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I finished the MS 150

lachoy on 2006-06-14T21:10:43

This past weekend I rode in the MS 150 and actually finished. (A few crappy photos on flickr.) At the start finishing was not a foregone conclusion and as the event got closer I actually got more worried about whether I'd do so or not.

Fortunately the weather helped out by (a) not raining and (b) staying below 73 degrees, unlike Memorial Day weekend where it stayed above 90 for the time I rode up Route 19 to New Wilmington. It also really does help to ride with other people, especially the nice sort I met while riding. There must be some sort of ego drug that keeps you going long past when you'd normally drop off if you were going by yourself.

The first day was ~82 miles, the second day was ~64, which technically makes it the MS 146 but I didn't hear anyone complaining. The winds were apparently stronger than normal, but I didn't realize that until after the fact since I had no concept of normal -- this was not only my first group ride, but the weekend comprised my longest two rides ever. (Thus my aforementioned worry.)

Physically I did okay, passing a good number of road bikes piloted by able-bodied folks. (I was passed by a lot too.) By the end of the ride Sunday my knees were really bothering me, particularly going up the hills. But that's mostly gone away by this time (three days later) so I'm not too worried about it.

I'm eager to see how much of a difference a road bike makes over a 15 year-old mountain bike with 1.75" road tires, and Denovich is going to let me borrow one of his to check it out. Of course, this means I'm getting into another potentially expensive hobby, but at least it's good for me...

So expect lots of boring bicycle posts in the future. (And I expect to post more in the future too, I've been offline for quite a bit.)

Posted from cwinters.com; read original

Differences...

pjm on 2006-06-15T00:42:51

If the road bike is at the upper end of the market you should notice a *huge* difference; I recently bought a Giant TCR1 Euro (circa 2.5K US dollars) to augment my aging Norco mountain bike, and the change in efficiency is quite extreme.

The upsides are (1) hill-climbing, which is now grin-inducing instead of grimace-inducing, (2) speed on the flat, which is much easier to maintain, and --once you get used to it-- (3) the handling, which feels a little skittish at first, but is actually much more precise than on the mountain bike. I'm still pushing way too hard (ie, cadence about 25% below what it should be) but will adjust over time. Oh yeah, the downsides: not much really, but your hands take a bigger beating through those skinny little tyres and rigid frame, so a pair of padded gloves is a must for longer rides.

Cheers,
Paul

Re:Differences...

lachoy on 2006-06-15T04:18:03

The mountain bike I have now does not have a suspension and I do currently wear gloves (and bib shorts with tons of padding, which feels like a diaper) so I'm not sure how much more I'll feel bumps than now. (We'll see though.) And I don't think I'll be quite at your end of the money range, but I'm saying that now, before the real equipment lust has set in :-) Our team leader actually just picked up a new bike the day before this ride, a Trek Medone S2 (IIRC) plus a couple of notch-below supernice wheels, so he probably dropped $4K on the bike. Yow!