Infernal machine

Last year I picked up a used 2016 Swift Neurogen frameset. This thing is mean as hell and dead sexy, and it flat f*ing flies down the road. I got it used from a guy who raced pro triathlons, and who ran with endorsement from a producer of sugary energy drinks. There were problems from the get-go:

• both stem bolts were so rusted they broke off inside the stem
• the headset bearing was so fouled I could never get the bottom piece off the fork
• the skis are still perma-glued into their original position and will never come off or move
• the internal cable guides were fouled with sugary drinks & sweat
• and of course the usual visual blemishes from wear & tear

But I put that thing together and got out on the road pretty quickly, and for a lot less money than I'd expected. I solved most of the problems without too much fuss, although it took MONTHS to finally get the new headset to stop getting wobbly. I ended up drilling out both stem bolts and replacing them with electric-box bolts (you know: the kind that aren't technically "load-bearing" at all), and TBH the skis aren't that far off for me.

But I've never fully solved for the cable guides. One major design flaw in that bike is that all the guides enter the top tube via a shared access panel a couple inches behind the stem. That happens to be just about the exact spot where sweat drops from my chin, and I'm guessing that's also true of the former owner.

He was courteous enough to provide me with a spare access panel cover, but it's really just 4 vertical entry holes in a custom-shaped rubber plug: anything that hits it will pool in the stops and wick down into the guides. And boy howdy has it wicked.

After the first couple of rides, I completely lost the rear brake. I squeeze, it engages, and that's it. No release at all. Then I lost the front shifter to the opposite issue: no moving to the big ring.

At first I figured I'd just go 1x up front, but after a couple of dropped chains I decided to get this crap under control.

I pulled all the cables and, well, there's not much that you can fit into internal cable guides. So I used the cables themselves as floss, which freed up a bunch of gunk--enough to get the bike back on the road...for another month or so.

Round 2 involved pipe cleaners! My kids have lots of pipe cleaners for arts & crafts, so I jammed a few up and removed a whole lot more gunk from both ends of the brake cable housing, but still nothing was long enough to go all the way through.

Round 3 saw the introduction of "safe" cleaners like SimpleGreen, but we're at a point now where I'm having to replace the rear brake cable every 3 rides, and the front shifter almost as frequently. Then in my last TT I started to lose the rear shifter, having to shift down-twice-up-once to climb. These cables have less than 300 miles on them, pulling year-old 22-speed SRAM Force derailleurs.

So I'm at a bit of a loss on how to proceed. I punted and just bought a box of internal brake & shifter cables, but I really have no interest in recabling the bike every other ride (especially not that infernal TRP TTV rear brake). Last night I installed a power meter crankset, and when replacing the bottom bracket shell noticed that there are 2 access ports inside the frame to the internal guides. I cannot possibly imagine that they could be used to actually replace the guides, since they'd have to be fed up the downtube and then bent beyond their limits to fish under the bottom bracket, but I *can* access them.

Do I drill out the stops under the access panel and run full-length outers through the frame? That will work for the brake, but the shifters might be a bit more problematic--the front doesn't have a visible stop at all: only the exposed cable exits from a *very* small hole. But do the shifters matter? I could go eTap for that, but at incredible cost, which wouldn't make a huge amount of sense for a bike that only gets ~900 miles/year.

Will running outers through the frame cause rattling to the point where I'll end up throwing the bike off a bridge?

It does me a frustrate.

Blood, Sweat, and Bacon TT

This weekend I learned the hard limits of racing to heart-rate. Delightfully, though, I still got to enjoy some bacon.

Sunday was supposed to be the start of a mini TT season within the VA Cycling road season: 3 races over the course of 4 weeks, mixed with a couple of crits to bring the whole season to a close. Alas, an entire weekend got canceled, and that left us with just 3 points-scoring opportunities.

From the BAR perspective, the cancellation meant that I'm the only contender who can possibly unseat the guy in 1st, but it also meant I'd have to average roughly 4th or higher over the remaining 3 events. Sunday's race suddenly had more on the line than just "show up & score points".

I'd trained only a little on the TT bike: my road racing season from April thru June included no good compelling reason to ever touch the thing, so when I pulled it off the rack and commuted on it on July 9, it had been untouched for quite a while...and it showed. Braking was terrible, and the front derailleur had to be moved by hand.

I worked out the cabling issues and did a couple of bigger rides on the thing in our worst heat wave of the year, and was pretty satisfied with my speed. I even took a 21-mile segment by 2+ minutes near the end of a 56-mile ride, so I knew I could maintain power and focus on it.

Except I also had no idea what "power" meant on the thing, because it lacks a power meter. No worries, said I: I know roughly how my power equates to heart rate because of countless hours of measuring both on the race bike and in Zwift!

Would that that were true...

I started Sunday's TT strong, with a clear focus to work up to max power, not go too hard in the first 5 - 6 miles, and aim for a negative split. There was very little elevation on the 24-mile course, but it was hot hot hot. My goal was to go under an hour, and of my competitors, I was genuinely worried about 3.

But within 3 miles, my heart was already over the limits of what I wanted. And then at the first turn a corner worker didn't see me coming and released a truck straight at me. I let off the gas and probably blew about 3 or 4 seconds, and after that I stopped trying to stay out of Z5 heart rate.

At mile 5, there's a fast descent followed by a loose-surface sharp left turn across a low bridge. The run up to the turn is blind, but everyone had been cautioned to get on the brakes. Someone didn't, and when I came around to view the turn, it was 100% blocked by emergency vehicles. I slowed almost to a full stop and picked my way around the 7(!) different trucks, losing huge time (though it turns out everyone else in my class did, too). That was the first time I've ever had to unclip and drag a foot in a TT. I hope the other rider(s) is(/are) ok.

There were no further interruptions, and while I caught 3 of my competitors in the next 2 miles, the other two (who started just before me) were just GONE. My Garmin was telling me that I was racing my brains out at 180+BPM, but after a while I started to feel that maybe that wasn't quite true: there was no lactic build-up, and honestly I felt like I was just turning in a middling Z4 ride. Without power, though, there was just no real way to know.

Except that the two guys ahead remained invisibly far ahead.

I started to pick up the tempo a bit in the last few miles, but I knew I was beaten. I even gave it a middling sprint effort at the end, pushing my heart over 185, but while I felt tired, I didn't come anywhere close to how I should have felt after an hour at max effort.

I ended up finishing in 3rd. Enough for a podium, bacon, and enough points to keep the BAR dream alive, but really frustrated to have given up more than a minute to both 1st and 2nd place.

So I did what any reasonable competitive cyclist would do: I ordered a power meter for a bike that I only need for one more event this season.

[For giggles, last night (day after the event) I got on the trainer, and instead of doing a recovery ride decided to do sprint efforts in Zwift. I was able to dump some of the biggest power numbers of the year, which frankly shouldn't have been anywhere close to possible.]

Wintergreen - 3rd time up the mountain

Glad that one's out of the way...

Time trials are a special form of hell. They're 100% mental, and exploit the depths of your willingness to suffer. Time trials uphill are also mental, but give you less choice: you either stay on the bike when it gets miserable, or you get off. Depending on the gradient, you may not have any other choice to make.

Wintergreen has a couple of places where that limited set of choices comes into sharp relief. The course traditionally starts on a false flat, rises steadily for about 2 miles, then hits some punchy ramps up to the entrance of the resort. Once you hit the resort, at about 4 miles and ~950' of climbing, the real work begins: the remaining 2.x miles contain 2/3 of the total elevation of the course.

I say 2.x miles because the finish usually includes three back-to-back brutally steep ramps. But this year the course ended beside the first ramp, on a relatively mild pitch about 200' lower.

I took that reduction in elevation to mean MORE POWER!! And I'd switched over to a compact crankset for the first time, so I had functionally another whole gear under me.

But it was also 30 degrees warmer than in previous years, and the sun she was a-shinin'. No wind to speak of, and 80-degrees F all the way up. Those two places where the choices get slim? They claimed a bunch of folks.

I've never seen so many people off their bikes, and attendance was down.

I made it through the bottom section with no real problem, though I ran out of gears sooner than I'd expected to. But I'm trying a new thing where I don't stupidly stay off the bottom gear just because, and the choice was paying off: I was able to keep my cadence in a tolerable range, and my heart took longer to climb into zone 5. I was slower than years prior, but my overall power is down and my weight is up, so that wasn't a surprise.

The top part, though, takes riders through a miserable section that sees one of the steepest turns on the course lead onto a withering ramp, followed by another steep turn that opens into direct sunlight. If you make it to the sunlight, you know you're near the top. It was in that first turn where I began to regret all of my life choices, and coming out of it I realized I was not alone: at least 5 riders walking or standing next to their bikes.

There was no way I was getting off the bike that close to the top, even if I was moving slowly enough that the Garmin kept auto-pausing, and my heart was pushing deep into the 180's.

I made it to the sunshine and was surprised to realize I could still add a little kick. The course leveled out a bit, and I managed to goose it one last time coming through the finish, though there was no way I was going to try to sprint it in.

My goal was not to win. I'd seen the finish times for all the other riders in Cat 3, and my best hope was to be just off last place. But I guess the heat got people more than I'd expected, and I LOVE the heat. I ended up 4th of 8, still several minutes out of first, but less than a minute off the podium.

I think the revised finish played to my favor, as did the weather and compact crankset. But Wintergreen is still hard AF. If I'm not vying for a BAR jersey next year, I doubt I'll have a compelling reason to do it again.

For now, though, I'm rewarded for my efforts by being officially 2nd in the BAR race, and I've earned a 2 month respite--there are no BAR events for Cat 3 until late July! 3 of the remaining 5 scheduled events are TT's, so my curious aversion to bunch sprints (new for 2019!) may not play as big a role as I was fearing.