Review of MicroSHIFT shifters

Specifically I bought the MicroSHIFT (that's what's printed on the brifters) brifters and rear deraileur. I have a compact FSA system with the FSA front derailleur. As far as installation is concerned, just follow the directions - nothing fancy. Adjustment, same deal - no surprises. The big surprise is that you can buy a brifter that even works at all for the price I paid ($119/pr). Nashbar claims MSRP at $199, but I've never seen them at full price. The rear derailleur was $29 ($59 MSRP). One thing I did do was replace the incredibly crappy pulleys with Shimano ones. Performance pulleys (11T sealed bearing) would be first choice and I'll make that change later.

Shifting is Campy-style, but without the refinement. There are large and small paddles used separately for up and down shifts and the brake lever is old-school and isn't involved with the shifting. The paddles are plastic and the overall appearance is unexceptional, without looking too cheap. With the exception of the 34-->50 front, shifting is precise and quick if somewhat noisy on occasion (clack!) Going from the small to large ring on a compact is never pretty, but this is the only shift I'd rather have my old (9s) Ultegra for. The effort is high and the response somewhat slow and occasionally a second push is necessary. Trimming works, but I seldom use it since I'm set up for racing.

Under racing conditions it's never let me down, but I haven't had to upshift the front under pressure. When you think about it, that doesn't come up all that often in a race when a 50x21 combination is easily obtainable. I'm on the big ring a lot, with the compact you'll find people do that. Unfortunately, there's no way to say anything about durability or reliability at this point. I have to say I like the Campy shifting better than Shimano. It's nice to have a brake lever that doesn't move sideways, speaking as an old-timer I never gotten used to that.

Even though the shifting is Campy-style the appearance is more Shimano-esque. The brake cables are hidden, but not the shifting cables. The pull ratio is 2:1 (Shimano) so the brifters should work. I don't know if Campy is different, but something deep inside tells me that Campy buyers won't be interested.

Tabata!

The latest craze, or maybe it's "so last summer" and I'm behind the curve again? This method is just so...me! My background and education is all science and engineering and Tabata is a real doctor who did actual repeatable studies with the goal of evaluating methods to increase both aerobic and anaerobic efficiency. On top of that, it takes far less time to do and appears to simultaneously increase muscle mass and make you leaner. Magic!

OK, first the protocol. Warm up, some sites say five minutes but I ride for at least 30 minutes prior to interval work. Then do 20 seconds peak effort followed by 10 seconds of rest (I still spin my legs, but with zero effort) eight cycles in a row. Done in four minutes. Of course a cool down is required afterward. Tabata did his research based on five sets (total 20 minutes) per week. One of the problems with the web is that googling "Tabata Intervals" should bring up something like the abstract of the good doctor's publication. Instead, it's just blogs and exercise equipment (Tabata timer only $20!) sites that pop up. Oddly, Wikipedia was no help. Anyway, the reason for the above digression is that I can't figure out if that's one set on each of five days, or say two sets followed by two rest days or whatever.

Since the web seems to think this is the greatest thing since sliced bread, I naturally looked for a naysayer. I found a differing opinion here, which notes several downsides including "Interferes with Resistance Training", "Injury" and (my personal favorite) "Cardiac Event"! This didn't deter me. My son is away at college, my life insurance is paid up, the economy is in the crapper and my job sucks. So, why not try something new and potentially fatal? You might want to consult a physician before trying this. So I've replaced a couple of my anarobic intervals with these and dicovered a few things:

1. Twenty seconds is a long time
2. Ten seconds is a short time
3. Recovery is a mysterious thing
4. I'm not dead yet
   

Let me explain. After three or four cycles (ie only two minutes into it I'd look down and simply not believe that either (a) I still had seven seconds to go on an effort or (b) another one already? The first time I did a set I felt drained. Then after twenty minutes of recovery I began to be aware of my breathing. It felt like my lungs were really having a good time, exchanging that oxygen, sending energy to the muscles. The next time I went into the session already a little gassed from riding Como the previous weekend and slogging through a long week. The next day I had that "beaten with a stick" feeling that brought on an unscheduled recovery day. Bear in mind that I still did a 6x2minute (3min recovery) set 10% above LT power after, so blame could lie with that.

In summary, there are some issues. My feeling is that you can't possibly do these five days of the week. This means stacking two or three days. I'm going to try attacking from another angle and I'll let you know (provided I survive). I find that the limiter to completion of a second set on a given day is specific muscle fatigue. There's no reason why this can't be done with pushups and I'll give that a go to supplement the cycling intervals. Another problem lies in volume. I've managed to buttress my fitness with lots of tempo riding from September through early December. This would be eroded by the huge cut in volume resulting from "interval fatigue". I think I'm going to take a chance on high intensity, low volume training. By doing three weeks on and then a week of low intensity, high volume (AKA enjoyable bicycling) maybe I can race and enjoy life.

A Sprint, Followed by a Time Trial

XC mountain bike racing sounds like fun. Why not try? There are races practically year-round nearby so it makes a nice off-season training event. There was a series of three races this Fall known as the "SoCal Triple Crown Challenge". I thought I'd be sandbagging as a beginner, since I'd done lots of road racing and felt I was quite fit. Turns out sandbagging is the norm, the guy who won the series had over twenty MTB races under his belt and handed me my ass two out of three times. It made me wonder if there was any order in NORBA, but I suspect that mountain bikers generally are not big on rules - which makes sense. It's an odd undertaking, and the MTB crowd is more focussed on things like fun and adventure over results or racking up mileage. This is a good thing.

Since I've found that I'm not good at working on blog posts over a period of time (usually I just forget I started writing) I'll break down the races in other entries. Here are some general observations:

• The groups I started with ranged in size from seven to over a hundred. The promoters would decide between starting all Beginners (now Cat 3) together or dividing them by age category as well. Can't say I had a preference, but I did best when we all went from the gate together. My crit training came in handy, it could be some competitors were a mite nervous elbow-to-elbow going full blast.
• As a practical matter, these are time trials. You finish in a chute and I worried that things would get a little testy going into the last 400m or so. This never happened to me, even while trying to hold on to second place in the points series with the guy in third 20 meters behind in the last race.
• Skill and prep count big-time. In my first race I fell down fairly hard once and threw a chain getting third. Stayed upright for the entire race second time out and won it. Then got tangled up multiple times on the last and most difficult course, barely holding fourth. It's really hard to go downhill either chasing or being chased.
• Lots of waiting around. After a crit I would cool off for twenty minutes, go to the car and have a snack and then have a look at results. Since the MTB promoters are posting everyone's time for the course, things just take longer. Count on having lunch (or brunch) post race and hanging out with friends for over an hour or two.

Double Fun

I was remiss in not reporting my impressions of the Eastern Sierra Double Century, a Planet Ultra product. It was like riding a hard century. Then an easy one, with lunch in between. All of this with generally beautiful scenery throughout, something that the Mammoth area pretty much guarantees. Describing any double century as "easy" would be a little weird, since my butt hurt for about 130 miles of it. Luckily, the pain didn't get any worse after about mile 90, although it worried me. I used Descente Strata shorts and lots of Assos chamois creme and still got some chafing. I think bibs would have been better, since the chafing was not really in the crotch so much as toward the outer edge of the chamois in the back. I've now invested in the bib version of these shorts to minimize chafing by limiting movement of the chamois relative to my body.

The link in the first line of this blog entry points to a complete description of the ride, so I'll assume the reader knows how to use this interweb thingie and I'll just give some impressions:

• $80 is a lot of money for a ride. On the other hand, a $40 century isn't considered unreasonable these days and it's not like there's any economy of scale. Planet Ultra is clearly a business, and that has its pluses and minuses.
• The rest stops (known as "checkpoints" in planet ultra lingo) were well stocked with provisions and workers. The food I needed to carry at the start was enough calories to get me to the first rest stop at around the 30 mile mark. Lunch at Mono Lake was sumptuous and well placed at the 110 mile mark. This ride featured "Bonkbreaker" energy bars - well cubes really they are very compact and tasty.
• Regarding shorts, since I am posting this way after the fact I can now report that I've found the right ones for me. As you probably know this varies from person to person, but for me it's the Pearl Izumi's with the Pro 3D pad in bib form from now on, or until PI changes the design (sigh!). Just FYI the most experienced riders tend to use use Assos.
• I hadn't ridden over 90 miles on a single day for the previous six months. My training averaged about fourteen hours per week, with a lot of interval work. I did make a point of doing two 90 mile rides with 10,000' of climbing at altitude in the month prior to the event though. My wife says Lon Haldemann told her that "If you can go hard, you can go long" so do yourself a favor and include some high-intensity work while training.

Sorry, Francois

Okay, if I'm going to blog I need to do it daily. I let things slip and missed a comment from I nice person named Francois inre the Polar iRDA interface. The answer is I never even suspected the CS600 would work with the old interface so I didn't even try at the time. Polar is a very frustrating company. They tease you. First they offer power monitoring for about half the price of any real competitor (notwithstanding the latest from iBike, I'll believe it when I see it) but then you find the IR interface is an extra $50. The installation involves wanting to grow an additional appendage and then it drops out seemingly at random during use. When this happens I stop and move the pickup unit a couple of millimeters (really!) and we're back online. The AAA batteries in the power unit seem to last a random amount of time, sometimes as little as 60 hours (vs the published 300 or so). But then they include some cool software which does almost everything you want.
In spite of all this I found myself defending the Polar in a class my coach was giving on using power measurement to reach training goals. In his opinion the Polar was marginal. This was based on the fact that most of his clients who tried the Polar later switched to the more expensive PowerTap or SRM and I was the only person who made the Polar work consistently. He related that there were numerous complaints about the PowerTap, especially the wired one. It appeared the SRM was pretty trouble free, but that may be due to the maintenance being handled by team mechanics or household servants.
I guess everyone lives somewhere on the "Frustration-Money Curve". The more money you have, the less frustraion you need to bear up with (unless acquiring the money is frustrating - which brings up a different discussion). For me, there were two sound reasons that the other systems seemed crazy. First, you could buy an additional bike for the price of either one. Second, hubs and cranks wear out - I like the "no moving parts" feature.

Ya Pays Yer Money

I recently was offered a deal on a Specialized Tarmac Pro frame at a cost "too low to print". Seriously, bike shop owners would hunt down the distributor making this offer to some local racers. Below dealer cost. I thought long and hard, decided I was going to do it and then added up all the attendant expenses and backed out. It wasn't that the frame isn't worth it in some sense, but that the word "worth" is what's up for grabs here. In the end I didn't want to be riding something I'll cry about when I lay it down.
Further proving my cheapness, I'm going to experiment with Microshift shifter/deraileur system. I also got a Shimano R700 crank (supposedly DA quality) for cheap. My wife has Shimano 10sp equipment already and an extra cassette from an upgrade so this conversion is going to be under $350. So expect an installation review in a week or so.