Sunday 8 September 2013

Cannock Chase failure & bike stand

I paid a visit to Cannock Chase today with among others the evil blogger of Gecko Cycling. My arm is still recovering so I lent my MTB to a colleague for the day and went out myself on the blue trail with my Fuego.

En route to where I was going to be picked up I noticed (late, as usual) that my left cleat had become twisted on the shoe and had twisted the angle from a nice comfortable toe-out to slightly toe-in. I guess this was due to my exclusively putting my left foot down when I stop, on that long ride with Andy the previous week. I cannot believe I didn't notice this at the time, it explains the knee pain perfectly, as that completely vanished when I reseated the cleat.

Hills are pretty tough. Gravelly hills are magnitudes worse, especially as I wasn't properly set up for off-road. The front tyre is still the Schwalbe Kojak that David had fitted when he owned it. I think it would have gripped better if I had a Marathon Plus or a Marathon Supreme fitted (like I have the rear). I've read that Fuegos are pretty decent off the road, but I'll not try it again for a while myself.

I couldn't manage the entire loop and in fact gave up when I slipped on some gravel and landed again on my bad arm. I switched to the roads after that and played around a bit before I returned to the cafe. There are some nice hills around there.

I took the seat off of the Fuego to fit it back in Stan's car and when I got home tried to fit it in my Park Tools PCS-9 without the seat on. It just about works, which is good. The seat isn't hard to remove really and having the bike in a stand is brilliant for working with wheels and the drive train.


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