Mike's Bike Blog

One of my joys for last season's Run Far Time Trials was passing and beating a few guys on Time Trial (TT) bikes with their aero helmets, shoe covers and skin suits while I was outfitted in a regular team kit and non aero helmet while riding my road bike. This Saturday I'm signed up for the Cronometro and it will be my first TT with a TT bike, aero helmet, shoe covers and even a skin suit. I've lost a little of the security or should I say the excuse for getting passed while on a road bike by those with full blown TT bikes. Now when the woosh of carbon rims signals the approaching of a competitor from behind it will be a hard pill to swallow. And oh yes it will inevitable happen. The 30-39 year old field is one of the largest at the Cronometro and race favorite David Wenger (Super Squadra) is starting 30 seconds behind me. So I will get passed at some point, my goal is to only be down by 6 minutes to David, another goal is not to get passed by John Korioth (Team Lifesize) who will be battling David for the overall fastest male prize. He's starting 13 minutes behind me. According to my crystal ball I will be about 6 minutes behind the overall winner.

My only solace will be that I spent a fraction of money on my TT bike than those that I'll be going up against, we're talking probably at least $4,000 difference as mine was very much below $1,000. Also I'll be rolling with the tires off my Orca, no carbon, no deep dish just heavy wheels designed for training. There will be competitors out there that spent more on their front wheel than I did for my bike.

I did get the TT bike outfitted with standard cranks last week. I found a great deal on Bonktown on Raceface Cadence cranks for $35, the deal only lasted about 40 seconds but I acted swiftly. Southwest Cycle Sport installed the cranks over the weekend and made some modifications on the cabling as well. The shifting is smooth and responsive and feels like a real bike, before I was never certain if it would shift or not, especially going from the 34 to 50 on the compact crank it was really tempermental. Not anymore, Paulie set it up to shift smoothly. I had debated racing both the TT bike and the Orca to see which is faster, but I don't think that would be a good test as subconciously I might hold back a little on the TT bike as to leave a little in the tank for the next race. No, I'm going to put everything into the one race on the TT bike. I'm fairly certain the TT bike is a little faster anyway. Before the cranks were changed on a 3 mile stretch on 360 I'd been doing some testing and on the Orca I averaged 22.5mph. On the TT bike with compact cranks I averaged 22.4mph. When I tried it again with standard cranks I averaged 27.3, I'm pretty sure the wind and other conditions played a significant role in the jump in speed.

The plot thickens for Saturday as I have a friendly bet with Chuck (Team Brain & Spine) on our times for the Cronometro, loser buys the other a Coke. Good luck to everybody on Saturday, I'm going to have fun.