Bicycling

Im thinking of buying a fitbit surge. I respond well to motivational stuff like tracking my rides and being able to track fitness improvements. I like the surge as it has gps and a deccnt screen size so can replace my every day watch, a gshock. Im already logging food and exercise with the fitbit app via my phone and its already made a difference, I sit at a pc pretty much all day at work and the pedometer showed me I did about 1k steps, and they recommend 10k. Started doing a big loop round the buildng every time I need a piss now rather than using the toilet 20 feet from my desk.

Heading to Italy tomorrow to start the tour. ;-x Will try and post pictures during. If not, pictures to come after I get back!

Yeah we all can't wait to be seething with jealousy!

Kuriin_sl said:

Heading to Italy tomorrow to start the tour. ;-x Will try and post pictures during. If not, pictures to come after I get back!

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Have a friggin' blast dude. Join Strava for the occasion!

What, if anything, do you guys use to keep sweat out of your eyes when summer temps are kicking in? I usually just deal with it, but I'm sick of my left eye constantly having stinging sweat drip in it after about ten miles. I thought it might be my Oakley's design somehow, but I'm using cheap sunglasses now and its still happening. I have pretty thick eyebrows so I don't know if those are helping or collecting sweat that slowly drips out. Still, its just the one eye.

Thought about an old school headband, but maybe a homebrother UnderArmor style headrag would be better. My hair is pretty short but not shaved bald.

I wear an iZumi headband, but only on extremely hot days. It's really thin, which is great, but it grinds sweat and dirt into you forehead, which is not so great on long rides. A lot of my buddies just wear those short brimmed cycling caps, but I can't help but feel like everyone that wears one is an asshole.

Bragon_sl said:

Whelp, Triathlon season is upon us. I'm still about 5-7 pounds overweight to be competitive (@172 for 5'10) but this should put me in the top 30 of this first tri of the season if i can get it together on race day.

Bike is a 2012 Canondale slice. No money this year for new wheels so stock wheels and there's a lot i can improve on my own weigth and conditionning wise before i see any need for hardware upgrade anyway.

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That's a great pace, though one seriously flat course. I'd work some hills in there, unless the Tri course has that little elevation as well.

Edit: Good luck, btw!

I use the "Halo" headband and it works very well. Fits under a helmet nice, keeps sweat out of my eyes, doesn't make me any hotter than if I was sans headband.

Ordered one, thanks.

Seventh_sl said:

I wear an iZumi headband, but only on extremely hot days. It's really thin, which is great, but it grinds sweat and dirt into you forehead, which is not so great on long rides. A lot of my buddies just wear those short brimmed cycling caps, but I can't help but feel like everyone that wears one is an asshole.

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I'm that asshole but at least I have sweat free eyes.

fifey_sl said:

I'm that asshole but at least I have sweat free eyes.

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I'd wear one if I could find an anodized brim.

Got all my new suspension bits on the Trance installed and setup. Freakin' stoked. 160mm Pike RCT3 and a Fox Float-X kashima for the rear. Need to yank some of those headset spacers out, but other than that dialing it in was pretty simple. I'll put some hard miles on it tomorrow and tweak away.

Cycling tour is done. I have never ridden something so tough in my life; but, it did get easier as the days went on. Someone had a Garmin and each day was minimally 3500 feet. A couple days it was 4100 feet and then another 3000 feet after lunch.


More pictures to come later.

You know its hilly when someone from SF calls it a lot of climbing!

Metric century day here, followed by BBQ and craft beer in the park. Yay! Can't say I'll be climbing 7K feet or anything though.

Was there a specific Baltimore-area metric century you did, or just went for a ride? I'm always looking for fun/interesting event rides to do in Maryland/VA/PA

It was in Delaware:

Home - Broad Creek Bike Brew

This one coming up in Dover looks fun too, but I have something gong on that weekend unfortunately:

Amish Bike Tour Festival

Just look on bikereg.com and find stuff in the region. There's events in PA and VA. If you like mountain biking and camping (and beer) you should try to get some people together for Dirt Rag's yearly Dirt Fest up near State College, PA in May. Its a great time with really fun trails.

I'm after a little advice/comments:

My current MTB is a 2009 Gary Fisher HiFi plus. It's in great condition but I'm not altogether happy with the deore groupset, especially compared with how slick the 105 is on my CX bike.

I can't really afford to throw ?3k at a new bike, or should I say my wife will kill me if I do? And if I was I'd probably try out a 27B or 29'er but I'm stuck with what I have for now.

So I'm debating the merits of upgrading to an XT groupset and at the same time dropping to a 2x10 rather than a 3x9. The problem is that my rear hub is an 8/9 so highly unlikely that a 10 cassette will fit. So now I'm looking at needing either a new hub and the pita of restringing the current rim or a new wheelset. So I've gone from a ?400 groupset to then adding around ?300 extra on a wheelset too! This is further confused as the new XT groupset out later this year will be an 11 cassette so then do I buy a 2x10 or wait and buy a 2x11 or even a 1x11?

I mainly ride single track type stuff on the bike and I'm not entirely convinced I need 22 gears, certainly I double shift a lot with the 27 gears but other than my CX bike I've only ever ridden triple chainring bikes so have nothing to go off, perhaps if I wasn't STILL waiting for the new frame I could take that for a quick blast and see how I went with a 2x11.

Man, why is nothing ever easy?