Mike's Bike Blog

Join me in welcoming the newest bike to the stable, a Fuji Aloha Time Trial (TT) bike. It kind of happened out of the blue and quite unexpected. I have been oggling TT bikes for almost a year, watching CraigsList for a deal trying to come up with ways to get another free bike. An opportunity presented itself when Spin City went out of business. I hate to see any local business close it's doors especially a bike shop but I was able to get the bike way under my imaginary budget.

The bike itself is very entry level, evident with it's 9 speed drivetrain powered with a compact crank. I'm not sure what Fuji is thinking when they put a compact on a TT bike, most TT cranks have 54 or 55T big ring (standard big rings on a crank are 53T). The crank will be the first thing to be upgraded. If you follow me on twitter you might have seen my tweet looking for a used 53T or bigger Shimano compatible crank.

I took her down to Peter at Southwest Cycle Sport for a fitting where Peter confirmed what I'd already known, I'm not that flexible. From the picture below you can see that I'm not bending at the hips and I'm arching my back to compensate. I've been working on that with some stretching but also working on my position on the trainer, I'll post up that process another time.

I am a little worried if a low end TT bike will be any faster than my Orca, thus why I don't want to spend much money on it. I did give it a little test, on a course I averaged 20.5 mph in a 20 minute TT on the Orca I averaged 20.8 on the TT bike. The time on the TT bike was a little faster and the power to accomplish this was 9 watts less on the TT bike. On the fast section of this course I spun out the compact crank in the 11 so when I get a new crank that should help. I'll also do more testing with a route I have more data to compare. I do plan to race it at the Cronometro. I suppose I can do 2 races, 1 with the TT bike and race the Orbea in the road bike classification race. In case anybody is wondering about the 20.6 mph as that is not very impressive, I have a disclaimer, the course is very short, .86 miles so there's a lot of braking to do a 180 to turn around at both ends. Not a great course to use to gauge the performance of the bike.

I'll be posting up my thoughts and experiences on riding a Time Trial bike as I'll be riding it almost everyday till the March 13th Cronometro race. For now welcome to the garage!

I'm not one to shy away from getting out on the bike when there's water on the streets or a downpour. Really the only thing that makes me think twice about the weather conditions is if my bike is clean and how much I want to clean everything afterwards. If it looks like the bad weather is here to stay for a few days I'll get out and do my rides for a few days in the elements and clean it up when the weather clears up again.

This approach has worked well for me, no crashes or even close calls to speak of. That is until 3 weeks ago, it had been raining heavily the night before and the roads were still wet when I went for my lunchtime ride. While I was out on the ride it started to rain a bit, but not monsoon conditions. I was on my second 20 minute Sweet Spot Training (SST) interval for the day. In fact I had about 1 minute left on the effort and I had 1 hard right turn to negotiate. I let up on the pedals and applied pressure to the breaks. I wasn't slowing, I then realized I was hydroplaning! The back time started to slide to the left  and fishtail. Just about that time I hit a dry patch of road. When the back tire made contact with the road it catapulted me straight into the air like a bucking bronco. I went down hard onto my left side and slid a good distance. Luckily the pavement was wet, I hate to think how tore up I could have been. As it was the only damage suffered was to my Clear2Go bottle, it got totally mangled, I think a car ran over it as I didn't noticed it came dislodged and rode off before realizing it was missing.

Well that was 3 weeks ago, then today once again it had rained the night before and the roads were wet, but when I went out for my ride the skies were dry. I had another set of 20 min SST intervals to do and given the wet conditions I thought doing them on the Twin Creeks circuit (1 mile loop) would be the best option. I've done this workout on this same course in similar conditions and I know to take the roundabouts with caution. In wet conditions when I enter the roundabout I gently apply the brakes as I stop pedaling.  Before I started the ride I let some air out of my tires to compensate for the wet pavement.

About 13 minutes into the first 20 minute interval I entered the roundabout, stopped pedaling and as I started the turn the tires went out from under me at 24.4mph. I slid across the road a good 10 feet or so to the curb. I didn't sustain too much new roadrash, I seemed to land in the same exact spot as the previous crash so re-tore up what was just starting to heal. I landed on my hip pretty hard so along with the fresh roadrash I'm sporting a rather large lump

These 2 crashes got me thinking about my tires and how they might not be the best selection for wet conditions. Back in August I bought 2 Vittoria Rubino Intrepids from bonktown. Giving a quick search it would seem others aren't too fond of their handling in wet conditions. Another factor in this last crash could have been my speed, the other times I negotiated thru the roundabout this morning I averaged 23.9mph, 23.5mph, 24mph and 23.6mph. When I crashed I was going 24.4 mph, a bit faster than the other times. I felt like I was in control and nothing was different that is until I hit the pavement.

One thing I'm coming away from this experience with is that when it's wet out I'm not going to do SST intervals or anything with intensity. When I'm attempting to hold certain wattages, especially wattage around threshold it's too much for the conditions and it's not worth the risk. Next time I'll just do a regular easy ride and complete the intervals on the trainer or forego the interval all together. Seated hill repeats would have been a good alternative for a day like today too.

Actually it's 3 crashes in 3 weeks, I nearly forgot about the crash on Monday on the inline skates. I was skating around the neighborhood with Zeb. He was up on the sidewalk and I was in the street, we were going up a slight hill so we weren't going fast, 3 or 4 mph when I hit a pebble. I stumbled a bit and wasn't able to recover and went down. Again on the same darn side hitting my hip and tearing open the scap on my knee.

Well it was bound to happen, I've been tagged by Bryan on the latest meme that's floating around the biking web.

This particular meme was started by Fat Lad, and the idea is based on the “my old mother went to the market and bought” memory game. Only in this case, each blogger in the thread lists something that was bought at the LBS in June. Here’s the list thus far, with my addition at the bottom:

1. Fat Lad went to the bike shop in June and all he bought was: A new PC971 Sram Chain and a Cassette Spanner and a chain wear tool.
2. TOB went to the bike shop in June and all she bought was: a new pair of ruby red Sidis and some X-Series Cleats (but it’s only the 4th!). (Editors Note: Surprise, Surprise…a lady cyclist bought shoes…Ruby Red no less…LOL!).
3. Mike J went to the bike shop in June and he bought two Gel Flasks and some Handle Bar Grips.
4. 331 Miles went to the bike shop in June and he bought a pair of Performance Ultra II Bib Shorts.
5. Biking To Live went to the bike shop in June and picked up a new tube and CO2 cartridge.
6. Weiland went to the bike shop in June and looked at clip on aero bars. However, I bought a dozen CamelBak Podium water bottles from Bonktown.

I've had my eye on bonktown as they have had the bottles come up a few times, but each time I missed them. So I sat diligently at my computer waiting for them to come up when I saw they were suppose to come up that day. I guess this is where I tag the next unsuspecting blogger... Doug let's here what you bought in preperation for the Ride for Heart.

Bonktown.com that is. If you haven't seen the roadie specific clearance site you have to check it out. Be forewarned however, there's a couple problems:

1.  It's addicting! You'll soon add the alerts to your desktop, to your browser, via email and RSS. You don't want to miss a deal.
2.  It will take strong will power to not buy everything that comes up
3. There will be a feeling of disappointment of missing out on a deal that ran overnight when you look at what was up for purchase while you slept. Don't get too discouraged, it appears if it doesn't sell out completely there is a good chance it will come back up during the day.

Bonktown.com is the latest release from the people at backcountry.com. They're the ones behind Chainlove.com. I've been a fan of Chainlove.com and have purchased a few items there as well, but it has been more mountain bike specific. With the release of this new site they appear to be making the distinction between the two disciplines. Also I'm happy to report that the Firefox alerts for both Bonktown and Chainlove can coexist! Bonktown is less than a week old and I've already made a purchase. A deal on a Dura-Ace chain came on for $25, I'm kicking myself for only getting one though.

I spent yesterday afternoon down at Austin Bikes checking out the Orbea Orca, they have 1 in my size with Dura Ace components. I road 2 other Orbea's the Onix models. The Onix in and of itself was a great ride, but my goal was to ride Ultegra and SRAM Rival compact cranks. Both of these bikes were in compact crank configurations. This was my first time trying out compact cranks.

My Fuji has triple cranks, I typically don't use the small ring very often unless I'm going on a mega hill attack. My knees like the lower gearing that the third ring offers. In my testing I went up 7th and 9th street over by Austin Bikes several times testing all 3 groups. 7th is the steepest around the shop that I was able to ride, it averaged 6% with the max at 10%. The compacts offered the low end that I was accustomed to with my current triple. The double of the dura ace still got me up the hill, but I definitely had to work harder, not sure how my knees would hold up with repeated climbing with the double.

The problem with the compact I seem to be giving up a lot of the medium gearing. It seems that with the compact I'd be in the large ring for most riding and only using the small ring for steep hills. I might be giving up too much with the compact.

So the question is, if I went with the double and then had multiple cassettes that I swapped out for hills, maybe a 12-28 would I have enough range for the hills around Austin? On the flip side, should I go with the compact and get a different cassette for flatter rides?

I'm open to suggestions and insight that will give me the best options.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner! The race on RoadBikeRides is over and I'm the winner of the Orbea Orca!

I'm not sure yet on the particulars on the prize, all I know at this point is the value is set at $5,400. I'm hoping I get to use Orbea's made to order web app to put the bike I want together.

For a few months now I've been having a problem with the Garmin Training Center on my Mac where it would not download imported tracks to my Foreruner 305. Whenever I would select Download to Device from the Training Center the device would freeze and I'd have to do a soft reset. Everything else with the Training Center  continued to work, it would download my data.

On Friday I ran the web update and downloaded and installed a firmware update and also updated the Training Center to the latest version. After the update once I plugged in the Forerunner the Training Center would immediately crash. I managed to make it even worse!

After some googling I found some hints that all that might be needed is to do a complete reset of the Forerunner. Holding down the Mode key while powering on will bring up the Reset Confimation dialog. Once I confirmed that I did want to reset and all my data would be lost I was able to plug in and not get a crash. Plus I could send imported routes to the device.

I didn't lose any information really, all I had to reset was the display fields. I think in all I was back up within 10 minutes.

On Friday I had my bike fit with Alexis Sheehy at Bicycle Sport Shop. We started with a basic fit and if we needed to do a 3D fit we would cross that bridge when we came to it. She started off by getting my bike background and the type of riding I'm doing.

After plopping my bike on the trainer and spinning along she broke out the plumb. There wasn't any glaring problems with my fit. She did lower my seat a little bit and moved my seat back a little as well. Nothing too drastic. Her biggest recommendation was different pedals as well as working on my flexibility. I should work on the flexibility in my hamstrings and hip flexor.

I've been riding basic SPD pedals. The SPD pedals don't have much of a platform for your foot and with the lack of a platform my foot was not being supported properly. The thinking is the smaller pedals are forcing me to use more of an effort to stabilize my foot and thus putting stress on my knees. She put on Shimano 105 pedals and had me try them. On the trainer they felt decent. She suggested I give them a try over the weekend.

Friday evening I did a short 10 miles to test my knee and the pedals. Both were great. My knee didn't hurt at all and the pedals felt great. I could definitely feel the power transfer difference. When I kicked through or pulled through on my stroke it felt like I had more response.My next test ride was Saturday morning. I did 40 miles in Cedar Park on Parmer and 620. My goal for this ride was not speed, but to keep my cadence at 95+. For the entire ride I didn't shift to my big ring. I did average 96 rpms for the 2:21:55 ride. The pedals were great, I just might keep them. I'll poke around and compare the 105's to others. It seems the top of the line Dura Ace pedals are about the same, just lighter, not sure if it warrants the extra bucks.

Now for the bad news, my knee didn't hurt outright, I think I stopped before it went over the threshold of a minor annoyance to pain. As I was riding down 620 I could feel it fatiguing and knew if I kept it up that it would start to hurt. It's kind of hard to explain, it didn't hurt, but I could feel it. It was the prepain feeling and if I would have pushed more power it would have started to hurt.

Merry Christams! My pride and joy of presents is a new Garmin Forerunner 305.

I've had a chance to take it around the block and on a 10 mile ride yesterday. I really like it. Ok I love it. I wanted a heart rate monitor and the price at Costco.com ($179) was pretty good. Shop and catalog prices were $219. I wanted a wrist version so I could easily use it with the spin bike, mountain bike or with my road bike. It is pretty hefty for the wrist. I have not been able to get MapMyRide.com to interface with it yet. Looking at their forums others have run into the same dilemma, others have gotten it to work, but I haven't been successful yet with my Mac. Running it from a Mac could be the difference there.