The wheels I rode to the TT series victory were won in a fundraising raffle to support Sue Butler's world's trip. A kick ass set of Reynolds Strike full carbon clinchers. I raced them in a crit or two on the Klein and then put them on the Paramount and attacked the Bikeworks TT with them. Not quite disc wheel aero in the rear but pretty close.
I probably should give them some credit for the win, but that would be silly. Winning a bike race doesn't come from buying shit. Esp against cagey veterans and wicked smart bike racers like Solobreak. Winning the race comes from pedaling wicked hard.
That said you have to buy a raffle ticket to win. Sort of like the lottery but with better odds. You can't win the Lottery if you don't buy a ticket, but then the odds are the same if you don't buy one, money maybe not well spent unless you really get a huge amount of pleasure thinking about how to squander the pile of money gathered from people who are really bad at math.
Chabot will never let you forget that I also won another set of wheels. That was pretty fucking amazing. First RTK kicks me out of the rollercam chat room (so TJ can get his mug on camera to do the drawing) but I got back in... Then Mike Golay went and won the beer (I had just stopped drinking so that was nice to see it go to a good guy and a friend - no jealousy on my part). Then he did some other stuff and the raffle for the wheels started.
And he pulled my name out. WOAH. It was crazy. I won. I won the Kickstarter Wheels! (jerry's guts are writhing right now and not from the two heads of cabbage he ate in the last 24 hrs). A set of Zipp 101s. Their new wheels. Pretty sweet wheels I will say. I did have a chance to ride them. They were on the CX bike for a while. Totally rocked them at the Rhonde Rosey, solid solid wheels. And fast. But clinchers.
So winning these wheels put a big spotlight on me and my bike from last year. Someone pointed out what I was racing on. The Tubulars I was riding. Hell the front wheel is almost eligible to race as a Master. Definitely too old to race Juniors. And the rear wheel? Still holding up but it certainly isn't light, or esp new anymore.
Pretty soon I was asked if I would mind sending the 101s back, in trade for a pair of Tubular CX race wheels.
Out of the blue I was just completely dumbstruck. seriously? Would I mind? I couldn't box em up fast enough. Although I will say it was sad to send em back. Those 101s were wicked nice. Very fast wheels.
When I got home last night there were two boxes from ZippUSA.
Time to glue up the Racing Ralphs onto a pair of 303s.
Time to get a hold of a couple tubes of Mastik1 and get to sniffing some glue! We've got RACE WHEELS BABY!
So
So
SO excited... Today is absolutely the antithesis of FPF!
THANKS ZIPP!
anyone have a raffle for some Di2 stuff? (just kidding - sort of)
heddwch
G
1 comment:
great post.
good on you.
respect
fm
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