First, the Vendetta was the
First, the Vendetta was the center of attention for a lot of people. Everyone that came to check it out were tossing a lot of superlatives around. I spent about 45 minutes chatting with John Morciglio and he was also very impressed despite having become anti-MBB. He did say he thought the turned down edges of the seat bottom made wonderful aerodynamic brakes and wondered if John was going to change this aspect at some point. He did NOT like the velcro seat and claimed it would pop off when you started riding it. I told John I had about 200 miles on it at this point and had not had a problem. He looked surprised but still thought I would experience problems with it atsome point.
I took the wheels off the Vendetta to fit it easily in the back of my Chevy Equinox and apparently did not pay close enough attention to the speed and cadence sensor magnets when I put the front wheel back on as I was getting crappy data and then no data on my practice run and then my 1 hour TT.
I think I fixed it right before my 2nd hill climb - I forgot to hit start on the hill climb the first time I did it and there weren't too many people so I ran it again and captured that ride in Cyclemeter.
I also forgot to hit start on what turned out to be a half mile TT (instead of the 1/8 mile) so I didn't get any data for that one either. I got distracted when a yougster was sitting at the line about 2 bikes in front of me when all of a sudden everyone heard this loud pfffffffffffffffffffft and he suddenly had a flat tire on his front wheel. Following that Sean Costin raced around on a fixy kids bike modified to fit an adult. That was hilarious as Sean is quite tall and he was doing a very high cadence so it looked like all you saw were knees madly flying up and down. They don't seem to have reported his results for that one but he was going pretty fast on the thing.
Here are the
online results. I ran in the stock class of course - number 304.
1 hour TT - 15 laps, 20.243mph average and I came in 4th. I think the 3 guys who came in before me were all low racers but I'm not sure. Several people had multiple bikes. Mid racer, low racer, streamliner and were running some of these races multiple times, swapping to their other bikes before racing the same event again.
This is supposed to be a 1.4 mile track so my 15 laps should result in 21 miles for the 1 hour TT. My training rides of about this length have been steadily improving. My last four 22 mile training rides average speeds were 17.6, 17.7, 17.7, and 18.8 mph so I'm pretty pleased with the 20.2mph average today.
As I've posted before, the Vendetta can climb! I came in 3rd in the hill climb part of the hill climb plus coast down. The guy that came in second was only 6/100s of a second faster than me. I came in 5th in the coast down - goal is to roll as far as you can. My results are based on the first attempt I did. I noticed the other recumbent riders were unclipping their bent leg to hold both legs straight so I followed suite on my second run and rolled much farther. I liked the hill climb challenge, the coast down was fun but a lot a variables with aero and wheel bearings, tire pressure, etc. My Volae rider that I see on my training rides was here and he made a second run after loading up the bag behind his seat with a lot of water in container(s) to try and get more weight for the coast down - course he also had to tote it up the hill climb part too
I came in 4th in the 1/2 mile TT with a time of 1:13.313. Kind of tired to do math - someone check me but I think this works out to be about 26.5 mph. Tired, hot, sunburnt at this point so not too shabby.
A lot of fun. Met a lot of really great people. Everyone was really friendly with several asking me if I was going to travel to several other HPV venues.
Tomorrow for me is a 200 ft flying start sprint and one of either a 20 lap, 12 mile road race for faster vehicles or a 15 lap, 9 mile road race for slower vehicles. The distance is shorter because they are cutting the hill climb section out of the course. I presume I will race in the 20 lap, 12 mile race.
Hopefully my foolishness in applying sun screen at around halfway through today's events instead of at the start won't trouble me too much tomorrow. Got a good case of sun burn going on, including the tops of my feet in between the straps of my riding sandals. Guess I'll wear socks and my long warm weather tights tomorrow. Wish I had arm coolers, those would help although my arms aren't quite as bad as my legs and feet as I've been getting a bit more sun on my arms. Most of my training rides is through heavily wooded park roads with heavy shade over most of the roadway so today I got a lot more exposure than I usually do.
It was a bit hectic getting there this morning. I didn't pack the bike in the car until this morning and it was the first time doing so - should have done it the night before. The track is about 50 minutes drive time from my house and we got a late start so I didn't get there as early as I had planned and had to rush a bit to complete registration and get my technical inspection done along with a lot of people checking out the Vendetta. I also had to create my own race number plates but they had material there to do so. I elected to race with my Bachetta Brain Box which I left pretty much empty in order to have a better place to attach my numbers. They provide different sizes and colors of Coroplast sheets so I grabbed two yellow ones similar in color to the Vendetta along with a supplied nail for poking holes and zip ties and zip tied the numbers to my Brain Box.
There were a lot of people taking photos. The Vendetta seemed to draw their attention. Photos and race results are typically posted
here so maybe there will be some interesting photos if/when they get posted.
More tomorrow.
-Eric
