I almost didn’t ride today, due to my usual dinner time riding slot being consumed with a light touch of mobile bike repair courtesy of Mick at MBCycle Repair. Yes, today was new cassette and chain day. Very fortunately my second new cassette arrived from Tredz – much faster than the previous one – and so I now have both back wheel and Tacx Neo 2 with the replaced cassette on.
Perfect.
The previous chain was absolutely shot. I didn’t realise – because I am always learning about bikes, but still barely know a thing – that a chain should be replaced after about 3000kms. I’d done 7300km.
Mick also pointed out that the front big ring was showing wear, but the little ring was in good nick. As you can see from the photos, I’ve made a big damned mess of both bike and turbo by using WD40 oil as lubricant.
Probably for the best that the chain and cassette got wazzed as they were caked in disgusting tar.
Now I’ve bought a bottle of Muc Off Dry Lube from Amazon. Rather than applying it all over the chain as I previously had done, Mick suggested just 4 dots on equally spread out parts of the chain should see me right if done between once a week or once a fortnight, riding conditions depending.
Anyway, after finishing work my wife told me that tea wouldn’t be ready for an hour or so, so I figured why not use the time wisely and test out the new chain.
I’d been thinking of giving one of Zwift’s new workouts a shot, but thought I better first make sure things were running smoothly.
I’m glad I did this as the cassette I’d put on the turbo – though identical – wasn’t set up the same. When taking off the previous cassette, it came with a spacer ring. I’d put that on the new cassette too, which meant when Mick had put the new chain and cassette on the back wheel, things were very slightly out of line about 4 rings up at the back.
What I needed to do was keep the spacer on, but put it first on the freehub (see, I am learning the terms). Once this was done, the turbo and the tyre matched 1:1, so things are absolutely perfect. Hoorah.
With that done, I decided I’d try my hand at sprint practice. Something I suck at.
I opeted for the short Richmond flat course, I forget the name. I did 5 loops, taking it fairly easy between sprints, but giving it full gas efforts for the ~20 seconds each lap.
Disappointingly I did not set a new max effort today. I couldn’t believe I’d come over a 100w lower than my previous best 5 second effort. I feel cheated.
What I am pleased with today – aside from the new kit – is that my first three sprints were really consistent. Heck, even the final two were close. I felt I’d given a better effort in the last one than the fourth, but that wasn’t reflected in the times.
Of course now I have the new cassette and chain, I really want to head outdoors again.
But I’m still very much smarting from my wrist injury, and my legs are still full of cuts and bruises.
Oh, and the weather is atrocious.
So, indoors it is.
I’m not sure what I’ll be doing over the next three days. I thought I was finished with work from tonight, but I still have tomorrow as a work day now. That means I’ll probably skip riding tomorrow – I had planned on a ~2 hour ride as a treat, but I’ll likely push that out to Sunday instead.
Likely my next rides will be Saturday and Sunday.
