your daily bicycle log

Welcome to Southern England. You don't get many long climbs but you can get some punishing short sections. Lots of areas are geologically similar to belgium, some bits are part of the same formations I think.

some bits are part of the same formations I think.

scanned as "some brits"

Well they are now thanks to a concerted ten year cycling performance development programme.

This isn't really the right thread, but I have a maintenance question. I want to clean the filthy chains on my two bikes. I had one of those things with an aerosol and brush that you clamp onto the chain and spray while winding the chain through it, but in the year or so since I last used it it seems to have mysteriously emptied itself. So I went to a bike shop to get another one, but they didn't sell them.

I spoke to the owner (who's been running the shop / doing maintenance for about 25 years) and he said to give the chain a proper clean you need to break it, take it off, soak it a mixture of cleaning fluid and hot water inside a big empty coke bottle for about twenty minutes, give it a good shake, then put it back together and on the bike and lubricate it. I bought some super-concentrated cleaning fluid, but not a chain rivet tool because I've still got one of them that I bought (and last used) about 20 years ago and SHOPMAN said that would still do the job because nothing has changed in the world of chains since then.

On my drive back to London my super-concentrated cleaning fluid escaped from its container and soaked its way over quite a lot of luggage (including most of my wife's clothes). This was unfortunate. I have no idea what it was made of (it was unlabelled), but I got the impression it was just like a powerful detergent. I hope so, anyway.

I've now been reading about removing chains and I'm getting MAINTENANCE FEAR again. It would seem that, contrary to SHOPMAN's advice, plenty has changed in the world of chains since 1990. In particular, since my bikes have 10-speed and 9-speed shimano gears, it sounds like this means they have special narrow shimano chains. I don't know for sure, because the chains are filthy (which is why I want to clean them). The book isn't completely clear, but it sounds like my old chain tool might not be appropriate. It also sounds like you can't just remove any old rivet, it's got to be a particular one, and you have to replace it with a new rivet, and it takes 'a surprising amount of force' to do this job, and it's rated as especially difficult.

My questions:
1) Do you think my old chain tool would work?
2) Am I right in thinking the downsides of me trying to do this job far outway the benefits (given that virtually everything I try to do bikes goes wrong and ends up taking five times longer than it should)?
3) Isn't there any reason why I shouldn't just use household detergent mixed with water?
4) Or should I just get another one of those aerosol-brush-clamp things so that I don't need to remove the chain?

an 8 rivet tool will not go with 9. i dont know if a 9 will go with a 10.

i just spray with simple green and a rag, rinse, lube, rag, relube, rag. i would never break a chain these days just to clean it unless i were using a sram power link, and then still probly not. i dont know about reg detergent, but i doubt its efficacy. the brush clamp things ime are useless unnecessary crap.

in the early days w/ six/seven spd chains, i would periodically remove chain, soak, and paraffin wax. those days are over.

NB my drivetrain is never award winning by even my own lax standards.

its snowing for the 4th time this week. cant face another day in gym, so im taking out the snowbike for a leisurely hour. i put studded on the front, but back is just knobs.

Start with OranjPeels or simple green, much stronger detergents than dish soap. Give it a good old scrub, do the cassette and rings as well. I then go for lots of WD40, which cleans, penetrates and forces out the residual moisture to a certain extent. Dry that off and then lube up.

http://www.eldukedegreaser.com/El_Duke_Degreaser_/Home.html

this stuff is srsly amazing ime

i have a horrible drivetrain at the moment, but if i ~were~ to clean it i'd go ahead and break the chain (tho curious as to why you're reluctant to, hunt3r?? yr makin me nervous that i've been doing bad things), plop it in a bowl of el duke, watch youtube, come back, wipe it off, put it back on, lube

TBH my winter routine is blast it with WD40 and put some lube on. I am due a new chain and probably a cassette when the snow goes.

oh i def need a new cassette. i replaced the chain a few weeks ago and all my shifting went janky because the cassette was "used" to the old chain.

i mean, plans for the spring include:
-- new wheels (105s to dt swiss 1.2s)
-- total drivetrain replacement: i've been sitting on 105 f/r derailleurs for like two years now. figure i'll pick up some new cranks/cassette, and just swap out the whole shebang. i'll stick with barend shifters, though, cuz i like 'em and brifters are $$$$$.

btw anyone wanna sell me a new crankset

This stuff?

that's the stuff, but I like this better:

http://www.pedros.com/oranjpeelz.htm

curious as to why you're reluctant to, hunt3r?

http://blogmay.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/sloth_in_a_box.jpg

i guess its no more likely to break at the special pin than a new chain, but w/e. is your chain THAT dirty?

four hours today and four hours yesterday. sun was actually out both days but boy was it windy. my poor face.

ddb rode with me yesterday and BONKED HARD

LOL

no biking for me this weekend - i dj'ed a party and took drugs instead

today, same ride as last week: hard 87 miles, vascillating between endurance to tempo to threshold depending on terrain... also a lot of regrouping due to crummy weather on the first half of the ride.

I definitely learned my lesson from last week and ingested one banana, 2 bars, 1 clifblox, 1 hammer gel, and one large mocha, 3 bottles of sports drink and 1 bottle of h2o over the course of the 5+ hours.

we had a lot of rain yesterday which flooded out part of the bayshore that connects Sausalito to Mill Valley, so we got creative and opted to take the shoulder of California Highway 101:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4003/4394386486_678c7be2c8.jpg

def. not the safest way to travel but worked in a pinch.

avg speed was slower than last week: 16.9 mph but the conditions were pretty bad for the first half and we did a little more climbing than last week (5100 feet).

once we got about halfway the weather really turned nice and we got a good paceline going again which helped cut the gusty winds:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4072/4394386628_f93d3e9647.jpg

dude in front is a monster from northern germany who chose to wear shorts, short sleeve jersey and windbreaker for the ride (42-51F + rain/wind). i'm second from the right. dudes in 2nd and 3rd are 125-135lb cat 3/4 racers who bound up steep grades w/o breaking a sweat (dude taking pic falls into this category as well).

I def feel super drained. back of left knee feels sore, possible cramp or just weird pain, hard to say. taking it easy tomorrow on an easy recovery ride.

Alleycat fixed-gear/single-speed race round the parks of Glasgow yesterday afternoon.

We had 43 riders turn out. I placed 11th. A wonderful finish at the high point of the Glasgow Necropolis.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2800/4393587908_896543444b.jpg

Isn't it snowing in Scotland?

solo ride this morn: home > one (1) lap of the boulie > back home. 30.6 km, 1.19.35, avg 23.1 km/h @ 69 rpm & 159 bpm. max 50.5 km/h, 193 bpm, 199 (!) rpm.

34 miles 91 minutes on tt bike testing positions and dialing it in. theres a tt about 1.4 hours away next sat, but i dont think im willing to spend that time and effort.

there really arent too many tts on the co sched. beyond the 7 race series (one of which will prob be a snow-out), i think 3-4.

What kind of format do time trials take in the USA?

In Britain they're a bit weird, a legacy from decades ago. Basically, some time early in the 20th century cycle racing was banned from the roads and was only allowed on tracks. They came up with time trials as a way of getting past this ban: if the riders were let off at one-minute intervals, rather than in one massed bunch, then they could claim not to be in a race. Obviously the police weren't quite that stupid, so the time trial organisers went to the further trouble of scheduling every race at the crack of dawn, of making the riders dress from head to toe in black, and of identifying each course solely by a secret code. Even now, long after all this became unneccessary, some of this persists - lots of races start at 6am or 7am and the course descriptions are still basically a code and an extremely minimalist account.

The vast majority of time trials are over fixed distances (10 miles, 25 miles, 50 miles, 100 miles) or fixed times (12 hours, and 24 hours for the complete nutters). Because of this, a lot of riders are obsessed with getting a fast '10' or '25', rather than with getting a fast time for a particular course or beating other people over a particular course, so that they can get a new personal best. This means lots of riders flock to fastest time trial courses, which are nearly always very flat and straight dual carriageways with lots of fast-moving traffic and sliproads and a big roundabout where you turn at the halfway point (there is a rule that the time trial has to finish within a mile of the start, I think).

Does America have the same obsession with times for a particular distance and riding on unsafe roads? Or are time trials over more challenging routes with odd distances?

yeah i've read that uk has some sort bizarro racing history and a cultural tt fetish. in the us, there seems to be emphasis on 40k for district titles, but im not aware of other distances. i mean, you see centuries, but they never seem to be promoted under any of the standard racing federations.

you just have a permitted course with cones on the side of the road, some marshall's at the turns or turnabout, you line up at your start time, some schmoe holds you, and beep beep beep go! the series im doing is on open roads inside a pay-admission state park. traffic is light, but ive actually had a couple altercations in there. you've not lived until youve leaned into the passenger window of some mercedes bitch who blared the horn at you for like 30 seconds and yelled "YOU. ARE. IN. A. FUCKING. PARK! CHILL!"

tbh, most racers i knew considered emphasis on tts a pretty damn dorky way to race a bike. you might enter states every year, but otherwise they were just one part of a stage race, and in the lower cats you dont do too many of those.

yeah, I'm no racer or involved with it bt I've always gotten the impression that TTs stateside weren't valued v highly at all.

Back in my tri days lots of dudes were way more interested in TT than road racing... maybe just because the bikes were the same and they could save on gear? Tri dudes are weird though, even weirder than roadies... they like to solo and are obsessed with wattage.

Today: 45 miles/3 hours SLOWWWW recovery ride. Weather was insanely nice, I was in shorts and short sleeves. got a mocha and a brownie, also got my tanlines back </dork>

ALSO: today marks my one year anniversary of being a roadie! thanx for entertaining my pointlessly stupid questions.

Isn't it snowing in Scotland?
― Home Taping Is Killing Muzak (Nasty, Brutish & Short), Sunday, 28 February 2010 11:37 (11 hours ago)

Just raining in Glasgow, the brief snow passed a few days ago.

ah, tanlines *shakes fist at heavens as the snow resumes outside*

40km should be 1 hour for the elites, right? My neighbour did the Windsor tri last year and of 2000 riders he was the only one to complete the 40km bike leg in under an hour (he came 76th overall).

What is a mocha?

coffee with chocolate in it, innit

i think i would be a bad tt'er - not especially good at pacing myself. might have a play around with the heart rate zone alarm stuff on the computer to see if i can get more even efforts over a ride.

cat 1-2 is usually elite-ish in my mind, they should go sub 54 or go home.

i'm thinking of doing an hour soon to gauge my solo effort skillzzz. i think my best effort is 22.5 miles (last year).

however, being tied to this geography, i'd like to stake out the rare stretches of relatively flat ground. there is a paved lap around the polo fields in Golden Gate Park that would make a monumentally boring ride but could do the trick.

ok, after looking at that internal hub xc bike on the other thread it reminded me of a question i've always had w/r/t TT bikes:

do you really need two chainrings on a TT bike?

why not do away with the weight of small chainring and front derailleur?

i think some tt specialists swear by fixed as on the track, right? single ring makes some sense. bonus, you wont drop your chain. otoh, the weight penalty on a flatish course is really minimal. see cyclinganalytics.com if you ever have insomnia. for example, i have an antique first gen specialized tri spoke front that weighs 1200g. srsly. and the disk i have is heavy too, like 1450g. i think i figured out a long time ago that the extra weight penalty vs a modern set of the same weighing 1700g total (2.1 POUNDS less) was less than 5 secs on a flat-rolling 40k. in a triathlon, thats like, dropping your gu in the transition and having to pick it up, right?

oh shit. fitting new headset, had to trim fork again. thought it was taking a bit long, realised i was actually sawing through the star nut as well ;_;

i mean i can fit another one of course but was hoping to avoid the hassle. i don't have any of the tools, gotta borrow them every time.

40 miles this morning (I don't usually work on Wednesdays) in preparation for a sportive this weekend.

just got caught in a hailstorm! quite invigorating in a way, could do without everything getting wet tho.

rode 130 mi commuting this week. this am im going to try to catch my first big boy group ride. this should sort out my relative fitness for me.

sort it out

finally got a builder to look at my bike. headed over shortly

feel like I'm taking my dog to the vet, prognosis unknown

Totally smoked a roadie on a hefty uphill while doing a rolling 35 mile country loop on my fixed complete with laden courier bag; always makes me feel good.

thats awesome and devastating but why u ride w laden courier bag?

I think I scored major points with skinny jeans hipster bike store dude as I managed to up sell the indecisive customer who was preventing me from buying a new chain from a 600 buck road bike up to a cross check. I think everyone wins on that deal.

Americans always trust a British accent

Talking of degreasing, he sold me some speed bike degreaser. I think I killed a couple of penguins, a polar bear and dissolved a cranial lobe, however it also turned black into shiny in seconds.

http://media.rei.com/media/717907.jpg

just degreased my chain, too, but with ECO FRIENDLY, ORGANIC (and potable, even) EL DUKE