Bike Noob

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Archives for July 2012

Waited Too Long to Replace My Cassette

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I’ve never been vigilant about maintenance to my house, or my car,  or my bike. That gets me into trouble from time to time. The house is okay, now that we replaced the air conditioning system a year ago. But the car sounds like it needs brake rotors. And the bike has been giving me fits.

I mentioned in the last post that I replaced the chain, but that didn’t solve shifting problems I was having. The new chain skipped just as badly as the old one, because it was having trouble with the worn teeth on my cogs.

I figured a chain might take care of the problem, because I had gone way longer without replacing it than one is supposed to. I think the chain easily had 6,000 miles on it. Most bike books say to replace it after about 1,500 miles, although posters to some online forums I’ve visited maintain that a chain could last about as long as mine did with no trouble. Cassettes are supposed to last three times as long as a chain, so most riders can replace them every year to year and a half. I’ve had mine three years. I know. I’ve been bad. But like I say, no problems until about a month ago.

Now, I ride a cassette that isn’t all that uncommon, judging by comments and emails I’ve received here at Bike Noob HQ, as well as other websites I visit. It’s an 11-28, nine speed. I need that 28-tooth cog to negotiate some of the steeper hills around here, and frankly, even it’s not enough on some of them.

So, I called around town Saturday morning looking for a replacement cassette. No one had it. This, in a city that has 33 bicycle shops, according to one source I’ve seen. (I didn’t call all of them, but probably 10 or so.) Most had 11-23s, or 12-25s. No one carried an 11-28. One shop told me they aren’t made. That would be news to Sram. I went back to my first shop, only a mile from my house, and ordered one.

Great service. It came today. When I went over to the bike shop to pick it up, there were some moments of panic because the outer cog ring — the 11 tooth — wasn’t on the cassette. It turned out it had fallen off in the shipping box with all the other items the shop had received by truck today. A few minutes later, I was on my way out the door with a shiny silver cassette standing out against my black spokes, and my black chainstays, and my black chain. I gotta be more regular at cleaning that thing.

I was all ready to ride and check out the new purchase, but the skies to the north threatened rain. I think I’ll be able to ride tomorrow afternoon. Maybe even in the morning, if I can get out before work. I can tell you one thing — a few pedal strokes were enough to show me that skipping is a thing of the past.

With the new cassette, I’ll be in a position to start targeting that century I talked about the other day. Finally, I’ll be able to apply some power to the pedals. Can’t wait.

Inspired By the Tour

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Well, it’s Tour time again. As I have done in past years, I didn’t pay much attention the first few days. But I did watch Saturday, and that stage has inspired me for the rest of the year.

When Chris Froome went around Cadel Evans on a 20 percent climb and won by a wide margin, that got me thinking. I’ll never be Chris Froome, but I can be a better me.

Chris Froome wins Stage 7 ahead of defending champ Cadel Evans.

I’ve got some things going for me. My weight is finally starting to come down. I’m about seven pounds lighter than I was at the beginning of the year. But I’ve noticed that my average speeds are lower than they ought to be for mid-summer. I must be slacking on my rides. A friend of mine is coming back from hip replacement surgery, and has been riding like crazy to get back into biking shape. She (yes, she!) posts her Garmin stats online, and her average speed is now ahead of mine — and this on the same routes in our area.

Hmmph! That was a wakeup call. But that’s all right. Now, I have something to shoot for. Two things, actually. I’ve decided I’ll do a century later this summer, maybe in August, maybe in September, and I have to get myself ready for that.

I’ve done three centuries so far, and as a friend observed, I’ve been pretty done in after each one of them. So the goal is not just to finish the century, it’s to finish it feeling good. And that doesn’t mean riding it so easy that I still have a lot of oomph left at the finish. It means marshaling my resources so I can get through those testy last 30 miles or so without dropping to an average speed in the single digits.

My work toward that goal has already begun, and it wasn’t all by design. I’ve got a balky cassette that will be replaced this week. At first, I thought the problem was just my chain, so I got a new chain. But the new chain and old cassette don’t play well together. I am effectively limited to about eight or nine of my 18 speeds when I ride. So I’ve been spending a lot more time riding in the big ring than I usually do. (I prefer to spin with a high cadence in the small ring.) I’ve even been climbing Convict Hill, my neighborhood grade, in the big ring — something that had never occurred to me before. The first time, I struggled. Yesterday, I got to the top without much trouble, much to my surprise.

Today, out on the club ride, my job was to guide a new rider. Although he had mountain bike experience, this was his first real road ride. He’s a big guy, with huge calves from his mountain biking, and he could have pulled away from me fairly easily for much of the ride. But I was in my big ring strategy, and kept with him or ahead of him for most of the 40-mile trip. And when I got home, I didn’t flop on the bed and nap for two hours as I so often have done. I’ve been working on household chores for most of the afternoon.

Thibault Pinot congratulated by his team director as he approaches the finish line in Stage 8.

I also watched today’s stage of the Tour, and saw how first-time Tour rider Thibault Pinot caught the lead rider on the last hill of the course, then gave it everything he had to hold off the peloton made up of all of this year’s top riders to win the stage. He dug deep. I’ve been doing a lot of riding, but not much digging. The digging begins. I’ll keep you posted.

No More Titanium

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I took the titanium bike back to my friend Rick today. With the beginning of the new month, the bank account is flush again, and I took my own bike over to the bike mechanic to have it worked on. (I feel a bit sheepish about that now, because it took him only 10 minutes to fix it, and he charged me a whopping $8.)

After a handful of rides on Rick’s bike, I thought I’d give some impressions. The two big differences between his and mine — besides the size — were the titanium frame and the triple crankset.

The titanium frame had much the same effect as the steel frame I tried a few months ago. It smoothed out the roughness we encounter on our roads around here. But compared to the steel, the titanium was even smoother. That loose gravel I mentioned that we hit on Sunday was swallowed up by the titanium and the 25 mm tires. I know if I had run into the same conditions on my aluminum bike with the 23 mm tires, I would have been able to feel every pebble.

I’ve also concluded that if I ever get another bike, it will have a triple. The reason is simple: better gear selection. My Allez has a nine-speed compact. While some of the gears have a single-tooth spacing, others have a two-tooth gap. One has a three-tooth gap. On the Airborne, most of the gears were spaced only one tooth apart. For me, that had the effect of more precise gearing throughout my rides. As I told Rick, “I always feel that I’m in the right gear. With the compact double, I feel like I’m between gears sometimes.”

Of course, the triple made climbing hills easier, although I did not get a chance to try it out on some of the really challenging hills around here — the hills that I have trouble getting all the way up on my own bike. I did take it up some of the steeper hills on my Saturday morning route, and it made a couple of testers seem positively easy.

I used the 12-25 cassette for those hills. Another wheel had an 11-23. So that one would have gotten me a little bit more speed on the flats, when I’m in the 11-tooth gear, but really — my highest speeds come when I’m coasting down hills anyway. One tooth difference between cassettes doesn’t mean much.

So I enjoyed my time on Rick’s bike, but I’m eager to get out on my own on a Fourth of July morning tomorrow. Maybe, as Rick suggested, the perceived differences between his and my bikes were simply due to a “placebo effect,” and my own bike won’t feel much different, after all.

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