Called in sick at work and rode the Endpoint through Berkeley and up a medium-ish hill to Tilden. Probably the hardest I’ve tried on my bike in a long fucking time. The short, low Q nerd cranks feel fucking great and on the way up I was wondering if I could even have gone shorter than 165mm. On the way down, though, I felt like I noticed having my feet closer together when the cranks were parallel to the ground and it was a little weird. I’ll get used to it, I’m sure.
I’ve got some kind of rubbing on the pusher that only happens under a lot of load, so I guess I’ll chase that down today. I was feeling kind of cool about my monstrous power legs, but then I remembered I also weigh a lot more than I used to and it’s probably at least as much to do with that. Oh well.
Also, my back started hurting real bad on the way back down. I need to get my core a lot stronger if I want to keep having fun on bikes.
Trying to hang with a lighter friend. There’s some gravel in there, which was a blast. First time through there since 2013 and couldn’t hit all the little steep uphill sections. Did get a chance to dive, bike and all, into a pile of leaves and wood chips that smelled wonderfully of bay and eucalyptus. Hey, close enough to a pile of leaves, and fall is coming.
Still have the 50/34 on the gravel bike, wishing I had the 48/31 of the GRX on there.
My friend did it on a rim-braked road bike with carbon-spoke bike wheels and 25ish tubulars. Fucker.
Swapped cranks on the eLorry. The cheap Shimano crank gamble yielded much success.
Also swapped out the inexpensive but small bottle bags for some Swift stem bags for marginal gains in volume and non-floppiness at the expense of wallet mass.
Man I love a donut holder though. As long as it’s less than 40mm I say leave it. I dunno why but something about some steerer post poking up resonates with me.
It is most assuredly not worth the bucks, there’s probably a better stem here:
Previously, I’d been using a Thomson X4. Also had a couple X2s which slipped too much. The ENVE stem is not discernibly less stiff than the X4, weighs 48 grams less, and is superb in terms of quality. It has zero propensity to slip or suffer galvanic corrosion with carbon steerer or bars and all corners have been radiused nicely to prevent stress risers.
I’ve been a fan of the 3T Arx in its various guises over the years, nice to see that I’m an intuitive genuis of bike parts (and not that I just buy cheap-ish, sturdy looking parts).
I’m mildly curious about carbon bars as they do some of the things that carbon stems can’t, but my next two bikes are going to see me goofing around with bar shape, and I’m doing that in $100 increments, not $350.
I’ve some ENVE carbon bars of either variety both aero and non. The non-aero variety is on the CAAD 10 presently with the ENVE stem. I’m not an elite athlete by any stretch of the imagination, but I do like to stand up and smash on the pedals while hauling on the bars. If I had any fitness to speak of to make it to the end of a race, I might be dangerous.
In any case, the current combo feels very stiff. At least as good or better than any other combo I’ve ever tried. Might be an increase in comfort, not sure. Certainly, an increase in impact to the wallet.
Plan is to throw the aero bars on the CAAD10 and move the regular (compact) ones over to the Poprad when I throw the 11-speed group on it.
