Tubular love



Holy carp! STRAVA gave you 170 est.Watts?!?! Real world that's well over 200. Nice ride. 2400' of climbing over 35 miles is more than just rolling stuff. You did at least 6 good climbs on the course. And you did that on what? A 42x23? Kudos given!

STRAVA gives me 150-160 Watts on estimated rides and my power meter rides hit 200 and above.
 
Holy carp! STRAVA gave you 170 est.Watts?!?! Real world that's well over 200. Nice ride. 2400' of climbing over 35 miles is more than just rolling stuff. You did at least 6 good climbs on the course. And you did that on what? A 42x23? Kudos given!

STRAVA gives me 150-160 Watts on estimated rides and my power meter rides hit 200 and above.

42 x 23? I will double check when I get home from work, but I think that's an old six speed straight block (12-17) freewheel. I would be surprised if I had a 23. Hard to see from the back end of the freewheel in the picture; and I haven't counted out the teeth. That's why this bike is destined for the flat lands of the Jersey shore for the summer.

Obviously my Masi has no power meter, but I've done that same route on many occasions at similar speeds and generally see watts in the range of 200 plus using a calibrated PT hub. There was also a ferocious wind to deal with on the flats. I have old software on my Garmin so interface with Strava requires me to manually download the data with a USB, and I've got some more recent rides that show averages from 210-215, which I just haven't inputted into Strava. Here's essentially the same ride from earlier this year at about a similar pace with average watts over 200. .https://www.strava.com/activities/765213147

Strava always underestimates the hilly rides, but it's pretty darn close on the flat rides.

And yes, my area has some of the best riding around. Lot's of rolling SE PA farms and horse country, covered bridges--basically the foothills as you start to get out to the Appalachians. It's relentless. Constant climbing and descending. I've had friends from CO tell me about climbing in the mountains and how they expect that riding around our way will be easy. I have to explain that these old country roads were built without any highway grade guidelines. They basically just paved over old deer and horse trails to give the shortest distance between two straight lines. About half way through, they start complaining about the never ending hills. It's different than climbing for 40 straight minutes out west on a gradual grade up a mountain, and then descending down the back of the mountain for a nice stretch. It's just a series of 6-11 minute relatively steep climbs interrupted by 2-3 minute descents for practically 2 straight hours. If you're off the bike for a few weeks, or having a bad day, it 's a pretty punishing ride. PM me if you're ever in the Valley Forge area. There is a reason these Kenyan Marathon runners train in Valley Forge, and General Washington himself trained his troops here. Adding to the fun, we get more rain than Seattle and its colder.
 
A 6-speed?! You're an animal if that's a 17 granny! I did hills for decades on a 21, but only the really, really strong guys used a straight block and even then it was just for crit work. The minute they came of the course a 21 or 23 went back on the hub. Most guys looked at my 21 out on the road and thought I was nuts for not carrying a 23 or 25.

Your climbs looked fairly gentle, but I still saw a couple 10%'ers in the mix. A 42x17 on 10%, even for a short interval, is hard work! Normally at race speed it might be on the 53x23 or 21, but in training...not unless I was on dope would I be pounding a 42x17 at my age! LOL!

I'm in the Allegheny foothills on the other side of the tall and steep stuff. I know exactly what you're talking about. Even in the easy stuff, you're climbing the same 50' - 200' climbs over and over and over. I'm sure you also have plenty of 12% - 20% stuff over your way also. The 'leg breakers' here hurt plenty with 20-30 miles in your legs. Put 60-75 miles on and they bring strong racers to a walking pace.
 
Counted teeth when I got home. It's a 42 x 21 for my granny. So I'm not the he-man I claimed to be. Looks like 21,19,17, 15,14,13. I'll snap a pic of it so I can count better and not get my fingers greasy. Looked on eBay. Those vintage campy freewheels and cogs are expensive. Otherwise, I'd have to get a straight block to prove my manhood. Hopefully, it will hold up and work ok with new chain changes. I also have to adjust shifter tension because it kept shifting out of the 21 under load.
 
A late model Regina America freewheel would be awesome for that Masi. Pair it with a Regina Oro chain. Word of warning: The early America freewheel bodies were improperly heat treated. They were brittle and cracked. I broke two of them, myself, back in the day.

Realistically, any of the Jap 6-speed freewheels will work just fine and those are still cheap. You are correct about Campy. They never made a lot of those and they cost a lot then and a lot more now.

A 42x21 is doable for a younger rider on hills that don't classify as 'walls'. Hit a steep one of only 1/4-mile in length and your legs will be screaming for a 23 or 25!

One good thing about the old 5-6-7 speeds...the thicker gears and wider chains lasted longer.
 
A late model Regina America freewheel would be awesome for that Masi. Pair it with a Regina Oro chain. Word of warning: The early America freewheel bodies were improperly heat treated. They were brittle and cracked. I broke two of them, myself, back in the day.

Realistically, any of the Jap 6-speed freewheels will work just fine and those are still cheap. You are correct about Campy. They never made a lot of those and they cost a lot then and a lot more now.

A 42x21 is doable for a younger rider on hills that don't classify as 'walls'. Hit a steep one of only 1/4-mile in length and your legs will be screaming for a 23 or 25!

One good thing about the old 5-6-7 speeds...the thicker gears and wider chains lasted longer.

This bike is still shifting darn nicely except for the tension issue where it is slipping out of 21 when I stand to climb (which was a lot! for that gearing) It will be a perfect shore bike. Steepest hills are highway overpasses and bridges. I'm not going to miss the additional gears at all. And I am not putting a Jap freewheel on this bike. I might as well just take a **** on somebody's Ferrari! Really really disappointing coming from someone with the moniker "Campy Bob"

The other nice thing about this bike is that i have it set up to ride in the drops as opposed to riding on the hoods. With downtube shifters, and that old school geometry, it feels perfectly comfortable to just hang down on the drops and reach down for the very occasional shift. I may also hang it on the wall and just look at it since its so pretty!
 
Really really disappointing coming from someone with the moniker "Campy Bob"

LOL!

Please don't tell anyone, but my 'All Eyetalian' track bike has a Dura-Ass crankset on it. Connected to a Campy Record BB and Campy Superleggera track pedals!

For the occasional hilly ride, climb fast and no one will be the wiser that your legs are turning over a...<gulp> shitmaNO freewheel! You could hit the English web resellers and track down a few Miche freewheels. Tullio started his career at Miche so no sacrilege is committed if you mount a Miche. Likewise an old Sachs-Rohloff will work as Campy used to buy their chains from Rohloff.
 
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LOL!

Please don't tell anyone, but my 'All Eyetalian' track bike has a Dura-Ass crankset on it. Connected to a Campy Record BB and Campy Superleggera track pedals!

For the occasional hilly ride, climb fast and no one will be the wiser that your legs are turning over a...<gulp> shitmaNO freewheel! You could hit the English web resellers and track down a few Miche freewheels. Tullio started his career at Miche so no sacrilege is committed if you mount a Miche. Likewise an old Sachs-Rohloff will work as Campy used to buy their chains from Rohloff.

Only kidding about the freewheel, this is a rider not a museum piece so I will upgrade/fix as necessary with reasonably available stuff. It's already got speedplay pedals on it; and I am not a big fan of the brakes--from an effectiveness standpoint as opposed to beauty. We'll see. If its not being ridden, than its simply a waste of space. I intend to ride the **** out of it until it is no longer serviceable. Honestly, given work obligations and other restrictions, I have been doing a lot of riding on the trainer. Now I'm even racing on line. it's fun as hell and I am seeing my power numbers go back to where they were when I was a giant among men, or at least a prepubescent boy among toddlers.

Jump on line and we will show the youngsters what the old men can do. Here is a Zwift race I did last night--fun stuff. https://www.strava.com/activities/891613858/overview

And then Zwift posts your results with some useful data. You can see that tactically I rode this race like ****. Way too much time trying to close gaps and staying on the front of the slower group. If i had just sucked it up and drafted off the lead group, I would have finished better with less energy expended. They actually said that I should have rode B, which I've tried but get smoked because I haven't quite mastered the pacing of virtual drafting. Still, its awesome training http://www.zwiftpower.com/race.php?id=4225
 
New brakes pads. Those old things are hard as hell and their stopping power is much reduced. They can be softened, but NOS is readily available.

Watopia...I've been threatening to join Zwift. Maybe next year. Either that or retire and travel to Tenerife and ride a month or so there.

'C' racers on Zwift are mostly sandbagging Cat. 3's. They fly. I would, like you, have to be at it a few times to figure where to lay it down and where to sit back and cruise.

With a max. Wattage of only 523 you either didn't sprint or just stayed on cruise control throughout the race. A steady 250 to 275 on every segment...nice work! Flat sections were fast. The nice thing about your race was that in 46 minutes you got a better workout than I got in an hour and twenty minutes climbing 1300' over 23 miles in a 25-30 steady wind with 51 MPH gusts. You averages 24 MPH...typical race speed...while I fought my way along solo through that hurricane at 15 MPH.

Anyone that disses indoor trainer workouts hasn't been on a smart trainer in a live race.

I watched a few of the top riders on Zwift race and those speeds are pretty much 'pro'.

I hate indoor training and if I am forced to do it another year I'll be on Zwift.
 
'C' racers on Zwift are mostly sandbagging Cat. 3's. They fly. I would, like you, have to be at it a few times to figure where to lay it down and where to sit back and cruise.

With a max. Wattage of only 523 you either didn't sprint or just stayed on cruise control throughout the race. A steady 250 to 275 on every segment...nice work! Flat sections were fast. The nice thing about your race was that in 46 minutes you got a better workout than I got in an hour and twenty minutes climbing 1300' over 23 miles in a 25-30 steady wind with 51 MPH gusts. You averages 24 MPH...typical race speed...while I fought my way along solo through that hurricane at 15 MPH.

Anyone that disses indoor trainer workouts hasn't been on a smart trainer in a live race.

I watched a few of the top riders on Zwift race and those speeds are pretty much 'pro'.

I hate indoor training and if I am forced to do it another year I'll be on Zwift.

The workout you get as far as time efficiency is unmatched. At that time of day, it would be 20 minutes before I even got outside traffic areas and could start to do some real work; or I would be confined to a riverside bike path and have to dodge joggers and dog walkers that time of day. Even VF park is pretty busy with commuters.

And yes, you get really great data. After this race, Zwift suggested that my FTP should be raised. That's nice that its all automatic and I adjust my training levels accordingly.

That ride was supposed to by a FTP training ride (2 x 20), but I saw the race scheduled and figured I could jump on and stay motivated better than just logging some of their pre-canned workouts, which are great but a little boring. And yes, after hours logged on trainers within the sweet spot, i am the proverbial human metronome.

My concern starting out in this "race" was that I would burn too many matches going out too hard too early. On B and open rides, I basically get gassed halfway through just trying to hang on and closing gaps. In many of these races, you have rabbits and CAT 2s who are going out way too hard for my pace. If I am in the 300 average for 20 minutes, then I'm going to get gassed over 45 minutes. On that race, I clearly held back and got stuck with a slower group, which caused me to pull too hard and too long at the front, and just didn't have enough recovery time to want to lay it all out there the last few miles or really try and pull away in a good hard sprint. There was nobody to really sprint against when I got close to the line.

Like any kind of racing, this does have its tactics which need to be learned. I clearly am not racing efficiently, but the training is pretty solid for this time of year. I wouldn't want a steady diet of it and I'm looking forward to spring, but I am surprised how motivating it is compared to simply staring at my garmin numbers for 50 minutes.

I am also taking some of these numbers people are putting up with a grain of salt. On a hilly course, if you lie about your weight, then the Zwift algorithm will allow you to climb at a faster rate than a heavier cyclist generating the same watts. Even on a flat course, if you overstate your weight, then you can race a class below because they are looking watts/kg. One of the racers in my area joined that race, and suffice it to say, he is a very fast CAT 2 who races in the season without the healthy layer of winter paunch he allegedly is reporting on his Zwift profile. (Looked pretty darn lean last time I saw him) He was in the upgrade group as well and absolutely smoked the course. This was a pretty flat loop so the weight issue was less a factor and he just motored ahead.

As a true test of a real race under real laboratory conditions, Zwift is lacking. As a fun way to get some of that race feel and keep your juices flowing, these virtual races are fun as hell. No crashes, no long time commitments riding to and from races, no fees, no flats. But a few percentages of inaccuracy across the field are real game changers in a race. If my PM is off a few percentages either way or somebody is reading really high, that's going to make a difference over 30 minutes. If everything is reasonably calibrated, than the race is reasonably fair. So far, my numbers are pretty close to what I can put out on the road. I always figured that if a person is insecure enough to cheat in a 'fun" competition like this, I can't let it ruin my fun.
 
I am surprised how motivating it is compared to simply staring at my garmin numbers for 50 minutes.

Don't remind me...<groan>

And the clock...the ****ing clock...

I've been putting some different apps on the 520 just to have something new to stare at. How pathetic is that?

From what I'm reading, a LOT of guys are under-estimating the Watts/weight & FTP so they jump in the slower rides and races and run away with them while the honest folks are left gassed and scratching their heads. You're correct, experience matters on Zwift.

Fairness and cheating aside, we're on the trainer for a workout and you're damned sure getting one on Zwift. Win or lose...it's freakin' virtual and not much is on the line. Join in and kick as or get it kicked. You'll come away a stronger rider.

I could climb with some 2's, but on the flats they just rode away from me. In crits their punch was a notch or two better than my best. If I could hang on I might make it 10-15 laps before detonating.

I wish I had ridden the Emonda this afternoon with the power meter. I took the Ribble R872 out because the hurricane winds and hills yesterday and the trainer rides the two afternoons before that had my legs pretty well toast. No need to get number today, right? Well, I came around after a couple miles and started to generate a decent tempo. I was drilling it pretty fair into the 10 MPH headwind and handling the terrain transitions with more punches than slowing. Oh well, I'll recover over the next three days as the the snow might be falling.
 

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