In the Pipeline ...

When trying to express my exasperation with compact gearing not supporting half-step gearing, or maybe "banded" half-step, because only the middle of the range half-steps, I realized I wasn't being very clear or persuasive with a new rider the other day.

Neither 50/34 nor 50/36 chainrings make very nice gearing. 50/38 makes BEAUTIFUL gearing, but the shit-heads at Shimano just don't seem to get it. The current gearing strategy seems to be "here's a gaggle of gears, and here's another gaggle of gears, and they have nothing to do with each other". Pathetic. The speed chart below is for a cadence of 80, despite it being labeled gear ratio, although the latter is irrespective of cadence, this, paired with the RWGPS speed histogram, is a better intro to gearing, so I rather hastily adapted it.

Note how 13 of 20 usable gears here  participate in 1/2-step gearing

If you choose a slightly different set of chainrings, and to a lessor extent cassettes, you have almost exactly the same range and granularity, BUT, when you get into the gearing range where you spend most of your time, between every gear on your big ring there's a gear on your small ring.

IMHO, choosing between 80 & 88 rpms for any length of time is unacceptable. You should be able to find a gear that will make the speed, and consume the power that makes your legs happy at, in my case, 84-85 RPMs by shifting a bit, making full use of Shimano's 3-gear change on a full cable pull in back. Also, the design goal of Shimano's HG system, circa 1989, was to support simultaneous front & rear shifting, so no surprise, this is now easy-peasy.

How do you find out which gears you spend the most time in? RWGPS makes that easy with their speed-time histogram. Here's mine for a recent ride.

The intricacies of good gearing is kind of a black art, but I wrote the spreadsheet that made the above  gear-chart 10+ years ago, and it's very helpful in rooting out good gear combos. Once you catch on the question becomes "why NOT use half-step gearing". It costs you nothing, or very close to it, reduces fatigue and harvests more power and speed from the same effort. Bottom line, I will be buying a new 52/39 crank (yes, I had to buy the 39T stand-alone and put the 36 on top of the stack of other useless rings already in the drawer, but that's only about $35, so very cheap) I'm buying a whole new crank for $209 because the chainrings alone cost that much, and I'll keep the 50/34 set up for climbing. Swapping cranks is a 20 minute chore, tops,  these days.

Handlebar Setups

Next, I've been intimately involved in the subtleties of handlebars in a way I really never paid much attention to before. My old carbon bars are now in the bin in preference to a better fit. Turns out the stem, stack height, bar, shape of the shifters and aerobars all come into play when trying to get a really good fit.

Sorry for the tease, but these are both pretty involved subjects, and if not for nursing a bum left knee the last week, I wouldn't have time to work on writing, so I hope you'll bear with me as I gather my thoughts and exhibits.

Cheers!

Riding in the age of COVID-19

One of my favorite destinations is the Apple Valley Airport, which currently requires face-masks, which I cannot wear while riding, so I can carry one in my jersey pocket, or stay outside. The Cafe is open again, and while I love having it there, in spite of copious signage now making masks mandatory, this common-sense measure is being universally ignored, so I have been looking for ways to mitigate my risk when at the airport.

1st, I started rolling up to one of the two covered picnic tables behind the building, well down-wind of the cafe, depending on wind direction. I stop long enough to catch my breath and take a couple of good long pulls off my waterbottles in anticipation of refilling them inside from the water cooler, which has bottled water on tap.

2nd, after catching my breath, usually early in the morning, sitting in the sun, letting mother nature's UV rays kill CVID-19 and everything else, I roll inside though the back doors, pass the entrance to the cafe, and tank up.

3rd, I roll the bike down a long hallway to the bathrooms, relieve my bladder, and wash my hands thoroughly, and then leave promptly. Clean hands are a must when eating my rice-puck with my fingers, so I prop the door open with a door stop and keep my right hand clean as I exit, using my left to operate the door.

 Adaptation:

I noticed, new, more aggressive signage yesterday, stating in no uncertain terms that masks were required. Nobody was wearing them, and I forgot  mine. (distracted by a sore knee, which required adding a leg-warmer over my L knee to keep it warm in the morning cold) Turns out there's a BBQ area 100ft or so downwind of the main building with seating for ~ 50, AND, it has running hot and cold water in a stainless steel sink with a plumbed drain.

Sink with running H&C water in deep background

I was able to re-wash my hands, and rinse them as well after eating my rice. It got me thinking though, most days, if I carried a small amount of soap I could skip the trip indoors entirely! I might have to water the cactus discretely somewhere down the road, but there isn't much out there anyway, so no problem. Like so many aspects of social behavior post-COVID-19, safety seems more important than a discrete pee on the side of a dusty rural road.

So now I've talked myself into a requirement to carry a small bit of anti-bacterial soap. Not to worry, I repurposed a spray bottle of nasal saline, which holds ~ 1oz AFAICT (the label came off in the dishwasher)

Cleanliness is next to Godliness, or in this case, GU

So going forward, I think I'll just dig this bit of soap out of my saddle bag, wash my hands & faucet at the sink in the BBQ area, eat, drink, be merry (or tired), wash the sticky from the rice off my fingers, fill my waterbottle and move on. If I remember my mask and there's bottled water inside, maybe a quick trip through the lobby to refill and then straight out the door again. Limiting indoor time is critical to limiting exposure, which goes up 500+ fold sans sunlight and a cleansing breeze.

Continental GP5000 TL Longevity: Pt II

As promised, I ended up replacing the rear Conti GP5000 TL 28mm tire on June 30th as the wear dimples were barely a shadow at 1,750 miles, but the catalyst was skidding to a halt to keep from hitting an electric gate, and wearing through the 1/4 mm tread left. The black of the casing has a slightly different hue than the tread, so careful inspection convinced me I was pushing a bad position and should change the tire.

Another factor was I intended to ride a long ride on the 31st, and I didn't want to set myself up for failure by riding a bad tire, especially since the new tire had arrived more than a week earlier and was sitting on the shelf, ready to go.

I stayed with a 28mm tire, which I now run at 60-70 psi. I get a nice ride and better grip. Several times now I've rolled over a 1/2 to 3/4" stone in a turn, and the rear tire just envelopes it, giving way nicely, and staying hooked up. I used to run Michelin Pro4 Endurance 25mm in back @ 115lbs, and that was a much harsher ride, though the best I could find in a tough, tubed tire.

My Pinarello Prince also has a "D" shaped, flat-back seat-tube that pierces the wind nicely for the wider tire. There's also only about a 1/4" gap between the seat-tube and the tire, so the air-flow is probably pretty clean even with the wider tire.

As I said in the earlier post, you should expect to get about 2x my mileage on a rear tire, as for some strange reason, over the last 13 years I have consistently gotten about half the mileage others do - so expect 3,500 miles, at least from a 28mm rear tire. (probably due to unintentionally skidding the rear wheel - my bad - a bad habit I'm working on)

I guess I should also mention that I ran the entire life of the tire with NO flats. Not even one, and no slow leaks either. That's  frankly amazing to me. The high desert is so hostile to bike tires I used to flat every 3-4 rides. I use Stan's sealant and tape, and, NEVER, EVER added one drop of sealant. I put a full 2oz (60ml) of sealant in when I aired it up, and never touched it again. I just rode it and rode it and rode it.

They still go on tight, and I had to use Zip-Ties again to get this one on, but it was on, inflated, sealed and seated in 15 minutes total time, and that included cleaning the rim-tape and valve. No way I would ever go back to a tubed tire.

Breaking All The Rules

When I was a boy people drawing social security checks weren't supposed to be breaking their personal performance records, and for the most part, be involved in sports at all. They were supposed to be laying back in their Lazy Boy recliners waiting for the Grim Reaper to find them, so happy to report I am breaking all those rules.

In 2010 the riders in the Sacramento area, which I called home for well over a decade, rode over 3 MILLION miles in the month of May. When the Great Recession started to fade, and more of us had jobs to go back to, that mileage dropped a bit, but in 2012 I made a concerted effort, between bouts of allergies and saddle sores and managed to log a PB of 575 miles.

A few months earlier I put in 214 miles in a single week (I looked this stat up in a post on this blog, as I had remembered it as 235 miles, but 214 it was) in response to a personal challenge from an online friend who was tragically killed by a motorist on a ride shortly after that.

As you can see, I easily beat both of those totals, as well as riding my longest ride, twice actually, since moving down to SoCal in 2015, first on Monday with 73 miles, and then besting that on Sunday with 80 miles. I also passed 3 people I follow on Strava for total mileage in 2020 and bested their longest rides.

As crazy as everything is out there right now, and as much as our nation is enduring, I am thrilled that this small corner of my life, the bit I have some control over, is going great, and I hope I can do a little leading by example in this regard.

Success ALWAYS feels great, and you can't have that unless you set goals that are attainable, and then do your damnedest to meet them.

Cheers!


PS:
If you care about sports at all, and especially basketball, you MUST watch "The Last Dance". I can't think of anyone more than Michel Jordon to embody the ideals in this post. He, like Kobe and Magic Johnson have always been a huge inspiration, and that's getting harder to find these days.