I always thought fancy gear was wasted on me and I couldnt tell the difference between the $1,000 frame and the $5,000 frame. I got the fancy stuff cheap from working for bike companies or shops so i just rode it.
I just rode the Edge Tubulars after a month on my clinchers (chris king and DT suisse R1.1). I was amazed at how much stiffer they feel! Even with big fat 34mm tubies with very little air in them I was bouncing off of stuff i got used to rolling over on the clinchers. Weird huh? i guess thats what deep dish carbon is for right!
Maybe the nice gear is worth it?
Showing posts with label EDGE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EDGE. Show all posts
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
So it begins (again)
And we're back...
A new coach, new plan, soon a new bike. But Cross season hasnt really begun until the Edge Tubulars shed their larval road tires and emerge, butterfly like, resplendent in Knobby glory.
Last year I kind of geeked out on cross tires, and in my quest to find an aggressive tubular tread, ended racing on some vintage rubber that was mighty skinny. They looked like dirt bike tires from the 60's, im not lying. They grabbed the ground well, but I couldnt run the low pressures that are the whole point of buying pretentious tubular tires, bouncing around on rocky or rooty sections was not too much fun.
This year, after riding D2R2 on road racing tires and doing a good amount of trail riding on my own, Im not nearly as stressed. I was able to climb some nice steep gravel roads in deerfield on slicks, so i dont feel an aggressive tread is as important this year. Fangos were available and decently priced on the last team order, so Fangos are what I got (BTW 34mm fangos are HUGE!) I am currently scouring ebay for a cheap set of campy compatable clincher "B" wheels to give me some more options, but at the moment the Edge 1.38s will get a lot of use so the tires had better work pretty well all the time.
I have been a disciple of taping tires since last season. I know that gluing is delightfully "baroque" as the bikesnob put it. But I like the fact that I can put a new tire on in a half hour, rather than 3 days. And to everyone who says that im playing with fire, I submit the photos below. That small bit of unseated tubular tire is as much as i could get up after 20 minutes and a thumb blister. These tires have been taped on for one road season. So, the tape is plenty sticky enough.
I think that glueing tires must fall in with leg shaving. We do it because that is "how it is done". Now im not saying there is a better option for shaving legs, that technology is still waiting for some daring young inventor to make his fortune. But it seems that tubular tape is much more idiot proof than glueing and, in my experience, just as reliable. I dont tape because I cant glue, I actually CAN glue tire up, and still prefer the tape. Maybe im just an early adopter, sadly its just an advantage when it comes to my sanity, and not performance enhancing. Though if I do win any races maybe i will credit the tape and see if anyone converts...
20 minutes later...the tire remains and my thumbs hurt.
A new coach, new plan, soon a new bike. But Cross season hasnt really begun until the Edge Tubulars shed their larval road tires and emerge, butterfly like, resplendent in Knobby glory.
Last year I kind of geeked out on cross tires, and in my quest to find an aggressive tubular tread, ended racing on some vintage rubber that was mighty skinny. They looked like dirt bike tires from the 60's, im not lying. They grabbed the ground well, but I couldnt run the low pressures that are the whole point of buying pretentious tubular tires, bouncing around on rocky or rooty sections was not too much fun.
This year, after riding D2R2 on road racing tires and doing a good amount of trail riding on my own, Im not nearly as stressed. I was able to climb some nice steep gravel roads in deerfield on slicks, so i dont feel an aggressive tread is as important this year. Fangos were available and decently priced on the last team order, so Fangos are what I got (BTW 34mm fangos are HUGE!) I am currently scouring ebay for a cheap set of campy compatable clincher "B" wheels to give me some more options, but at the moment the Edge 1.38s will get a lot of use so the tires had better work pretty well all the time.
I have been a disciple of taping tires since last season. I know that gluing is delightfully "baroque" as the bikesnob put it. But I like the fact that I can put a new tire on in a half hour, rather than 3 days. And to everyone who says that im playing with fire, I submit the photos below. That small bit of unseated tubular tire is as much as i could get up after 20 minutes and a thumb blister. These tires have been taped on for one road season. So, the tape is plenty sticky enough.
I think that glueing tires must fall in with leg shaving. We do it because that is "how it is done". Now im not saying there is a better option for shaving legs, that technology is still waiting for some daring young inventor to make his fortune. But it seems that tubular tape is much more idiot proof than glueing and, in my experience, just as reliable. I dont tape because I cant glue, I actually CAN glue tire up, and still prefer the tape. Maybe im just an early adopter, sadly its just an advantage when it comes to my sanity, and not performance enhancing. Though if I do win any races maybe i will credit the tape and see if anyone converts...
20 minutes later...the tire remains and my thumbs hurt.
Monday, April 6, 2009
People keep making themselves my enemies!
I guess I've been lucky in the years ive been racing bikes that I have never actually been involved in a crash while racing. There have been a couple times when people have crashed around me, but ive been able to avoid these "entanglements" myself.
So it was a shock on sunday, at the first race of the year that I found myself out of the race and unable to support the team because of a crash at Marblehead. And a silly crash at that.
I think we all accept a bit of risk when we race, and there were certainly several chances to take yourself out this weekend. A car on the course that could not be cleared before the start, the famous "Marblehead Hairpin", and the rookies who are always part of mixed 4/5 fields. But I was crashed out because of someone being dumb.
CCB fields a number of Juniors and most of them are fast kids. I found myself behind one of them several times in the first half of the race and noticed that his bike was squeaky and he was not a smooth rider. A squeky bike on race day means one of 2 things, either you dont know better and dont care, or you ride too much to keep things clean. If you are on your bike 7 days a week ill forgive a dirty bike that makes some noise, but once i started seeing some of the hard cuts into the field the kid was making I was pretty sure that he was the former and that he was best avoided.
With 4 laps to go we had our first crash of the race when someone finally got sloppy near the car on the course and bounced off it, I found out later this took Gregor out of contention. At the end of the back half of the course my favorite squeaky cervelo found himself in front of me when he decided to cut in on a wheel and cause our second crash of the race. It was a typical crash. Front wheel versus rear wheel, the kid lost his front end and went down at decent speed, turning his bike sideways. A racer who had been moving up to pass us both got caught as he went down and blocked the only room I had to avoid. Being the type of person who keeps things in pretty good and functional shape, if not always perfectly clean, all my bussiness worked well and I got things stopped a couple inches from running the culprit over. But of course people behind me were less aware of what had hapened and ran into me, knocking into the crash. By the time I got up the field was a good bit ahead, but still visible. Pretty quickly i determined that everything was working, but that my shifting had bit of a delay in it, but it was minor. I chashed up, trying to catch the field as they slowed for the hairpin, but soloing into the headwind took too much and I was still by myself as I made the turn. After a hard lap of chasing I started finding wheels from others who had been involved in one of the crashes, and among them Gregor. We rode it in together, finishing the race and beating the dreaded "DNF" that would have otherwise appeared on our "road-results.com" file.
So this kid is now on the list of wheels to avoid, and hopefully give me reason to bark at the next time im in a race with him. Im not injured but I have a sore stiff knee, a bike that needs adjustment, and a carbon tubular that needs to be stripped and trued. I keep thinking of a quote from the book version of "Silence of the lambs" about how Hannibal Lector preffered to "eat the rude", and now i can relate. The only moral I can take from this is Im glad ive been riding the EDGE wheels for the last week and had a pretty good feel for how the respond to heavy braking. If I had just thrown them on for race day im pretty sure I would ran over the kid rather than just falling on top of him.
I also keep thinking of a project that a former roomate kept trying to get going each year, early in the road season. Its a website called ICANTRIDEINAPACK.COM and I think we have our first candidate.
So it was a shock on sunday, at the first race of the year that I found myself out of the race and unable to support the team because of a crash at Marblehead. And a silly crash at that.
I think we all accept a bit of risk when we race, and there were certainly several chances to take yourself out this weekend. A car on the course that could not be cleared before the start, the famous "Marblehead Hairpin", and the rookies who are always part of mixed 4/5 fields. But I was crashed out because of someone being dumb.
CCB fields a number of Juniors and most of them are fast kids. I found myself behind one of them several times in the first half of the race and noticed that his bike was squeaky and he was not a smooth rider. A squeky bike on race day means one of 2 things, either you dont know better and dont care, or you ride too much to keep things clean. If you are on your bike 7 days a week ill forgive a dirty bike that makes some noise, but once i started seeing some of the hard cuts into the field the kid was making I was pretty sure that he was the former and that he was best avoided.
With 4 laps to go we had our first crash of the race when someone finally got sloppy near the car on the course and bounced off it, I found out later this took Gregor out of contention. At the end of the back half of the course my favorite squeaky cervelo found himself in front of me when he decided to cut in on a wheel and cause our second crash of the race. It was a typical crash. Front wheel versus rear wheel, the kid lost his front end and went down at decent speed, turning his bike sideways. A racer who had been moving up to pass us both got caught as he went down and blocked the only room I had to avoid. Being the type of person who keeps things in pretty good and functional shape, if not always perfectly clean, all my bussiness worked well and I got things stopped a couple inches from running the culprit over. But of course people behind me were less aware of what had hapened and ran into me, knocking into the crash. By the time I got up the field was a good bit ahead, but still visible. Pretty quickly i determined that everything was working, but that my shifting had bit of a delay in it, but it was minor. I chashed up, trying to catch the field as they slowed for the hairpin, but soloing into the headwind took too much and I was still by myself as I made the turn. After a hard lap of chasing I started finding wheels from others who had been involved in one of the crashes, and among them Gregor. We rode it in together, finishing the race and beating the dreaded "DNF" that would have otherwise appeared on our "road-results.com" file.
So this kid is now on the list of wheels to avoid, and hopefully give me reason to bark at the next time im in a race with him. Im not injured but I have a sore stiff knee, a bike that needs adjustment, and a carbon tubular that needs to be stripped and trued. I keep thinking of a quote from the book version of "Silence of the lambs" about how Hannibal Lector preffered to "eat the rude", and now i can relate. The only moral I can take from this is Im glad ive been riding the EDGE wheels for the last week and had a pretty good feel for how the respond to heavy braking. If I had just thrown them on for race day im pretty sure I would ran over the kid rather than just falling on top of him.
I also keep thinking of a project that a former roomate kept trying to get going each year, early in the road season. Its a website called ICANTRIDEINAPACK.COM and I think we have our first candidate.
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