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.
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.
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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Thursday 13 August 2009 at 9:00 pm
Things which you didn't know were wrong until you changed them; SPD pedals on a racing bike. After nearly 20 years of racing on SPD type pedals, I just switched to Keos on my TT bike and immediately noticed a more solid feel to the pedalling platform. I doubt that the Zxellium shoes are any stiffer than my old Nikes, so I'm putting it down to the wider support improving roll stability. Less successfully, I changed down to the 16 sprocket, which was a touch spinny with the Drift Road being fast; >34mph past New Lodge, even on the 88" gear. Bumpy corners, low tri bars and 130rpm make for an interesting ride. An average cadence of over 92 was the highest of the year, and my
25:02 was a substantial improvement on my course best, but annoyingly just a couple of seconds shy of my target and a place in the top ten.
Sunday 02 August 2009 at 12:00 pm
A poor effort on the
ski slope this morning. Everybody noticed that there was a headwind all the way around, but other people seemed to be less affected. I drifted off race pace in the last couple of miles once it was clear that I wasn't even going to get inside 1:2:0. Avoiding the climb to the start on the 100" gear didn't seem to provide any advantage, so some kind of research into warm ups might be in order to maximise the benefit of taking the rollers up to the top of the hill.
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