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Sergeant_Pluck
So as noted I made it round the 23,500m of climbing on Alpi 4000 fixed, with minimal walking - uphill gravel at altitude in the heat is not my thing (or many others from looking around).
Reprised my double-fixed setup from the TCR with 44/46T chainrings on a Sugino RD2 and slightly wider BB (106mm I think) for the inner to clear chainstays and my third bottle mount, however having two cogs on one side as before is bending the Fixed Wheel Challenge rules somewhat I believe, so stuck with the Halo FIX-G hub for the 16T fatfoot cog spaced for the outer ring but had a 18T threaded onto the reverse side with a velosolo spacer to get the chainline dialled in. Worked a treat, flipping the wheel at the bottom/top of climbs and with the 44/18 (66") and 46/16 (77") combinations meaning the wheel position didn't move and could continue to use the rear brake without adjustment.
For shortish descents (<500m or so), eg Finestre to Sestriere stayed in the low gear and dragged the rear brake to give my knees a bit of break - they were working hard enough! The descents were much more fun than I expected, the more technical the better, eg off Passo Gavia, found I could leg-brake into the hairpins, modulate the power though the apex and then full power on, overtaking freewheelers in the process.
No mechanicals at all, didn't even pump up my tyres once, though did have to remove the half-link as I'd managed to stretch the chain to the point it was no longer needed, and also had to redo the tape on the bars as I'd managed to pull that off on some of the harder climbs.
Settled into a routine of aiming to stop near the base of climbs and then getting on the road pre-dawn for a few hours of respite from the heat and traffic. The early start made it more convenient to start searching for hotels in the early evening as only spent half the nights in the dormitories for comfort as well as route positioning reasons.
Oh and as mentioned, I did it by train as a #nofly #RinkoBike trip: Thursday Eurostar London-Paris and TGV Paris-Milan, reassembled the bike and overnighted there, then Friday Milan-Tirano and cycled the 40km from there which was all pretty smooth. The return was slight messier as there were engineering work on the Trenord line so chucked the bike into its bag outside a Bormio pub in about 20mins flat with hippy watching on then bus -> rail-replacement bus -> commuter train (no bike spaces!) to Milan. Back to Paris on Saturday to meet the missus, hang out in brasseries, and see Jarvis perform Chansons d’Ennui Tip-Top plus some JARV IS songs which was brilliant and a total counterpoint to the previous week, before a Eurostar home on Sunday night.
Loved pretty much of all of it apart from maybe that single squat toilet at one control shared with hundreds of other riders...