Well, I haven't really been doing anything really special. I haven't had a season I can feel good about so far. The almost seven month break I took last year from complete riding propably hurt me more then it helped. It put me behind the eight ball for all the early spring races and am only now feeling my fitness and form coming together. My ideal weight is right around 135 and I'm now a few pounds shy of that. My eating out at work and sweet tooth just get me in too much trouble.
This race has a little bit of climbing to it, while it's no Hermann, it'll still have some. I've known a few guys that have actually been using compact cranks and been doing just fine on them. After some thought I decided to go ahead and try them. The idea is to eventually build two bikes, a climbing bike and a crit bike.
While I have no grandioso plans of winning the State race, my main goal will be to stay in the main group until the finish. It'll be good to see how my form is coming along. I imagine with all the climbs in this race it will be a race of attrition.
I got a good deal on some Campy UT cranks and put them on last week and did two rides with them. They felt fine on the Ghisallo training ride, I was first on the Ossenfort climb, but then dropped the chain shifting the front derailleur and pedaling too fast. I guess I learned a lesson there. I didn't feel I was too undergeared, exept when trying to bridge after dropping the chain. I also felt fine on the hammerfest back. The Tuesday crit was a different story though. I did feel a little undergeared at times and I've also learned I've got to spin a lot more then I'm used to. It also takes a few shifts to find just the right gear too. Because of this, accelerations made it harder to keep up. I don't think I'll always keep these on my bike, but also think I could get used to them and use them in a crit if I had to. Hopefully after Sundays race I'll have good news to report about these cranks.
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