Carbon Copy
Sunday 13 December 2009 at 4:07 pm
I liked the Pro Vibe bar so much, I bought the carbon version. 50g lighter, and between the huge discount and the desire for an Vibe bar on my winter bike, this upgrade was barely over the £1/g mark.Getting under
Sunday 04 October 2009 at 11:00 am
Time trial bike £2200Outfit £420
Getting under - priceless.
On a bright cool morning with a gentle sou'westerly made to flatter the fixed gear rider on the H25/2 Ski Slope course, my four weeks of training (i.e. going for a ride now and again) paid off with a 1:15 improvement and my first sub-hour 25 in almost two decades. Getting under by 18s doesn't seem like a comfortable margin, and it certainly didn't feel like a certainty as my average speed dropped to 24.7mph approaching the Hurly slip road on the way home, but it's mostly downhill from there and the final margin amounts to about 200 yards at my eventual average speed.
1.35%
Thursday 10 September 2009 at 9:00 pm So this is what 5 months of training and racing amounts to; a speed increase of less than 1.35% compared with the first time I drove the Koga round Shurlock Row. With the medium gear bike put back on the rack for another year (at least as far as racing goes), I was back to my habitual 13th place.100rpm, take 2
Thursday 03 September 2009 at 8:00 pm Well, 99.51rpm really. A bit slower than last week, with the same howling gale hampering any attempt to set a decent time, but a bit further up the overall result and second in the medium gear contest just 20s behind Simon.100rpm
Thursday 27 August 2009 at 9:00 pm You need to scroll a bit to find me in the result, as I was trying out my 72" gear on the old Brian Rourke. It was pretty breezy too, with the tailwind on the downhill Howe Lane stretch I was hitting >130rpm, which is hard work for an old bloke on 175mm cranks. Having seen the weather forecast for next Thursday, when I should be up against more people on medium gear, it might all have been a bit pointless.Inverse proportion
Thursday 20 August 2009 at 9:00 pm Turning 93" at 87rpm, compared with last week's 88" at 93rpm. Would have been nice to have hit 88rpm for the sake of symmetry, but under the circumstances an improvement was never on, and I was surprised to get as close as I did. Others went back more, so I was up to tenth, but my chance of getting under 25:00 at Fifield this year has now passed.Hot wheels
Tuesday 18 August 2009 at 11:20 pm
It took only a few months for Shimano's current year wheels to become so dull that they needed heavy discounting, so now the Look has some wheels more fitting to the overall build than the nice but porky Aksiums. The RS80s drop a pound off the bike weight, have better aerodynamics, and the UD carbon finish and graphics are an excellent visual match to the 585 Ultra. A quick spin around Dorney Lake proved satisfactory, with the wheels living up to their billing as stiff enough despite the low spoke count. Most of the weight loss is in the rims, which means faster acceleration and a surprisingly noticeable increase in turn in rate thanks to the reduced gyroscopic forces.
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