Once more to the well
As promised, I went out and rode the Estacada 100 again this morning. I did not scrounge 13 minutes, though; I shortened my loop time by 20 seconds. Sigh.
I think that part of the problem is that after about 50 miles the project bike starts to feel very heavy and it rapidly becomes exponentially harder to shove it up even a short ramp (this, however, has not stopped me from big-ringing the Estacada 100 twice in a row); I’m going to take it up to Sauvie Island tomorrow morning, though, and I’ll see how well it runs on an optically flat 110k loop (wednesday, on the other hand, is going to be a no-brevet day because I’ve got a collection of errands to run, including a trip to the LBS and King Harvest.)
But, despite all that, I managed to continue to work on my new trick of riding the project bike no-handed. I’m getting more confident when I’m riding no-handed, as you may be able to tell from the photo. I’m still having some trouble switching to no-handed riding (the project bike lurches a little bit when I sit up and lift my hands from the bars, and that’s often disconcerting enough so that I grab for the bars again) but once I’ve got my balance I can ride for a mile or so before my legs start to ache from the unfamiliar position.
I’m now up to 10815 miles & 10570 RUSA km for the year.