Crappy cycling session

2008 07 31 Thursday 20:45 finish

Cycling in Somerset
duration 33:34
avg 12.8
max 24.0
distance 7.24 miles

Why is this "crappy" ?

Well... it started before the ride, when I discovered the rear wheel of my Trek had 3 broken spokes and was badly warped. I found this out as I was installing the new Continental Contact tires which I bought in hopes of increasing my road speed. I probably bashed the spokes while car-racking the bikes back from Brooklyn a couple of weeks back. [Sigh.]

So, off came the tire and the wheel went to the bike doctor.

I decided, "Hey! Why not put the new Contis on my Fisher and see what happens?" So I did that, and in the process somehow got the rear derailleur cable out of its little holders. I found I could get it to go back into any TWO of the three holders... and eventually, thanks to some brute force, I got it back into all three.

Then I quickly measured the wheel rotation (202.7 cm, rounded up to 203 for the Cateye Enduro 8), set the computer and grabbed my helmet.

So, now that it was pretty much dark, I turned on my lights and decided to go for a short ride. One thing I noticed right away was that the new tires didn't seem any faster than the Bontrager knobbies that came with the bike. A harder, quieter ride to be sure, but not significantly faster.

Did I mention I felt like shit from too much ice cream today? Now's as good a time as any, I guess. Anyway, maybe that's why I was slower than 2 days ago, even though it was a shorter ride and these tires are supposed to be super fast thanks to the magic of "low rolling resistance". Or maybe I didn't have enough air in them, or too much.

Or maybe I was just tired from Mon/Tue/Wed's workouts. Or out of sorts from the gears not shifting up too smoothly. Or from searching for an easy mountain bike trail earlier today online and not finding anything definite. Or from my saddle being half a finger too low and its nose being tilted one click two far up.

Whatever.

I get the wheel back from the shop either tomorrow or Monday and then the Conti Contacts go on the Trek, dammit. I'll maybe try the Town & Countrys on the Fisher, or maybe just stick to knobbies. I think I'll go check the tire pressure right fricking now and double check the rotational distance. And raise the saddle half a finger and tilt the nose back one click.

And maybe pat myself on the back &mdash that makes 185 of my target 275 minutes for this week, leaving only 90 for me to nail that on the weekend, maybe on an easy mountain bike trail.