During the race this past weekend I managed to mash my cassette. I guess a fat guy stomping on the pedals for everything he is worth while shifting gears can cause harm to the cassette. Who knew. Between the cables which were gummed to the point of making my forearms ache while shifting gears and my mashing skills. I manged to bend several of the cogs. Karl made the phone call and gave me the bad news. Oh well it is just money right? . I did manage to go out for a short ride tonight and it was amazing how much better the bike shifts.
My ride was cut short by a flat tire. I have been using a new sealent Caffelatex. The stuff works great for sealing a new tire on your rim but I am not sold on it's ability to plug holes. It seems to spew out of holes of the size a goat head produces. Guess where I live? Goat head central. Anyhow I went through a tire full of Caffelatex and it never plugged. I put in some good old Stans and it plugged up immediately. Given that Stans is less expensive I am not going to use Caffelatex any more.
How did my race go you ask? It went OK. When it was over I thought for sure I had finished DFL. Mike let me know that I actually was not DFL but had finished in 7th place of 8. It turned out that there was one racer who had not finished at that time and really I was 7th of 9. Anyhow I was 15 minutes slower than the group that I would like to race with so I have some work ahead of me. Honestly finding out I was not DFL was a win for me. It made me feel much better. I have no delusions of winning but I would really like to just hang with them from time to time. I am not there right now. That is the goal . Get to where I can hang.
5 years ago
2 comments:
Good to know about Caffelatex. I saw it at the shop and was considering giving it a try. I'll stick with Stan's. I've never had trouble getting a tire mounted with Stan's if I take the valve core out and just blow air straight in with a compressor.
Congrats on the "win." Success is based on how you measure it. If I get done and had fun, feel like I tested myself, learned something, and feel motivated to improve, then I got all I needed from the race.
Nice of you to haul the camper to the parking lot as a home base for the team.
2nd the Caffe Latex opinion. I tried it in my road tubeless setup this year. This is my 3rd year on the road tubeless tires. First two years with Stans = no flats. I've had two flats this spring alone with Caffe Latex. It wont seal anything but the tinyest of holes at 90 PSI. Caffe Latex does seem to not dry up as fast as Stans but it's not worth it.
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