The biking thread

Took my bike to the velodrome. Was told to take my pedals off my bike and given a bike to ride.

Forgot about the whole no brakes allowed thing. And the whole fixed gear thing. And that their bikes all have geometry with a higher bottom bracket so the cranks/pedals don't strike the track.

What a crazy experience. I actually got a pinch flat (I think) on my front wheel while hitting my first sprint. There's a pretty gnarly concrete joint in one corner of the track. Definitely not the butter smooth ride I thought it would be, but it was nice for something outdoors. It was juddery over the banking while going slow and learning the ropes. Steering is really all about leaning and keeping the stem straight.

Track riding is totally different. I feel like they're all guys who are too afraid to go out on the road. There's like a certain friendly disdain for roadies. Especially when they come to the track with crazy strong legs but nothing else working right 😂.

Ive never been on a bike slammed that low in the drops. I didn't think my road saddle was awesome, either, but then I did 10 miles on an old steel track bike and saddle with no pressure relief channel 🤣
 
There's only a single velodrome in the whole bay area, and it's 2-1/2 hours drive to get there for me. There's only 6 of the things on the whole west coast, and only 2 of the modern type. Kind of nuts considering how big cycling is out here. In general the things are rare as hens teeth in the USA. Whereas Australia has 93 of them, which equates to 1 per 239,000 people, the USA only has 26, which equates to 1 per 12 million people. Hell New Zealand has as many as the US does.
 
There’s only one that I’m aware of here and it’s old am not well used. Riding around the province here is just too good to give up for a ride in a circuit.

I joined the GTP Strava group and now I’m thinking of dusting off my wheels and doing a big ride without any prep and 0 fitness.
 
W3H5
There’s only one that I’m aware of here and it’s old am not well used. Riding around the province here is just too good to give up for a ride in a circuit.

I joined the GTP Strava group and now I’m thinking of dusting off my wheels and doing a big ride without any prep and 0 fitness.
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Send it bruh!
 
I had plans to do some riding this week, but that damn track bike ravaged my perineum. Don't think I'm gonna go back without my own saddle. Just trying to heal up for my fitting adjustment on the 2nd.
 
Downloaded Strava, joined the GTP gang and did my first ride in 2½ weeks. I got ill right after my previous ride and haven't really had energy to get back on the bike until today.

Legs felt a bit weak for some reason, but at least I had fun ;)
 
So with rainy season about to start I've been thinking about switching one of my bikes over to a rain configuration. The Cannondale is a super short wheelbase, super steep head tube angle race bike with no mounts on it and clearance for only 25mm tires so I don't think that one is particularly suitable for extended wet weather rides. The Ribble is a lot more relaxed, stable, and comfortable and has mounts for fenders and clearance for whatever tires I can think of. So I've pretty much decided to deck out the Ribble for winter riding. My only issue is that 650bx47 tires are not exactly ideal for pavement, which is where I will likely be doing most of my winter riding. So I'm thinking of getting a secondary 700c wheelset for this purpose (the bike could be ordered with either wheel size, so I'm confident they fit). Now the trick here is that I don't want to be swapping the cassette and rotors every time I want to switch wheels, so I'm thinking of getting new ones for the new wheels. One thing I'm not sure about is the alignment of the rotor with the hubs I have and the rear brake caliper. These are the parts on my Ribble from my build sheet:

SLX M7000 Cassette 11spd 11-42t
RT70 Disc Rotor CL 160mm
1 x Level 24 Gravel 650B TR Rear Wheel 142x12 CL SH11

Anyone want to help me out here? It makes sense to me to get identical Cassette and Rotors, but I'm not sure what to do about the wheels and hubs.

As far as tires, I'm leaning towards Panaracer Gravelking Slick Folding or Teravail Rampart tires which have been recommended to me, but open to other suggestions. I had WTB Byways on the bike when I got it, but their puncture resistance was not very good.
 
After a month and around 90-100ish miles of riding, I had my bike fit adjustment today. So we dropped the saddle nose just a tad like 2 degrees or so, and actually wound up moving the whole saddle back further. Stayed with the Stealth, though, so I guess I'm stuck with it since the 30-day guarantee will be over tomorrow. Now I REALLY feel the saddle on my sitbones but I'd rather have the contact there than under my anterior bits. Also fixed my bartape with the cabling being a little high under it and the whole bike just feels a lot better now.

I signed up for DCC XIII which is organized by the Miami Dolphins. It's their annual 100-mile ride to benefit cancer research. https://dolphins.donordrive.com/

The ride is February 25th, so that should be enough time for me to train and I'm planning to make that my first Century. I'll need to also fundraise $1,000, which goes to UM Sylvester Cancer Center. If I don't reach that goal, I'll have to foot the remainder of that bill myself. :lol: I'm going to fill out my page and all that, and I'll share the link here if you guys want to make some donations on my behalf. First training ride is on Saturday, which should be fun. It's all police-escorted, so that gives me a lot of peace of mind.

Also bought this saddlebag:

71KCPu41H7L._AC_SX679_.jpg


My fitter said the Pro bag that goes with the saddle kinda sucked because the screws never held fastened and you'd eventually get a rattling bag or have it just fall off outright. That's why they don't carry them. This Cannondale Contain bag looks pretty sweet though-- it's big without being bulky, and I have two tubes (still in their boxes), two tire levers (do I need two?), my CO2 inflator and 4 cannisters in there. Good to have some peace of mind under my butt if I'm gonna be on the road.
 
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I'm a total convert to the wrap-style saddle bag. You need to remove it to access the contents, but honestly trying to rifle through one of the zipper compartment style packs drives me nuts and they always swing around. The burrito pack is snug when you wrench the velcro hard enough. I have soooo many bags now. :lol:

 
@Eunos_Cosmo sorry mate help re the disc brakes, my knowledge is lacking with them as I've always owned rim brakes.

@Omnis are you familiar with the rules?

As per rule #2 I'm compelled to point out rules numbering 24, 29 and 31.*

That aside good luck with the charity ride, 160km is a decent ride for anyone but you have some time to work up to it. Don't push yourself too early in the training leading up to it. Small gains as you go along will serve you best, put your mind to it and I'm sure you will manage. 👍

* The rules are all in jest and not to be taken seriously but always carry the required gear to get you home from punctures.
 
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Shaun
@Eunos_Cosmo sorry mate help re the disc brakes, my knowledge is lacking with them as I've always owned rim brakes.

@Omnis are you familiar with the rules?

As per rule #2 I'm compelled to point out rules numbering 24, 29 and 31.*

That aside good luck with the charity ride, 160km is a decent ride for anyone but you have some time to work up to it. Don't push yourself too early in the training leading up to it. Small gains as you go along will serve you best, put your mind to it and I'm sure you will manage. 👍

* The rules are all in jest and not to be taken seriously but always carry the required gear to get you home from punctures.
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I frequently ride in a plaid fishing shirt over bib shorts with a saddle bag, a top tube bag, AND a handlebar bag, while rocking a mustache, always using SPD cleats, and I damn sure do not shave my legs. :lol:
 
Eunos_Cosmo
Anyone want to help me out here? It makes sense to me to get identical Cassette and Rotors, but I'm not sure what to do about the wheels and hubs.
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They aren’t cheap (nothing is with cycling now mind...) but Zipp 303s’ are pretty great if you’re going tubeless, know people road race on them and use them on gravel bikes. Plus the lifetime warranty they come with is nice piece of mind. Can fit a huge range of tyres on them.

Agree on your cassette and rotor plan, keep it consistent between sets.
 
So I think this is the wheelset I'm going to go with for my 700c setup:

www.dtswiss.com

G 1800 SPLINE - Wheels for Bikepacking | DT Swiss

Gravel-specific wheels for bikepacking adventures, optimized to cope with high system weight for increased reliability on long trips.
www.dtswiss.com

Pretty confident they'll fit, but I'm going to ask them anyways.

I ordered a set of Panaracer Gravelking Slick+ in 700cx35

I also opted to order an 11x46 rear cassette (in lieu of the 42t). Strictly speaking, my rear mech only supports up to 42t cogs, but looking online the combo will apparently work pretty well if you add a couple extra links to the chain. If it doesn't work, I'll order an extended cage. That will be a spring project because I'm planning to put the bigger cassette on the "off road" setup with the 650b wheelset.
 
Eunos_Cosmo
I also opted to order an 11x46 rear cassette (in lieu of the 42t). Strictly speaking, my rear mech only supports up to 42t cogs, but looking online the combo will apparently work pretty well if you add a couple extra links to the chain. If it doesn't work, I'll order an extended cage. That will be a spring project because I'm planning to put the bigger cassette on the "off road" setup with the 650b wheelset.
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Seeing that the medium cage 12s MTB derailleurs are officially rated for 11-46 but in reality work with 11-51 just fine with no tricks whatsoever, I can't see any reason for it to be a problem.

My very weird bike project is still chugging along slowly but surely. An old friend is currently building me a custom wheelset, the wheels that came with my Chisel were branded as "Specialized Stout" ie. basically el cheapo in-house stuff, but the reality was a bit more interesting. The bike is the very first '21 Chisel sold in Finland and probably one of the first in the entire Europe as I reserved it one day after it had been announced worldwide, which may have led to an interesting thing with the specs. The wheels don't match those in the promo pictures and the rims were immediately noticably asymmetric when I first got hold of it. They look exactly the same as the ones sold previously (but nowadays discontinued) as aftermarket Roval Controls, just with cheaper Shimano hubs instead of the Rovals using DT Swiss internals. I'm willing to be they're indeed the exact same rims, with the very early production perhaps having been built with leftovers from the Roval parts bin. Now they're being laced to the revised 2021 model DT Swiss 350 hubs with DT Comp spokes - they'll probably last the rest of my biking days.

The final result will be something that I'll have to be careful about taking to any serious bikers' meeting. I'm happily mixing XC, enduro, gravel and road parts - the purists will beat me purple with mini pumps as soon as they figure out what they're looking at, if they don't faint that is.
 
Greycap
Seeing that the medium cage 12s MTB derailleurs are officially rated for 11-46 but in reality work with 11-51 just fine with no tricks whatsoever, I can't see any reason for it to be a problem.

My very weird bike project is still chugging along slowly but surely. An old friend is currently building me a custom wheelset, the wheels that came with my Chisel were branded as "Specialized Stout" ie. basically el cheapo in-house stuff, but the reality was a bit more interesting. The bike is the very first '21 Chisel sold in Finland and probably one of the first in the entire Europe as I reserved it one day after it had been announced worldwide, which may have led to an interesting thing with the specs. The wheels don't match those in the promo pictures and the rims were immediately noticably asymmetric when I first got hold of it. They look exactly the same as the ones sold previously (but nowadays discontinued) as aftermarket Roval Controls, just with cheaper Shimano hubs instead of the Rovals using DT Swiss internals. I'm willing to be they're indeed the exact same rims, with the very early production perhaps having been built with leftovers from the Roval parts bin. Now they're being laced to the revised 2021 model DT Swiss 350 hubs with DT Comp spokes - they'll probably last the rest of my biking days.

The final result will be something that I'll have to be careful about taking to any serious bikers' meeting. I'm happily mixing XC, enduro, gravel and road parts - the purists will beat me purple with mini pumps as soon as they figure out what they're looking at, if they don't faint that is.
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I love Frankenstein builds!

My Ribble came with different wheels than the spec sheet indicated as well...though in my case I suspect they had issues obtaining the Mavics and just shipped it with their in-house wheels instead (Level)
 
First training ride was Saturday morning. There were like 200 people there, it was crazy. We got an awesome police escort from the highway patrol. I rode with the A group for the 31-mile ride from the LBS near University of Miami to Black Point Marina. There was a B-group that did just 17 miles (these were like the commuter bike people in shorts and tank tops with the Miami Dolphins cheerleaders). We rode double-file with an 18mph target pace, but we hit like 30mph at one point. Average wattage for me solo around the park is like 210W to sniff 16-17mph. Avg wattage for this group ride was just 120 :lol:. I felt like half the time I was coasting or on the brakes because nobody ahead of me was steady. I was in the front half going out but the back half coming back. The back of the paceline had so much yo-yoing, it was crazy. The pace variance really multiplies the further back you get.

TpiQeRFXNd0uu6BOzcl45_si6RWAua1GWA8lSzPrtkQ-2048x970.jpg


GnLj2eAju75sDZ8pfbYpHF1lQu1hOQPQ9MDeHVFDLWc-1536x2048.jpg


My jersey is a sloth and says "Not to brag, but I totally got out of bed today." :lol:
I'm learning that I'm pretty fast and should give myself more credit, though. A few guys passed me in the paceline because I had a little gap in front of my wheel, but that's because I was nervous about crossing wheels with all the slowing. I kept calling "slowing" because people in front of me weren't communicating. Maybe the sloth is sending the wrong message. But I did get compliments on it and I met a cool guy from further north closer to home because of it. :P
 
I forgot to mention that on the same morning, one of the riders for the group further north got hit by a car on his way to the group ride. The car fled the scene and he died from his injuries. Yesterday, one of the other guys who heard the hit and found the downed rider was hit by another vehicle and suffered significant injuries but is recovering.

I feel really fortunate that I was able to ride safely with the police escort. This is insane. Makes me really nervous to ride up here in my county.
 
Update!

Got my new rotors, cassette, wheels, hubs, and tires. I ended up getting Gravelking Slick Plus tires. The plus in this case means that the tire is reinforced from bead to bead. While it's still a "folding tire" strictly speaking, they are far stiffer than the other tubeless tires I've used/setup. I'll tell you right now, typing with sore thumbs and the sound of my air compressor still ringing in my head, they were a total nightmare to install. I'm not sure whether this particular combo (with the rims) was just not very compatible or what, but good god these tires would not seat. The front actually did go on after a few attempts, and with my air compressor set to 80psi. But the rear...the bead got stuck on the inner rim profile (somewhat steep "ramp" internally) and even with soapy water, even with heating the tire, and even with cranking my air compressor up to 120psi, they would not seat on the bead. I tried and struggled for like 2 hours before giving up and taking it to my LBS where they put it on their mega air compressor (even their first compressor wouldn't do it) with the valve core removed (I only have a schrader chuck on my compressor, so I wasn't able to do this trick) and it made the loudest bead seating "bang" I've ever heard. Moral of the story is...stick with light and supple.

Once that was...dealt with...the rotors and cassette went on without any trouble and fit perfectly on the bike. Did my short commute today and the tires are great on the road. It's still not as sharp as my road bike but its just far more pleasant to ride on pavement than it was before with the Rutland knobby tires going "woo woo woo woo" down the road like a Jeep Wrangler on 35s. The bike will shift into the 46 tooth cog but I can tell the chain is really tight. I'm gonna stay off that end of the cassette for now and get a couple quick links which will hopefully smooth things out. I don't intend to use the big cassette on the road setup anyways, but I wanted to test it out. I'll probably switch it over to the off road wheelset this weekend.

Next up is to get some fenders, rain pants, some better dry weather winter gloves (my hands were frozen solid today, it was around 40F this morning) and some shoe covers and I should be set for the winter season.
 
Woke up at 3:45AM yesterday. Got to the group ride at 6. Put 30 miles in, ran home and showered, then did 18 holes of golf. A friend brought single malt to the course. Got home, ate, showered again, and passed out for 13 hours :lol: What a day.
 
I bought a Pro PLT ergo carbon handlebar from some guy in Switzerland lol. Should be here early December. Looked in decent shape and was like half price of new. Looking forward to the ergo shape and I'm thinking of changing stems again and going back to a bit lower or having at least a little more reach. So I figured I should just start with the bars. I hope that the damping of carbon vs alu isn't overstated. If I didn't have the Silca 3.75 tape I'd probably be dying lol.
Moreover, the peaks of each hood are hitting me right in the carpal tunnel when I'm in that "candlestick" position. Hopefully this little tweak to the bar reach will put them right in the palm and be a hell of a lot more comfortable anyway. The drops also look like they've got a little more parallel section to grab. Really not a fan of these cobra fang-looking compact drops. If I didn't see the bare bar myself when we retaped it, I would swear that someone took a hacksaw to the aluminum Vibe I have now 😂. Anyone want a really nice ultra lightweight and barely used handlebar? 😅
 
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Rode with the A group of the weekly groupride today. Did the first 10 miles up front then relegated myself to the caboose. In fairness, the pace was 22-24 mph (38km/h) and I was dead-on the whole time, but the guys were pushing up to 27mph (44km/h) on average and my max speed on the day was 33 mph (53km/h). Normally the group goes as an A/B peloton before the A's break off. But today everyone was pushing and there were only 2-3 guys in a breakaway on their own, but we'd all come back together at stop lights. It was really tough staying on the wheel at the back. Once you're in the slipstream it was a piece of cake, but it gets exponentially harder the further away from the last wheel you are. The guys were attacking out of the turns and my stupid rear derailleur wouldn't shift so I was always having to fight to close the gap. As long as I kept my HR under 150 I felt comfortable, but it was when I was in the 160s that I would start to slowly deteriorate and have to fight and push through. It would take 400W or so to maintain the pace, but only like 220ish once I was in the line. Crazy stuff, but it was a LOT better riding with the best guys than the C group last week.
 
Saw that ride on Strava, @Omnis. Great effort and endurance to keep it going for that long. Fully accustomed to the bike now?

Sounds like you’re working out your HR zones when on the bike too which is one of the best training tools I’ve found. Be sure to hit the different zones in your training, just doing Z2 or just Z4 will hold you back.
 
So I had my first crash today, lol. Ironically, it had to be on the first time I put a GoPro on the bike. I went to this park that's an old landfill. It's popular for people that want to walk the trails and do uphill runs, etc. It has a neat little climb but unfortunately all of the gates to the rest of the roadways were closed. I decided to just go up and down the open portion and explore what was accessible. However, the road was in HORRIBLE condition with chewed up asphalt and massive potholes at each turn-off into the parking lots. I turned into one of the lots to go look at the westward view, going around a huge pothole in the middle of the entryway. But I didn't realize the rest of that side of the road was a bunch of loose, marble-like gravel pellets. The front wheel just completely pushed out laterally and somehow I was able to unclip my right cleat, did 3 hops forwards on that foot, unclipped the left cleat, then somersaulted with my hands, rolling onto my right shoulder. It was a very slow and fortunate fall, I guess. Nothing was badly damaged on the bike but my left brake lever is all scratched up now. My shoes got trashed, but they cleaned up OK. Just a bunch of gravel rash on the carbon outsole. I have two big bruises on my right knee and elbow and some little abrasions. Luckily no lacs or anything broken. Didn't hit my helmet or wreck my Oakleys. :D
 
Omnis
So I had my first crash today, lol. Ironically, it had to be on the first time I put a GoPro on the bike. I went to this park that's an old landfill. It's popular for people that want to walk the trails and do uphill runs, etc. It has a neat little climb but unfortunately all of the gates to the rest of the roadways were closed. I decided to just go up and down the open portion and explore what was accessible. However, the road was in HORRIBLE condition with chewed up asphalt and massive potholes at each turn-off into the parking lots. I turned into one of the lots to go look at the westward view, going around a huge pothole in the middle of the entryway. But I didn't realize the rest of that side of the road was a bunch of loose, marble-like gravel pellets. The front wheel just completely pushed out laterally and somehow I was able to unclip my right cleat, did 3 hops forwards on that foot, unclipped the left cleat, then somersaulted with my hands, rolling onto my right shoulder. It was a very slow and fortunate fall, I guess. Nothing was badly damaged on the bike but my left brake lever is all scratched up now. My shoes got trashed, but they cleaned up OK. Just a bunch of gravel rash on the carbon outsole. I have two big bruises on my right knee and elbow and some little abrasions. Luckily no lacs or anything broken. Didn't hit my helmet or wreck my Oakleys. :D
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So what you're saying is your first gravel ride was action packed?
 

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