Monthly Archives: January 2016

Marv’s Jan 2016 Bike Log

 

Dear Rouleurs,

I’m a bit pissed off.  I spent the last two weeks afflicted by a stomach bug and chest inflection.  The first illness wiped out a long planned Australia Day holiday at Apollo Bay.  The second, prevented me from riding in the Cadel Evans Peoples Ride this week.  In short, this ruined my preparation and left me with a lingering chesty cough.  Bummer….oh well.

Peter Kennaugh wins the 2016 Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Classic

Peter Kennaugh wins the 2016 Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Classic

Having watched the men’s road race today, it looks like Australia has new one day classic on its cycling calendar.  I thought Team Sky’s Peter Kennaugh’s win today was outstanding, with his attack on the final climb of the last lap, showed impeccable timing.  The resulting gap extended out to 20 seconds which left the high tempo exhausted peloton with too much do.  Local rider Leigh Howard, riding for IAM Cycling, finished second.  May be we’ll see an Australian win next year.

2016-Jan-AccKmGraph

So looking at my cycling log for January, I’m seeing so-so start to the year.  Weeks 2 and 3 were blessed with good weather, light traffic and few disruptions.  Weeks 4 and 5 haven’t been as anywhere as productive. So I’m slightly below my target for week 5.  Bummer…

I guessing Feburary will be a big month to get this back on track.

Until next blog ride safe.

Marv

A very cool Christmas present…The Evolution of Bicycles Puzzle

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Dear Rouleurs,

Warning!!! this blog may be a shameless plug for a cool present.

My Wife has picked up on my obession with cycling. Probably, Its because
it has taken over my vocabulary, daily conversation, caused re-routing of holiday trips and
arguments over what’s on the telly. I digress 🙂 However, she has
embraced this change in my personality with aplomp and for Christmas 2015
gave me a very cool present. I have no idea where she bought this
in Melbourne.

<Shameless-Plug> but it can be purchased direct from the retailer Pop Chart Lab at: https://www.popchartlab.com/products/the-evolution-of-bicycles-puzzle </Shameless-Plug>

Essentially its a 500 piece poster of 75 illustrations of notable and famous bikes
from 1780 to the present day. It was pretty tricky puzzle that tested my
mid-fourties eyesight to its limit. However, it was a wonderful way to spend
some quality time with my partner and marvel at how the form and function of
the humble bicycle has changed over the years.

So here’s a picture of the “beastie”, after 8 hours of eye-straining puzzle
solving. Yes ,the background is brown stripe table cloth…yuk 😉
20160120-BikePuzzleAs an aside, how good is it to see Channel 9 doing a decent job of the
Tour Down Under coverage. Congrats to Caleb Ewen and Mark Renshaw for 1st-2nd
finish in the first stage.  I wonder if we ever see that combination in the same UCI team some day.

Until next time

Marv

Yes I feel the need, the need for speed

 

Dear Rouleurs

I just has to share this cartoon. I’ve swiped it off this very good blog. Hope the author has more readers than I do 😉

https://humancyclist.wordpress.com/2015/11/15/faster-without-training-or-money/

Yes I feel the need, the need for speed :-)

Yup… only a cyclist would understand this.

Hopefully the really crappy weather that’s hovered over Melbourne for the last 48 hours will disappear tomorrow. I’m keen to go riding and test out my new drive train.

Later

Marv

Cranksets and Cassettes…its a ratio thing.

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Dear Rouleurs,

I’ve been obsessing over gear ratios, drive trains and hill climbing.  As a 102 Kg Clydesdale, doing sportives this year, these things matter.  I’m riding the  60Km version of the Ballarat Classic in February and that course contains some serious gradient.  Certainly more than I’m used on my local Beach Road ride.

So I started out looking at triple chain ring. Straight away, I encountered two significant snags.  First, Campagnolo phased triple chain rings on their lower end groupsets, hence I wouldn’t be able to source a Veloce component.  Second, even if I had sourced an older Veloce triple, it would have meant changing over the front and rear derailleurs as well.  Essentially, that’s 3 out of 4 bits of drive train.  Given its Campag, that would be a costly trip to a bike shop.

Instead, I read a few blogs and landed on fitting a compact chain ring with a smaller 50/34t ratio and higher ratio 13-29t cassette.  Originally, I had 11-23t which I upgraded as part of Zonda rim package to 11-25t.  For everything I’ve done thus far 11-23/25t has fine.  I tend to do most of riding on the outer ring anyway.  The theory being I should be able to keep my cadence fairly high and not have to stand on the pedals to exert brute force.  So I’m swapping out the 11-25mm for the 13-29mm.

 11-25mm  To  13-29mm
 20160114-campy-veloce-cassette-10-speed-11-25  20160114-campy-veloce-cassette-10-speed-13-29

The compact chain ring is an interesting beast. Depending on what online cycling magazines Its being described as the ‘killer’ of the tripleset chain ring. Mainly because of its ability to provide similar ratios to the tripleset, whilst enabling manufacturers to avoiding extra tooling and production costs. Most likely, this is why Campagnolo doesn’t offer triples on the cheaper groupsets.

So these were the alternatives:

53-39 – Race -> I have one of these already
52-36 – Semi-compact –> the one I’m not sure about
50-34 – Compact -> the one I’ve decided on.

53-39t has been the standard chain ring for some time now. It’s used in races that are mainly flat and in timetrials, where the more powerful riders are using a 53 to 11 ratio to achieve maximum speed.

50-34t Compact crankset has been around since 2002 and has been used by the Pros to travel through mountain stages. The primary idea being that a smaller front chain ring allows a higher cadence which should reduce muscle fatigue. It also allows less powerful riders access to lower ration gears without ‘crossing’ the chain. Crossing the chain creates more friction and increases wear and tear on the drive train.

52-36t Semi-compact is the new kid on the block. Its reason d’etre is that it provides the best of both worlds means a 52-tooth chainring for attacking descents and sprints, while maintaining a smooth chain line from the big ring when riding on flat roads, and a 36-tooth inner ring which, of course, offers a lower gear for climbing than a 39-tooth ring.

My decision on which crankset was made easier…again…sigh…by Campagnolo not having Veloce 52-36 crankset. So I’m swapping this 53-39 for this 50-34.

 53-39t  To  50-34t
 20160114-campy-veloce-crankset-53-39  20160114-campy-veloce-crankset-50-34

So circling back to where I started, in about 2 weeks I’ll find out how all of this tinkering in my drive train worked. The Cadel Evans Peoples ride is fairly flat with the exception of a couple nasty little hills on the back end of the course. Hopefully this will all ‘gel’ together and provide a really efficient ‘gearbox’ for my 46 year old legs.

Until next time

Marv