Road Cycling Essentials

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Vonhelmet said:
Nice. I believe Berger also uses one. Possibly Asprilla as well, if memory serves.
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Yup, mine is a 24H with Hplusson Archetype rim and Sapim double butted spokes. Heavy but good training wheel.

Since I had it built with that it's been bullet proof, previous wheel build using other parts was more miss than hit.

I'd rather have a crank based meter, but they were at least twice the price at the time and I'd still need some wheels to train on.
 
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One More Solo said:
You'd need SPD-SL cleats (come with the pedals) and any 3 bolt compatible shoe (99% of road shoes).

Buy these though, the Ultegra isn't worth the markup IMO:
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/shimano-r550-spd-sl-clipless-road-pedals/rp-prod106714
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They've got similar things written in the reviews about the 'differences' between those pedals and the Ultregras.

ArmoVanBuuren said:
I've just bought these pedals and they come with some SPD-SL cleats (Yellow ones with 9 degree float) included and nearly all shoes are compatible with these.

I bought these as I wanted to match the Ultegra groupset on my bike, but if you are not bothere about an extra 20g or so, buy the Shimano 105 pedals from wiggle for £45. They are carbon too.
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Had a look at those and they're out of stock now on Wiggle :mad: but only 50quid on chainreaction so may opt for those ones instead. I don't think I'm at the stage to worry about 20g extra weight when I'm cycling :p
 
Coming up to 45 minutes and it looks tough going now! He's pretty neat on the black line round the corners which is good.

Looking at his live lap times he's creeping up into 18 seconds a lap, from low 17s earlier, not sure on the planning and timing though so can't tell if this was taken into account. His coach keeps standing to show him as being ahead on each lap though so must be going well.
 
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Brabbinho said:
His pacing wasn't consistent enough. So started like a rocket and got ever slower
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Great effort though. He looked dead at the end.

I can only think of one sporting activity that is probably more painful than beating the hour record. Attempting the hour record and failing.
 
Vonhelmet said:
So, I had another bang on the turbo. Good grief, it's boring and terribly hard work.

I had another go at driving my heart rate up. I got to 193bpm. Last time I was worried about the bike wobbling so this time I upped the resistance rather than increasing cadence and that worked a lot better.

Edit: nm, need to work out my zones properly. Need to test my resting heart rate properly.
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You need to do an FTP test to set your zones - your min and max heartrate won't really help do that. I'd advise getting trainerroad and doing one of their tests. It's about as accurate and repeatable as you're gonna get without buying a powermeter. TR also makes it much less boring.
 
Looks like my ballot entry for the Ride 100 was cancelled too :( Still, I've already signed up to the Tour of Cambrideshire Gran Fondo for this year so I'll at least get to do one closed-road event :)

On the bright side, finally got my warranty replacement frame from Giant. Noticed a crack in my TCX SLR2 at the beginning of September last year, finally got the replacement last week! Was a bit of a nightmare, not only did it take forever for the new frame to come in, but when it did turn up it was a different colour and the fork supplied with the frame was a completely different spec.

As a gesture of goodwill for the wait, Giant sent upgraded forks and a new carbon seatpost. The upgraded forks were full carbon Overdrive 2 with 15mm thru-axle instead of Overdrive 1 carbon fork/alloy steerer and quick release. The LBS weren't exactly happy that I would end up with a mismatching colour scheme if we used the existing fork to be able to use my existing wheel, so that meant:

Sourcing a compatible axle (Giant didn't supply one with the fork)
New hub
New spokes to lace into existing rim
New front disc rotor (new hub was centrelock rather than 6-bolt, think it was the only one they could get their hands on in short notice, iirc it's a DT-Swiss 340 hub)
New stem (technically an upgrade, think it's a Giant Contact-SL?)
New headset

Fortunately, the LBS were excellent and supplied all of the parts/labour free of charge! Just spent the morning installing compressionless cables for the disc brakes and re-indexing the gears. Running perfectly again now :D Not surprisingly the guy at the LBS said he would be happy if he never saw that bike again :D
 
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Been having this problem for the last 2 years and been putting up with it.

I get chafing in perineum area with me riding 20 miles daily and upwards of 80 miles at weekend. My bum seems to slide forward towards the nose of the seat. I've had a bike use chamois cream.

I'm assuming its the saddle ? Its the standard Selle Italia X1 Flow that came with the bike. Am I on the right track ?Although I know saddles are personal preference but anyone got any ideas?
 
Not sure what Bobridge's plan was with the hour record, Michael Hutchinson reckons from pacing he was aiming for 53km+ which is a bit daft. Nobody has yet beat Chris Boardman's 52.27km set in the current legal position.

Stage 8 of the tour of sufferlandria today was the most horrific session I've ever done on the turbo, or perhaps anywhere:
http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/1595160-revolver-aug-2012-to-feb-2013-
http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/1595709-sufferfest-violator
http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/1596104-sufferfest-half-is-easy

All back to back. HR monitor wasn't much use but I think it's fair to say I suffered.
 
Jimbeam3678 said:
Been having this problem for the last 2 years and been putting up with it.

I get chafing in perineum area with me riding 20 miles daily and upwards of 80 miles at weekend. My bum seems to slide forward towards the nose of the seat. I've had a bike use chamois cream.

I'm assuming its the saddle ? Its the standard Selle Italia X1 Flow that came with the bike. Am I on the right track ?Although I know saddles are personal preference but anyone got any ideas?
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Tried moving the saddle forward, or tilting it backwards first? Could be incorrectly placed which will definitely cause you issues.
 
Club ride was good in the end, if a little bit Arctic!

Started off cold and got warm once we got going. Everybody splits out a little bit on the hills but gathers at the top then goes on again. Good news is that I wasn't the slowest rider out there with two others a distance slower than me (which was a relief if I'm being honest!).

Café stop offered some welcome respite from the biting icy cold wind and gorged myself on a massive bar of red berry granola which certainly boosted me for the return leg. Wouldn't have lasted otherwise. Was horrible walking out the door of the café (which offered some amazing cakes!) as it was so frickin' cold! Then we had to pose for a bit of a Strava photo, all stood over our bikes shivering!

Good return leg and felt strong in the end. Could have done another 20 km without an issue but I was glad to get home. My legs feel it a little bit and the rest will do me good, as did the chunky vegetable and leek soup I had when I got home!

In all, 82 km and 650 m elevation.
 
Aye, the cafe at Rufford Marina is good. The cakes are much more reasonably priced than at Rivington. There's another good cafe near there, at Cedar Farm Galleries.

14.8mph average seems fairly sedate for a club run - nice way to ease yourself in!
 
Yeah, the two slower riders kept falling off the back a fair bit, especially on the way back so it slowed us up a bit, plus because there was an unusually large group of ten of us, we were forever waiting for people to get through junctions and the like, plus, the wind!!!! Brrrr!!! But yeah, it was a good way to start! Oh, and I absolutely CRAWLED on the way to the meeting point, trying to save as much energy as possible! Probably averaged around 20 km/h on that bit haha!
 
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