velodrome track race - kissena queens new york

Friday, January 09, 2009

Spring is not here... (yet)

But it's coming soon. One thing about winter riding is that the roads often contain hidden surprises.

Starting in November I installed a set of Ritchey's tom slick "fortress" tires. I don't know if these are still made or not, but they're pretty tough. For example, I pulled this metal shard out of the tire and the innertube was undamaged.

The Ritchey is even tougher than the Continental all season or gatorskin tires.

3 comments:

No One Line said...

badass tires!

i am getting extremely antsy about the fact that it's winter and not spring.

i'm wondering what those early-season races will be like. apparently the feb 28th race is 14 miles for cat 5. i need to get some races out of the way to upgrade - quick.

-mattio

40x14 said...

Hey Mattio, the new blog looks good.

You still don't have 10 races? Oh, right... alleycats don't count...

Race smart and you'll do fine. Certainly don't follow anyone who can't hold their line.

No One Line said...

Ha, I wish alleycats counted. I'm a Cat 3 alleycat racer with only a few points left till I upgrade! I should have done more road races last year but I didn't have the foresight to think that I might like road racing enough to not want to start out in the 5s this year. oh well. I'm actually not too worried about squirrelliness in the Cat 5's - I think internet banter calling them the "Crash 5's" kind of sounds like high school sophomores making fun of freshmen. Of course we'll see how Feb 28th is. Worst comes to worst I just chill behind Al until the sprint.