The second "race", if you could call it that, lasted just three laps.
The bike is therefore still a bit foreign to me. I hadn't really sprinted on it, not "ferociously", and I still haven't checked the SRM for accuracy. I mention the former because I wanted to make sure things were up to snuff - derailleurs adjusted, position reasonable, stuff like that - and I mention the latter because the power numbers I'm seeing were immediately 10-20% higher than those I see on the black Tsunami.
I went for a ride on a very close by loop recently on the bike shod with its Bastognes. After some intraweb discussions on wheel weight and aerodynamics I decided to throw on the race wheels to check them out. I'll post about the rides later but the second ride gave me a chance to photograph the bike loaded out in race day gear.
The Tsunami 1.1
First off you'll note some half finished yard work in the background. That's our handiwork. The part you don't see is that there's poison ivy mixed in there. I didn't know either but it's all over me - my arms, legs, stomach, back, neck, even just below my eyes. I must be much less stressed in life because it's not really annoying me, not like it usually does.
Anyway, back to the bike. I have some messy electrical tape holding the SRM cable to the frame. I plan on replacing it with clear tape of some kind.
One thing that you can't see are the parallel honed and faced bearing surfaces (the BB30 bottom bracket and the headset). It's made a huge difference in how the bike works. First off I started riding a bit squirrelly because the bike steered too easily (to me, coming off of some pretty stiff headsets). Second I am saving some decent amount of power because the cranks turn so easily. I would regularly see 5 or 8 watts when soft pedaling on the black bike, and I saw 15 watts once when pedaling with no load. Now it's negligible.
The quick steering and the efficient crank bearings make the bike feel like I'm riding rollers when I'm actually on the road. The bike feels super smooth, super quick.
Very nice.
The frame is much shorter in the rear now, I think 39.2 cm chainstays, so it reacts really quickly if I want it to change direction. They're just a touch longer than the black Tsunami's stays but basically the same.
For pedals I wanted to get the Keo Carbon again but with the metal plate for the cleat surface. Unfortunately the new pedals are absolutely wimpy on retention strength - I can clip out pretty much at will, even with the tension totally cranked. I need to figure something out because right now all my out of saddle efforts are somewhat checked, even sprints, because I'm afraid of unclipping.
For "race gear" I have the HED Stinger 7 front and Stinger 9 rear on the bike. I'll do a post on them soon, I promise. Suffice it to say that they're really wide, they have a rounded rim edge (the spoke side of the rim), and they feel really fast.
The SLR saddle.
I'm trying this saddle because I'm running out of the Titanio that I favor. It seems minimalistic but I rode it to Bethel, a 4.5 hour ride for me (at 14 mph), and it worked out well. I admit I was a bit tender because the different shape resulted in different pressure points but I was also going from virtually not riding to doing a 4.5 hour ride. In addition I started cramping almost immediately on that ride, due to a severe lack of fitness, so I had to stay seated for most of the ride. This literally kept me in the saddle even when I wanted to stand and stretch - the saddle definitely got tested on that ride.
Not only that but even when I was pedaling okay I couldn't pedal hard. This meant I wasn't supporting a significant portion of my weight with my legs, resulting in increased pressure on the saddle.
Even with both those things working against me the saddle seemed to work fine for me. The one thing is that it's more slippery than the Titanio. I don't have a solution at this point.
As far as fit I had to raise the post a bit because the saddle sits closer to the post. I raised it a touch more because the "center" of the saddle, where I end up sitting, is much further forward than the Titanio. This had the effect of shortening the distance from the saddle to the pedals by about 3-4 mm.
Err no you can't see the smudge marks on the seat post.
I took this picture because I could see the smudge marks on the post from where I raised it first for the saddle height difference and then again for the slightly different "center". No worries, it shows the seat collar area well.
The business end of the bike.
The Deda stem is misnamed, in my opinion, as a track ("pista") stem. In fact it only points 3 degrees (70 degrees or -20 deg) down from my regular stem which is horizontal (73 degrees or -17 deg from the head tube angle). I want a 14 cm stem that drops me at least a centimeter more but I can't find one.
The Deda is a 14 cm to try and make up for the lack of reach of the FSA Compact bars. I'm still short 1 cm in reach and the bars are 1 cm higher than my other bars. Due to this I'm almost positive I'm going to be moving back to the lower crit bend bars. Either that or I need to find some compact reach bars that drop 140 mm instead of 120 mm.
Centaur 10 speed shifters
I'm going to post more on this decision later too but I had two reasons for getting these shifters. One, I wanted to see if the new shape works for me. Two, I wanted a shifter that only gave me one shift at a time. The Record 10s shifters I have allow me to dump the chain down a lot. Limiting that to just one cog will hopefully save me from shifting too many cogs at once in a sprint.
GOOP and my PCV (off the Cannondale so the first one I got)
On a side note my SRM has a slight crack in the front "cover", the clear plastic that covers the whole face of the computer head. The plastic alternately bulges and gets sucked in, depending on the atmospheric pressure I suppose, maybe temperature too. It tends to bulge in the summer, get sucked in in the winter. Whatever, the important part is that whatever I used to patch it would need to be flexible.
I used GOOP to patch it up. It's clear after it dries and it's flexible. I've used it to fix the driver's side mirror on the van, gluing new mirror glass to the plastic backing. Someone had hit the van while it was parked on the street and left me with a broken mirror glass. So far it's worked well - about 5 years or so.
Reviewing this post you can see that the bike isn't quite complete. I still need to hone the bar position relative to the saddle or change the bar completely. I need to address the pedals. But overall the bike is great - responsive, agile, and fun.
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6 comments:
Have you thought about trials bike stems? They can typically be found in 25-35 angles and 120-180 mm lengths, though it might take some digging to find just the right combination of angle and length.
Interesting. I didn't know about them. I am considering a custom stem though. This would be sort of the whole 'custom frame' concept taken to the stem.
What about the FSA Energy New Ergo bar? It has 80mm reach and 150mm drop, so same reach as Shallow with 25mm more drop. Continuous curve to the drops, not standard ergo shape.
Seem to be designed with some slope to the ramps, so that would also lower the hoods somewhat.
You know, I just learned about them. I was looking up the Compact's dimensions and saw the 150mm drop of the Energy. That might be the way to go. The 80 mm reach is nice because the tops of the bars are 2 cm further out right now and that feels good.
Forza (4ZA) bars have a slightly longer reach (90mm for Cirrus and Stratos) and a 140mm drop. (The Pro version adds another few mm for both dimensions.) And they'll remind you of your youth, it's a Belgian company.
I'm checking the FSA Energy (will put it on the bike for fit purposes soon).
I want to stay with a minimal reach since that'll minimize forearm bruising in the sprints. The crit bend bars gave me reasonable clearance and the FSA Compacts did also. The 80mm reach, 150mm drop, that seemed ideal in numbers. The shape of the drops is my only concern.
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