I just completed the rebuild of my old Trek. I used the stem that I had and it is too short… I will have to replace it (7cm) with a 10cm to get the position correct. Here is the finished product..
I also put together my new handlebar, stem, and SRAM Red shifters….
Can’t wait to build up my Felt this week!
Well, I got my SRAM Red groupo on Thursday. Building it up and riding it will have to wait however, since I won’t get my Felt FC until late next week. So for now, all I can do it weigh it and imagine…
Looking up some weights they are listed as:
It is funny how some are higher, some are lower…..At the same time, I bought the Ultegra 10 drivedrain used from Andrea since she recently upgraded to SRAM Red herself. I am putting in on my Trek (after giving the frame a good wash and wax, long overdue) and got started on the upgrade tonight. Here is how far I got….
I also washed up all my wheelsets… I definitely have a lot of training wheelsets…
…and a crowded, cluttered workspace….
…but it works for me….
Last night was the first daylight weekend night ride for the year. I ended up just doing a standard loop out of Cordova of about 25 miles. The weather yesterday was fairly nice, but what made it remarkable was that it was a first ride of the Zipp 900 disc I bought back in January. At first I was riding out in the open down Cordova Park and Lenow Road so it was fairly faint, sounding like an airplane overhead….but by the time I got to the more closed in roads (Latting Road), the noise was unmistakable… the disc whoosh. I hadn’t planned on riding hard (I really didn’t anyway), but it was not recovery ride… That sound just encourages you on…
Coming back in through the neighborhoods Kingridge and Fletcher Trace, kids and adults were looking up at me as I rode past… This wheel definitely gets some attention… But maybe not in a good way… I think I will save it for TT’ing…
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I did not wear my TT helmet, that would have been over the line…
This morning Memphis is covered with several inches of snow that looks like it will hang around for a while… another trainer day, but that can wait.
Here are some short movies I took of Andrea’s dogs playing in the snow.
Her Jack Russel:
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Her Belgian Malinois:
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The crazy weather continues in Memphis today (extreme weather perhaps..what could possibly cause that?). Last Saturday, I was racing a few hours away in Little Rock with 75F temperatures…. Today, the temperature dropped along with a winter storm giving Memphis the first real snow of the year. As I write this there is about 2″ of snow on the ground and the temperature is dropping below freezing.. So it is not looking good for riding tomorrow morning. So rode as long as I could stand on the rollers (which today was about 45 minutes).
Last night, I helped Andrea put her new groupo on her Blue bike that she got in the fall last year. She got her new SRAM Red groupo yesterday. Due to the weather, the maiden voyage will have to wait, but it sure does look good. I am still waiting for my Felt FC frame (expected this month) and my own SRAM Red group. I have been riding Force since I got my Kuota last April. I am looking forward to the improvements over Force. After getting a chance to handle the parts during the installation makes me all the more excited to get it myself. From everything I have heard, the demand has been great for this group. I think it is well deserved. Shimano and Campy should be worried.
Really it has been a crazy week in Memphis starting off last weekend when someone decided to slaughter a household of people. This “Lester Street Massacare” is giving Memphis another black mark after a number of recent “worst of” lists which put us up there in “fattest” (pork ribs anyone?) or just a bad place to do business (no citation, sorry). Aerotropolis? That is the concept that Memphis is pushing to be to get something going to leverage the air freight trade in/out of Memphis Airport.
But in the end, living anywhere is what you make of it. Memphis is not the best place I have lived, but I would say that life here is not that bad. It has it’s problems, but they are manageable.
The next post will be #100. I started this thing last April as an experiment to see how it would go, as a creative outlet, and a place to post up photos.
Today Andrea and I went out to North Little Rock to race the flat 26 mile loops of the Crosswind Classic. Memphis Velo had a good representation with 4 of us racing Cat3 (in the 123 field), 4-5 racing Cat4, and some masters. Andrea raced Women’s 123 mixed in with the Cat4’s. She ended up finishing in the middle of the Cat4 field and was the first woman. I am sure she will blog this soon….
As for my race, the turnout was a good one for the 3 lap race (78 miles). At the start they gave the rundown: 16 Cat1/2’s and about 40-45 Cat3’s. The first lap started out pretty slow on the narrow course. Despite the yellow-line rule, the field frequently swelled across the road as riders tried to get into position. About half-way through the first lap, David Jones was up in a break of about 10, John was up near the front, and Jarret and I were trapped near the back. I know I wasn’t willing to ride over the yellow line to advance despite most of the field. So it was difficult to move up as you were quickly overwelmed by people passing over the yellow line. There just wasn’t any enforcement of the rule.
In any case, all was well near the back of the field until about 22-24 miles in when the some vicious surges put me in difficulty (a.k.a. a spot of bother). The first, I recovered from but it weakened me, the next one a little bit later out of a corner did me in. I chased like hell for a mile or so, but I was steadily losing time and had to pack it in. I ended up riding the 2nd lap and withdrew without doing the final lap.
Back up in the race during the 2nd lap, there was a bad crash caused by a truck cutting off the field after he grew impatient behind the peleton for mile after mile of the field swollen across the road. In the end, David’s break came back.
As for me, I am disappointed that I couldn’t hang on through the surges…the course was board flat, but the wind was tough out there alone. I hadn’t really planned to race until April given my ‘cross racing through the end of January… I really shouldn’t be surprised.
I probably will race in 3 weeks (Ride to Live race in Birmingham - Cat123 field) and then 6 weeks out (Chattanooga Georgia Cup race - Cat3 field). Time to get ready!
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