Entertaining week!

This last week has been extremely solid if you are a fan of cycling.  Sunweb put a real stamp of authority taking both men's and women's TTT at the World Championships.  Watching the women's individual time trial was pretty exciting as well. I was, of course, rooting for the American's (Imagine how good Chloe Dygert has the potential to be with a few more years!) but it was the Dutch that really dominated. Van Vleuten and Van Der Breggen really looked solid even through that nasty uphill.

In the men's TT Dumoulin really looked like he was on another level, and in a way I'm happy that a "time trial specialist" (although honestly, can you even classify him that way any longer?) still won the bands, as the climb seemed to be put in there as a foil for Tony Martin and friends. Rohan Dennis continues his streak of bad luck in World Championships... he's been my pick the last 3 years and has had an issue every time.  Maybe it's my fault.  Froome looked good overall, but tired. Not surprising considering his Tour Vuelta double. He needed to be a lot fresher to compete with TD in form.
The transition area was ridiculous... and pretty much was consistently a bad idea to change bikes. I didn't see anyone who seemed like they gained anything from taking the swap.  Martin Madsen (MTM on Slowtwitch) did it with only a single ring on his TT bike and finished a respectable 21st. Dark Horse story (well, it was more a story for the UK guys, I didn't see much about it over here) Hamish Bond turned out rather disappointingly, not because of his performance, but rather his mechanical. It would have been great to see how he stacked up with no issues.

hard to argue with that

In the women's road race, it was tough to see anything but the predictable outcome. The Dutch had the power and the numbers, and Blaak, with a little help from her friends, will get by with the stripes next year.

The men's race... what a good race to watch. (except when the coverage got miffed and we stared at the 1k to go banner for 5 minutes) When you look back at it now, I think... of course Sagan won it, but at the time... I never would have bet on him doing it. Even when he seemingly materialized out of nowhere for the sprint, it didn't look like he had it. But he did. Winning 3 WC road races in very different finishes... it's hard not to think he is one of, if not the best one day racer...maybe ever. Long live the champ.

FYI: You can watch the UCI's replay's (and live streams) on their Youtube channel by using a proxy service to get around the Geoblocking they put up. Of course you can also use Steephill.tv for live viewing, but you get some sketchy websites/streams and often a lot of non-english language streams.

But it wasn't just the WC going on. The Newly opened Mattamy National Cycling Center Velodrome in Milton, Ontario was the scene for "The Day of the Hour" where 8 Canadians set off on attacks on both the Canadian Hour Records as well as the UCI World Hour Records. You can check out lots of video on it here

By the way, Congratulations to all! I only have a taste of what it's like, and my hat's off to anyone who can ride the track for an hour at some serious speeds.

There were 4 new World Records and 8 new Canadians records at the end of the day, with outstanding performances by everyone. Like any good hour record, there was a non-zero amount of drama that has the forums humming. The placement of the little bumpers was not in it's normal position (which is touching the very edge of the upper part of the Cote, to prevent someone from dipping below the black line)

My awesome art program showing where they "should" be touching

While historically the bumpers do indeed touch the other edge, the always informative Alex Simmons brought to light that in the UCI handbook there isn't a rule specifying where the bumpers must be. (At least back to 2000 - take with a grain of salt as I'm not a UCI Comm intimately familiar with the rules)

From an actual performance standpoint... it's kind of a grey area in my mind. On the one hand, actually trying to gain an advantage by riding on the Cote for an hour record is a little ridiculous (you travel less distance in the turns, but you also have less banking) but on the other hand, having that extra 6 inches or so can allow a rider to be significantly braver about the line they choose to ride. Would I ride farther up the track if I was afraid I was in danger of hitting the bumper? Possibly. So in that way there is a little bit of advantage, if only primarily a mental one.  Since a few records were set with under a lap of distance between the records, it starts getting a little muddy as to the "spirit" of the rules. That said, there were UCI comm's at Milton who had no trouble with it for 8 hour attempts, so I see no reason to be outraged beyond a curiosity. Perhaps, with the renewed interest in the hour and this day in particular, we might get clearer rules.

That's all about other folk doing great things. Me... I've started riding a semi-serious amount again, but not anything overly exciting. With my mind focused on all the things to get in order for our trip to Germany my own cycling has taken a bit of a back seat, in my mind if not in my legs. I'm sure things will pick back up into full order soon. It's about time for a new project as well... I don't have anything staring at me from the workbench in desperate need of repair, it feels a little strange!

Until next time, thanks so much for reading! I really appreciate it!

- Christopher Morelock

Shimmy Shimmy ya

Shimmy yam shimmy yay

Ok, ODB references aside...  my new project (well, bike project, the real time consuming project I've been working on is learning to cut my own hair, which is MUCH more difficult than bike related stuff!) is printing off some angled shims for my Brezza bars.

I've learned both times that I went to the wind tunnel (I'm a slow learner obviously) that higher hands worked for me. While I understand it's not quite so simple as some is good so more must be better, I think it's safe to assume it's not going to be a negative hitting the limit allowed by the UCI. The problem of course is that 3T doesn't make any angled spacers for the Brezza II's I use.  There are a couple of ways around such an issue, but I spent good hard earned money on my 3D printer, and by God I'm going to take every excuse to use it!

The initial mock up just took my original spacers design and chopped off a 10° angle towards the back. Voila!

Maybe not the most refined piece of work, but the important thing is that it's functional.

So, after a shell for test fitting and some minor adjusting, I printed off two of the little buggers and bolted them down. With the way the 3T bars bolt on, I don't see any need for a conical washer or any other frills, everything seems to be a-ok!

You get a feel for how much higher 10° actually is. I'm lucky with the 3T hardware as it conveniently also tilts the pads so no need for another solution for that. Now to throw it all back on the homemade jig and make sure it all passes snuff.

I may print off a few taller and shorter shims as well, just in case I get froggy and want to be able to test multiple angles and/or heights. With the material I'm using I don't want to add much height to the spacer, as I'm much less confident of it's lateral strength.

Thanks a ton for reading, I really appreciate it!

- Christopher Morelock

What's next?

My break is over and now it's time to enter back into a base period. I do hate those first few days after a few weeks off the bike... when you still have the fitness to do some work, but all the tender and moving parts of you moan and hurt just that little bit to remind you that they enjoyed sitting on the couch more than they enjoy sitting on a saddle. It never ceases to amaze me that you could be averaging 2hours/day for months, take a short break, and then riding for an hour feels like eternity until the body re-adjusts.

So now it's nose back to the grindstone for a while. Most everyone has issues with it turning to worse weather, but since I do the vast majority of my training indoors anyways, it's pretty much business as usual for me.  I do hope to make it back to the track a few times before full on winter though... we'll just have to see if it all lines up.

As for next season... the planning is already taking place. Of course I am looking at another shot at the State Championship TT... I was soundly beaten this year, but wasn't totally on top of my game. Another year's worth of fine tuning and hard work will hopefully give me what I need to finally take that top step.  I also missed the track TN championships this year, which was unfortunate, it's definitely on my list for next year.

But primarily, it's the hour record that has my attention. I can do an hour, now I just need to fine tune doing it and start squeezing in more laps. The fact that my legs were in perfect shape afterwards tells me I wasn't working anywhere near my max at Rock Hill (although other factors certainly made up for a lot of that) so now I've been lured into the hour's hold. I'm not sure how far I can go with it, but right now it is what I'll continue building for. There are a couple of other velodrome records I'd like to use as test runs to improve my technical abilities... but my eye is really on the US Masters record. Time will tell whether that is a far fetched dream or not, but it's a nice carrot to consider during the long months ahead.

Until next time, thanks so much for reading!

- Christopher Morelock

Some new projects in my off time

After Rock Hill, it was time to back off, partly because mentally I needed a break from the season and partly because the hope is that a little R&R will bring my TSH back down to normal (for me) levels. My extended bloodwork came back with no flags, so I suppose popular theory now is that I just have a fairly high TSH to start with, but that my increased load leading up to this had pushed it higher still. We'll see in a few months how that goes.

Nonetheless, time off the bike doesn't mean I've forgotten about the bike. There are some things I came away from Giordana thinking would make excellent improvements to the setup... and so here I am keeping myself busy.

The main thing I found uncomfortable at the track was my "Bridie nubs" (look, they probably have a better name than that, but I think that's a cool name and it's what I've always called them, so there.)

Version 1 and 2 were just something I whipped up on tinkercad and printed out on my 3d printer. They worked adequately, but for extended periods they really dug into my fingers and caused some pain, something I don't need more of. So it was back to the drawing board, and after a couple of hours messing with some different designs, I came up with these.

Version 3 is slightly more ergonomic with the cutouts (I wrap my pinky underneath, next two fingers in the cutout and pointer/thumb more on top) and probably more importantly I've totally removed any non-rounded edges. The smooth profile should keep them from digging into my fingers and hopefully the cutout will make for some slightly more secure wraparound. I'll have to do more testing on them, but at the least they are the right direction for v4 I think!

Here you can see the difference in design between v1 and v3.

As you fine readers certainly are aware, I'm an aero weenie. I love to eek out the absolute minute details of position/equipment. But, when you've worked on it like I have, you get to the point where the gains that you can still make require either a lot of time or a lot of money, most likely both. Certainly I'm not against spending either searching for those elusive missing watts, but now I'm taking a little closer look at other ways to save just that little bit extra.

I'm officially making my way into the world of friction weenies. I admit, in the past I've put very, very little interest or thought into friction. Sure, I bought the friction facts reports, but the extent of what I came away with was "wax your chain with additives when you're racing" and I called it good enough. But while searching for anything "free" I could for the track, I read that a lot of folks were pimping out their bottom bracket. Sure I've seen the video's of the BB/wheel/etc that spins seemingly forever, but until the FF report showed it actually could save a watt or two I never got invested.

Well, here we go. I picked up a pretty nice 7700 (needle and ball bearing style) DA7700 bottom bracket, found a pack of 50 ceramic enduro 1/8" balls (after balking at Ceramicspeed wanting $6!!! each for them... holy jeez) and picked up some CeramicSpeed TT/Track grease. Putting it all together and I ended up with... still a bottom bracket. But it should be a slightly more efficient bottom bracket!

Otherwise all has been pretty quiet in my part of the woods. I'm still pouring over the data I did get from my hour... plugging numbers, calculating... My mission was accomplished to get through the hour, and to set the track record, but now I wonder what distance I could have went if I wasn't riding to someone else's schedule. I want to have another go. Maybe sometime early next year when it warms up we'll head back and try to tack on a few more laps.

Anyways, as always thanks so much for reading, I really appreciate it!

- Christopher Morelock