Allen

Last weekend after the training shower, as Kevin called it, I took Mason into Cycle Solutions to book a tune up, and talk about some upgrades. Mason, of course, is my Giant Cypress ST. He's a hybrid, great bike for scooting around in the city, but I've noticed there are some things about him that aren't perfect.

I spent about an hour and a half at Cycle Solutions discussing options for upgrading, and looking at other bikes. The weather was still quite bad, so I arranged to come back on Tuesday to try out some of the other bikes. I tried out a Felt F80, a Giant OCR, one other bike I don't seem to recall properly, and a Specialized Allez Sport Double in the white / red colour option.

I headed back yesterday (Friday), decided that the Allez was to be my bike, and we proceeded to do some additional fitting. Overall, we didn't need much, the seat post was adjusted to suit me better, and we replaced the stem with a slightly shorter one. By the end of the evening, I was heading home with my new bike, Allen :-)

I did today's training ride on Allen, and was immediately amazed at the difference it made. It's my first time on a road bike, and the 46km ride was a breeze! There were only mild hills today, but I know they would have presented me with a small challenge on Mason. With Allen, it was easy to push ahead and keep my pace up. He's fitted with a Cat Eye Cordless 7 cyclocomputer, which of course seems to be missing from the Cat Eye website.

Regardless, I'm thrilled with my new purchase, and I'm sure that Mason won't mind having a sleeker faster brother around, so long as I keep taking him out for some of the trail rides.

Bike Maintenance & Repair Clinics

As first year riders, we're required to attend a repair clinic, so last night, Stu and I attended one at Velotique. It's a neat little bike clothing and accessories store located at 1592 Queen St. E. Their slogan is something like "the best selection, because we don't sell bikes."

This seminar was given by Saul, and if you've ever seen a Velotique catalogue, then you'd recognize him. While his store doesn't sell bikes, they also don't do bicycle repairs. Saul says that the best mechanic for your bike is you, and that's something I've always believed as well. No one else is going to want to put in the time to adjust things properly when they're not the one riding the bike. You see this all the time with new bicycles - the gears and brakes are almost never tuned properly. I suppose when you work in a bike shop assembling bikes all the time, you eventually start to take shortcuts.

The clinic covered three topics: preventing and repairing flat tires, cleaning and lubricating your chain, and adjusting the rear derailleur (which is the thingy that shifts your gears). I've been tinkering with bikes since I was around 12 or so, so most of this was old hat, but I'd never been taught any of it in person, so I did pick up a few things here and there. In particular, there were 2 things I learned that really stand out.

1. Gauging chain wear.

   First the short one... you can check for chain wear by shifting onto the large chainring, then pulling the chain forward and checking how much slack there is. If you can expose a full tooth, your chain too worn. Chains sort of stretch over time, so that the links don't line up well with the teeth on the gears any more, and this can cause jumping and poor shifting. If you ride with a worn chain for too long though, the gears will wear as well, and then a new chain will not work properly with the gears. So it's best to replace chains before they wear, because chains are cheap and gears are not. Saul recommended doing it every year, but surely it depends on how much you ride. I've never changed mine, and it's only about half worn out.

2. The importance of tire pressure.

   Air pressure is often measured in pounds per square inch, and that relates directly to how much surface area of the tire is contacting the road. With skinny road bike tires, typically about 1 sq. in. per tire should be in contact with the road. In the past I've inflated my tires to about 100 psi, which means that the bike can carry 200 lbs of total load, rider and bike (though this doesn't take into account impact forces, like riding over a curb or hitting a pot-hole). If you go beyond that, the tires squish down until the area of contact is large enough for the pressure to support the weight. In extreme cases, this will pinch the tube between the tire and the rim, causing a flat.

   Even with my bike, I'm nowhere near the 200 lbs that my tires can support when inflated to 100 psi. However, tires lose air over time. A car tire is large and has low air pressure, so it doesn't lose air very quickly. A road bike tires is under high pressure and contains very little air, so a small amount of air loss makes a big difference. I usually try to pump my tires up before every ride, but sometimes I'm lazy and I don't bother if it hasn't been too long since my last ride. Often when I pump them up again, I notice that the pressure is down to 65 or 70 psi, which is not enough to support me and my bike without significant deformation of the tire. In addition to elevating the risk of a pinch flat, this adds rolling resistance which slows you down.

On Tuesday, the day before the repair clinic, I decided to fix my flat tire because I knew I wouldn't have much time to do it this week before the next training ride on Saturday. Since I speculated in my last post that my worn rear tire had something to do with it, and since I refuse to ride with mismatched tires, I bought a new set of Schwalbe Stelvio Rain tires. (I didn't realize at the time that they were made for riding in the rain, but that's a pleasant surprise, because rain does make me somewhat nervous about slipping.)

When I inspected the tube, I didn't find any glass or anything sharp, but I did find that it had not one, but two small punctures, one on either side of the tube. This had me utterly confused. Had a needle somehow gone sideways through my tire? Had I run over a staple? Well, I learned at the repair clinic that this is known as a "snake bite" and it's exactly what happens when you get a pinch flat. So it turns out that it was the pot-hole that killed my tire. Since it was rainy, I couldn't swerve, so I just rode straight through it. I think my tires were inflated to about 115 psi that day, but from now on for that extra bit of protection against pinch flats, I think I'll aim for about 140 psi before every ride, if my pump can handle that (and if not it's probably time for a new pump too). Saul recommends inflating to the maximum recommended tire pressure that is printed on the sidewall of your tire, which is 145 psi for my new ones.

I'm excited for this Saturday's ride! I've only ridden around the block with my new tires, so I'm eager to see how much faster my riding will be when my tires are pumped up to 140 psi.

Training Shower, er um, I mean Ride, #3

This morning Stu and I headed to Kennedy Subway Station for the third training ride. It was raining steadily, as the weather forecast said it would, but we were somewhat prepared with our rain shells and tights / leg warmers. Stu also let me borrow a pair of his full-fingered gloves.

Training rides proceed rain or shine, since on the way to Montreal we can't take a day off if it rains, so it's good practice to experience riding in the rain now and then. Of course, the training rides are not mandatory, so only about 25 people showed up, some better prepared for rain than others. After the ride leaders had collected our signatures (we all have to sign a waiver of liability), they reminded us that it was our choice whether to ride or not, and they mentioned the extra precautions (and dangers) that come with rain.

After a bit of debate with some of our team members, Stu and I decided that we'd give it a try, and we'd simply turn back if it was too awful. The other 3 people from our team who showed up weren't as keen on it, so they went for coffee instead.

About 10 of us started out, and it wasn't too bad once you got moving. I felt chilly, but not wet. But then, after just 2.29 km, I got a flat tire! Now, I did have everything I needed to fix it, but I really didn't feel like doing it in the rain. So I called up Stu, who had been in the lead, and I told him what had happened and that I was just going to turn back since we weren't very far into the ride. Stu was relieved to hear that I hadn't fallen or anything (he had noticed that I wasn't behind him any more) and also because we now had a legitimate reason to turn back! We may be troopers, but there are varying degrees of trooper-osity. So Stu rode back to the car, and then came back to pick up me and my bike. I had to keep walking while I waited though, because once I got off my bike, I noticed how wet and cold I actually was.

I'm quite lucky that this happened early in the ride. (It's also good to get flat tires out of the way before the ride to Montreal - it's not superstitious, it's just statistics! I hadn't had a flat in probably 3 years until today.) It would have been awful to walk 20 km in the rain, or even to wait for Stu to get back to the car and then drive back to get me. Also, because it was early, we were able to join up with our team mates who were still at the coffee shop.

I'm not entirely sure what caused the flat, but perhaps I'll find out when I fix it. It may have been my fault though, because I've been riding on a rear tire that is badly worn from my indoor trainer. I was meaning to get a new one before the bike rally, but in the meantime I had been on several rides with it with no problems. I did hit a pot-hole a bit before I got the flat - so it may have been a combination of factors. I'm certainly hoping for better weather and better luck next weekend!

Super Joe, 39 km Ride

Last weekend I went to Rack Attack, which is conveniently around the corner from my house, and I picked up a Yakima Super Joe 3 bike rack. I used it to get Mason out to Kipling for the 39 km Ride. The bike rack is great - excellent value, very easy to set up, and it really secures the bike.
As for today's ride, I can't help but think of a simple song lyric: "What a difference a day makes", and realize what an incredible difference seven of them makes. Of course, then I wonder what nine would do, but that's another story alltogether. The ride was much warmer than last week's and everyone was in great spirits. It started out with a wrong turn near East Mall Cres., it's funny to watch 30-40 riders follow the leader down a wrong road, then execute U-turns as the mistake was noticed.
People were much calmer today about claling out potholes and glass and the likes.. There weren't many major items to note - one large puddle / small pond in the road, one section with loads of glass, and a few large potholes. Otherwise, it was great. I got to chat with Kyra for a bit too, she's the Rider Development Lead for this year's ride, and she's got loads of enthusiasm!
Looking forward to next week's ride!

Training Ride #1

Kevin and I just finished training ride #1 which started out very cold. According to the Weather Network, it was -3°C with a wind chill of -11°C when we started out the ride - yeah, chilly! Once we got going it was pretty good, though people were really taking our pre-ride pep talk to heart. People were pointing out every little pothole and ice patch. It made for an odd experience, a group of bikers travelling along shouting "pothole!" as they went.

About 10 km into the ride, we were heading up John street, and all the riders were beginning to settle into better packs. Kevin had already mentioned he wanted to move up a bit so we could finish the cold ride sooner, so we were doing that. I got delayed at a traffic light, then while playing catch-up I noticed that my fingers were pretty much frozen. I couldn't move them well, and they were quite numb - it made shifting gears tremendously difficult. I pulled over to warm them up, and shook my arms to get a bit of blood flowing. Well, my hands started to feel like they had been put in a meat grinder - I think it was very early stages of frost bite, but it seems I caught it before much damage was done. Soon we were up on 14th Avenue, and as we turned south on McCowan, it was like a whole new ride!

We had the sun beaming down on us, and the wind was no longer in our faces, everyone seemed to be sitting a little lighter in their seats, and the pedaling seemed so much easier. Things were great! Even the detour on McNicoll was no problem. There was just one more obstacle to overcome.

The training map does warn us of the big hill on Cummer. It's pretty fierce. I'm sad to say that I stopped my bike part way up to take a drink - when you're going that slow it's harder to keep the bike stable, so it's more dangerous to do stuff like grab your water bottle. Or, at least, that's the story I'm using to explain why I stopped ;-)

With the detour included, my bike computer logged the ride as a 36.5km ride. Not a bad ride for a chilly day. Now, I think it's time for a nice hot bath!

Look for Kevin's details to be posted in his training log.

New Gear

So I managed to make it to Velotique today, party out of inspiration from Kevin's "Retail Therapy", and partly out of fear for our first official training ride on Saturday April 8th. I'm pretty used to the usual warm weather rides, but since this one is starting at 8:30 am, and the weather is due to be rather chilly, I felt it best to get a bit more prepared than I was for the ride we took last Sunday.

Last Sunday was one of those brilliant-looking days, you know, where it's sunny and nice looking, but the air just has that bit of a bite to it? Riding in just the bike shorts and a thin bike jersey proved to be pretty bone-numbing. As we rounded the point at Tommy Thompson Park, the wind whipping off the lake did manage to cut out most feeling in my extremities, so I no longer noticed how cold I was. This coming weekend though, I'd rather be a bit more comfortable.

I left Velotique with some extra tights for warmth and the same rain shell that Kevin picked up. I got some extra gear for the bike - a floor pump from axiom and a Finish Line chain cleaner. When I got home, I realized that I've now got rather a lot of bike clothing - enough for a whole drawer! I'm not sure where to put the other clothes that used to occupy that drawer, but I guess that's a challenge for later. At least I'm more prepared for Saturday's ride :-)

FORCE G

I went to the Ontario Science Centre with my friend Chris last June, and they had a special exhibit - I think about amusement parks. Whatever it was, they had this fun contraption that was sort of like a bicycle crossed with a rollercoaster. Here are some photos of me riding it!

Retail Therapy

I'm not a big shopaholic in general, but sometimes if I'm feeling down, I find that buying myself something can cheer me up. "Buying a little happy," I call it.

The week before last wasn't such a great one, so I went on a few shopping trips. I needed a bunch of stuff for the bike rally, so I decided to visit some bike shops. First I checked out Cycle Solutions, at 444 Parliament St. They're offering a 15% discount to bike rally participants on all merchandise other than bicycles. It's a really great thing for them to do. So here's what I bought:

• an extra pair of Specialized Body Geometry Sport gloves, blue
• 2 spare tubes
• a patch kit
• Pedro's Ice Wax (chain lube)
• a bell that fits in the end of my handlebars
• 2 water bottle cages

I got all that for just $75. The following day I decided to check out Mountain Equipment Co-op after visiting their website and discovering that they have a rather extensive cycling section. Mostly I wanted a waterproof jacket, which I bought. Then I realized that it didn't fold nearly as compact as necessary to be carried in a back pocket or saddle bag, so I exchanged it for a couple other things. In the end, this is what I bought:

• 2 Specialized Big Mouth water bottles
• MEC mechanical chain cleaner and bio-cycle cleaning fluid
• MEC front & rear "Turtle" emergency LED lights
• MEC Wedgie Pro saddle bag, black
• Topeak Peak MasterBlaster DX frame pump
• Topeak Alien DX multi-tool (27 tools in one)

These items totalled about $148. All in all, I'm very pleased with my purchases. I have very few things left that I need for the bike really. That's thanks not only to my shopping, but also to Dave, who bought me some other essential gear for my birthday:

• a new helmet, Giro Eclipse, in red
• a Louis Garneau Clear Choice rain shell
• Sugoi SubZero leg warmers, for those chilly training rides

Though I'm not quite ready, in terms of gear, for the ride itself, I think I'm pretty well prepared for the group training rides, which begin on Saturday, April 8th.