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Yesterday's Ride



 
 
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Old October 23rd 17, 04:30 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
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Default Yesterday's Ride

I have three steel bikes and a couple AL CX bikes.

An Eddy Merckx Corsa Extra with Columbus SLX tubes.
A Basso Loto with Dediaccia tubes.
A Pinarello Stelvio with custom larger diameter Dediaccia tubes.

Local hill is Palomares Rd. From the north end a mild climb until the last mile and an eighth. Then it jumps up to 9%, soon graduates to 10%, final half mile at 11% and just over the top it's 12% for a very short distance.

From the south side it has has a 12% jump up from Niles Canyon Rd. from which you are trying to get across in a hurry because of pretty heavy traffic at high speeds. It then goes for about a mile at 4-6% and then has a 9% or so climb for perhaps a quarter mile followed by a pretty flat (2%?) for a way and then another quarter or so mile of over 8% with a few lumps up to 10%. At the top it has an 8% climb to the top.

Since I haven't been riding a great deal this year I'm doing the south side..

Going down the north side you have a "20 mph" turn for cars. Although I used to blast around this turn I don't do that anymore because I've seen bicycles criss-crossing the road as they become exhausted in the final 1/8th mile.

The Merckx has a very solid feel on the descent. But the tubes are pretty stiff and it does shake you about enough that you can't see anything in your rear view mirror and it's difficult to see pot holes and cracks ahead without real concentration.

The Basso has a very comfortable feel but it is pretty scary in a cross wind. It flexes just enough that it can be effected by side gusts. For the most part it is an extremely nice riding bike.

Yesterday I did it for the first time on my Pinarello. I had a couple of people pass me on the way up and then a group of Grizzly Peak Cyclists overtook me talking as if the climb wasn't even noticeable. They were all stopped at the top. I recognized the black Grizzly peak guy as one of the rockets I've seen on Tunnel Rd. before.

I stopped to zip up my jacket and take a swig from my bottle from Joerg's admonissions. The first man to pass me who was only going perhaps 1/2 mph faster than me took off on the freefall. As I was about to leave a semi-sport Audi sped by. I gave him about 3 or 4 seconds and kicked off.

The Look pedals I have are some really light one's and I'm going to have to pull them apart and use some Campy grease on them because they do not spin properly so the right pedal isn't in the correct position to get into all the time. That was the case this time. So for the first 50 feet or so I was fiddling around trying to clip in.

Then I concentrated on going down. I backed off around the turn and went around it as probably 30 mph and then let it go as there was no one in sight except that Audi ahead.

The Pinarello went up to probably 40 mph in a blink. I ran right up onto the Audi and was concerned because if the AH put his brakes on hard a bike couldn't stop fast enough. So I had to ride the brakes for perhaps a mile before the jackass sped up enough to pull away from me.

Though difficult to tell that Pinarello appears to be the best bike I've ridden so far. The vibrations coming up through the fork and frame were never severe. But how much of that was due to the Michelin tires? They were pumped to 120 psi (23mm) and the wheels are Campy Sirocco CX wheels which should be stiffer than most.

I don't think I descended as fast as I normally would because of that Audi but just at the end of the road I spotted the guy who took off before me. I was 30 seconds behind him at the top of a last little 5% rise. He was riding a super-light and was probably 35 years old. He stopped at the end of the road to talk on his cell. No one else caught me even when I went over the final hill into Castro Valley in the big ring.

I got home and had averaged 12.7 mph despite all of the stop lights going out on the flats through three towns. And at the end I added another couple of hundred feet of climbing including a half mile of 7%. Now that's the same as the best time I've done this year. And I did not feel particularly strong at any time. The only time I stopped were at the bottom of Palomares at the top of the little steep climb to have some water and unzip my jacket and the same at the top to zip my jacket so it wouldn't flap around in the wind.

How much of that can I attribute to the bike?

As a side note: the Campy Skeleton brakes REALLY work better than the last generation. They open further and have a lighter action. The brake shoe material has a higher coefficient of friction.

The Compact gearing is nice - 34/28 low gear so I can climb in the 34/24. But there is clicking and I have to discover the source of that. Perhaps the top cage idler of the rear derailleur is backwards. Although looking at them you'd swear that they have identical curvature to the teeth they do not. They are slightly different. So the chain hitting them from one side has slightly different loading than from the opposite.

But it may come from another source since I can only hear it in the small ring near the lowest gears. But that is also when I'm going slow enough to hear things as well.

Judgement - Pinarello have their reputation for a very good reason.
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