that mimicked my ride.

Specifically – take a look at the efforts that recorded wattage. Here’s a screenshot….

 

Watts Mountain Biking Average Power Strava
Average Wattage and time splits, along with Heart Rate and speed.

Now, the first thing to look at and consider are the average speeds. Mountain biking in Texas is so twisty and TRUE SINGLETRACK CYCLING, that it’s hard to get a good speed. By the way – if you look at that Strava segment, you’ll see that my fastest time this weekend, was about SIX MINUTES SLOWER than the fastest times ever, and about FOUR MINUTES SLOWER than some of the athletes I’ve coached (using Xert, interestingly enough).

But look at the correlation, or otherwise, between average power (with zeroes), and time. Specifically, look at my fifth-best time, and my 2nd-best time. The average power output was different by just ONE WATT, but the time split was OVER SEVEN MINUTES. Why? I can think of just one thing, and that’s BIKE HANDLING. And I think my bike handling was improved by the tweaking I was performing on the suspension, front and rear.

But I think there’s something else going on that is important, and I think Xert is the system to use so we can understand it, and improve.

Click here to see the mystery solved, plus some training tips for handling short, steep, punchy North Texas-style terrain in Part Two (Premium Content—subscription)

 

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!
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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.
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Studying Suspension With the Shockwiz

Fox RP23 ProPedal with Adaptive Logic
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.


Coach Wharton, Mtb, Shockwiz, Power2Max, Womble Trail
Coach Wharton using a ShockWiz and a Power2Max to study mtb suspension on the Womble Trail in Arkansas.
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.
Shockwiz, Power2max
Coach Wharton's Trek SuperFly with Power2max, Shockwiz, and Garmin 1000.
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!
Shockwiz Suspension Tuner on a Front XC Sid Fork. Richard Wharton,
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.
Wombly Trail and Ouachita Lake, Highway 27, Arkansas
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.
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