Rodalben Metric Century ride

Sounds good. See ya bright and early.

The second attempt at a Rodalben century went better than the first, but still failed to make a full century.

Eurtrash and Jonesy started off from Landstuhl at about 5:50 since the sun hadn't quite risen yet at the originally planned 5:00 start time. The climb up to the castle gave us a nice warm-up and we were rolling along nicely when Big Wave Dave joined up with us in Queidersbach.
Somehow, the scenery seemed even more enjoyable this time and it dawned on my how nice a ride even the path-ride down to rodalben is.
Well, as we got into Waldfischbach-Burgalben, a clink clink clink from Eurtrash's bike told us we were in for some kind of a technical. When we stopped and saw that it was the clink clink of his granny ring which now had only one chainring bolt holding it in, Eurtrash began to have visions of a completely crapped-on ride.
A quick search revealed one chain ring bolt, which we used to secure the granny ring in place and Eurotrash and Jonesy continued to Rodalben while Big Wave made a dash for his home in Queidersbach to get some chainring bolts.
We all met again at Lidl and with the new bolts installed, we hit the A-side. We took a pretty liesurely pace around the A-side and then time forced us to skip the B-side and head back to Landstuhl.

All in all it was a great ride, and I'm glad the technical didn't kill it before it started.

The final distance for the day was 88 km, so I think with a full loop it would be somewhere around 115.

Lessons learned from this attempt:

-Sports gels ROCK! I got some sports gels to experiment with and found they really kept the bonk away. AT the end of the ride I still felt quite strong, and though I could definitely feel it in my legs I also felt like I could have gone another good 20-30km or so. I felt FAR from fully-tapped like I did last time.

-We are back to the time of year when a ride starting at 5:00 a.m. requires lights.

-Some bike manufacturers' Quality Control sucks. You'd think that a crankset that retails for $500 would have come with chainring bolts lock-tite-ed and properly torqued... apparantly not. Just confirms my approach that less stuff on yer bike means less stuff that can break!

-Getting the weight off my upper back and down to my waist by using a fanny-pack made a helluva difference. I had NO neck tightness/stiffness like on the first ride, and it made a world of differnece for the overall ride enjoyability. The combination of this and better eating/hydrating caused this ride to be SO much better than the first one. At no point did I ever have the thought 'Okay, I don't feel like riding anymore, I just want to be done with this ride.' On the last ride I pretty much felt this way somewhere along the B-side and for the rest of the ride home!

-An itty-bitty saddle, while light and fast etc. etc. does tend to get a little UNcomfy at kilometer 60 or so... Probably won't change it for now, I wanna see if it is somehting I just need to get used to...

Did you end up riding the SS or did you manage to sort out your issues with your gears?

Slim wrote:Did you end up riding the SS or did you manage to sort out your issues with your gears?

See my reply under the repair topic...

Thanks for the account of the day's events. The chainring dropping all of its Ti bolts on the path somewhere, a case of slightly slack spoke tension in the non-disc side of the front wheel causing wheel rub on my fork while mashing, and the fussy sidewall nick were all black-cloud items for me. (Funny thing is, the damn tire is holding air finally, after 2 weeks. I'm not sold on no-tubes.)

So with 20k to go, I totally blew up on a hill. Not sure what the deal was, I was riding strong up until then. That was one hell of a bonk, and it's a mystery to me. Last ride, I ate less food, had 2 liters less water, no electrolytes, we took very few breaks, I was on 4 hours sleep, but I was still hopping and popping wheelies all the way home. This ride, I did everything I was supposed to as far as each of those things are concerned, and megabonked. I just don't get it. Maybe it was the chainring bolt omen playing games with my head.

Also, big thanks to BWD. You not only saved this ride, you also saved my bike for schlaflos. Thank you for sacrificing the parts, I hope I can make it up to you!

Cumulative fatigue? There is no explaining megabonk sometimes. I felt like crap for about a week a couple weeks ago. Felt great since. For me it was getting five hours of sleep a night for a week.

Almost forgot the other lesson learned: my old habit of keeping a handfull of common bolts in my flat/trailside repair kit (chainring, bottle cage and cleat bolts) was a good habit i should immediately revive.

And also a big thanks to Dave for saving the ride! There are few nicer folks on wheels than Dave.