Tuesday, June 23, 2009

When an easy ride gets even easier

I didn't plan on riding today due to events happening today and my legs being tired from multiple rides each day for the past 2 days but... I couldn't resist the urge to get on the TT bike for a quick spin. I just got my TT bike professionally fitted but haven't had it on the road yet. So I decided to take a 75% type effort on it for 10 miles or so to see how it felt. Less than 1/2 mile into the ride I realize the steering tube cap bolt is loose and turn around for home. I am a bit frustrated that this wasn't caught during the fit session but not a huge deal. After tightening that, and neglecting to check over anything else, I head back out for this somewhat easy spin.

I start down Bass Lake road heading south out of Chardon and LOVE the new position. It feels slippery quick and some tips I got on pedaling stroke I am trying to utilize. I am forcing myself to hold back since my mind is telling me to rev it up and see what it can do but my body is saying 'this is a recovery type ride'. After a few miles I notice something wrong with the bars and then notice they slipped again and my TT aero bars are about 20 degrees out of whack with my front wheel, YIKES.

I pull over and with little effort, scary, straighten the bars back up. At this point I decide to just head for home at a easy pace as I didn't bring a cellphone and don't love the idea of hammering on a TT bike with loose bars when I am leaning over my bars in a aero position. I limped home (at times much faster than I should have though) and rolled into the garage to realize that a few more bolts were loose but in general the stem is not fitting the steering tube correctly. The stem was swapped during the fit session and now must be in need of shims or something. So off tomorrow to the bike shop to get this corrected, not a situation you want on a TT bike. Hopefully this doesn't now introduce a new source of anxiety/fear on future TT bike rides. Kinda like driving down the road at 55 in your car and realizing your steering wheel is loose.

1 comments:

Kevin said...

That's pretty scary, and pretty weird. As far as I understand it, stems and forks are as close to standard sizes as any bike part is. I think you have to try really hard to get a fork/stem combination that's an odd size.

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