Road Fixie

Recovering from a hard ride is boring. Especially when you get a cold on top and can’t really train or focus. So, I took some time to build up some wheels. Basically I’m playing around with my lightweight hillclimbing set. The front wheel is radial laced and I had the spoke heads facing out. This looks cool, but I’m concerned about stress cracks especially on the light hub I’m using. So, I re-laced it alternately with head out, then in. I’ll give this a ride and see how it goes. I’m not a heavy rider and this wheel is really for hillclimbs only, so I don’t suspect any issues.

When I build wheels like this I generally true them up concentric (roundness) first, then follow by tensioning for wobble. After I get the spokes up to where I like them, I will let the wheel sit for awhile then pre-stress it by applying weight all around and stress relieving the spokes as much as possible. Following that, I’ll loosen the tension to do the final truing , then ride it. Then one more truing pass.

I don’t have a tensionometer here, so I just rely on the ‘feel’ of the spoke and wheel. It turns out that my ‘internal tensionometer’ is pretty close to Sheldon’s ‘tone gauge’. My spokes all sit around a G# or A for a 286mm spoke this is pretty darn close.

Here is a handy chart for those interested in this more empirical method:

http://www.bikexprt.com/bicycle/tension.htm#pitchtable

Since I’m using a carbon rim, I’ll shoot for the low end of tension rather than the high-end to aviod any rim distortion and possible pullouts. These are DT spokes and rated quite high – over 2.0 . My guess is that I’m tensioning them closer to 1.0 or 1.2.

Here’s the result. I’ll go out and hammer on this when I feel a little better. I used basically the same wheel at Kusatsu with no issues whatsoever but I just like to try new variations on a theme.

These rims and hubs are available from yours truly. I’m sourcing them directly from a high quality manufacturer who makes wheelsets for quite a few ‘famous’ brands. If you’re interested, then give me a shout. I can also do the corresponding rear wheel which is nearly unobtanium in the fixie world – a lightweight, tubular, track hub wheel for under $500.

I get alot of  ragging about riding fixed gear. But at the end of the day the stats speak facts. Here’s what I mean.

http://ridewithgps.com/users/31208/activities

I use a pretty standard fixed gear rig.  I use a flip / flop hub to optimize my transits out and back to the hills. Typically I’m riding a 49 /15 or 14 with a 49 / 21 or 22 hill gear.  If I feel like slacking, then I’ll just set out with a 49 /18 and never change. It’s good for any prolonged ascents of 6% or less which covers more than 75% of the rides I do. If I really want to attack the rouleurs or steeper roads, then I’ll set out with the 14 /21 or 22 combo and never look back.

In more than a year of  fairly intensive riding over all sorts of terrain, weather conditions and distances, I’ve just never had the need to resort to anything else. Not that I don’t like derailleurs or anything, I guess I just don’t really need them to do what I like to do …. ride!

Since <re>starting my passion for cycling and especially fixed gear in general, I’ve entered some events as incentive and for fun. I promised myself (and my family) that I wouldn’t train seriously and let the sport overtake me – but use it as a positive lifestyle element. The Tour de Kusatsu was the first such event that I entered after beginning my conditioning regime and I managed to break the 1hr mark after just a few months cycling. Not bad, I thought. After 1yr and a few thousand more kilometers let’s see what this old cat can pull out of the bag.

First is the bike:

I started with an old Panasonic muletto, broke that. Then got a cool Japanese steelie and broke that, too. Resolved in my quest to build the perfect roadfixie, I designed and built the Toge Warrior. A titanium classic design with the stuff that makes me happy. On this bike I have been riding all over the Japanese mountains and enjoying every kilometer of it! I made some small upgrades for this race and everything came together.

I’m a big fan of the CHUB HUB, and if you see the pics of my bikes , you’ll almost always see the CHUB riding the rear! It’s a great riding hub and I couldn’t be happier with that choice. But, for a purposebuilt hillclimb, I wanted something just a little lighter and more svelte. So, I turned to my latest project, GS Astuto, and produced a special set of lightweight fixie wheels. These are based on pure carbon rimset, DT spokes and Bitex / Novatec hubs.  Strong and lightweight – they come in under 1200 gr for the pair!

Next up came the cockpit, and I upgraded to a lighter fork, carbon saddle, seatpost, stem and bars. Another substantial weight savings over my daily riding gear. You can see it here on my workbench ready to install.

The net result was an even lighter and more responsive Toge Warrior ready to do battle on the mountain! BTW – this shows the rear Chub wheel, but I had managed to get my new wheel built up at the 11th hour so I was running both front and back GSAstuto RFC-20′s!

The Training:

By habit I’m a pretty lazy guy. I let myself get heavy and out of shape, don’t stick to solid training plan or good diet. But I have been keeping up a more or less dedicated ‘concept’ of preparation which hearkens back to my old Zen Monk training days by simply ‘riding with intent’. This is more a visualization and imagination method than a hardcore play it by the numbers method. I set out riding with intention to increase effort with the imagination that I’ll do better. if I actually do – its great, if actually not, it doesn’t matter because I’ve created the space for improvement and just let the mind and body follow that. On the practical side, I ramped up my riding a notch or two and the 2 weeks prior to the event, I increased some interval cycles to get my cardio system prepped for the hard effort. That’s about it.

The results:

First off, I gotta say that this was one of the most enjoyable events I’ve participated in not because of me – but because of the family and friends around me! I spent some really quality time both on and off bike with those people I love and treasure most and at the end of the day, the bike is just spice on the pie.

Here is my coach giving me last minute position pointers on the morning of the event!

The race itself was fantastic. A beautiful day, great crowd and a challenging course. We gave our 100% and at the goal the final results were amazing. I had managed to complete the climb in 45min knocking more than 14min off my previous year’s time! This was good enough for a 7th place finish and I really couldn’t be more, literally, on top of the world.

So, what’s next? Just keep on keeping on! As the tagline of my blog says -  Push Harder, Ride Longer!

Today as I was coming home from my morning ride I was nearly wiped out by a bus.  I was preparing to turn right onto my street (legally) and this bus just slammed by me and literally brushed me off the road. I managed to gather my wits enough to hit the parallel street and catch him at the intersection for shouting at AND some pics! Police report will be filed!

And for the number shot! Asshole – I have your number and you will pay for this!

OK – well, I’m headed to the Koban to file my report on this complete wanking idiot driver. I really hope this gets picked up by 2ch and other threads!

Wow – what a great day! At  least 8 riders showed up for this hammerfest ride to top of Shiraishi plus alpha. Max had to bail early due to pressing engagement and missed the actual 7km climb, but rest of us had a mini-race to the top. Kimm san and JF led off with a nasty hard pace. Then followed by Steve and myself. The competition was stiff and we all found ourselves at the summit completely spent! Takakki san suffered 2 chaindrops making it an especially agonizing ride up the more than 20% in some places grade.  I tried hard to catch Steve but everytime I started an attack he somehow sensed or saw me and pulled out the afterburners to crush me.  At the top it was a tie with Kimm san and JF, then Steve and myself, followed by Fumiki san, Sat, Takakki san and Pete. (I’ll have to get official order later – was really too wiped to concentrate fully) We completed the ride by heading up the Greenline and hitting another couple of short climbs finally ending up a favorite soba /udon shop at the top. While we there one of the customers gave an impromptu performance of a Spanish song played on a traditional Japanese flute. Magic always happens on these rides!