But it...

Looks so easy on paper. Maybe this year, since I'm not on call again on Saturday night, I'll get my ass out of bed to race the mere four laps with the 45+, starting in the morning rather than the heat of the day. I'm going to brave the Concord crit the day before this year too.

To prepare, this past Saturday I rode the TT bike for almost two hours. WTF? Well, it was similar to a crit, as I ended up riding fairly hard. I'm not sure how fast, as I don't have a speed sensor. I could have put one on though, as I swapped it out to normal spoked wheels. Even though the tri-spokes are clinchers, I realized I had no way to inflate them in the event of a flat. My CO2 inflator won't fit in there, and neither will my frame pump. So, before heading out, I cranked up the AC and finally got around to converting a box of hubs, spokes, and rims up in the bike room into a pair of rear wheels. Nothing fancy, 6600 hubs with Mavic Reflex clinchers, DT 14/15 all around. I had one 28 hole and one 32. Got them both done in a reasonable amount of time, but I could not find the spoke prep (until, of course, I was done) so I tried plain old blue locktite this time. We'll see how it works out. The 6600 hubs seem OK, 10 speed version, and I got the non-drive side spokes reasonably tight using 298/299 for the 28s and 294/295 for the 32s. Still not as tight as I'd like, but maybe offset rims are the only way to accomplish that and still have the rim centered with all these cogs on the back.

The bike is still fast even without the trispokes. I tilted the bars up a bit and did not like it at first but later on it seemed ok. I'm too lazy and impatient to fuss with it. Sunday, switching back to the road bike, I headed north and tried this route. Actually that is not the whole thing, as runstoppable got tired before I could map my way back home. Ended up being exactly 4 hours, 115k. I was toast. I'm glad to see the total climbing was more than Bow will be. It was hot too, and I was roasted. Had some exciting moments on twisty downhills at speeds approaching 80 kph, then hitting driveway stones with both wheels. Did not pinch... All in all a fun and productive weekend. Thanks for reading.