Astana Woes

One of the few other "sports" I follow is Formula One car racing.

F1 is the epitome of car racing. It may not be the most this or that (want more crashes? tune into NASCAR), but it's the highest level of racing. Something like 30-odd racers hold the Super License required to race F1, teams have to pay a huge fee just to be in the sport, and everyone has to develop their own cars. You even have to pass crash tests and use pump gas.

Well, sort of. You're allowed to buy engines from another team now, but the rest of the car is pretty well unique.

The F1 scene is actually pretty interesting now because the new rules (which led to cars that admittedly looked pretty odd, at least till the look grew on me) turned the whole F1 world upside down. F1 now has slick tires again (like most other racing series).

2009 to the left, just to be clear. Click to get the whole picture.

Previously the cars cornered too fast, so the rulemakers decided tires should have less traction. In 2009, they decided to dramatically decrease allowable downforce, and let slick tires back in the picture.

They also allowed teams to use a hybrid drivetrain, one that stores power generated by slowing the car down.

Yep, hybrid F1 cars.

Not to save gas but to get more power. A car so equipped can use 6.7 seconds of "boost" each lap limited to 82 HP.

The result of all these rule changes? The top contenders from last year languish at the back while former mid-fielders are fighting for the wins and the season championships.

It's sort of like if Lotto suddenly had a hard time winning a classic, and... Oh, wait. They haven't won a classic, have they? Okay, it's like if Boonen suddenly couldn't ride the cobbles.

One of the fairy tale stories in F1 is the current dominant team, one that goes by the name "Brawn".

Is Brawn short for Brawny? Are they sponsored by a paper towel company?

No.

Brawn is actually an individual named Ross Brawn. His earlier claim to fame was his link to a certain Michael Schumacher. Under two different teams, Brawn helped the teams earn 7 Driver's Championships (overall season best driver) and about as many Constructor titles (for having the best cars in the overall season - each team has two cars).

7 titles. One driver. One director.

Sounds like a certain cycling duo, doesn't it?

Wait, it gets better.

In '07, Brawn took a leave of absence. It happened to be when his star driver hung up his shoes. It's unclear why he did this, but after a year off, he ended up signing a contract for the definitely-midfield Honda team.

The Honda team was, unfortunately, like the Mets of US baseball. Highly funded with no results worth speaking of, an embarrassing situation. Kind of like the weekend racer with a $12,000 bike but he gets dropped a lap or two into each race.

You can't help but feel kind of bad for him. I felt bad for Honda. I felt bad for their two drivers, Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello.

Button is a relatively new driver, coming of age if you will, perhaps a Contador type of racer. He would do stunty kinds of things like drive a street car around some track, and then let a wanna-be journalist drive the same car around the same track. (Button demolished the journalist's time, btw, and the journalist said as much.)

Barrichello was Schumacher's lieutenant, loyal to a fault. Once he pulled over literally a few hundred meters from the fhinish in order to let Schumacher pass him to earn maximum points. Schumacher actually had Barrichello get on the top podium, a gallant gesture, but everyone disapproved. It illustrated just how uncomfortable everyone was with the situation. It's like Lance having Hincapie stand on the podium at the Tour. It's just not done.

Anyway, Brawn went to Honda, and he had two good drivers - the young upstart and an aged veteran who happened to study under the Master.

Then the car economy (and everything else it seems) tanked. Honda, unwilling to spend the millions and millions to sponsor a losing team, decided to pull out.

Here you have a rich F1 team where the sponsors suddenly pull out their support. To be fair there had been some warning, and Honda said they'd pay the bills until the team found a new sponsor. Honda actually paid for the development of the 2009 car in 2008, a car that would race under whatever new team sponsor came on board.

Ultimately the team couldn't find a sponsor. To continue the team, Brawn paid a symbolic one Euro to buy the team.

Then the team went on a rampage, using the infrastructure so thoughtfully set up by Honda.

Right now, Button leads the championships with 31 out of a maximum earnable 35 points. His teammate Barrichello is in second. Brawn (the team) leads the constructor's championship by 22.5 points (50 to 27.5). A dominant performance.

This, in case you haven't guessed, is the point.

Substitute "Astana" for "Honda" and you'll start to see a potential picture.

Astana, it seems, has more money problems than I thought. They have a strong team, with two huge names (Lance and Contador) along with a bunch of almost-huge names (Levi and Horner pop into mind right away, plus that Brankovic sounding guy). They have "the" director, Johan Brunyeel, who's acknowledged to be a "master tactician" (a common description for Brawn).

And they have money problems.

However, they already have a ProTour team license, along with riders who have followed the blood passport program, experienced mechanics, and all the ancillaries that go with a ProTour team. This is like Honda's situation just before they sold the team.

Last year I predicted that when Lance came back to racing, he'd have his own team. He didn't, though, because he wanted to race with his old director, Bruyneel. Bruyneel couldn't leave Astana so Lance joined them too.

But now Lance and Bruyneel have the option of buying out Astana, maybe for a symbolic Euro. They'd have some obligations, like replenishing the $2 million in the UCI account. But then he and Bruyneel would have the run of the team.

A turn-key team.

And they can go on a rampage.

Equipment - Which Group Should I Buy, Part 2

So you've read through the history of the rear derailleur, at least as we know it now. Why was that so significant? It's significant because it illustrates how the various companies evolved, how your drivetrain became what it is now.

It's also important because it shows how important compatibility is when dealing with different companies' designs. I'll get back to that in a moment.

When one selects a group though, you normally don't look at compatibility, at least not initially. When you first look at a bike, a real bike, either at a bike shop or maybe at a race, you inevitably touch and feel the shifters. After all, if you don't like the way it shifts or brakes, well, you won't care who it's compatible with.

Nowadays one of the primary differences between groups is how you the shift, what you do to change gears on the bike. All current groups use some kind of shifter mounted on the bars. Shimano began the "brifter" (brake/shift lever) revolution with their STI levers. They've been unique in that the large, main lever works both the brake as well pulling in the cable.

Campy kept their big lever for brakes only, and uses a smaller lever and a thumb button for shifting.

My thumb is on the thumb button, my index finger on the "main" shifter. The brake lever, the furthest to the right, is used only for braking.

Campy's Ergo levers have two, maybe three things going for them. First off, they're rebuildable. Now, granted, if your Ergo lever looks like someone pulverized it with a sledgehammer, it probably isn't worth rebuilding. But you can address something like simple wear, after thousands of shifts, by replacing a few key parts.

Second, Ergo levers allow you to use any front derailleur. Yes, I said "Any". Because the left shifter works like a glorified ratcheting downtube shifter, you control how far over to move the derailleur. There are no defining "high and low" areas. Just a whole bunch of micro-clicks, if you will, letting you decide where to stop the front derailleur. This means that you can use any front derailleur that is cable-actuated and has a return spring. As mentioned before, I used to use a Campy Super Record (the old one, not the current one) front derailleur, definitely not a shift-ramp-sculpted front derailleur.

Finally, Ergo levers let you double-shift into a lower gear with one motion. Okay, some of them do - look for the ones that allow more than one thumb-button shift on the right/rear shifter. If you calculate your gears, you'll find that when you shift from, say, a 53x19 to a lower gear, and you want to use the small ring (maybe a big climb is coming up), the next lowest gear isn't a 39x19. Instead, it's a 39x15. This means that to shift into the next lowest gear, you need to move the chain from the 53 to the 39 while, at the same time, you shift it from the 19 down to the 15 in the back.

That's what they call a "double shift", because you shift both front and rear derailleurs at the same time. It works too, although it may seem like it may not work.

With Shimano and SRAM, you can shift the front derailleur just as quickly as an Ergo lever. However, the rear derailleur shifts only one cog at a time. Therefore you have to rapidly click the little shifter to get the chain over to the 15. Not a huge deal, perhaps, but it's certainly easier to double shift by pressing both thumbs down a bunch of clicks. Brrrrp! and you're done. With Shimano/SRAM, it's Brrp! on the left and ClickClickClickClick! on the left. I even mention my first "live" shift comparison in the middle of a P123 race - me on Ergo, Frank McCormack on Shimano. Personally I think Ergo won, although I have to admit that I didn't do as well as Frank in the race.

SRAM came to the table much later, and they use just one separate lever for shifting. Like Campy, their main lever is just for braking. Here's a good picture on SRAM Double Tap usage. Although there's been talk of how you can grip the bars and the shift lever in a sprint, I find that I can shift an Ergo lever fine while going 100% while in the drops while holding the bars as pictured above.

One must take ergonomic recommendations with an eye on the recommender. Due to the personal nature of ergonomics, one rider may find a particular shifter easy to use while another may find himself confounded by the same shifter.

I have a hard time with Shimano's STI design. Apparently I pull the shift lever towards me when I push it inwards. On Campy- and SRAM-equipped bikes, this has no effect on anything - pulling the shift lever towards you simply moves the shift lever towards you. On Shimano-equipped bikes this same habit almost throws me over the bars every time I go to shift because pulling the shift lever towards you will engage the brake. Since lots of cyclists have absolutely no problem with Shimano's brifters, it's just me (and probably my smaller size hand). But, being risk averse, I'd say that even the possibility of confusing the two actions (shifting and braking) pushes me away from trying to learn myself to use Shimano.

So what else differentiates groups, if not shifting?

It's significant because it illustrates the importance of compatibility, both within a company as well as between them.

It's easier to understand the "between companies" concept. Companies have to choose their allies, define their borders. Campy, history indicates, ends up isolated by the others. Or, if you ask the non-Campy companies, isolates themselves from the others.

Wait for a minute. What do I mean by "compatible?"

To define "compatibility", we need to define exactly what needs to be compatible. For example, most techs expect a crank and bottom bracket to be a one-company unit, with the exception of any bearing upgrades. Likewise, parts that don't interact with anything else, like a headset or a front hub, are pretty much automatically "compatible with everything".

Brake calipers and levers make up a somewhat necessary combination, but, realistically, the days of incompatible brake calipers seem to be over for now. When Shimano first decided to make their brakes different (SLR, or Shimano Linear Response), they made such light action calipers that the calipers could barely open back up after you closed them with, say, a Campy brake lever, cables, and housing. Now that pretty much all the calipers out there work the same way, calipers have become somewhat universal. Compatible, in other words.

So then what defines compatibility between companies' groups?

The three main differences between groups are the cassette splines, cassette spacing, and the crankarm's chainring bolt circles. These three specifications define which drivetrain pieces you can use, your rear derailleur's shifting requirements, and what you can do to adjust your gearing (via chainring or cassette changes).

Campy chose a unique deep spline for its freehub, a slightly wider cassette cog spacing, and an odd 135 mm bolt circle diameter (BCD). Unusually for Campy, they went with the standard 110 mm compact crank BCD, the old mountain bike BCD borrowed by the roadies.

Shimano still uses the same profile they used a zillion years ago, a narrower but more standard cassette cog spacing, and they've stuck resolutely to their 130 mm BCD. If you read the previous post, you'll know that the 130 mm BCD, when first introduced, was an oddity. Now it's the standard. Shimano uses a 110 mm BCD for their compact cranks.

The joker in the deck, SRAM, allied themselves with Shimano, choosing to go with the more common Shimano freehub shape, Shimano cassette cog spacking, and the now-standard 130 mm BCD for the standard size 'rings. For compact, they went with a 110 mm BCD too.

So in compatibility between companies, Campy is unto itself, with its unusual standard BCD, cassette splines, and cassette cog spacing. SRAM and Shimano both allow some interchangeability, especially on rear hubs and crank/chainrings. All of them use the same compact crank chainring BCD.

Okay, now let's talk about compatibility within the company.

Que?

Let's go back to the history books just a bit. When Campy first came out with Ergopower levers (their brifter), they had an index shifting mountain bike group. Because Campy is a relatively small company, they have a relatively small budget when it comes to manufacturing things. It makes sense, then, to make their various component pieces interchangeable with one another.

For example, when Campy came out with Ergopower levers, you could use any of their rear derailleurs on your road bike. In other words, Campy made their road bike stuff index the same way as the mountain bike stuff. You could mount Ergo levers on your mountain bike, and mountain bike levers on your road bike. It would all work together. You could pair any 8 speed Campy shifter with any Campy 8 speed drivetrain and it would work.

Let's repeat. With Campy's first iteration of Ergo, with their 8 speed lineup, everything in their line was compatible with everything else in their line.

You could use drop bars on a mountain bike, or mountain bike bars with a road bike. The only sketchy bit would be the brake cable pull (but a simple cantilever straddle cable piece would fix it), but drivetrain-wise, your 8s Ergopowers would shift a triple crank or a double crank, or a long cage or short cage rear derailleur. We'd have guys using long cage derailleurs on their road bikes, and, conceivably, you could install a tight 12-21 cassette on your mountain bike and use a short cage rear derailleur.

In addition, you could move up and down the component range as necessary. Broke your Record rear derailleur in a crash? Slap on your Athena, it would work fine. Or, if your Athena rear derailleur started getting a bit sketchy, you could upgrade to a Record.

Shimano, in their brilliant non-compatible wisdom, initially made Dura-Ace different from everything else in their own line-up. They kept their then-unusual 130mm BCD, but they altered their derailleur specs. If you bought into a Dura-Ace derailleur and shifter, you had to stay with Dura-Ace. Ultegra derailleurs wouldn't work with Dura-Ace shifters and vice versa. Buying a bike meant making a big decision on your bike's disposability - would you be willing to go "all in" to Dura-Ace to get the acknowledged superior shifting, or would you compromise and forever stay in the Ultegra/105 range?

Just recently, the two companies swapped "within compatibility" ideas. This actually prompted my thoughts on this whole topic, because it seemed like a violation of each company's respectful basic philosophies to do so.

To preview what I'll mention, Campy introduced a set of groups that won't interchange (per my definition - cassettes, shifters, rear derailleur) with other groups in their line. And Shimano, for a few years, has offered a Dura Ace that (horror!) allows you to use Ultegra drivetrain pieces with no problems.

So, first, Campy.

Campy introduced 11 speed, a system totally incompatible with their 10 speed line-up. Sure the freehub width was the same, but the cog spacing wasn't, and neither were the derailleurs and shifters. In addition, some 10 speed wheels won't work with 11 speed cassettes because the 11 speed cassette pushes its largest cog deeper into the spokes, and a rear wheel with "bulky" spokes (or a more vertical set of driveside spokes) will prevent the use of an 11 speed cassette. To go 11 speed you must get the new shifters, derailleurs, cassette, and chain, and you have to have a wheel that accepts an 11 speed cassette.

That's fine if all of Campy went 11, but they didn't do that. They only went 11 for Record and Chorus (and Super Record, but that's sort of like Record). Their more economical groups, Centaur and below, remain 10 speed. This means that, like Shimano earlier, if you want the best quality Campy, you have to buy into it.

And you're stuck in it.

On a side note, Campy cassettes are crazy expensive, some costing as much as $400 or more. Shimano's more ubiquitous cassettes, and the non-Shimano compatible versions, typically cost under $150, with a bunch coming in well under $100. Shimano's wear parts are simply less expensive.

With that, let's talk about Shimano.

A few years ago, Shimano made Dura-Ace compatible with everything else. This means you can buy an Ultegra bike with thoughts of upgrading it, or, if you have a Dura Ace bike, you can buy an Ultegra rear derailleur as a spare. For now, all of Shimano's main road stuff is 10 speed, and everything interchanges with everything.

Which group do you think would work the best? Be the most fiscally efficient? For you and me, for the average rider or racer?

Hm.

What is clear is that the 11s Campy stuff is incompatible with the 10s stuff. Fine, the non-drivetrain pieces are interchangeable (the brakes, for example, didn't change between 10s and 11s). Even the crank arms are identical.

But the wear items, the chains, cassettes, shifters, derailleurs, even the derailleur cables and housing, that's all different between the two sets of Campy groups. 11s doesn't work with 10s in that case. And, technically, 10s doesn't work with 9s, unless you make a minor modification to the shifters and replaced the 'rings. Even if you have 9s, there are a couple versions of 9s, as I recently discovered.

As mentioned before, it used to be like that with Shimano. You had Dura Ace? You could only use Dura Ace. If you had an Ultegra kit on the bike, you'd have to replace the brifters to install a DA rear derailleur. Thankfully they've changed that - now you can mix and match at will.

For me, though, Shimano's greater issue is that combined function brake/shift big lever - I just don't like it. Therefore I scratch Shimano off my list.

(I can do that because it's titled "Which Group Should I Buy", not "Which Group Should You Buy" - I started thinking about this on a reflective moment somewhere out in California this February).

Okay, what about the new kids on the block? What about SRAM? I didn't mention in the above comparison, so I'll mention them now.

They went the Shimano drivetrain route, meaning they made sure that their stuff interchanged with Shimano - Shimano freehub splines, Shimano cassette cog spacing, 10 speed max.

However, they went further. It's as if they looked at Campy's 8 speed intercompany compatibility matrix, liked it, and made their model. Right now, everything that's in their line up interchanges with everthing else in their line up.

You want a long cage rear derailleur on your superlight road bike so you can do Mount Washington with your double chainring? Slap it on. Short cage for a crit the next weekend? Slap it on. Red rear derailleur on your Rival bike? Go right ahead.

SRAM has made it possible for cyclists (and manufacturers) to mix and match parts to their own liking. I have yet to see a mixed SRAM spec bike though, so that makes me think that they prefer the groups to stay "pure" (and forcibly sell them that way, an early Shimano trait). However, I have to imagine that there are individuals out there mixing up their SRAM groups, cherry-picking for stiffness or weight. And when the inevitable part wears or breaks, you can buy whatever level replacement part fits your needs.

This opens a huge range of options for the average racer pedaling SRAM. By cherry-picking the group, especially if upgrading or replacing worn components, a rider can get the best of the line.

I've heard (unsubstantiated) rumors that the Red chainrings are a bit flexy. If that's true, you can put Force (or any Shimano) ring on instead to stiffen things up a bit (I like having stiff rings because it feels so much more solid when you're out of the saddle in the big ring) . Similarly, I like having a steel cage front derailleur so I can do my own tweaking, because I have much lower standards for being able to shift across a cassette without having to trim the front derailleur than do any manufacturer. Therefore, looking at SRAM's line, it looks like I'd prefer to use the Force front derailleur instead of a Red.

Ultimately, for me, 20 or 40 grams here and there won't matter, not if I'm overweight by 10 or 20 pounds. And even for pros, trying to stay over the UCI mandated minimum 6.8 kg bike weight can be tricky with sub-1 kg frames, sub-2 kg groups, and 1.5 kg wheelsets. The number of 5.5 - 6 kg bikes in the non-UCI Cat 3 races astounds me.

So, based on what you've read so far, it seems like I'm leaning towards SRAM. I am, but with one caveat.

A biggie.

See, I really like Ergo levers. I'll sacrifice a lot to be able to keep the Ergos, because I think they work the best for shifting in all situations - regular riding, climbing, and, most importantly, sprinting at 100% out of the saddle.

SRAM doesn't have Ergo levers. But... Leonard Zinn found that Campy's 10 speed Ergo levers work with SRAM rear derailleurs if they're shifting across a SRAM/Shimano 10 speed cassette. Since I like the Ergo levers, I have to admit that I've filed that fact prominently in my head after stumbling across that article.

Therefore, for me, I have the perfect group scenario:

The ultimate group would be a SRAM group (pick whichever one fits your, I mean, my budget - from Rival through Force and up to Red), and a pair of Campy 10s Ergo levers. Centaur would work if you want a new set, and, if you're like me and you have a few older 10s Ergo levers, any of those would work too.

You'll be able to use any SRAM or Shimano 10 speed cassette, chain, and compatible freehub wheels, and you'll get the advantages of the Ergo lever.

Now what to do with all my Campy wheels?

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Disclaimer/notes, and there are a few of them:
1. I haven't verified that SRAM works with Campy as described above, but I think Zinn wouldn't say it if it didn't work. His article is not dated April 1.
2. I've ridden SRAM Double Taps only once, and for a short time. I didn't feel comfortable with them, but then I didn't have to learn to like them either.
3. I've never had success riding STI, and I tried for a long, long time (10 years?) to like them.
4. I think Ergo levers are the best (just to clarify what I said before).
5. My thoughts are all theoretical - with three complete Campy 10s bikes, at least 5 sets of Campy (cassette) wheels, the missus's Campy 10s bike, and the Campy-Shimano 10s/9s set up on the tandem, it'll be a long time before we move to another group wholesale. However, if I had to buy a new bike right now, you'd know what I'd do.

Equipment - Which Group Should I Buy, Part 1

Or, as I should call it, Why Derailleurs Look Like They Do Now. And then I'll discuss why this is significant when you go and select a component group.

Recently I had discussions with two of my friends about what direction to go with when it came to groups. Since ErgoPower came along I've been a diehard Campy fan, liking the separation of brake and gear (levers, that is), the ability to dump multiple gears, and the ability to once again run a full Campy bike.

See, before that, somewhat unbelievably, I used Suntour derailleurs, Dia Compe brakes (whose company was so close to Suntour that they made Suntour brakes), Sugino (Suntour cranks and bottom brackets), and the ubiquitous new Sedisport chain (probably the quietest chain out there, cheap, and flexy enough to shift well).

At that time racers could select between Campy, the acknowledged leader, Suntour, the Far East Campy, or Shimano, the, err, Far East bastard son who kept thinking up wacky ideas because no one could really improve on the Campy level quality. I mean, how could you develop higher quality metals, better bearings, or more durable components? You couldn't. So companies either tried to be like them (Suntour) or make functionally different things (Shimano).

One of Shimano's ideas involved a freewheeling chainring (the crankarms freewheeled separately from the chainrings) combined with a fixed gear rear 5 speed freewheel. Since the cranks turned whenever the bike moved, you could shift whenever the bike moved, even if you weren't pedaling. Tellingly, Shimano had to use a solid wire for a shift cable, with a lever that could push or pull it. A regular cable was too unpredictable, but the solid wire had absolutely no stretch or compression. Shimano added stops for each gear - it was indexed.

I had started out, in my pre-racing days, subscribing to the Campy Way. Cold forged aluminum, super high quality bearing races, one level of quality and performance (high), beautiful old world craftmanship, and a link to the man that made bike drivetrains what they were - Tullio Campagnolo.

There were other Campy features - the 144mm bolt circle diameter for one. Suntour used it too, like a little brother copying his older one, but Shimano used 130mm, because, well, because no one else was using it. Campy's bottom bracket axle taper worked well for their cranks, and Suntour's also, but Shimano used the Japanese standard, and you had to use Shimano BBs with Shimano cranks.

I digress, slightly.

Of course my first race bike had Campy derailleurs and shifters. I couldn't afford everything else (most of the bike was Excel Rino, and it came with Modolo brakes), but that would come with time. I moved to a Shimano parallelogram rear derailleur when I went to a Suntour bar end shifter (complete with the wiggly stainless steel cable housing) because such shifters require a bit more precision than the predictably vague Campy rear derailleur. The stainless housing didn't help any, but it was cool looking so I used it. Plus I could lube the cable simply by pouring TriFlow all over the housing.

Ironically that's when I could afford a Campy crankset, and so I paired my odd drivetrain with a Campy crankset and a Super Record front derailleur, one still connected to a downtube shifter, and it shifted immaculately. How could it not, the cable was about 2 feet long and probably twice the thickness of today's derailleurs, and the return spring was one for men, not boys, and required the shifter to tug the shifter pretty hard.

Wait, you ask. What's a parallelogram derailleur? And why wouldn't a Campy rear derailleur work with a bar end shifter?

Get your popcorn, gather 'round, and let's learn a little history.

Before indexed shifting ("click-shifting"), all the different companies worked with all the different companies. Riders would readily mix shifters, derailleurs, cranks, chains (most groups had no specific chain). In fact, groups were so non-specific (i.e. universal) that Campy, Shimano, and Suntour would leave the chain and possibly the freewheel up to other manufacturers, usually ones that did a better job of it. Sedisport made great chains, and Regina made the most in-demand freewheels (there were no cassettes for a long time).

Campy's initial parallelogram rear derailleur. I refer to the two derailleur plates as the "parallelogram". (Image from Sheldonbrown.com)

You can see some non-derailleur items in this picture, like the Regina freewheel (with no special shifting ramps - the little groove at the top of each cog was their "shifting secret"), the Regina chain (it's sort of rough looking, like a BMX chain), and finally the floppiest housing ever, the stainless steel uber-expensive derailleur housing I lusted after.

On the derailleur, though, you'll notice something much more significant. Note how on the Campy derailleur the two plates drop straight down from the upper derailleur bolt. Due to the pivot axes of the plates, the derailleur pulleys will initially drop as they move inward, then rise back up a bit. The pulley cage has to rotate to keep the pulleys closer to the rear cogs.

With this design it's difficult to get the upper pulley closer than, say, two or three links from the cogs. In fact, the obscured bit of chain, between the top pulley and the freewheel, only touches air. This means that you have a lot of slop when you shift. This necessitated the Campy Overshift, a technique everyone learned where you shift past the intended position to get the reluctant chain to move off its starting cog, and then shift it back a bit so the pulley lined up with the target cog.

Shimano's parallelogram. I ran this type of derailleur for many years. Note the L-shaped piece at the top, which turns the parallelogram on its side. (Image from VeloBase.com who got it from eBay seller coffeeride)

Shimano improved on Campy's design by tilting the two plates so they sit almost horizontal, not vertical. The derailleur pulleys now move back and forth without the downward/upward arc (the arc moves the upper pulley a little more in front of the cog, then back a bit). This lets the upper pulley sit closer to the cogs, and allowed the derailleur to move the chain without necessitating any kind of overshift.

The only problem with this design was that it took an unpredictable amount of cable movement to make said shift. In the middle of the freewheel range, the derailleur was further away from the cogs than at the ends. This derailleur was always a bit iffy on the smallest cogs, and the upper pulley would rub large cogs readily. Using a super long chain would allow the upper pulley to sit closer, but you'd get massive chain bounce in the small ring.

Suntour's slant parallelogram rear derailleur. I ran Suntours towards the end of my barend days, just before Ergo. Note how the parallelogram points up towards the upper pivot bolt. (Image from Kinetics)

Suntour made one more improvement to the parallelogram soap opera - they tilted it. Note how the two plates now tilt a bit, as opposed to the flat profile the Shimano derailleur presents to you.

This immense update allowed the derailleur pulleys to follows the slope of the cogs.

Let's repeat that, because it's important.

The slanted parallelogram design allows the upper derailleur pulley to follow the slope of the cogs as it moves across the cogs.

A given amount of cable travel would move the derailleur a given distance. It shifted well at all ranges of the freewheel, and it could handle larger cogs than, say, the Shimano design, typically two more teeth than a similarly designed derailleurs.

Although the ingredients were in place for the next step, Suntour couldn't, or wouldn't take it. The bicycle drivetrain world sat in stasis.

Then came the fateful day when Suntour's slant parallelogram (second) patent expired.

Shimano had obviously been planning changes around this date for some time, because shortly after Suntour's excellent rear derailleur design became available for anyone and everyone, they introduced a high end index shifting system. The new system had a few significant features:

1. Shimano invented an upper derailleur pulley that had lateral movement, to allow it to automatically adjust for small derailleur misalignments.

2. They used a compressionless housing, one that didn't flex at all when tensioned. This meant that any shifter movement translated into cable movement, not housing flex. Said housing also had a slippery lining, one that the uber-cool stainless housings lacked.

3. They developed a low-friction (small diameter) cable that slid easily in the above lined housing.

4. They combined this with their own chain and cog design, one developed from their Uniglide line of twisted teeth cassettes and bulging sidewall plate chains. These new products helped the derailleur move the chain sideways under pressure.

5. Shimano started off the acronym war with the first widely used cycling acronym: SIS, for Shimano Index System.

The system worked.

With indexing came a whole host of related issues. Suddenly companies needed to have predictable performance from the previously ancillary pieces. First off, the "sloppy" top pulley became a necessity so that minor adjustments to derailleur position happened automatically. Second, the chain and the cogs had to work together. And finally, the system had to use compressionless housing, and a cable that, once broken in, didn't stretch at all.

Shimano started specifying specific chains and cassettes, and everyone rushed to make their version of non-stretch derailleur cable, non-compression housing, better shifting rear cogs, a spec chain, and some wiggly upper derailleur pulley.

For a while only Shimano had a system that worked well. Suntour's first attempt failed miserably, and Campy, well, Campy stubbornly stuck with its old, outdated rear derailleur design, and that would never, ever index properly.

Their market share dropped accordingly.

Shimano happened to introduce SIS just as the mountain bike craze hit the public. Suddenly a whole bunch of people who had no idea how to shift were buying bikes with 21 or 24 speeds. They needed indexing.

Suntour almost made their system work, survived by the skin of their teeth. Campy trudged along, selling systems to the lonely road riders in a sea of mountain bikers.

Then, in the late 80s, Shimano came out with STI, their brake lever - shift lever combination. Racers screamed for similar systems from Suntour - the Tour du Pont was won when an STI equipped Lance accelerated away from a downtube shifting (or not, in this case) Raul Alcala.

Racers had to have a bar mounted shifter. (And why Alcala didn't have a bar end shifter belies belief, since Suntour had an excellent bar end shifter, but that's another question).

Campy finally, belatedly, introduced the Ergopower levers, adopted the slant parallelogram derailleur design, and pulled themselves from the edge of extinction.

Suntour, with its failed Command Shifter (and no other viable ideas other than the Barcon), died an inglorious death. Their inability to invent a brifter killed them.

The world now is a bit different. No more Suntour. People talk about "drivetrain kits". Brifters. No one knows what freewheels are anymore.

And, finally, a new company popped up: SRAM.

So when someone starts thinking about road bikes and what drivetrain to use, you have to decide between Campy, Shimano, and SRAM.

Which one should you get?

Stay tuned for Part 2.

Life - Killer Instinct, Part 2

A short time ago I had a short (email) conversation with a local friendly Cat 3 racer, a result of my post on "killer instinct". The exchange centered around how we both started riding as kids, and how we both, somehow, have kept the competitive fires alive for decades.

Part of what he wrote:

"I remember when I was ~13 years old and starting out racing my bike, I used to see you with the "actual size" Cannondale. You were already a fixture on the racing scene. After all these years of racing I have seen guys come and go; I have watched guys race for "personal glory", and to satisfy their ego (which is all well and good. I suppose we all do that to some extent). But many racers who do it only for those reasons fall out of the sport. Guys like you love bicycles, bicycle parts, racing, riding, all of it. I have a tremendous amount of respect for guys that do it, year in and year out, because they love "bike riding". I get that sense from you.


Lets make it a point to go out for a long weekend ride sometime this summer. We will each invite some trustworthy guys that won't turn it into a race and we can just go out and ride, for riding's sake."


As he suggested, we decided that the best way to talk about things is to go on a long ride and just talk. We have yet to set a time for this ride, but it's one of the few rides that I'm looking forward to doing this year.

At about the same time, another good friend of mine asked me what I'd ask a certain Joe Parkin if I could ask him, say, 10 questions. My questions, in a reply on April 17th of this year, were as follows:

1. Currently racing rider you most respect, if any. Ditto team, ditto director.

2. Ex-racer you most respect. Ditto team, director.
3. Briefly, what advice would you give a new Elite lever racer?

4. Do you currently coach or advise any riders, teams, directors, etc?

5. Do you ride now?
- If so, what bike?

- Do you use power, HRM, cyclometer, nothing?

- Do you "train" or just ride?

6. Favorite bike you raced, and why. (I believe he mentions a bike he likes, but he doesn't really say why)

7. Typical training week back then, say during a break, if you weren't in the Tour, etc.

8. Dirtiest riding you've ever done.

9. What drove you to write your book? Will you write another one?

10. Do you do any grassroots racing? i.e. USAC racing.

11. What kind of music did you listen to back then? Now?

12. What other interests/hobbies do you have?

Then, on cyclingnews today, I saw an interview with him. I suppose my questions were pretty generic because he answered some of the same questions.

Based on what I read, I could make a few deductions. First off, I guess he's writing a new book (!). Second, he mentioned Adri Van der Poel, a guy I briefly ran into during my trip to Belgium. And finally, he is really good at shooting rifles, a skill that I've been fascinated with ever since reading the Bob Lee Swagger books (especially A Time To Hunt). The only difference is that I haven't pursued the last skill in any way except to learn how hand guns work, whereas he's become a top level long gun handler.

Mr. Parkin seems like a character with incredible depth. He has incredible cycling talent, but that seems to be just the surface of his character. I have a feeling it would take a long time to unearth some of the treasures he has to offer, something more than just an interview.

Perhaps a long ride would help talk with Joe. A ride that respects the group's members - no egos, no half-wheeling, no stupid attacks, no yelling, respect for motorists, along some nice, quiet stretches of road. Two by two when it's safe, a smooth paceline when it's not. And, for my benefit, a gentle pace up the climbs. Or at least some regrouping at the top.

I wonder if Joe is free for a long ride some day this summer.

Equipment - Why Tubulars?

On the bike forums someone asked a standard question for those who ride on the road, one that seems much more pertinent after my little tutorial on gluing tires:

Why tubulars?

Such a simple question, such a difficult answer. Especially after reading a couple posts on how to change a tubular tire (and how long it takes to finish it). Let's put it this way - a tutorial on changing a clincher doesn't take two posts to complete.

So, let's ask again. Why tubulars?

Tubulars are fun. They put you in a different mindset. It's that flahute mindset, the gritty lowlander Euro pro who rides box section rims over all sorts of adverse terrain and makes it look easy. Or the sleek aero Tour look, skimming along on tall, dark, logo-covered carbon wheels. You can subscribe to either fantasy but both of them work better on tubulars.

Tubulars (or sew-ups) are tires that have a tube sewn into them (hence "sew-up") instead of a tube that is easily separated from the casing. The latter type of tire is called a "clincher", because the tire has a bead that clinches the rim.

This is where a neatly cut up tubular would come in handy, as well as a neatly cut up clincher. Let me get my sheet metal sheers and I'll be right back.

(Okay, since we're in Vegas right now, and I didn't find a tire I wanted to cut up before we came here, I don't have a picture of a real cut up tubular).

There are a number of reasons for using tubulars.

The primary one, for a racer, comes from the tubular tire system's lighter weight.

Although the tire itself may not weigh substantially less than a clincher/tube combination, the rim can be built significantly lighter. Zipp's lighter tubular wheels are down to 1000 grams a set, where as a light clincher set costs you 300-400 grams more.

The reason is the tubular tire holds its own pressure - pump one up to its maximum pressure while unmounted from a rim and it'll just turn itself inside out. Pump up an unmounted clincher and its tube to anything over 30 or 40 psi and you'll have a gargantuan tube that will, at some point, explode in your face. In fact this used to be the preferred "starting pistol" at some mountain bike races in the area (Mount Snow, to be exact). Clincher rims have to be strong enough to hold in that pressure; tubular rims do not. Because of this structural requirement, clincher rims inevitably weigh more than a similar tubular rim.

Even a perfectly good clincher rim may be manufacturer limited to a certain pressure. For example, Campy limits their super expensive Hyperon clinchers to only 118 psi. Imagine what happens to that rating after you slam that sharp edged pothole while cruising along at 30 mph in the middle of a crit. Speaking of which...

A second reason cited for using a tubular addresses durability.

Because the tubular rim has no bead, it has a correspondingly low chance of pinch flatting. The round tubular tire construction means there is very little chance to pinch the tube between two parts of the tire wall.

This means you can ride lower pressures without too much worry about flats. Tubulars seem to be softer anyway, but see my disclaimer line at the end. Whatever, I can ride 170 psi if I want to, or down to 120 psi, and it feels fast and resilient either way. As a note, my Contis need 170 to feel fast, and it's not skittery at that psi, CXs are good at 110-120, 140 on an "A" day.

I've only seen one guy double flat tubulars, and that happened right in front of me. A friend had a pair of TriSpokes and, at about 45 mph, hit something so hard that not only did he flat both tires, he also dented both rims. I later bought them from him, bending out the sidewall bulges with ChannelLocks, but the rims were never the same. Yet I raced on them regularly for the last ten years or so.

I also got a pair of similarly damaged clinchers. But because the sidewall is integral to holding the tire's shape properly, I had to lace new rims on them to make them usable.

With tubulars your tire doesn't depend on a perfectly formed rim wall to contain its high pressures. The tire holds its own pressure. In addition, the tire relies on glue to hold itself onto the rim, unlike a clincher.You can ride the most banged up, dented, crazy weird tubular rim with 100% confidence because the rim only supports the base of a tubular tire - it does not do any air pressure related work, nor does it retain the tire in any significant way.

I was amazed at how bad the wheels were that the pro teams Z and Gatorade were riding in the now-extinct Tour Du Pont. On the Hershey stage I spent about 2 hours watching mechanics work on bikes after the day's stage. My "pros ride awesome bikes" myth got shattered that day while I watched the best pros's bike getting worked on by tired mechanics. Some wheels were bad enough that I would have swapped out the rims, but the teams just keep them going. One mechanic put Superglue into some cuts on Lemond's tire, albeit after some discussion about replacing the same tire. However, for lessor riders like Gatorade's Dirk DeWolf, for example, he had such major flat spots on his rim that it must have shaken out a filling or two any time he went over 30 mph.

Yet these bent up tubular rims have about the same functional strength as a straight tubular rim. On the other hand, a messed up clincher rim is just asking for trouble if the tire doesn't seat properly. Your tire may blow off such a rim at any moment, with no warning. I'm sure you've seen (or heard of) rims that blew apart due to overly worn sidewalls. This will happen on clinchers, but not necessarily on tubulars.

Tubulars also let you ride even after you've flatted.

You can do this because when the tire goes flat, it becomes flat and somewhat firm due to the fact that it's glued in place. A clincher tire, on the other hand, becomes a wiggly thing that goes all over the place because it relies on air pressure for securing the tire in place as well as its shape.

With a flat tubular you can go quite fast in a straight line. I wouldn't recommend going too fast in a curve, and for hard turns you'll definitely have to slow. Part of the speed depends on how well you glued your tires - I use a screwdriver to start peeling the tire, and only after about 1/2 of the tire is off can I rip the rest off by hand.

One (Pro) Worlds was won on a totally flat rear tubular. If it was a clincher he'd have been screwed:



Fricken awesome clip. Insane.

Longer non-English version, with 6 more clips to give you the lead up to the finale:



Disclaimer line: I think there may be some cognitive dissonance factors (sound, "feel", etc) but I figure I'm just rationalizing riding tires that cost more than the ones on the missus's car. So I don't count them.

Would I train on them? Have I trained on them?

Sure.

Have I flatted them while training? Of course. Do I regret riding them? No. Even when I flat, after that initial shocking disappointment (usually I flat when I move over for traffic, then I berate myself for being to nice), a flat tire turns my normal, ho-hum training ride into a chance to, well, be a pro for a few miles.

So, yeah, what you do is train on them, and when you flat, you pretend you're Olano with 2k to go or something, and you go super hard till you get home. Then you see what you did to your rim. And maybe you regret spending a lot of money on the tire and the kind of dented up rim, but man was it fun blasting home on a flat. Or catching a couple guys out on a hard training ride. Or motorpacing some random cars at 30 mph. Etc etc etc.

Life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

That's the point to riding, right? Having fun?

Tubulars are cool. They're cool because they're light, they're fast, and they're fun.

Life - Break

In Vegas for a short break - therefore post frequency should suffer.

If it doesn't, something else is wrong.

How To - Glue a Tubular

Fail!

I did a horrible job gluing this tire. Although the tire had a slow leak that escaped my somewhat hurried overnight pressure test, the wheel would have been unrideable due to the immensely horrible glue job. Note how easily I can peel away the tire? The tire would have rolled off pretty easily.

Having said that, it took about 15 minutes of struggling to start separating the tire from the rim. Once I got the first 10-12 inches freed, the rest of the tire followed in a minute or so.

If you need to glue a tire on a rim, you're in the same situation I'm in now. So let's glue a tire. You have a tubular wheel, and a tubular tire. You need to mate the two. How do you do it?

First off, let's go over some competencies and responsibilities you have as a cyclist. A big one is that you have to take care of your equipment in such a way that your bike does not endanger others. If it endangers yourself, fine, you suffer. But if you endanger others, that's a real big no-no.

A "no-no" example is, say, improperly mounting a tubular tire such that it comes off while you're riding it. Big no-no.

Since tubular tires are not as easy to mount properly as a clincher tire, it's imperative that you do it properly.

(I should point out that mounting a clincher tire improperly will also lead to a tire spontaneously dismounting, and such an event may also cause problems for the rider and those around him. This phenomenon is not reserved for tubular tire users.)

With that thought always at the back of your mind, let's proceed.

Start with dry-mounting a new tire on the rim to stretch it. This means you put the tire on without using any glue.

In my case I stretched it for a while - probably 20 minutes - while I looked for my glue. You're really supposed to stretch your tires at least overnight, and preferably a week. Back in the day I'd get a bunch of tires and let them "age" over the winter - the rubber hardens a bit, making them less likely to puncturing, or so the myth goes.

Now I just mount whatever tire I have, whenever I need to mount it. In this case I've had the tires for a couple months. Not intentionally though. I bought them and told myself I'd glue them "next week". Then suddenly two or three months had passed, I had a race coming up, and I had to glue them like "right now".

Pump up the dry-mounted tires while you're at it - you want to discover any defects in the tires now, not after you've glued it (most stores will exchange a defective non-glued tubular but not any tire with glue on it). Don't go back to the store after 6 months though - if the tire is totally flat in less than a day, it's probably not good, and you should bring it back then.

Keep in mind that latex tubed tubulars (Vittoria CX, for example) will drop to about 40-50 psi overnight. Butyl tubed tubulars (Contis) will retain pressure like a regular clincher.

The "age your tubular" reality is that this is the time you check for defects. Aging the tire is less important. Nonetheless, tradition demands tire aging. So age your tires.

I do notice the tread firms up a bit over the course of 6-12 months of aging. It would make the tire less succeptible to picking up debris and such, and let it wear longer. I think. Whatever, it sort of explains why riders think aging a tire is good.

(Car tires, on the other hand, just get worse when they age. Competitive car drivers will know the manufacturing codes on the tire sidewalls so they can see how old a tire is - and they'll choose the youngest, newest tires possible, given the choice.)

You can also use the "aging" mount to practice tire mounting techniques. Since it's hard to take pictures around wet tubular glue, I took some when I was dry mounting the tire to stretch it.

Note the Pinch Hold.

This is not a special Ninja technique for disabling your victims, although someone demonstrated to me a special defense technique similar to this just the other day (and boy did it hurt). Instead, this is a good way to hold a tire whose basetape is covered in sticky, icky tubular glue.

Pinch and pull up. You'll be surprised at how hard you can pull up on a tubular tire when you have a panic attack because if your fingers slip you'll have glue all over everything that you forgot to cover when you started putting glue on the tire.

If that's how you hold the tire, how do you hold the wheel?

The Toe Grip. Requires either special Ninja Toe shoes or any pair of socks.

This is a particularly useful hold when you can't touch the top of the rim because it's covered in icky, sticky glue. I try to do this on concrete (the glue doesn't really gob off when it's tacky, which is what it should be) or on a piece of cardboard if I'm on the living room rug.

Not that I've ever mounted a tubular tire in the living room. Really.

Once you've mounted the tire, pretending that all the tire-rim touch points are covered in tubular glue (sort of like when you're a kid and you pretend that the stepping stones going to your front door are surrounded by lava, and if you fall off of them you... um, you have pretended that, haven't you?), you can take the tire off and put real glue on both the tire and rim.

As an overview this is what we'll be doing: First, we'll first apply a layer of glue to the tire and the rim. Once both applications are relatively tacky, we'll put a second thin layer on the tire, and a second thin layer on the rim. Then we'll mate the two and hope things are good.

Choose a tire. The good pile is up high, the questionable ones are below. I chose from up high.

Tire and a pump. Note how white the basetape appears.

To put glue on a tire can be tricky. It's hard to glue the inside of a hoop. It's much easier to glue the side of a hoop. Therefore, make the tire into a sideways hoop. How? Pump it up a bit.

No psi. And the tire will be hard to glue, especially the side that's facing the floor.

Hey! I'm a flounder!

The tire is now laying in such a way you can glue the whole base. Flounder-like, if you will. Cool. Takes about 27 psi it seems, according to my floor pump.

This makes things much easier to glue. Note that the tire suddenly got what looks like old glue on it. That's not an illusion - it's actually what happens when you first pump up a tubular. Glue squeezes out of the casing, covering the basetape, and dust and stuff will stick to it, making the tire look kind of old right away.

Okay, that's really not what happened. Heh.

After I looked at the brand new tire, I realized I hadn't pressure tested it. So I mounted it on a wheel I had laying around, pumped it up, and grabbed another tire. I figured a used tire that I just pulled off a good wheel would be fine (because it had been pressure tested, aged, and raced already), and I found one in the upper pile (hanging off the top of the closet doors). The tire came off my short-lived PowerTap wheel, so it got, what, like 20-30 rides on it.

Luckily it was a Vittoria CX, my favorite kind of tubular. Even more fortunate was that the tire had previously been used on the rear, so it had some wear. Since tubulars tend to actually wear out before they get cut or punctured, I try and rotate my rear tires to the front before the flat bit in the middle of the tread gets too wide. A tire with a wide flat spot feels weird as it heels over in a turn. This tire hadn't gotten to that point, so it's an ideal front tire.

You also need glue. Everything else is optional.

I like Conti's glue. I don't like their tires, but their glue works well. It's considered a "clear" glue, one that is translucent. Vittoria has one, so does Panaracer. I've used all of them, and they all seem pretty good. Panaracer seems to have the most solvents, Vittoria seems the thickest and least translucent.

*UPDATE: 2012, I am using Vittoria Mastik One, a clear type glue. I like it enough that I bought a box of it retail from a bike shop.*

Clement, Vittoria, and others have a "red" glue, which looks like oozy bone marrow. Or pureed liver. Something like that. I've used both and I prefer "clear" glues.

Red can get messy just from squeezing out from under a tire. However, I find that red will fill gaps better, it seems like I can use more without feeling like I'm dissolving the tire, and it's what I started using when I was a kid. Red glue takes more time to dry - definitely 24 hours, and preferrably 48-72 hours.

In the above pic, I have a half or 2/3 used tube of glue (the upper one) and a brand new yet-to-be-unsealed tube of Conti cement. The white piece of paper is actually the tag off the tire - it's strong (ripstop plastic-like paper), won't let glue through, and is a good size. It was also right there, a key factor when looking around for a perfect glue-spreading utensil. It looks used because I already used it to glue a few tires. I just lay it on the stand to store it, and it sticks to the stand on its own. Imagine that.

The truing stand is there to hold the wheel. It's possible to glue the tire without one, but virtually impossible to take pictures of oneself gluing said tire. Since I wanted to take pictures, and I had the stand, I used it.

If you have less than a full tube, make sure you have a second one. This especially applies if you have a brand new tire, or, worse, a brand new tire and a brand new rim. You can easily use a full tube of glue in such an instance.

Since cats and tubular glue don't mix well, here's a picture of a cat to satisfy my need to show them off.

This cat got caught up in a bunch of glue.

The vets had to shave it. Make sure that you've secured your gluing area from fuzzy pets, little kids, curious grandparents, and the like. "Gluey", as some named the above cat, has grown her fur back into a nice, dark, almost black color.

Now glue.

If you have any doubts about your clean gluing ability, wear some latex gloves during the process. If you have supreme confidence in your clean gluing ability, you can skip the gloves. And you'll find out for sure exactly how good you really are at gluing cleanly.

With glue, once you open the tube, don't squeeze it! I mean really, don't squeeze it at all. Just tilt it towards the tire and just nudge the end of the tube to encourage the glue to come out. Squeeze it and you'll have glue everywhere. Do a nudge squeeze, one where, if it was toothpaste, you wouldn't see the paste budge, and tubular glue will flow like, well, like toothpaste.

When pausing your gluing to destress and such, prop the glue so the open end is up. Or cap it. Don't let it point downhill because after you shake out your wrist or hit the head or whatever, you'll look at the tube and it'll be in its own puddle of glue.

Trust me, that's what happens.

Start at the valve.

How did you know I'd say that? Always start there so you know where to end. Also you can use the valve to turn the tire.

I find it easier to kneel on the floor (pretend you're looking for contacts on the floor), arc my hand using my elbow as the pivot point, and glue the section my hand arcs over. Then spin the tire a bit so your hand arcs over a different section, and glue that. Repeat until you get to the valve.

On tires, since the basetape's adhesive apparently dissolves from too much tire glue, go sparingly on the glue.

I think this is actually a myth, since folks put a lot of glue on the rim, and when you join the two together, that glue on the rim is now... on the basetape. Ultimately the basetape adhesive will lose grip and the basetape will start to peel. Since this happens after a bit of time, one might deduce that the glue caused it (because it doesn't do that on its own, not for a long, long time). However, it's possible that some other factor, like UV rays, degrades the glue.

Whatever. Tubular tires are part of that superstitious part of cycling, and if the legends claim that too much glue is bad for the basetape, so be it. I put glue on the tire sparingly but with good coverage.

I used that tire hang tag to spread the glue a bit. More consistent coverage, but thin because of the myth.

Now for the rim. I find it easiest to use a truing stand, but failing that, you can glue a rim, carefully, by holding it with one hand and gluing with the other. The latter method tests your clean gluing ability more thoroughly.

I just started this rim. Notice the wet glue. It looks wet even. Much more glue.

You can see the wet glue trickling a bit.

See how the glue is trickling down just to the left of the spoke hole in the middle (lowest of the three close together)? I put a bit too much glue. Use the tube end to spread such glue along the tire-rim mating surface.

Make sure that you glue around the spoke holes. Those little areas are hard to glue properly, and if you miss them, you're leaving yourself vulnerable to a tire rolling. Those missed spots are like perforations in your glue job. Get one spot loose as you dive into the last turn in a crit at 38 mph and you may find your tire popping right off the rim.

Using the tire lable to spread glue.

I felt it was important to upload this picture, but I forget why now. Look at it carefully.

Note the spiderweb kind of effect that bridges one of the spoke holes. That indicates the glue is getting a bit tacky. It is fine. Sometimes I've gotten enough glue on a rim that the whole spoke hole is hidden behind such spiderwebs. On this wheel, since I have to true it using those spoke holes, I've kept them open. On rims with exposed spoke nipples I don't care as much.

Once you have a layer of glue on the rim, spread it out. I try and use a discarded plastic bag or something similar. I've also used scraps of cardboard (bent a bit to follow the rim contour), even small brushes saved just for gluing tires. I like the baggie method best. Failing a baggie, a tire hang tag works fine. I fold it over my index finger, holding it in place with my thumb and middle finger, and spread the glue carefully.

When you're done with a layer on the tire and rim, and it looks and feels like it's sticky from edge to edge, wait for a bit until it gets tacky. Then you can do a second coat. This time you want to work a bit quicker - it's easier to set and adjust a tire when the glue is a bit wet.

I find it better to put a thin coat on the tire, spread it, then a slightly thicker than thin coat on the rim, and spread that. By the time you finish doing the rim, the tire's glue will have tacked up some, and it'll be ready to go.

You want some rim glue to be wet because it makes it easier to center the tire on the rim. Otherwise you'll be stuck with a wavey tire tread that wears weird and rides unpredictably. A squishy layer of glue on the rim is good.

Now you're ready to mate the tire to the rim. Remember to deflate the tire! It'll be hard to mount a flounder-like tire onto a normal rim.

Then, quickly, do the Pinch Hold and Toe Grip method and get that tire on, starting at the valve. Stretch and pull the tire evenly away from the valve, making sure the valve stays straight. The Pinch Hold comes in handy for the last few inches of tire, and the Toe Grip counters your Pinch Hold efforts. Your earlier practice will come in handy now.

With about 20-25 psi in the tire, roll it on the floor while pressing down.

This helps get the tire into contact with all that glue that you painstakingly applied next to the spoke holes. If you don't do this, and you inflate the tire a lot, the air pressure will lift the edges off the rim, and the glue won't have a chance to set. This results in just the center being glued, and that's not good.

Presto, you're done!

Or... not. You really ought to wait at least overnight to ride the tire, and 24-48 hours is better. Check your glue job - if it doesn't look like the last picture of in this post, it's not good enough. Do it again.

You want to see the glue clinging tenaciously like this.

If you don't glue your tire well, it'll roll off. And if your tire rolls off, you'll get hurt. So be extremely and correctly confident that your tire won't roll off.

Racing - Plainville April 18, 2009

Saturday I went out and did Plainville. And yes, I did it despite not finishing my post on how to glue a tubular tire (I'm going to work on that after this little bit).

I've done Plainville before (once, twice, three times, and I got the first one on my helmet cam). I know the course, I know the wind tendencies, and I even know where it is (left, left, right, left, right, right, and that's from the driveway of the house - skip the initial "left, left" if you count driving in our little development as "part of the driveway").

In other words it's really close to the house.

I went specifically to repay SOC for some of the hard work he did at the last Bethel. Most of my team made the trip to Battenkill so I was sort of alone down here in CT. SOC's teammate had third place almost wrapped up, but two riders had a theoretical chance at passing him for that third overall. They'd have to sweep the points (two primes plus win the race), but still, it was possible.

Said third place overall rider was also up at Battenkill, so two of his teammates, SOC and Est, made the trip to try and protect his third spot.

Since I had no team, and the team didn't do anything at Plainville before, I went to help out SOC protect that third place overall.

We talked about how to approach this puzzle. The easiest thing would be to get someone other than the two contenders to win the first points prime, and then we could relax and work on bonus stuff.

Of course we threw around the idea of trying to sweep the points, both primes and the finish, because apparently that would get him or his team something.

After a little reality check, we decided the more conservative approach would work better for us. Neither of us are breakaway riders so we'd have to work things out in sprints, and those get a bit chaotic and unpredictable.

We arrived at the race at the same time and in short order we were spinning around a nice warm up loop that I had no idea existed until that morning. We went by a few guys from the two teams that held first and second overall (Blue and We-Chase-Blue, albeit a different team Blue from '07).

After a bit of pedaling around, we did a little jump to open up our legs. As SOC accelerated, I realized that I needed to do an even smaller jump to open my legs up so I could do the "little" jump. So I did about 3 pedal strokes at some absurdly low effort level, sat, and watched SOC, about 50-80 meters up the road, look around a bit bewildered since his warm up partner suddenly disappeared.

He looked back, saw me, and eased.

That's when I jumped pretty hard.

My legs didn't feel very good - I hadn't ridden the day before so I felt slow, sluggish, stiff. But that jump helped my legs wake up a bit, kind of like splashing cold water on your face shocks you into coherence. I caught my breath and decided that was enough.

We headed over to the course, ditched our LS jerseys, and after the Missus pinned on my number and gave me a good luck kiss, we lined up.

I saw, for the first time in maybe 20-22 years, a guy Dave. I read his name with a bit of shock when checking the results the prior week - back in the day he was a top notch racer, raced for Richard Sachs, placed 10th behind a certain Davis Phinney in the Boston Mayor's Cup Crit, and won numerous state titles as a Cat 1 or 2.

Now he was a 3, and he was in my race.

The kicker? He was the one guy that could take SOC's teammate's third overall.

I was hoping that he'd gotten really heavy or something, you know, like I did, but he looked just the same as he did before. Maybe not quite as cut, but the same oak tree legs, the same pedal churning power. Smooth as always, adept in the field, and tactically savy.

Like very savy.

I said hi to him, contemplated telling him I was actually riding against him, and before I could decide what to do we were racing.

To everyone's surpise, including me, I went after the first attack, a softening up attack by We Chase Blue. With me and a third guy tagging along, we went nowhere, but that little effort finally cleared up my legs. After a few laps of recovery I felt good.

I'd also managed to recon the course under fire. I mean, yeah, I know where it goes, but a course changes with wind and weather. On that day the weather cooperated - sunny, maybe 70 degrees. I raced in shorts and a short sleeve jersey, and I drank an unusual amount of fluids for a one hour-ish race.

The wind always seems more significant to me. I learned quickly that the wind mimicked the day I wore the helmet cam. From the left on the main stretch, a slight wind after Turn One, from the right on the back stretch, and a headwind just before the last turn, Turn Two.

I'd taught SOC to look for wind, and after watching him for a few laps, he looked like he read the wind the same way, and he sought shelter appropriately.

Cool.

For the next 15 minutes, SOC and I took turns looking after things. I'd watch moves, he'd watch moves.

His teammate went up the road in a little group containing both the race leader and I think the second overall guy. Their teams watched content at the front of the field, leaving the chase to those that had missed out. Although technically my team (Connecticut Coast Cycle) missed the move, I had an ally in the break, so I didn't want to chase.

A few solo type riders had to chase though, and Dave, with only one teammate in the field, needed to get up there to bring them back. He came up to my hip and murmured.

"We need to chase. The race leader is up there and everyone is blocking."

This was when I regretted not telling Dave that I was trying to help CVC. Dave rolled to the front, and him and a former collegiate teammate (of both of us) brought the break back.

SOC and I missed the first prime sprint (we didn't know it happened, although SOC gave me a heads up because he knew when it was scheduled to occur), but for the second one (which we thought was the first one of the day) we moved up aggressively. I watched the two overall leaders fighting it out for the win, and would ya believe it, the overall leader took the prime.

I was sitting just off those guys' wheels, and when they crossed the line, with Dave nowhere in sight, a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. SOC's teammate's third overall was officially secure. We could relax and race a race.

I glanced back to see what was going on - SOC sat on my wheel, a gap between him and the field.

"Hey, we can relax now!" I yelled.

He grinned back.

I tried to pull a bit but the field didn't want anyone leaving and they quickly regained our wheels.

A bit later someone offered me some inside tactical advice. I told him I couldn't take advantage of it, but SOC could. He nodded and I went and told SOC the tidbit. This galvanized SOC into action, to the point that Mrs. SOC was surprised on a particular lap when he came around the corner in a small break.

After what seemed like only a few minutes, Dave rode up to me again.

"5 to go."

I looked up and saw a big "5" looking back at me. I hadn't known where the lap cards were so it was nice to learn before it was too late.

I started looking for SOC. He saw me looking, interpreted the action properly, and eased over onto my wheel. This was good.

Only one problem.

We hadn't discussed the final sprint before the race - we'd focused on the numerical permutations for the overall and had decided that we really needed to protect the third overall before we thought of anything else. Problem was we didn't make any contingency plans, so now that his teammate's third was secure, our tactics were up in the air. The only known quantity was that I'd work for him.

With a slight cross-headwind sprint, it'd be best to go late, and to go on the left (because the wind came from the right). But by the time I figured that out, a few laps into the race, I couldn't really tell SOC because the whole field could listen in to my advice. I also knew that my legs were good for perhaps half a lap leadout, but it'd be a good, fast half lap. This meant I'd go on the backstretch at some point.

I could burn maybe another quarter lap match if I had some protection from the wind, i.e. if I was a bit far back and had to move up, I could do so from the first turn to the launch point on the back stretch.

Again, unfortunately, I couldn't share this readily with SOC.

Long time teammates who both train and race together will develop an almost uncanny ability to read each others' minds. A small nod or a subtle glance can convey paragraphs of information. SOC and I weren't there yet so I had to exagerate some of my nods and glances.

Therefore, every 30 seconds or so, for the last five laps, I'd turn around to check if he was there. If we had matching kits on, such actions would basically broadcast to the field "Hey! I'm leading him out! So if you want a leadout, get on his wheel! Okay?"

Long time or more experienced teammates would be a lot more subtle.

If I were in front, leading out someone, I'd look down, not back. I'd look for my teammate's fork, his front wheel, maybe even a unique mark we'd put on one of the two (some bright tape on the hub or fork works great). I'd conceal my looks with a face wracked with fatigue, so my glances down would appear to be that of a rider just about to give up. Folks watching would say, "Oh, he's supposed to lead out him. But man, that leadout guy won't make two downstrokes before he explodes." Then I hit hyperdrive and lead out my sprinter to a victory. Or something like that.

Alas, I didn't have those luxuries.

I'd sit up a bit, crane my head back, and look at SOC. Okay, he knows I want him on my wheel. And he looks pretty determined to hang onto it.

I tried not to take anything for granted, but I figured he knew it was five to go. Early in the race he'd noted we'd just covered fifteen minutes of racing, and the first prime hits at that time. We never heard the bell though so we didn't know if there was a prime. Whatever, SOC showed me he was much more aware of the race time than me. And I thought it'd be a bit hokey to point five fingers down to show him 5 to go, like a catcher signaling his pitcher.

For four laps we danced in the field. I'd choose the really big gaps if I had to move through guys, opting not to slither through the little ones. Luckily the field size allowed us to move around without too much problem.

In a 100 rider field, following a leadout man for five laps is practically impossible. It's more realistic to grab your leadout's wheel with maybe two laps to go, maybe one, and then fight to keep it.

It's hard though because a good rider can take your leadout man's wheel at will. It takes 5 to 20 seconds, involves no contact, and you're powerless to defend.

Luckily this doesn't happen all the time. Usually a leadout will benefit both the sprinter being led out as well as the guy behind the sprinter. So the fight ends up for the sprinter's wheel, not the leadout man's wheel.

In this case it'd be SOC.

The sprinter banks on this fight, and in fact when I was the sprinter, I've let other leadout men into the line in front of me because I figure that's another 100 meters of superfast leadout. A field with good teams (i.e. they're working together) usually approaches a field sprint led by a cluster of leadout men intent on drilling it almost to the line, followed by a cluster of sprinters all jockeying for position amongst each other.

As I remembered all this stuff I couldn't explain it to him, nor could I give him even hints of what to do. I had to rely on his wit, his ability to read race situations, his intuition, all those instincts, to carry him through the last few laps of the race.

We came up on two to go and things started getting organized at the front. We Chase Blue had a lot, and I mean a lot, of guys at the front. They had two guys off the front and were blocking like mad - they were trying to take the team overall, and getting first and second would help their cause greatly. Naturally the Race Leader (Blue) and his guys were chasing like mad, because they could also take the team prize.

We sat just behind all that.

The second last lap went by pretty quickly, nothing dramatic happening. I kept looking back at SOC and decided that I'd be burning my quarter lap match on the bell lap to move up, then going at half a lap to go. I decided it wasn't worth it to try and move up at 2 to go, only to have to fight like mad to maintain position. In all likelihood I could do it, but it's impossible to follow a wheel through that stuff, so SOC would be left out in the cold. Since my job was to lead him out, we had the luxury of skipping such efforts because we'd sacrifice one rider (me) to bring the sprinter (him) to the proper place at the proper time.

We came up on the bell lap, one to go, and now things were getting a bit heated, lots of yelling and stuff. Turn One got a bit crowded, but as the field exited the turn, things got nicely strung out. I knew I would see a bit of wind initially, but by staying left I'd hit the backstretch protected from the wind, and I knew I could go past the front at that point.

I surged out of the turn, on the left side, and hoped that SOC would follow me. Although a moderate effort for a last lap, maybe one that could be repeated twice before the sprint, on any other lap it might have been considered an attack. As I passed riders strung out in single file, I could see what was happening up front with the two man break.

The We Chase Blue break had disintegrated.

Gallantly one of the riders gave the other the biggest leadout he could, then sat up. His teammate had maybe 50-70 meters, but the way the field flew out of that turn, I didn't think he had a chance.

The field gravitated towards the guy coming back from the break, looking for shelter. The exploded break rider went almost to the left curb to get out of the way. And the field veered as if to tag him, pausing ever so slightly in their efforts. We Chase Blue didn't want to pull and no one else wanted to open up the sprint.

I decided I'd open the sprint.

I had built up some good momentum and had to go left since the field had strung riders from the right curb all the way to the exploded break rider to the left. I hoped he'd left a little gap, that I wouldn't have to brake, and as I went left, still in my "moderate" effort level, I knew that I'd have maybe two or three inches to spare.

I went left. And yelled.

"LEFT!"

I went by him and accelerated. Now I was committed.

I wasn't sure that SOC would be able to follow - in fact, I felt pretty sure he wouldn't be able to, simply because he has wider bars than me, and if I had his bars, I wouldn't have gone through the gap.

However, I hoped that by opening up the sprint, I'd get the long strung out field to straighten out a bit, and since SOC had been carrying more speed than the field, he'd be able to slot in as soon as he saw a gap.

I don't know what he did though. I didn't have the luxury of turning around anymore. I sprinted up to and past the poor break rider. He moved right and eased, knowing that the field would be flying by him.

Just before the last turn I did something odd, though, and my left foot, or rather my left ankle, smashed into the let chainstay on the upstroke. My shoe popped out of my pedal.

I looked down to clip back in, but the pedal spun wildly on the crank. It took a few jabs - I don't remember how many - before I got clipped in. The SRM says I spent two seconds fumbling around, so that's not too bad. I remember one guy (not SOC) going past me as I did this, and it ends up he won the race.

I got through the last turn and started sprinting. My legs immediately screeched in protest and I thought, "Oh, good, I can practice sprinting when I'm totally dead!"

I did about two more pedal strokes and realized, okay, this is why I jump late, not early. I can't move my legs anymore.

A few guys whizzed by me so I raised my hand to indicate a problem, a biological in this case. I coasted across the line 11th, apparently, with SOC actually getting money with his 6th place finish.

After the race we rehashed some stuff, but the big surprise was that SOC had gotten 6th without realizing it was the last lap of the race. He just "followed" the guys going for the "prime", but they all sat up after the sprint. That's when he realized that maybe it was the end of the race.

Overall though it was a good race. Our focus on race objectives helped mask the pain of effort - a sense of purpose really helps motivation, and we both gave it our all for someone who wasn't even there. We worked well together and in the end, although the leadout wasn't successful in an exact sense (since SOC wasn't on my wheel), I learned that I can, in fact, lead out someone pretty well.