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I do a lot of bicycling. I ride with the
UW Cycling
Club and the Brazen Dropouts.
I ride a little blue Cannondale
and a big blue Bridgestone. I used to ride a Trek mountain bike (that was
just right) but now someone else is riding it, entirely without my
permission.
The Road season is pretty much over now, for me at least. I did 9 of 10 superweek races and then the next weekend did the state time trial. Check out my results page. I was pretty pumped going into Superweek and was in good shape, but I only managed to place in two of the races. I was especially disappointed about the road races since I'm usually better at those, but it was still a great time and I really did do some good riding, even though didn't get any real results. A notable fact is that I didn't crash in any more races. As you may know I've had some bad luck with crashing and wrecking my back wheels this season, but that's all behind me know - hopefully.
The State Time Trial was my second time trial, my first 40k, and my first time trial on aero bars. The bars I have I bought from the Motorola guy right after I did the Sergio TT last fall. I'm happy to say that I went faster over 40k this time than I did over 20k last year. I'm also happy that I finished under an hour - 58'25'', for 6th place cat 3. the guy who won at 26'??'' was the same guy that I was in a break with at the Manitowoc Criterium in Superweek. So I was in a break with the state TT champ! We still got caught, though.
Right now I'm considering getting STi levers for my bike more seriously than I have before. Right now I have downtube shifters and a 7 speed freewheel. I am looking at Shimano RSX levers because they are 7 speed, but an interresting twist introduced itself yesterday. I have been riding my current chain for quite awhile. It's not all that stretched out, hardly stretched out at all compared to some other old chains I have sitting around, but I bought a new one last week just because it's been so long, and put it on my bike yesterday. It appears, unless Sachs has drastically chenged the way that they make their chains, that all this riding on stretched out chains has finally done in my old freewheel. If I pedal it hard all with the new chain the chain just starts skipping. I investigated it further and it looks like my 3 favorite cogs have been deformed by all this bad chain business so that when you put some load on a good chain the next link won't go over the next tooth because the previous link can go too far forward. What all this means is that I'm going to have to buy a new freewheel too - maybe I should go for an 8 speed freewheel and 105 STI levers. I don't know if my old old 105 derailleur will work with 8 speeds, or if my old frame/rear hub will fit 8 speeds. For now I guess I'll just ride this old freewheel and chain into the ground, my chainrings are already shot.
