Chatted with Ben today... he absolutely confirmed that the cause is consistent and my deduction is correct.
Seat angle.
I checked the Saddle to bar length (reach) on both the stache and the top fuel - identical.
How can I ride one for 24 hours and be fine and ride the other for 40 minutes 2x a day really easily and be totally fucked and crippled?
What's the difference?
effective seat tube angle.
Solutions:
- flip the chip to the low position, will relax the seat tube angle a tiny bit but also lower the BB (bad). On the plus side I just need lock-tite to do this
- different saddle and the only one out there with rails long enough and potentially strong enough is the Sella SMP and well they are [moderately to extremely] expensive and direct to consumer, also the leverage angle may cause the dropper post to not go up or down (might mean needing new dropper post too)
- different dropper post but no one makes one with offset it seems except a canadian company 9point8 and they are also (it seems) DTC and not cheap, but also really good and serviceable and well made and all that, may need new dropper anyway and well, these are cool but also not super affordable but not terrible, esp if I go with the entry level one.
But what does that mean for Freetown 50? Means I sign up as singlespeed, and rebuild that bike, move the wheels back over and get that longer travel dropper set at the right height. And somehow get some rest from not sleeping well for a few nights because of the spasms and pain caused by the Top Fuel.
Saw the DO this morning - expecting to fix more of the busted shit from last week, but no, was worse than last week so essentially I've set myself back even further.
Should have seen it coming. This lower back issue first showed up after riding the Top Fuel after work on Saturday and then again at Dirt Church. Two days in a row. Not hard days, but I hadn't ridden that bike two days in a row before. Once a week seems to be the limit.
Very much like riding a bike with cranks shorter than 180mm. Once a week and not super long or super hard and it is fine. More than once (twice a day seems to be exponentially worse for some reason) and I fall apart.
Damnit.
Part of me is thinking, just take the weekend off. Rest, ride or not ride, dunno. The new rear wheel for the Stache is still slated for 9/27, not soon. Really wanted to race Freetown though. Singlespeed would be fun too. Def won't be as slow as I was in 2019 with gears and not knowing how to ride.
have until 6pm reg deadline to figure this out... classic overthinking GeWilli shit here
At least the mystery is solved and I don't have to do that whole video with the two scales thing and Ben basically said I'd have to go WAY up in the stem height to fix this, way higher than possible with this bike so tossing out the new stem idea.
I did try one of the Reddiyo workouts last night after getting the car home. I think i was both tired, dehydrated, and hot in the basement on the trainer. the PRE was a zone or two higher than the HR was showing and while HR was sitting there in what they were calling Zone 3 I was kind of at my max effort... Something def off. Probably the whole back being locked up and everything. Or the heat, or the lack of air moving, or the fucking ancient old high resistance trainer. Super downside is not being able to load a training plan onto the Wahoo (no i don't have training peaks). I had the tablet open watching the replay of the Men's DH in snowshoe, my phone playing the workout (timer basically) and the wahoo stuck somewhere (didn't put the mount on the bike) so i could watch the HR. After the first interval and the rookie move of watching HR I overshot, killed myself and then settled into a target speed and sort of managed to hold it close. But not close enough or hard enough even though it felt harder than it should have as i mentioned. But that sucked. Not good. Need to figure it out. Have one lead maybe.
Still haven't decided on Freetown... can't quite figure out the balance between why I really want to do it and why it might be a good idea not to do it.
Ah well - fuck it, maybe I just need to head to Dirt Church instead... save the $75 and the hassle of trying to fuel and prepare to fuel for 50 miles... it is CX season anyway, right? And I'm REALLY tired (because of not sleeping) and my back is still fucked up so... yeah.
Guess I decided.
Maybe i'll change my mind between now and 6pm
back to other stuff (you can probably tell where I got distracted for 3 hours)
Heddwch
G
1 comment:
The Abbey tools fit kit makes measuring saddle setback much more precise. Instead of hanging the plumb bob from the nose of the saddle and then trying to measure the distance from the BB center to the plumb line, you hang the bob from the platform and have the line intersect the BB center. It's just easier to get a precise measurement from the hang point of the string to the front of the saddle, because the string isn't trying to be a pendulum. The fit kit has the graduations right on it, but you can do the same thing by fastening a level to the saddle with a couple of toe straps. It sounds like no big deal, but it's pretty easy to be off by a cm or two when just hanging the bob from the nose of the saddle. It's also more precise to measure the vertical and the setback this way than it is to try eyeball measure the hypotenuse.
The droppers probably don't come with setback because it's going to create the same stiction as slamming the saddle back on the rails. That's a tough problem if you can't get enough setback with a zero offset.
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