My regular bike, Specialized Stumpjumper Marathon 29er, is in the shop because of my lacking a front brake, but I still wanted to get my Wednesday ride in with my buddy who happens to ride with me, so there he is, on his C’Dale road bike, kind of setup racing style. And me on my Specialized Hardrock Comp from 2002, which I converted to a single speed.
Let’s just say riding an SS mountain bike with a roadie, is not the most easy thing todo! We went 10 miles, averaging around 10.5 mph (still working on figuring out my T6c! Too complicated!) in a temperature of around 50F if not below that.
The gearing on my bike is 32:16 for those who knows what that means. So my cadence is hillarious when it comes time to pick up some speed, which I did manage to max out at 23 mph on that bike, but I think my cadence was around 50,000 rpm to reach that though!
The SS needs some TLC, the chain is rusty, the brakes, are … Yeah not so much there, the tires probably need new tubes (I think those tubes in there are 2-3 years old.) But she’s a good bike that is always ready for action. So this weekend I think I will give her the once over and make her shiny and proud again!
As for the Marathon, she’s coming home from the shop tomorrow. I asked about getting bigger chain rings, and it’s possible. But that is something that I will wait on doing until after I get my road bike, as I will need to make sure I have that covered first, before upgrading it. Looks like I will be going from 22/32/44 to 22/38or40?/48. A friend also gave me the suggestion of swapping out the cassette to change up some gearing which might be cheaper. We shall see!
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