actually, yes, I do have an enormous crank

In case you live in DC and also in a cave, the weather was gorgeous here this weekend.  After a Saturday morning of GF pancakes (SO FLUFFY!) and dithering, I ended up doing a big pile of hills in Maryland with some friends.  I've spent lots of time on the trainer on my QR, and I've done a few short workouts at Hains Point (flat and windy and no cars to kill you), but I've never done any more climbing than the teeny tiny bumps on the MV trail near the airport.  So I decided Saturday morning, I'd ride the QR.  I have to get outside at some point...

The first part of the ride was pretty flat, but once we hit even the smallest hill, my ass got dropped.  I spent most of the first few climbs cursing my serious lack of bike fitness, but as the ride went on and I got warmed up, I started to realize that it wasn't all fitness, but that I was running out of gears a lot sooner than I was used to on my roadie (so maybe 98% I have no fitness, 2% WTF bike).  When we stopped for calories and self-portaits that look like every other picture posted on this blog, I checked out the road bikes my buddies were riding and realized that they had a lot more easy gears than I did.  

I figured out pretty quickly that they would notice if I tried to steal their big plates mid-ride and voted for the "least hilly" option to finish out the day.  When I got home and whined to my coach about it, she made me go count all the teeth on my crazy bike and report back.  

As it turns out, my road bike has "compact" gearing (not as many teeth) and a medium-length crank, and my QR has "really huge and bad for climbing" gearing (lots of teeth) and an extra-large crank.  If you know anything about cycling, which I apparently do not, my roadie has 11-28 on the back, a 50/39 on the front and a 170.  My QR has 11-23 on the back, a 53/47 (?) on the front and a 172.5.  And it all needs to go, because I'm a short & squat hill-climbing madwoman that needs to get through an ironman (did you forget?).  I have no idea how to go about changing all of the crap around but I'm going to be in the bike shop flirting this weekend trying to figure it all out.


All that aside, I had a really brilliant day riding my TT other than mashing the crap out of my knees.  It was sunny and breezy and I was riding outside with friends, which always makes the top ten list.  I managed to drink from my water bottle without swerving too far into oncoming traffic, and I spent a significant amount of time in aero with very little side effects, other than my super-duper extra-crabby shoulder.  And the bike is so much sex.  I can tell how much lighter it is than my roadie and when I drop into aero, everything just gets fast and easy and smooth.   Which makes me feel better about getting dropped by this wench on her TT all summer long.


How was your weekend?  Did you get out and enjoy the sunshine?  How many times have you posted on twitter that it's snowing right now?