With 299 posts under my belt I just couldn't resist making it 300 on Christmas Day. It's been a challenging year, but I did best my Annual Challenge on Strava by a good margin and am alive and well, celebrating with friends and family and hoping you are too.
Give yourself a pat on the back. It's been a tough year and you're still here. Smile, you deserve one!
I've been doing a lot of Winter riding the last few weeks, about 300 miles in the last 2 weeks, and have had a chance to try out my new Castelli LW 2 bib tights, AND, ride my old PI Barrier bib tights for comparison. When sizing, Italian Rules apply, go UP one size. My PI is a large, so my Castelli are XL - and still nice and tight.
I wore the Castelli on a day that started out @ 9:00AM around 60F, with lots of sunshine, and after an hour clouded up with the wind picking up to a solid 10-12mph. I was getting pretty warm riding on the sunny side of the Mojave Bike Trail, where the Garmin reported 67F, and the long knee-socks and lightweight Polartech (Garneau - no longer made) leg warmers under the LW2s were really warm on my calf, and I was seriously thinking of stopping and stripping off the leg warmers - a really great option with these LW tights. Then the sun went behind a wall of clouds coming over the mountains that separate us from LA.
The temps dropped to 59F within minutes, and then 57F and eventually 54F and no sun at all. When you ride you perform a balancing act between generating heat and shedding heat, and you seldom nail it perfectly without working up a sweat on hills or headwinds, and chilling down with a tailwind, downhill, or just leaving your zipper down for too long. Bottom line, sooner or later you're going to end up riding in wet cloths, and then even a slight chill becomes a problem.
IF the sun is out you can usually find a warm place out of the wind to peel off your jacket, balaclava, gloves and helmet and let all that and your jersey and tights dry out. The back of the neck on the jersey and balaclava are usually the most problematic for me, but in a warm, sunny spot you have time to warm up and dry out.
Unfortunately, no such luck on this day, and the only place out of the wind was inside the unheated public bathroom at SVL. This means stop time has to be limited to a few minutes, and no drying off is possible. After a few minutes you lose so much heat your restarts are very cold as your core struggles to generate enough heat to get back into equilibrium.
All in all then, a very challenging day, and yet, I was amazed at how comfortable I was, riding on flat ground somewhat protected from the wind, I tried to keep my HR constant and adjusted my jacket zipper to regulate any excess heat. If the sun had come out, as was forecast, I could have peeled the leg warmers off and stowed them, so a very flexible system.
A couple of days ago it was forecast to be cold, windy and go from partly cloudy to near complete cloud cover, AND be 5-7 degrees colder throughout, so I decided to wear my old PI bib tights. 1st, they were quite loose, which should have been a tell, but they also turned out not to be as warm as I remembered, and the chamois felt paper thin at the end. They'd be great on really cold days with heavy leg warmers and knee socks, but they already weigh 2-3X as much as the Castelli, so that's not very appealing. I'd rather wear the heavy leg warmers under the Castelli. The PI are just not as warm as I remembered them being. They're 10yrs old though, so maybe that elastic is just letting go a bit.
On my next outing, the air was 50-61F, and somewhat cold at the start, but the sun kept burning through the cloud-cover all day, until it there were lots of nice places to stop and warm up. The Castelli did a good job keeping my glutes warm, the compression level was awesome, they're light enough to not bother your cadence much, and the chamois is awesome for a tight. I also had the option to peel off the lightweight leg warmers underneath all day. I did take the sleeves off my PI convertible jacket, but put them on when the sun started getting low to stay warm. What a huge difference! Options in winter are wonderful!
My only complaint about the Castelli is the Lycra below the knees (remember, this is Castelli's response to knicker sales declining, so a tight that's close to a knicker) was easily scratched by the side of my pedal when pushing off and missing the clip-in a bit. SMH
Castelli makes great stuff that just doesn't hold up well in my experience. We'll see about these bib tights, but it is disappointing they can't seem to bring themselves to add a little robustness in a few areas and have a stellar product through and through. Maybe instead of using Lycra printed with their name in giant 4" letters they could just use something much tougher in Screaming Yellow, or Castelli Red for that matter, and print their scorpion label on the legs.
So with that caveat, I highly recommend these bib tights.
PS: Shimano bought Pearl Izumi 2-3 yrs ago, and the quality of PI is spotty now, though they seem to have pretty much worked though their warehouses full of old gear. It's a frustrating time to be searching for a new label. Their PRO bib shorts are awesome. I bought 2 pair, but so far Shimano hasn't impressed me with its take-over management, and I hate getting old crap sold as new. PI has dated their mfg season for as long as I can remember, so it's just obvious that it's old inventory.
About 3 weeks ago, for no reason I can discern, my Garmin Edge 520 Plus (an amazing device BTW, and what a bargain!) started intermittently doubling my cadence while riding. Last week I was looking at my cadence on RWGPS and noticed it was being shown correctly, which seemed really odd until I remembered that what gets written to the .TCX file is recorded only once per second (you can use their Smart setting as well, but I prefer 1-Second mode), AND, each one of those records has a time-stamp on it.
I immediately suspected that a 2nd "Ghost" signal was corrupting the real-time display, but was being discarded as a duplicate or not being written to file stored in on-board storage, which gets uploaded to Garmin's site at the end of my rides. Since my RoadID has a small stainless plate on it, and it gets wrapped around my leg just above the ankle, I suspected it first.
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| This is too low IMHO as it would get covered by my waterbottle |
Googling around I also noticed ads on Garmin's site for the new Cadence Sensor II (ANT+ and BlueTooth telemetry support) showed it mounted low on the crank-arm, not at the peddle end, as I had always mounted mine, so I moved my sensor down to the middle of the crank arm, moved my RoadID to my right foot, and went for a ride. (there's also some torque specs, a QR code, and assorted lettering on the pedal end of my alloy Ultegra pedal, all of which could cause ghosting)
Mount it wherever it works best, but the bottle cage, attachment hardware, water, and reflective bottle insulation will all interfere if mounted as shown in the Garmin ads. (you can't mount it on the drive-side crank-arm bc it will hit the derailleur)
Not sure which of these measures, or perhaps both in conjunction, fixed the problem, but it appears to be fixed. If anyone else is having this problem I hope this helps.
PS: In spite of these measures the problem briefly reappeared. I've noticed that the problem seems to occur when my Scoche HR monitor's battery gets low, so I ordered a new 24hr one of those and we'll see what happens. I hope the stuff Garmin sells the US military is better than the absolute crap they sell us. SMH
Sad to say, my prediction about COVID making a roaring comeback this fall was correct, and we're now losing more people to it in 2 days than we did in an entire YEAR of the Vietnam war. Forget the politics. Save your life. Wear a mask, but know that's not enough. 4:5 biggest venues for spreading COVID are bars, restaurants, cafes, and churches. God knows where you are, and knows if you love him, he doesn't need a building to find you. The rest you can do online. Learn to cook. It's so gratifying and really, how pathetic is it that most Americans can't even feed themselves bc they can't cook? Besides, you'll save so much money you can buy a new bike every year or two.
Don't go into any enclosed spaces, especially not with central heating where the air is circulated throughout the entire building, but generally, stay in the sun and the wind and in the company of your own household. In winter the "Noontime" sun strength that kills COVID in less than 3 minutes is only from 9-3 at best. Don't ride in pacelines, period. DO keep riding, or whatever kind of exercise you do, even in the cold of winter, and enjoy the Great Outdoors with your household.
California has been doing a pretty good job managing COVID, but even we are now over 500/1M deaths. That's 1 chance in 2,000 of dying of COVID. Skydiving is less than 1 chance in 100,000, so if you go skydiving 50 times in a row you have the same chance of dying as with COVID - so far. Every passing day is another day jumping out of a perfectly good airplane with COVID - on and on and on.
I'll move on from the grim warnings now, but please do be safe.
My "Gearhead" at Competitive Cyclist, where I bought my Pinarello Prince, finally got me a new pair of mechanical R8000 shifters as I agreed to do the warranty work myself at no cost to CC. The L-Side was defective AFAICT, and has been malfunctioning since April, so very happy to report a successful R&R on the pair (Kyle said they only come in pairs, though you can buy just the L or the R online for a small premium) Shimano is back-ordered for months, and any discounts are a distant memory - $350/pair is the going rate even on-line these days.
This deserves its own post, which will follow when the weather gets too cold or wet to ride, but long story short, the cable sheathing made routing the cables much easier. I had lots of sheathing, and a brand new pair of cable cutters (a rare splurge to get over the $$$ hurdle for free shipping ~ June IIRC), so I cut clean ends that would slide inside the sheathing cleanly and placed all the sheathing en'masse before pulling the shifters. I labeled them and put them in a 4" piece of PVC pipe in the garage for next time.
I taped the sheathing in place with electrical tape at both ends to make damned sure an end didn't slide back inside, and the short piece between the chain-stays and front derailleur didn't slide out completely. There's a small grommet/dust-cap where the cable comes up through the chain-stays that got pushed into the frame while I was trying to pull it out with a needle-nose pliers, so I ended up pulling the crank and the seat, but did get it to drop out of the seat-tube. Cleaned and R&R the crank and seat post. At least I didn't have to pull the fork this time!
I surpassed my mileage goal for the week AND the year on Strava yesterday, doing a beautiful warm ride along the Mojave River Walk and around Spring Valley Lake. The sun glistening off the water was just gorgeous. Sometime in late 2007 I just couldn't force myself to walk into a gym anymore. After 20yrs I realized being fit enough to exercise outdoors had an expiration date, and until that day, I wasn't going to spend one more minute coped up in a box. Best decision of my life!
The LW 2 Bib Tights are constructed using Castelli's signature Thermoflex brushed fabric on the upper portion to keep your thighs and sensitive areas warm. Considering that these tights are designed to be one step above a knicker as far as coverage goes, the lower leg is made of a non-insulated Lycra called Nano Flex Light. This is done to prevent overheating, while at the same time protecting your lower legs from road spray if conditions are a bit wet. Castelli omits ankle zippers to preserve the lightweight feel, but they put in their flagship Progetto X2 Air seamless seat insert which has one of the softest surfaces we've ever felt in a chamois.
I wear 8" wool socks on "warm" days, and thick snowboarding knee socks on cold days, so the usual thickness everywhere but below the knee is really flexible for me, and if really cold, I'll wear leg-warmers under the tights. It usually makes it into the 60s here on winter days, it's the start that's the problem. These should work well here I think.
Finally, my quest to learn more about grease (grease failures are far, far more common than I, and I suspect, most people realize) continues. I happened upon a blog written by a guy from the Czech Republic, who is probably a bike mech, and maybe a lubrication engineer too. We've been arguing out a lot of useful points and when that gets distilled down I will write a proper blog post about it, but so far I'm happy with all my RX-es here.
We do agree on one thing vehemently, the people who make grease are selling snake oil, as there are no labeling requirements, and that seems to be the preference of the industry. The only exception I have found is AmsOil. It's outrageous to buy grease for $100/oz and you aren't given a damned thing but the mfg's rep to go on. Oh, and that especially in cold weather, greasing shifer cables is a BAD idea. Us a thin oil. I prefer Mobil-1 0W20 Annual Protection from a repurposed Visine bottle.
Looking forward to snow-capped mountains around here soon, and hoping you all have some special holiday treat you're looking forward to. Merry Christmas, be safe, and I'll see you next year (or sooner)!
