Training - Anclote Road Sprints

One of my big goals for Florida was to get out and do some actual sprints. This was the main reason for getting the Steelman Bikes custom stem and I wanted to test it before I sprinted in a race.

Since my rocking trainer experiment is on hold (more on that later) I don't have a proper indoor way of doing a real out of the saddle sprint to test the position offered by the custom stem. Florida would be the last time I'd get outside, realistically, before I start racing in March.

Therefore I needed to get out and do some sprints.

I tried a few half hearted jumps here and there but they weren't impressive at all, and in fact I was so weak (based on both feel as well as SRM numbers) I started getting worried about my lack of power. I sort of forgot about being deathly ill on the way down here as well as the first day where I could barely do anything, but at the time even if I were sick I felt I should have been better.

Almost a week later, in warm-even-for-Florida temperatures, I felt much better. On Christmas Eve day the Missus booted me out of the house to go ride. I obliged.

When I headed down my now-normal route I realized that I'd have a friendly cross-tailwind the southward bits of road. I'd have one on the eastward stuff also but there wasn't a lot of eastward stuff where I could sprint.

There was a southward section though. It was just before the road loops back into a busy road, one that I wouldn't want to ride, so it worked out perfectly.

I zipped down to the bit of road in 20 or 25 minutes, about 7 miles or so, a decent clip for me if I were at home. I rolled through the sprint zone slowly the first time, trying to get some landmarks down, trying to figure out where to jump and where to sit up. For me sprints are much more productive with a real, solid finish line, but without one my sprints end up really kind of blah. I need to throw the bike at the finish to really finish the effort.

Unfortunately I never figured out a good finish line nor did I figure out where to jump. I just jumped when I thought it was getting a bit late to jump and I sat up when I knew I was about to blow. A finish line might have bought me another 20-30 meters of focused speed, but, well, if I get down there again then that's what I'll do, set out a finish line and try and do a better sprint.

Later, when I got back, I created a Strava segment (Anclote Road Sprint) for that bit of road so that I could easily see what I did for each sprint. (Unfortunately I created the segment without viewing the helmet cam footage so I really missed in the finish line point, making the segment way too long.)

That first roll through took me 50 seconds to cover the bit that ended up becoming the segment. The next one took me 27 seconds. I rue the fact that I was alone because with a proper leadout I think my speed would not have dropped under 35 mph. Even alone I managed to roll from 27 mph up to just over 40 mph, hold it for a bit, then drop down until I blew and sat up.

The important thing was the feel of the bike in the sprint. The whole reason for the custom stem was to get the drops down to where they were with the 3ttt Gimondi and Mavic bars. With the FSA Energy bars I was close but the bar shape was such that I was actually a couple cm higher. With the FSA Wing bar, whose shape I love, I was a good 3 cm too high.

This led me to get a stem that would drop the bars 3 cm. It would also make sure my reach was closer to what it was - the compact bars reduce reach by 3 cm and this stem would take back a little over 2 cm of that, maybe 2.5 cm.

I hoped that this would let me get forward enough and low enough to weight the front wheel properly. In my 2013 sprints the bars have simply been too high. The bike felt skittish and I never had a good jump, not ever. There were  few sprints in training where the bike was so skittish I unclipped while at 100% effort due to the front wheel not doing what I needed it to do. It wasn't just once, it was a few times, and this really made me hold back when sprinting (the few times I did sprint).

So how did the custom stem work?

It worked great!

That first sprint wasn't totally foreign to me. I'd done a few jumps here and there and I knew that there was potential. I just hadn't done an all out sprint at sprint speeds.

View of the section of Anclote Road in Tarpon Springs, Florida. Wesley Avenue is to the left.

Still, though, that first sprint was like coming home. I rolled through the right turn into the straight, waited a bit, and then jumped as a car approached me.

My first jump point.

For an instant I thought, "Oh, man, I'm gonna hit a 35 mph wall of wind just as I jump," but the thought quickly dissipated as I focused on doing a super hard jump.

Thumb to shift.

Jump again.

Thumb to shift.

Jump again.

A bit longer, then thumb to shift again.

Jump again.

I started bogging down - I probably should have tried to get more rpms out of the lower gear instead of getting into the high one.

When I sat up. That bush up ahead to the right would be a good finish line.

In Strava I put the finish is a good distance away, maybe 100m or more.

I looked down. I was in the 11T.

Well now.

I don't think I've done a decent sprint in the 11T in, what, in forever actually. I don't remember the last time I sprinted in the 11T. 12T, okay, 13T, whenever, but 11T… it's been a while. I mean, yes, I've shifted into the 11T but I haven't been able to get it turning.

I turned around and headed back to do the bit again.

I did three more sprints, two of them ending in the 11T, one of them in the 12T. I actually thought that I wasn't shifting into the 11T for the second or third sprint but when I sat up and looked down the chain sat on the 11T, not the 12T.

The last sprint I blew up before I really got up to speed - my base conditioning isn't really good for more than a few sprints - and I knew I was in the 12T and I knew I wasn't going fast.

Around where I jumped there was a dip in the pavement. A few inches, nothing major, but definitely something you notice when sprinting. For me it meant the front wheel was airborne for a moment, waiting to land, and since I seemed to be in the middle of a power stroke each time I hit it, the wheel was landing a bit sideways.

With the FSA Energy bars or the regular stem FSA Wing bars that would have been disaster. The front wheel would have not been planted, it would have done a wobble or something, and my bike wouldn't be 100% under control.

In the sprints where I unclipped I was trying to muscle the bike back into line, putting some lateral force into the pedals, and that caused me to unclip really hard. Unfortunately I can't increase the pedal tension any more so that meant I had to ease off on my body English.

This sprint resulted in no such shenanigans. I could sprint, the bike went straight, and nothing weird happened.

When I blew up on that fourth sprint I was already feeling queasy. I knew from experience that if I had some fitness I'd be able to push through that queasiness, substantially even, but I didn't feel today was the day to make the effort.

I rolled back to home base slowly, satisfied that my bike was finally working the way I wanted it to work. Hopefully it makes my racing just a bit more solid, a bit more rooted in its foundations. I felt like my speed was always in danger of evaporating last year, where I could never really dig hard. It became such that I remember feeling really good the few times I felt the rear tire dig in as I jumped out of a corner. That should be a normal occurrence but last season it was unusual.

Hopefully this year I feel a lot more of that.

Equipment - FSA Energy Handlebars

Over the last month or two I've been thinking about trying to fix my bar position. I mean, okay, I've been thinking about it since the winter, but I finally got another bar that might work - the FSA Energy handlebar. I was running an FSA Wing, a "compact" bar. It has 12 cm drop and 8 cm reach, instead of the 15 cm drop and 11 cm reach of the crit bend bars.

To try and make up for part of this I got a 2 cm longer stem (14 cm long) which moved the drops out 2 cm and therefore reclaimed 2 of the 3 cm lost. I'd be running 1 cm shorter reach.

I got the stem in a Deda Pista (track). Unfortunately instead of the normal 65 degree angle the Deda came with just a 70 degree angle, a whopping 3 degrees downward angle from horizontal, not the 8 degrees I wanted.

Ultimately the stem got me another half centimeter of drop, netting me a 1.5 cm raise, versus the 2 cm raise before. I knew it affected my sprint negatively but I decided that it would be acceptable. After all, 2013 was the year of no goals, just to ride and race as possible. Sprinting on the drops felt awkward, kind of like doing curls but just the top 25% of the motion. I want to get into the meaty part of the curl, the middle 90 degrees, not the top 45 degrees. The shallow drop bars kept me from really being able to push/pull the bars.

The big benefit to me was that the tops of the bars were 2 cm further out. I really liked that for the JRA type training I do out on the road - tops or drops for me.

Since the higher drops grated on my nerves every time I rode I decided to look for a deeper drop 8 cm reach bar, so a deep drop compact if you will. I saw the FSA Energy fit the bill, so when I could I bought one.

Then I let it sit around for a month or two. Or three even.

The other day, reluctantly getting on the bike for a hot trainer session, I decided that, okay, I'll try the doggone bars. I'd gotten a 73 degree 14 cm 3T stem as well so I bolted the two together, making it a Road/Energy combo, and stuck it in place of the Pista/Compact bar set up. I didn't bother transferring anything over to the new bars - if it didn't seem right I'd just put the complete Pista/Compact cockpit back on the bike.

Road/Energy stem/bar combo, bare.

Note the regular Pista/Compact assembly dangling below it.

Another view which clearly shows how I simply put a different bar/stem on the bike.

I rode the trainer like this. Shifting was awkward at best. Trying to check ride time on the SRM involved moving the dangling bar a bit so I could see the SRM.

A sideways view (left is down), showing the Pista label on the original stem.

I did the trainer ride with the Road/Energy set up, no cables, no tape, and even though the skinny unwrapped bar felt incomplete the overall setup felt better. Shifting the other sets of bars inconvenienced me, of course, but, more significantly, I noticed the 2 cm drop immediately. It felt better, it let me drop down lower while on the drops, and it felt like it ought to work. I even rode with gloves because the bar bars slipped too much. The drops themselves felt weird so after a not-too-intense ride, tired in a sleepy way, I decided to deal with it later.

The next day, when I looked at the bike with a clear mind, I realized that I never properly tightened the handlebar clamp bolts so the bars tilted up when I pedaled while holding the drops. The ends of the bars were pointing comically at the rear hub.

I had ridden a clown bike.

This is why the bars felt so weird on the drops, and in the dimly lit room (it was late at night), a hazy brain, I just didn't see it. I tilted the bars to a more reasonable angle, pointing to just above the rear brake, and sat on the bike. It felt okay so I spent some time moving the cable housing and levers over. I even moved the SRM mount over.

With no tape I did another trainer ride, again with gloves. Unfortunately I bonked on this one so I ended it quickly. Even in the short 35 minutes I realized that the right lever sat just a bit higher than the left and that otherwise the bars were great.

The next day, with the Missus's encouragement, I adjusted that lever just a touch lower in preparation for wrapping the bars. The cable housing seemed just a touch too short, just enough to make me feel slightly uncomfortable. I thought about lengthening the housing, something that you can do with the Nokons, but then I realized that maybe the Pista stem, with its 3 degree downward slope, would help. I quickly switched out the 73 degree 3T road stem for the 70 degree Deda Pista and lo and behold the housing looked okay. Amazing what a few millimeters of drop can do.

A final check of the lever level and the bar angle and I wrapped the bars. I bought some Fizik tape for its grip in the wet, to replace the set on the Compact bars. I'm not keen on how it doesn't really stretch but that's okay. I think I need to get cheaper tape in quantity so I can keep fresh tape on the bars.

I headed out for a proper road ride, complete with out of saddle efforts and such. The deeper drops felt great, familiar, like getting back into the groove again. I tried to remember the different positions, the different efforts, spinning, sliding a bit forward on the saddle, sliding a bit back.

The forward position worked well, tilting the pelvis forward, flattening my back, allowing me to spin. I could hold the bars with little effort, no stress on my arms, no stress on my back, unlike trying to hold a low position with the shallower Compact bars.

Although I focused on the position, on making sure the bars were straight, the angle was good, and the levers were level, I got back home a bit quicker than normal. The Missus queried me on the loop since I was back a bit quicker than expected - I did the loop in a bit under 50 minutes (about 18 mph). That's better than an hour or so, not as good as the 43 or 44 minute lap I did one time (over 20 mph).

The drops felt better, the tops felt the same, and the hoods, for some reason, felt better when I was standing. With a slew of races coming up I'll have some time to see how the bars work for me. I have races scheduled for Tuesday Aug 6, Saturday Aug 10, Sunday Aug 18, Friday Aug 23, and then finally Sunday Sept 22.

I have more thoughts about the deep drop bar (or, really, the "normal drop" bar) but I'll post on that later. For now some pictures on the bike with the Energy handlebars and the Pista stem.

The bike pretty much as I rode it for the first time with the new bars.

Notice there's no bottle? No frame pump? Yeah, I forgot that stuff. Oops. I got on the bike after the first attempt at pulling Junior along in a trailer. That wasn't a great success. It took a while to figure things out though plus we waited through two short rain showers. When we finally got back from our 1 mile outing it was getting late. I basically jumped on the bike and left, sans bottle and pump. I did have my pockets full with my tools and stuff but yeah, brain scattered results there.

Slightly better view of angle of bars.

You can see the the drops are about level with the tire. This is where I'm used to having my drops, there or slightly below.

For comparison here's the Wing bar from an earlier post.

Note how the drops are above the tire? Not good for me.

Normally I cut the last couple inches of the bar off but I didn't have the wherewithall to do that so I just left it as it. Seems awfully long - on a normal top tube length bike I'd worry about hitting it with my knee. I'll cut it down the next time I wrap the bars, with the end of the bar a vertical line down from the back of the tops of the bars.

Slightly different angle of the Energy-based cockpit.

You can see the slight downward angle based on the garage door lines. It's a very slight angle. I'd prefer to have a 3 cm shorter head tube and an 80 degree stem but that's not possible. A downward angle stem is the only real option.

From above. The SRM is missing - I had that on when I rode.

Now to see how the bike works at the next race, either tomorrow at the Rent or Saturday at Rocky Hill.