Equipment - End of Season Maintenance

Not to be confused with "Beginning of Season Maintenance", naturally.

The end of each season sees the normal wear and tear on the bike, the stuff that you think, "Well, it should be okay next week". My thought process usually goes a bit more like, "Well, I'll replace that part next week".

In Maine I don't think I mentioned it in the post but right before I left for the last Kingman Loop I switched out the cleats. It's one thing to break a cleat at home, no more than about 20 minutes away from home base, with so little elevation changes that it takes me 40 hours of riding to climb the same amount as 8 hours of "flat" riding in Maine.

It's another thing to break a cleat in a place where I may not have a cell signal, there aren't any bike shops around, and where I may be a couple hours ride away from home base. Even if I had a signal it may be that the calvary, i.e. any potential help, may not have a signal.

Finally there's the off chance that I run into some wolf or something, even get bitten by a couple of dogs.

With these factors in mind I felt it prudent to swap out the cleats. I didn't know when I'd last replaced the cleats but I thought it was in the spring. However, checking back on Strava, it seems that I replaced the cleats last June. Based on my Strava log I have about 200 hours on the cleats. This includes a bit more walking around than normal at some points, especially at Bethel, and a bit less than normal, like my trainer rides. Whatever, 200 hours is pretty good. I'm at 140+ hours for 2013 and I did 75 hours in 2012 on them after June 2012.

I also took the opportunity to twist the left cleat a touch. Usually I like my heel to miss the crank by about 10 mm. For whatever reason I had my heel a bit closer and I found myself twisting my foot outward all the time. This didn't do much for my clipped in confidence as I unclipped somewhat regularly. With short rides and races I kept forgetting about it, but in Maine, with lots of time, I thought about it a lot.

Therefore when I replaced the cleats I adjusted the left one. Of course I then had a really fast ride (for me) immediately after. No knee pain either, and I have really, really fragile knees.

I kick myself when I realize stuff like this.

I mean, I knew it before, but it didn't seem important enough to deal with it. When I finally deal with it I'd think, "Why didn't I do that earlier?"

Along those lines I switched out my cranks. My SRM battery died in July or something and I've been too lazy to fix it. First I needed to find my Cannondale SI crank tools, which I lent the shop when they faced the BB shell. Ends up I buried it in my gear bag so I'd never forget it. Next I needed to stage a new battery (I have it and I know where it is) and solder it in. Finally I wanted to make a decision on crank length.

This year I committed to the 170 cranks. In 2010, my best recent year, I was on 175s, and I was on them since 2004 (minus a break in 2008) after I dropped a friend and returning to racing road rider while on my 175mm crank mountain bike. I then went to do sprints with a 175 mm road crank and went 10 mph faster than my previous 170mm sprint. I wasn't in shape but I figured that some of that 10 mph had to have come from the longer cranks.

I wanted to try 170s again because in my heyday, back in the 80s and 90s, I rode 167.5s and I was literally 6-8 mph faster in my fastest sprints. I thought I could regain that speed by getting shorter cranks.

Unfortunately aging 20 years had something to do with my loss of speed, and 170s actually made me slower than the 175s. In similar circumstances (tailwind sprint on the same course) I was about 3 mph slower on the 170s. Also I haven't even gotten a whiff of those heyday type speeds while on the 170s.

Therefore I gave up on the 170s.

Instead of doing a new battery and stuff I just put the other SRM Cannondale SI cranks on, the ones from the black bike. The battery is good, I have a second head unit so no calibrating, and it has both the 175s and my best-so-far Keos, the Carbons.

BB axle looks fine

The two right side crank arms.

That's another thing. The Keo Max2 pedals feel really loose, like really loose. The Carbons, allegedly possessing the same retaining force, are much more decisive in their grasp of the cleat. I made the assumption that the Keo Max2s would have the same retaining power due to the same newton-meter rating, but alas the pedals easily give up the cleat.

So my overall changes are as follows:
1. New cleats on my shoes (and they didn't change the retention feel on the Keo Max2s).
2. 175mm crank arms, instead of 170mm. This involves dropping the saddle 5mm to keep the saddle-pedal distance consistent.
3. Second SRM spider with newer/working battery.

I approached my first ride on the 175s with some caution. Longer cranks means a bit more stress on the knees, not because of the higher leverage but because your leg closes more with a longer crank. It opens the same amount, based on the same saddle height, but your knee closes up more. This means more pressure on the knee cap at the top of the pedal stroke.

Well I got on the bike, did some spinning while deliberately not looking at the SRM headunit, and then peeked when things felt okay.

110 rpm.

Whoa.

I expected 90 rpm or lower, after coming from the 170s. Apparently I'm more used to the 175s, even after a season on the 170s.

For 15 minutes I averaged over 100 rpm on the 175s.

No knee twinges, no weird aches, nothing.

I geared up and slowed down my pedaling speed.

One concern with the 175s was that my legs would come up a bit more, a total of 1 cm, based on the fact that my saddle dropped 5mm but the cranks come up 5mm more as well. In my 2012 fitness levels, or even my early 2013 fitness level, I was basically too fat to ride the 175s without gut punching myself with my quads on each pedal stroke.

Now, at the end of 2013, having dropped 12-13 pounds since March, I can pedal the 175s fine.

If I can continue the trend and get down another 10 pounds or so, I'll be back at or close to my 2010 weight. That was a good year, and I hope to at least start 2014 in a similar fashion.

Equipment - Tsunami 1.1 (Red)

I haven't put up a recent picture of the now-red Tsunami in race form. I did only race it twice in its full race regalia and twice with a training front wheel due to the gusty wind conditions.

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.

Oh and they make that cool "Swoosh swoosh" sound.

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.

How To - Clipless Pedal Shoe Fit

So you're looking for a new pair of shoes.

If you've bought them before, if you've been on clipless pedals for a while, it's not that complicated. You figure out if there are any quirks to a new shoe, check out fit, and you buy them.

I find it interesting that even the most fervent online buyer will go and try on (and buy) shoes of a new manufacturer in a bike shop. Granted, once you know a particular shoe fits then you can buy another one (same model/make) confident it'll fit the same.

Just like other shoes, if you're an experienced clipless pedal user buying a different manufacturer shoe, it is critical to try them on. Why do you think they have shoe size runs at Interbike? It's so the dealers can try on the shoes, see how they fit, and get an idea of what sizes to buy. If they don't fit the dealers will scream and the manufacturer will probably change them.

If you're new to the clipless scene how do you check fit?

Believe it or not it's best to have one helper. It could be the person in the shop or it could be a buddy of yours. Make sure they're not squeamish about touching your shoe while it's on your foot. Got it? Okay, head out to the shop.

The reason you need help with the fit is that your shoes perform under different circumstances than when you're standing around trying on the shoes. It's easy to check for fit when you're pressing down on the shoe. This is like when you're standing with that shoe on your foot. It replicates pushing down on the pedal on the downstroke.

HOWEVER...

With clipless pedals you also pull up on the shoe. You're pulling up against the upper of the shoe. Even the original "clipless compatible" shoes by certain manufacturers didn't take into account the pulling up factor - that's why you saw so many riders with either maxed out laces, extra straps or three, etc. The uppers at the time (mid 80s) were designed for toe clips and straps and to have a strap take the upward force, not the shoe's upper.

Nowadays pretty much all clipless type shoes have reasonable uppers that resist the upward motion well. If you're new to clipless you will not know how these shoes should fit or feel. They should be pretty snug on the upstroke, not just on the downstroke.

So how do you check? You have someone hold the toe and the heel of the shoe (on the outside, like grasping just the sole part of the shoe, not holding the uppers) and you lift your foot up flat footed.

 Since I took the pictures I took one side at a time.

This is how your helper should hold the front of the shoe.

Note that the fingers are not holding your foot down, just the shoe.

This is how your helper should hold the rear of the shoe.

Again, note that the fingers are not supporting the foot, just holding the shoe.

A "normal comfortable" shoe will immediately feel loose as you lift virtually your whole foot off the sole of the shoe. You'll be shocked at how easy it is to lift your foot right off the sole.

You should strive for maintaining some contact with the outside of your foot. The inside will lift or unweight and that's normal.

Cinch down on the straps/buckles/wire/whatever and make sure you can achieve a reasonably snug fit on the upstroke.

This is where you check for hot spots and shoe width/narrowness. You may disagree with a seam or something on the inside of the shoe, on the upper. Again, this is something you only feel when pulling up, not when you're walking around the bike shop floor.

Make sure you don't max out the straps just getting the shoe reasonably snug on the showroom floor. Your feet shrink quite a bit when you ride - I find myself clicking a good 2-4 clicks tighter in the first hour of riding and another click or three when I get ready for the sprint. That's maybe 2 cm of tightening - it's a lot. If you have narrow feet the shoe may not accommodate that kind of snugging up.

 You can see that it's possible to adjust the "base" of the strap.

I've clicked it a couple clicks tighter than "factory".

If you look carefully you can see some silver smudges on the ratchets - that's where the buckle engages.

It used to engage up to the last notch, now max is about the 3rd one.

Flex your ankle a bit. You'll do that naturally when pedaling. If you have a really pronounced Achilles tendon you may not like the heel area of the shoe. I personally like a really deep heel cup and I learned that similar models within the same line of shoes ended up with different heel cup depths (Sidi shoes).

The heel of the Sidi. It's not the deepest but it's deep enough. Cutout is for Achilles.

Finally you need to make sure that the shoe works with your pedals. Unless you have bizarre leg issues you won't need massive amounts of adjustment in the pedal, and even if you do there are ways to do it with virtually any shoe (you just have to "modify" the shoe). Therefore I recommend going with a very straight forward, very simple, very easy to deal with pedal - the Looks or the Shimanos.

The ubiquitous Look Keo cleat mounted to the shoe via the ubiquitous "3-bolt pattern".

It's hard to go wrong with a popular standard that works well and is readily available.

On my Sidis there's an adapter plate for different pedal mounting systems, but most shoes don't have that.

You can go into virtually any shop in the country and find cleats and maybe even pedals. You know, like if you fly to Las Vegas for a bike trade show and then realize you forgot your pedals back at your house.

They're easy to get into, they're reasonable to walk on, and they have a reasonable overall weight (some "lightweight" pedals have cleat assemblies that weigh as much or more than the pedal itself). Pretty much every single clipless road shoe out there works with the Look 3 bolt pattern (which Shimano uses too).

Equipment - Maintenance (Cleats)

This isn't about how to maintain your cleats. There isn't much to that part of stuff... okay, this means that the first part of the post will be about cleat maintenance.

So... when I install cleats, usually a replacement pair on shoes that already have cleats, I do the following:

1. Mark the cleat position.
2. Clear out the fasteners (allen head or screw fitting).
3. Remove old cleat.
4. Put anti-seize on the new screws (or the old ones if I'm reusing them for some reason, very unlikely).
5. Put all the screws on lightly.
6. After checking alignment tighten all screws up to spec.
7. Note, for Look Keo cleats don't go bonkers on the screws - the cleats will crack if you overtighten them. What's overtightening them? It's when you tighten them until they crack.
8. Do a sanity check and put the shoe on and clip in. You don't want to find out that the cleat isn't in the right place 5 minutes before a race.
9. Oh, I forgot to mention - don't do this 5 minutes before a race.

What I really wanted to mention is that you should check your cleats and replace them if you think you're getting even a little close to wearing them thin enough to break. I checked my cleats last week at the Nutmeg State Games and thought, oh, these are fine, I'll replace them in the next month or so.

I figured I'd replace them the next time I was on the trainer in the basement - it happens to be where most of my spare cleats reside (one set in the auxiliary gear bag upstairs, but the other four or so sets are in the basement, including a couple pair in my main gear bag).

The problem was that I didn't know what to look for and therefore I never really checked them. Unfortunately I found out the hard way that my cleats really did need replacing. I looked at them a bit more carefully and found what I didn't know before.

 From left: broken, worn, new. Below, just sitting on the shoe, is another new cleat.

If you look carefully at the two worn ones you can see the white stuff (kind of a slippery plastic, I guess for easier clipping out) has two pins going into the grey bit of plastic. You can see the white dots in the grey area of the worn cleats, just behind (or below in the picture above) the rear screws.

This picture shows that the white dots are recessed when the cleat is not worn.

In this shot it's easier to see that the worn cleat's white dots are even with the surface of the cleat. The red cleat's white dots are recessed. The newer grey cleat, with some extra protection on the bottom, doesn't even have visible white dots.

So now I know. Look for the white dots on your Keo cleats - if you see them replace the cleat. I didn't know until today and I was lucky that nothing happened - a full throttle sprint, a hard shift up, and bing, the cleat went.

I couldn't put much pressure on the pedals - at about 110-120 watts my right foot would just pop free.

Obviously I'll be replacing the cleats before my next ride.

My punishment for letting my equipment go? A half mile climb at about 250 watts using basically just my left leg while seated. A good workout, okay, but for a bad reason.