I obviously travel a ton and ride with a lot of different people throughout the year. It continually amazes me how nice of equipment that people ride in other parts of the country. Not that in Kansas, the guys I ride with ride shit, but they aren’t training on carbon clinchers, etc.

I’ve been riding some Hutchinson Intense tubeless tires on Shimano clincher wheels and let me tell you, they aren’t up to what everyone raves about.

First of all, they are labeled as 25mm, but they don’t have the volume or height of a 25mm tire. They look and ride more like a 23.

2nd, they ride like solid rubber. Even at 80 psi, they are harsh. Descending the crummy roads off Mt. Soladad in La Jolla, they sent such a shock to my handlebars, it made controlling the bike very unpleasant.

The one advantage this new tubeless setup has going for it is that it does reduce having punctures. I’ll give them that. But the horrible ride quality offsets any advantage of less flats.

I have been riding with a bunch of people that are training on carbon clinchers. I don’t get it. They weigh just about the same as aluminum ones, but cost a ton more and you have the carbon braking issue. Plus, they have to wear out a ton quicker than scandium or aluminum rims.

So these guys are riding expensive carbon clincher wheels with expensive tubeless clinchers. It doesn’t make sense.

If you’re going to all this trouble and expense, I’d suggest you just ride carbon tubular wheels with Vittoria CX sewup tires. This is the best setup that you can have on a road bicycle at the present time. The lightest wheels with the best handling tires.

If you used just a small amount of sealant in the tires, I’d bet most people could get half a season out of a tire. You can buy the Vittoria at Wiggle.com for less than $50 with free shipping. That is a 1000 times better deal than an Hutchinson Intensive for $70.

Anyway, I’m considering going back to tubualar tires for training. Especially in the mountains. The clincher tires do not handle anywhere near as well as a tubular and they aremuch more dangerous, if you flat, when you’re descending fast or cornering.

Yesterday Bill and I were going out for a shortish ride through South Austin. We’d ridden across the MOPAC pedestrian bridge and then were heading out south on the frontage road beside MOPAC, when ahead we saw a huge dust cloud. As we approached it, it became apparent that is wasn’t just dirt. I should of made a quick decision and just turned around. But, I glanced over my shoulder and there wasn’t a car coming from behind, so we just kept riding.

At the bottom of this hill there was a big pile of cement, not concrete, but just dry cement. I have no idea how it got there. It would have been dozens of bags of Quickcrete. We rode by the pile and got a hundred meters up the hill by the time the first car drove by. Looking over my shoulder, there was a huge plume of airborne toxic dust.

Dry, unused cement/concrete is really not something good to breathe. The way cement works is when you add water, a chemical reaction occurs, by hydration, and a lot of different things occur. Lots of different chemical reactions occur and heat is produced as a by-product. When you breathe dry dust into your lungs, this hydration process starts because you’ve added the water. I’ve had the pleasure of having the experience a few times and it plays havoc on my lungs and throat. It was not different this time.

The first time I had any experience with this was when I was racing MTB bikes for Specialized back in the mid-90′s. We were racing the World Cup in Hoffalize Belgium. I was doing the qualifying race the day before the World Cup and they were rebuilding the cobble main street in the morning. The construction workers were spreading a dry cement mixture on the cobbles and then they were just spraying a little water and using a squeegee to spread the mixture and get it between the cobbles.

Anyway, there was a lot of dry cement dust that hadn’t contacted water, thus was ripe to react with our lungs. 150 of us started out and it was a complete whiteout of cement dust. Nearly instantly I couldn’t breathe. My throat was toast. I don’t think that any of us that road that first qualifying race had a result the next day at the World Cup. All of us were ill from breathing the cement.

I’ve had the same experience laying tile. When I get lazy and don’t wear a mix when I mix the thinset, mamy times I get the throat burn. Usually doing this, I end up with strep throat, having to antibiotics.

Back to yesterday. I’m not sure how much cement dust Bill and I actually took in. We were pretty far past the pile before the first can came by and the wind was blowing from the west, so it was blowing away from us as the cars passed. But the road was dusty for a long time, maybe half a mile.

My throat felt pretty bad all ride and then this morning isn’t good either. I should of done a sinus wash right when I got back, but didn’t think about it.

I hope this isn’t the start of something bad. I know I’m very much on the edge and have trying to be very careful and stay well. I guess time will tell.

Click to enlarge.

I was sort of perusing the internet and came upon this headline story over at Velonews.com about “When you should replace skewers?” The headline grabbed my interest because I’d never heard of anyone replacing a quick release skewer for any reason other than scrapping it flat from falling on it.

So, I click on the link to the story and Lennard Zinn is answering a question from a reader about when to replace skewer. Lennard proceeds to answer the question with 6 different replies from skewer manufactures.

I personally know a few of the guys that answered and they all said that they had never heard of a situation where a quick release skewer failed and there really wasn’t/isn’t a test to check for fatigue.

I don’t get it, an article about a subject that does worry some people new to the sport, portraying that there might be an actual issue there, but there isn’t.

They might as well wrote an article about if Cancellara was using mice to power his bicycle or would it be good to use maple syrup to lubricate your chain.

I think Lennard should of just answered the question, since he already knew the answer, or maybe after he contacted the manufactures and got their responses, just said, “Hey, I contacted about everyone I know in the industry and you don’t have to worry about your quick releases failing, they don’t.”

I think there were plenty of cool technical innovation to bikes at the Paris-Roubaix last Sunday. Maybe Fabian’s bike could have been the headline story, not a failing quick release scare headline.

It sort of irked me that they used a attention grabbing headline, of a non-issue, to attract readership. It didn’t deserve to be the led story of the website Velonews.com.

Lance shows you how to use a quick release in this video.

Okay, this the last post on the MS150. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised how much fun I had the last couple days. It was a refreshing reminder about how vast our sport is and how many facets it has. Those people that sat on the bikes for over 10 hours to ride 80 miles, man, I have to give them credit. It was hot and windy the first day, then just muggy and windy the 2nd.

I was so impressed by the infrastructure that the tour had. I can’t believe how many SAG wagons, EMT guys riding, police (100′s of police) and all the other volunteers that made it possible for 13000 people to ride from Houston to Austin. And the cones. One lane was blocked off in Austin the last 6 miles. And there was a police officer at every intersection. It was a big organizational task.

We started off from the ranch we stayed at at around 7 am. We had to ride 12 miles to the start and by the time we got there, the roads were pretty much line to line riders. It was nearly impossible to ride side by side. So, I went to the front and pulled for the first 5-10 miles. We were going along at a pretty good clip, somewhere close to 25. We had a pretty good line of guys riding behind us.

I love the vernacular that a tour type rider uses. The announce when they are starting off by saying “rolling”. Of course, the ever present, “stopping”. Lots of people would say something was we went by about announcing our passing. One guys said, “Hey, sing out when your passing riders.” Oh, sure. I would be riding along, saying over and over, like 6000 times, “Passing on your left”. We could ride in the left lane a fair amount of the time, the road was virtually closed. Towards Austin, it started thinning out, but the cones made the bike lane super narrow, so it was hard passing.

The last 20 miles, we started just pulling a mile each. So, one mile in the front and 3 miles off. We kept up a pretty good speed. We got to Austin a little before 11 am. I think our average was around 22 mph, but the first hour, riding to the start it was only 15, so we were going a bit faster than that. It was Brian’s birthday yesterday, so we had a beer to celebrate. I kept going and rode another 20 miles to get over 100 for the day. I had to ride back to Ann’s house anyway, I just took the long route.

I had a little over 500 miles for the week, with one day of no riding and one day of 13 miles, so the other 5, were pretty big. Four days over 100, which isn’t normal for me recently.

I was going to have to get up super early to drive all day up to Kansas City this morning to pick Trudi up after Paris-Roubaix, but I just got her a ticket from Kansas City to Austin this evening, so she has to travel another couple hours, but it’s easier. She needs a little down time and hanging in Austin is pretty enjoyable down time. It is supposed to maybe snow in Kansas today anyway, so the weather isn’t so good. It’s raining right now here in Austin, but is supposed to clear up early afternoon.

I need to go and find a great breakfast place now, that is if Bill every wakes up. He’s staying too and he can sleep.

Here are some photos from yesterday.