On New Rides and Burning Too Fast

Lets see, where to begin? Well I got a new ride, I've got her all road worthy and damn is she fast. Here are some pictures.

So a little about my new ride, first I'm calling her Abigail, which apparently means her father's joy in Hebrew - yes I did go to Hebrew school (and got yelled at by Israeli teachers) from grade four to seven but they never did teach me the meaning of the word Abigail, that job ultimately fell to Wikipedia.

Anyway some technical specifications. First she is a Specialized S-Works Roubaix, 2011 model year. But with some serious modifications, for one thing, a careful review of the above pictures one ought to be able to see I added a chain catcher. In addition, I remove the Specialized compact (50/34) crank - I'm sorry it is pretty, but Specialized, your cranks suck! (Had one on Alex - the TT bike on the right, but the crank is not rigid and it keeps dropping the chain back to 39 when I try to up-shift to 53.) Anyway I replace the crank, since it's a BB30 bottom bracket, with a SRAM Red 53/39 crank, which is nice, but actually for anyone who buy's SRAM Red, just so you know, their cranks are actually Truvative, of course SRAM owns Truvative - or is it the other way around?- but just so you know, it says SRAM on the side, it's really Truvative.

What else? Oh yes, the wheels, notice, they are Tubular (or sew-up) Fulcrum Racing Zeros. Very fast, actually I think noticeably faster than my Clincher Fulcrum Zeros.

I will say this, having had Jordan to ride for almost a year now, I don't much care for Shimano Shifting, Shimano makes a great drive train, but I think I am going to replace the Dura-Ace shifters and rear deraileur with a SRAM Red shifter system on Abigail.

Of course none of this means I am replacing or phasing out Jordan, it's just that well, as we all well know, the number of bikes we should have is n+1, where n is the number of bikes we currently have! (I haven't decided what the next bike will be, for now, I want more aero wheels for Alex and like I said a better shifting system... oh and new bars, those Specialized bars feel like tooth picks, I want something fat!, for Abby.)

So yes Abby is getting extensively modified from the basic Specialized high end (S-Works is their top of the line) bike, but I really have to tip my hat to the engineers at Specialized, that's a sweet frame they designed. The componentry they stuffed on it, really ruins it though, but at least that is easy to fix.

Anyway even though Abby still had to be properly sized for me, I really wanted to ride her on Saturday. Then it rained in the morning. So that evening, when it became apparent that the rain had stopped and things were dry enough I called up Ian Wilcox and the two of us went went on a hammerfeast. I sprinted like it was nobodies business and had to keep stopping and waiting for Ian, yeah, Abby is fast - or maybe I'm fast when I'm all scrunched up?

Sunday morning it rained so I adjusted Abby, put on a longer, S-Works (of course) stem, and raised the seat post. Then Ian and I went for another ride in the afternoon. It was hot, really hot, and muggy. Somewhere north of the city I flatted and had to do a road side tubular swap. Turns out it actually is not all that hard to swap a tubular tyre roadside, but if you are going to use tape, carry a knife to cut the tape with! (Ooops!) By the time Ian and I got to Stouffville I was dehydrated, riding home - after quite a bit of water and juice, was tough.

Monday and Tuesday I rode Abigail to work. Tuesday on the ride home the GPS went funny and said that on what I estimate to be a 19km route I did over 440km... not bad for half-an-hour of spinning. Tuesday night I went for a club ride, the Tuesday night insanity feast. Here are some pictures.

The guys were fast, damn fast, probably does not help that I have yet to fully recover from Saturday, leave alone Sunday. But they were also more than a little jealous!

Anyway we rode about 75km in about 2 hours 40 minutes, or about an average of 28.5km/h. The Lakeshore bike trail was packed and we just could not get any speed, until we started going up Royal York.

Of course Wednesday my ride to work was painful, probably did not help that there was a gusty head wind. But I managed to get myself riding reasonably quick. On Merton I was doing 35 - a 30 zone when a car recklessly overtook me so that I could catch up with him at the red light. The driver did not look to his right when he saw me. I was so tempted to ask if he enjoyed his reckless driving and that thanks to my GPS I'll only have the cops charge him with speeding. But I have better things to do with my time, like admire a very pretty little bicycle... or three!