I am a little kid on Christmas morning. The anticipation has been building for days and years. Technically yesterday was new bike day as that is when FedEx delivered my Canyon Spectral 29 CF 8. This is my first new-new bike in 15 years and my excitement is well beyond 9000!
My coworker had a new bike day a few days ago and got a sweet road bike. I had to bite my tongue about getting my bike for fear of jinxing the delivery, but FedEx was on time!
Wus in here?
Canyon is a direct to consumer bike company. This means that they sell their bikes directly to you from their website. There is no bike shop selling Canyon bikes, anywhere. This allows them to save costs and give us lower prices, but it also means that you need to do some assembling of the bike once it arrives.
Putting your Canyon Bike together
I was able to assemble my bike during my lunch break and even got a quick ride down the drive way. Everything went pretty smoothly together with solid instructions provided. There was an omission of attaching the dropper post lever to the front brake handle but I figured it out.
Most safe.
First impressions are that this bike is a missile and it is ready to launch me down some trails! There are a lot of reviews on this bike that go into detail about the head angle and progressive suspension. Considering I am coming from a mountain bike that was built in 1997 this thing is basically an alien spaceship.
The only things familiar to me are the grips, seat, and pedals. The rest of the bike is totally different from anything I have ever owned. The main areas I need to get familiar with are the suspension and the hydraulic brakes. Both of these are very advanced technology to me and require training to understand better. The brakes are pretty much good to go for now but the suspension needs to be adjusted to my weight and riding style.
Put a fork in it!
Naturally it snowed all night so I guess it’s time to get some snow riding in!
After your tires the bike chain is the most used piece of equipment. A chain is as critical as the bearings in your wheels and bottom bracket, but it gets none of the protection. Keeping a chain clean and lubricated is a constant process. The main method of lubricating a bike chain is with grease and oil, and require almost constant work.
#nasty
If we remain open and calm, uncertainty can be seen as an abundance of opportunity.
Now that I am riding 4 or more times a week the maintenance of my bike has also increased. As you ride the dirt builds up in your chain. Wiping the chain with a rag simply pushes more dirt further into the links and rollers leading to more friction. Eventually you need to remove the chain and soak it in spirits to clean it.
When I was a kid I recall seeing chain wax in bike parts catalogs. Back then the idea of removing your chain that often was a scary proposition. Then a few years ago I saw this video:
Then this one came out just a few months ago with an improved process:
The idea of waxing a bike chain seems so bizarre at first glance that I dismissed it without additional thought. Fortunately those videos above explained it well enough that I had to give it a try. Now that we are back on the land I have all of my materials:
Slow Cooker
1 lb Wax
1.5 oz PTFE/Teflon powder 1.6 microns or smaller
Gasoline
De-greaser
Denatured Alcohol
New Bike chain
When you get a new bike chain it is covered with a sticky film that almost everyone recommends you remove immediately. In this case we do 3 soaks in 3 spirits to strip it down to bare metal. The first step is to soak it in gasoline for 12 hours. Then soak it in de-greaser for 30 minutes. After rising the chain with water it gets soaked for 30 more minutes in the denatured alcohol.
Overnight Gasoline
30 min De-greaser
30 min Alcohol
As the final two soaks are started you can fire up the slow cooker and melt the wax. Apparently the ideal temperature is between 194 and 204 Fahrenheit. Once the wax is all melted you add the PTFE powder and stir it up.
Wrong focus
Once you pull the chain from the alcohol it dries pretty quickly. Slide it onto a piece of wire coat hanger and dip it into the wax. The first application gets soaked for 10 to 15 minutes.
Then pull the chain out and let it cool. It will be very stiff with the hardened wax and you will need to run it through your hands to free each link up. At that point it is ready to be returned to your bike and ridden.
Every 150 to 180 miles you need rinse the chain by pouring boiling water on it. This will rinse any dirt off of the outside of the chain but leave most of the wax and PTFB between the pins and rollers. Then reheat the wax mixture and dip the chain for 5 to 10 minutes.
You should be able to keep rewaxing with this batch for over 9000 miles. At that point the chain may be ready for replacement. This is far more life than most chains ever see. In addition the rest of the drivetrain will last for another 18000+ miles by which time you may be considering a new bike. For comparison I hope to ride 5000 miles this year but will probably come up short of that.
There are some drawbacks to this process:
Lots of equipment involved
Preparation and organization is required
I am looking forward to seeing how this process works. From everything I have watched and read it sounds like the benefits are huge. I will report back as we progress with testing.
Pro tip in Gutenberg: If you want to add a paragraph before the first one use: ⌥⌘T . It will insert a block before the one you are currently in. Use ⌥⌘Y to put one after.
Workout detail:
This is the 6th week of my 12 week training program. While the majority of the week was full of rest and recovery workouts, today was different. Today we did a fitness or FTP test. This involves 20 minutes of maximum effort. You should be ready to puke near the end of this workout.
The idea behind the fitness test is that you go really hard for 20 minutes. From that you can make an educated guess at what your average heart rate would be for a 60 minute all out effort. From that you have your functional threshold heart rate and from that you get your heart rate zones for training. (The reason you only do 20 minutes is because doing 60 minutes would probably result in injury or death.)
Today I matched my effort from 6 weeks ago. While I wish I had improved I feel good about this. I know I could have push myself harder during the 20 minute effort. Also it was another beautiful day of riding.
