Prepping a Q for Bike Sebring
- Thread starter John Dorlon
- Start date
Eric Winn
Zen MBB Master
My official result was
My official result was 7:26:24 and they gave me a nice certificate with my name and time on it. My moving ride time was closer to 6:45 but I felt the need to take advantage of the two manned rest stops and two impromptu stops. I did spend a little bit of extra time at the first rest stop answering questions about the Quest and Cruzbikes in general. As I mentioned in another post, I got a lot of that is a cool bike comments thrown at me during the race.
Jim Parker posted a video of the start: http://youtu.be/sk75LAQhCeQ
In the video, my girlfriend Laurie is standing on the side in the middle with a white sweater and white shoes to the right of the post in the foreground. At the 30 second mark I am lined up with her and I ride off screen to the left at about the 34 second mark. Look for the signature Quest curved rear arms... I think the loud woohoo you hear was Laurie...
I started really slow at the back since I was planning on a modest pace and I wanted to stay out of everyone's way but after I entered the actual race track the pace of the group I was riding with was slower than my planned pace so I sped up and passed a lot of people.
I basically tried to keep my cadence at about 80 rpm and in the highest gear that felt comfortable at that cadence. I was expecting this to roughly equate to about a 15 mph moving pace average which is what I ended up hitting. On the flat track with no wind I was hitting about 17 to 20 mph.
I stopped and dismounted briefly at about 68 miles to ease some thigh cramps and to refill my water reservoir from my two water bottles on the seatback because I had emptied the reservoir and didn't want to have to handle pulling water bottles from behind the seatback while I was riding although I am comfortable doing so on my training rides. Pulling on the drink tube when the reservoir is empty is definitely frustrating.
I also stopped at the other manned rest stop around the 80 mile mark and went ahead and topped my water reservoir back up and ate two bananas. The 10 mile stretch after that was fun as I had the wind coming from behind at an angle providing a good bit of tailwind and I was holding 18-20mph during this stretch but the final 10 was a short mile or so stretch of gusty crosswinds and then turning straight into the wind at around 91 miles was not as much fun especially since I popped the chain off the crank (inboard) just as I was making the turn into the wind so I had to stop briefly to put it back on.
My headwind progress was pretty erratic. If you run my ride playback (see the Ride With GPS link in my prior post) you can see the gusting wind was resulting in me bouncing from 7mph to 13mph most of the way with a lot of 9mph stretches.
I felt good as far as aerobics but had some slight aches in my right knee (old surgery) and a bit at my ankles. I think I need to tweak my cleat positions just a hair more. Otherwise I had some moments of bad leg cramps despite being carefull to hydrate and replace electrolytes. This was on the second half so I think it was more from lack of adequate distance training. I had no cramping at all post race. No stomach problems either.
I used my iPhone 5 in a handlebar mount running Cyclemeter with an external battery strapped to the handlebar stem. Battery strength on my iPhone was at 100 percent after the 7 1/2 hours and I was down only 1 bar on my external battery. I had the iPhone set to keep the screen on and lit the entire time with status announcements spoken at every 10 minutes and once I got off the racetrack and was largely riding solo the entire way I was also playing music so the external battery worked exceptionally well.
The Quest was very comfortable and very responsive. If the engine (me) had trained better I think I could have eliminated the rest stops and hit around 6 and 1/2 hours, probably better for overall time results. I had the seat at 40 degrees and felt a little tired with my head angle. I think 45 and up would have been fine, lower than 40 would need a headrest.
I had a blast and want to do more. Driving back to Michigan was frustrating as the last 200 miles included 20F temps, wind gusts into the upper 20s, low 30s with sideways whiteout snow squalls (fortunately brief) - ugh more indoor training until warmer weather arrives... queue up Queen's <i>Bicycle Race</i> here...
Here are the century results: http://racesmith.com/results/2013results/BikeSebringCentury021713.html
-Eric
My official result was 7:26:24 and they gave me a nice certificate with my name and time on it. My moving ride time was closer to 6:45 but I felt the need to take advantage of the two manned rest stops and two impromptu stops. I did spend a little bit of extra time at the first rest stop answering questions about the Quest and Cruzbikes in general. As I mentioned in another post, I got a lot of that is a cool bike comments thrown at me during the race.
Jim Parker posted a video of the start: http://youtu.be/sk75LAQhCeQ
In the video, my girlfriend Laurie is standing on the side in the middle with a white sweater and white shoes to the right of the post in the foreground. At the 30 second mark I am lined up with her and I ride off screen to the left at about the 34 second mark. Look for the signature Quest curved rear arms... I think the loud woohoo you hear was Laurie...
I started really slow at the back since I was planning on a modest pace and I wanted to stay out of everyone's way but after I entered the actual race track the pace of the group I was riding with was slower than my planned pace so I sped up and passed a lot of people.
I basically tried to keep my cadence at about 80 rpm and in the highest gear that felt comfortable at that cadence. I was expecting this to roughly equate to about a 15 mph moving pace average which is what I ended up hitting. On the flat track with no wind I was hitting about 17 to 20 mph.
I stopped and dismounted briefly at about 68 miles to ease some thigh cramps and to refill my water reservoir from my two water bottles on the seatback because I had emptied the reservoir and didn't want to have to handle pulling water bottles from behind the seatback while I was riding although I am comfortable doing so on my training rides. Pulling on the drink tube when the reservoir is empty is definitely frustrating.
I also stopped at the other manned rest stop around the 80 mile mark and went ahead and topped my water reservoir back up and ate two bananas. The 10 mile stretch after that was fun as I had the wind coming from behind at an angle providing a good bit of tailwind and I was holding 18-20mph during this stretch but the final 10 was a short mile or so stretch of gusty crosswinds and then turning straight into the wind at around 91 miles was not as much fun especially since I popped the chain off the crank (inboard) just as I was making the turn into the wind so I had to stop briefly to put it back on.
My headwind progress was pretty erratic. If you run my ride playback (see the Ride With GPS link in my prior post) you can see the gusting wind was resulting in me bouncing from 7mph to 13mph most of the way with a lot of 9mph stretches.
I felt good as far as aerobics but had some slight aches in my right knee (old surgery) and a bit at my ankles. I think I need to tweak my cleat positions just a hair more. Otherwise I had some moments of bad leg cramps despite being carefull to hydrate and replace electrolytes. This was on the second half so I think it was more from lack of adequate distance training. I had no cramping at all post race. No stomach problems either.
I used my iPhone 5 in a handlebar mount running Cyclemeter with an external battery strapped to the handlebar stem. Battery strength on my iPhone was at 100 percent after the 7 1/2 hours and I was down only 1 bar on my external battery. I had the iPhone set to keep the screen on and lit the entire time with status announcements spoken at every 10 minutes and once I got off the racetrack and was largely riding solo the entire way I was also playing music so the external battery worked exceptionally well.
The Quest was very comfortable and very responsive. If the engine (me) had trained better I think I could have eliminated the rest stops and hit around 6 and 1/2 hours, probably better for overall time results. I had the seat at 40 degrees and felt a little tired with my head angle. I think 45 and up would have been fine, lower than 40 would need a headrest.
I had a blast and want to do more. Driving back to Michigan was frustrating as the last 200 miles included 20F temps, wind gusts into the upper 20s, low 30s with sideways whiteout snow squalls (fortunately brief) - ugh more indoor training until warmer weather arrives... queue up Queen's <i>Bicycle Race</i> here...
Here are the century results: http://racesmith.com/results/2013results/BikeSebringCentury021713.html
-Eric
