Road Ride Report. Yeah, I'm GRS - I even wore my matching Tufts jersey and Tufts bib shorts 😉
Trails are still wet. Brought the road bike into the shop today and I finished running cables and
wrapping the bar, adjusting everything, and whatnot. Came out pretty good.
Group ride at 6pm - was I going? Actually, no, I was going, according to the active manager. Sure
thing. Turned out to be only the two of us, probably a good thing because the rest are all racers
(as he is, but he was off his bike for a while).
Anyway, he's mid-20s, and has a beauty of a bike - Aegis Aero Svelte (reference: 48cm weighs 2.4
lbs!) with an amazing custom paintjob (red flames on black, with a red-black inside-out fade in the
rear triangle), Zip speed weapon wheels, mix of Dura-Ace and Ultegra. He's not a small guy either,
about 6' and probably 170 or so. Bike weighs approx 16lbs (I think it was 16.23 on the shop scale,
ready to ride). Mine's an old Specialized Allez Comp, lugged steel frame with a few dents, Kinesis
aluminum fork, mix of 105, 600 series (ultegra?), and Sora parts (sora shifters, thanks Gary!), plus
a pretty sweet deep dish Fir Superrialto rear wheel with a carbon fiber hub. Still heavy, but at
least it looks cool. His bike was sweet though - on flats, he could tuck, and I could tuck behind
him semi-drafting but not fully in the sweet spot, and without pedalling he'd actually just pull
away. Good demonstration of what a quality bike can do.
I'll just give you the major stats - remember, first real road bike ride ever, second time ever on a
road bike, and I live in a pretty hilly area. It was his computer, so I don't remember exact numbers
for everything.
Time: 90ish mins Distance: 28 miles Avg: 18.6mph (was 19.5 until my leg started to cramp and we got
into the last major climb area) Top: 43mph
we were doing 28mph up a 3/4 mile uphill for a while - he dropped me about
2/3 of the way up, but I wasn't doing too badly. Hit 38 on the final straightaway - well, he did, my
cables had stretched enough that I couldn't get back into my big ring, so I was closer to 30.
I definitely need to work on drafting, and I need to get a shorter stem!!!! I was way too stretched
out (he said so too, and he's a damn good bikefitter). Luckily I have a huge assortment of
threadless stems to browse. If I can find one with a removable face plate, I may take a hacksaw to
my current one so I don't have to undo all the beautiful taping I did today 🙂
Jon Bond