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I probably need a dedicated audax bike
It's not about the bike, but if it's going to be a psychological boost then get n+1.
I've done Audaxes on:
- A 1990s Colnago Master, 23mm tyres, 40?x26 lowest gear
- An Aravis Audax, Reynolds 631 steel, 25mm tyres, 30x29 lowest gear
- A Wilier Izoard, Carbon Fibre, 23mm tyres, 34x26 lowest gear
- A Condor Tempo, Dedacciai SAT 14.5 steel, 25mm tyres, 46x18 only gear
It's way more about you and your fitness (both physical and mental) than the bike.
- A 1990s Colnago Master, 23mm tyres, 40?x26 lowest gear
Greenbank-
Usually I'd be the first person to say that buying multiple bikes for different purposes is unnecessary, but the amount of pain I was in yesterday & this morning suggests I need to set up something a bit different.
Of course I could probably achieve this just by getting a bigger rear cassette and a longer cage mech + adding in a load of headset spacers, but that wouldn't be nearly as fun...
And letting some air out of my tyres as well. Though I have not had a single puncture while audaxing this year.
ad441
I think I must have gone through Crowborough about 30 mins later, by which point it was chaos. I suspect if I'd not been exhausted and going through a low point I'd have probably found it really entertaining, but was just not in the mood for dealing with loads of people at that point.
The party house in the North Downs was blasting out Tiffany 'I think we're alone now' when I went past, was pretty surreal.
Talking of distances, I jumped straight into doing an SR this year, not really having done much over 200km ever before. It's been tough... still feel like I'm trying to figure out what does and doesn't work for me. As rides go on I struggle not to watch the clock and count kilometres on my Garmin, which psychologically is really bad as I'm pretty slow, particularly on hills. I found GMC much harder than my 400km as a result. I think I enjoyed 400k more than most of the rides because it was in Scotland and the scenery was a lot more interesting. Also about the only audax related thing I'm good at is dealing with sleep deprivation.
I think while it is mostly psychological, bike comfort really seems to get important on 300 and above. I suffered a lot on WCW and I'm feeling pretty rough after Saturday. I reckon I over-inflated my tyres due to not wanting to risk pinch flats and am now paying the price.
Have concluded that if I'm to do more long distance rides I probably need a dedicated audax bike with bigger, tubeless tyres, higher bars and an even lower gear than 34-28.