frankenbike's frankenbikes

Combining my other thread into here as well...

Did the "5 Ferries Challenge" on my Kona yesterday. Aero bars for the laughs, which paid off on some of the flat sections. On One Midge and aero bars is a pretty funny combo. I was sort of worried that I'd have a hard time riding into a headwind, which is partly why I added the aero bars, but the "drops" don't feel too bad and if I keep my elbows in it doesn't feel like the width slows me down a lot.

Ride was about 120km all in, as we connected up the Wemyss Bay to Ardrossan leg, some decently fast stuff but I was shockingly slow uphill compared to my friends on the fancier/lighter bikes (Fairlight Faran on the left, proper carbon roadie Ribble on the right). I have always been pretty slow uphill, aside from a brief period when I was training for a 100 mile sportive on a 8-9kg bike, but even by my standards the weight of this bike is noticeable. Oh well - aside from racing to catch a ferry I don't do any riding where it's important to be fast and that's partly why I went for this bike in the first place really. (But I do feel there's an aero road bike shaped hole in my roster... think my next bike will be a TT frameset sort of thing built with spare parts and used as a normal road bike and maybe a few triathlons or something. Not for another year though I reckon.)

Hit my lowest gear (30/36) on the steepest uphills and top gear (46/11) on most of the "long" descents so it's perfect for my sort of riding. Love it. And loving the downtube shifter too, I only ended up changing rings about 10-20 times I'd say. Cassette is a good range and most short hills are fine in the big ring. You only need to shift to the little ring on long steep climbs that you can't sprint up. Really glad I had that as we were all flagging by the end.

Had a deep fried pizza in the chip shop before the drive back :) think I earned it

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