Manatees Roar into the 20s! CLOSED (Page 103)

Definitely counts as epic! Glad you had fun!

Yes, rent a bike and try some gravel! 

Because Sycamore Cycles sold all of their rentals. They may have some again in the fall.  I tried to look at a Salsa there. No dice.

Lisa, IM Wisconsin is moving to JUNE? I'm so confused!

Yeah, no one has bikes or bike parts. Many of the shops in my area have a two week wait for service. A friend of mine crashed her bike and had to wait more than two months for the new one. It's nuts.

I needed a new stem for my gravel bike, ordered it 7/13, just got word today that it is ready to ship! 

I hope that when all these new cyclists decide they don't really want to be cyclists (not that i'm wishing they quit) we will see some great sales as they dump their purchases. Keep an eye out on craigslists and FB market place!

Seems like a good excuse to go tubeless!

I had to wait almost two weeks for a trainer tire.  I feel your pain.

Kevin is going tubeless.  I'll let him test the waters for the household.

I love my gravel bike! I've heard many people say if they can only have 1 bike it would be a gravel bike. That said, if you were on the pointy end of the stick racing, then the aero advantages of a road bike could be worth it to you. But, a cool thing about gravel bikes is you can put different width tires on them, different tread patterns too and make it so they ride very similarly to a road bike. So, all you'd have to do for racing is change the tires to something slicker and maybe skinnier. A few years ago it was determined (don't ask me by whom) that really skinny tires were not as fast as wider ones, so there has been a move to wider tires with less air pressure for racing. I'm sure someone can chime in with more detail about this or you can google it !  

I think if i could have only 1 bike it would be a gravel bike - unless i was doing an IM. 

I'm interested to hear other peoples take on this!

ETA: Here's a quick article about tire width. And another.

Here's an article from Slowtwitch that I shared with Chris last week. It discusses on "do it all" bike to cover both road and gravel but the principles apply to other models as well.  https://www.slowtwitch.com/Gravel/Multi-Purpose_Bike_2_OBED_Boundary_7720.html

In your particular case, Marysia, it may depend on how much you want to ride for the podium in a triathlon versus how much you want to do adventure riding.

There was a good discussion about gravel geometry in the most recent Pace Line podcast.  It goes into why you want a longer tail on a gravel bike, etc. https://redkiteprayer.com/2020/08/paceline-podcast-208/

OK, apparently Wisconsin is in it's traditional September time slot. There were some major typos in the St. George email, including incorrect dates for both the Wisconsin and Texas deferral options. 

My aspero is tubeless ready, so I'm interested to hear Kevin's thoughts!

So...Tuesdays and Fridays are the only days that my gym doesn't have aqua fitness classes at 5:30 PM and my family had to go to Tulsa for dentist appoints and wouldn't be home (two hours away, that the downside of living in a small town) so I was looking forward to a longer swim session after work yesterday.  Well, I got there and there was a sign at the front desk that said "Pool Closed Due to Weather".  It is an indoor pool.  I don't know why they close it for the weather  I wasn't going to go home empty-handed so I went for a run on the 13 laps to a mile indoor track.  My record is 130 laps in one a session on that track (and I may be more like 11-1/2 to 12-1/2 laps to a mile. I have just been guessing based on what pace I think I am running and how many laps I can do in what would be a mile pace).  I only did 52 laps yesterday but it was my first ever run with a mask on.  I was surprised.  Running in a mask was not too bad as long as I was at an easy pace and wasn't breathing hard. 

Oh...and I joined a conference call after work with my triathlon team on Monday.  There was a lot of gravel talk at that meeting.  I felt right at home.  :-) 

I'm actually surprised that Kevin hasn't made that jump yet. The benefits of tubeless for a MTB or gravel bike are pretty good. Less prone to pinch flats and a cushier ride, both of which make it fairly nice. The cons to me are setup (since you need a higher volume air pump), mess, and maintenance. That said, I haven't gone tubeless at this point, so anything I mention is anecdotal at best.

New bike = new set up

My road bikes are mostly gathering dust at this point. Partly due to the friends that I ride with, partly due to staying off the roads. However, if I had to reduce my bike ownership to just one bike (shiver at thought), it would probably be a gravel bike. Smooth and flowy singletrack, check. Fire roads, check. Pavement, check. Gravel roads, check. Overnighting, check. The way these bikes are currently being manufactured, they definitely beat anything else for my money.

I am holding out for the post Covid sell off that I think will happen as all the people that purchased bikes begin to get back in their cars and go back to the gym.

Cool, what is it????