At this point, about 10 days from the road season's goal races, there's not much I can do in terms of fitness. I'm either ready or I'm not.
But there are little bits of fine-tuning that can happen in the meantime. Last night's Wednesday Night Worlds was a good opportunity to work on the drill it-surge-sit in-surge bit for a few upcoming crits.
By and large, that part went off without a hitch. It helps, of course, if you know what's coming: Shim attacked where he always attacks, as did Lucas. In the case of Shim's jump, I was moving up before he was.
After that, the plan was to sit in and cruise the rest of the way home. Again, mission accomplished. I feel pretty solid right now. No weird soreness to speak of, and my back is fine. Right now, the only job is to figure out why my rear derailleur was so jumpy during the second half of the ride last night. It's not a cable-tension thing, so there's some investigative work to be done.
While I was trying to figure it out on the bike last night, my mind wandered to the worst-case scenario: what if my Madone had some sort of uncurable problem (at least an uncurable quick-turnaround problem)? What would I race? Orange Crush? The Cronus CX with a full-size crank installed?
Each has pros and cons, but I think I'd end up on the Cronus. It feels more like my SSL than Orange Crush does. Plus, I'd only have to swap the crank. Plus, it's just a cooler bike. You get points for that at races, I think.
2 comments:
If it was me and I couldn't figure out the jumpy rear der, then I would ride the Orange Crush. It's a road bike, has better brakes for a crit, and has the exact geometry as your other Madone. And it's what, just over a year old? Geez!
And another thing: changing a crank takes about all of five minutes. It will take you longer to diagnose what's going on with your other Madone's rear derailleur than to change the crank.
You rode well to Hoonerville last night. That was a good tune up and should bode well for this weekend.
It turned out to be the chain, which was surprising because it's reasonably new. That thing did not last as long as it should have.
So new chain installed, cassettes cleaned. Should be OK. I'll find out tonight or tomorrow morning, I guess.
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