Jarery

So....there I was contemplating a new road bike. Also, my cycling friends and I wanting to do our first brevet, the flatlander 200. Our usual sunday group rides are about 80k, so this was our first foray into the uncharted waters of randonneuring. My current bike is my cross commuter, but its beginning to make a lot of noise, and its heavy, and im already the slowest in our group.........(shhhh, im justifying the purchase to myself)

So i decide to finally buy my second bike, one that is only for nice weather fun rides, while my previously ‘only’ bike gets relegated as my commuter/rain/bad weather bike.

The brevet is on sunday, i try to get my bike on friday so i can ride it some and break it in a bit. That goes to crap due to real life interfering. So then its saturday. They build it up, different wheelset, different crank, etc. Finally a couple hours before closing, its finished and ready.....Till they check the paperwork and find out it wasn’t really a medium, it was a small but mislabeled...........Off to the warehouse to find the medium, shop closes at 5, the owner stays late...8:30pm the bike is done as i roll it out to my car.

New bike, new shoes, new saddle. ZERO miles on any of them. (this is gonna hurt)

So a short few hours later its 6:50 am and were running late as we arrive at the start. We need paperwork, have to become members first, then pay the yearly fee, then pay the event fee. 7:00 arrives and off everyone goes. Were still filling out paperwork. Then they examine our bikes....and we have no lights, (didnt read the rules quite close enough). So after 20 min of running around we scrounge up enough lights to qualify, although now its 7:30 and the sun is fully up

So 30 minutes behind we roll out. And in honor of its namesake as being the flatlander 200, we got our first flat. 10 km later we get our second flat, 2 miles later we get our third flat, this time a sidewall rip. 20 min later and $20 bill as a patch were on the road again. By now were well over an hour behind everyone. But we pedaled like crazy and made up most of the time, and finished in the front half of the pack.

Was awesome weather, a beautiful sunny day, thru a picturesque landscape, and finished the rest of the ride without a flat.....almost.....got another between the finish and my car.
Bike was awesome, shoes were the most comfortable i’ve worn, my feet felt great, even my butt felt great after 8 hours on a brand new saddle.

So my first 200k brevet is under my belt. Cycle computer said it was a 31 kph hour avg which i think was pretty decent for a first time at that distance. (yes i know its not a race) Next time were bringing more tubes, more patches, and practicing our flat repair Oh and taking a camera next time also.

Extort

Nice job!

If you keep this up everything that you bought new will be fully broken in after another couple rides and you will be completely addicted.

DogBoy

So your JTS is heavy? If you take the rack/fenders off and put on a lighter wheelset its basically the same as a road bike...at least my JTS and road bike are similar in weight after slight modification to the JTS. This being the case, I still think your purchase of a road bike was wise since you don't want to have to take off your rack/fenders every time you do an event, and in your case moreso since I don't think they make higher end road wheels with disc tabs on the front hub.

Nice job on the ride. 19 mph is pretty quick. If you are the slowest in your group, you must ride with pretty fast riders.

Jarery

Well....my JTS is light when its stripped bare. Add a bombproof heavy wheelset, armadillo 28's, full fenders, mudflaps, racks, pumps. lights, disc brakes, etc, etc. it adds up. A lot of it I used to remove every weekend, but that was a hassle and time consuming, and it still never got down to 16 lbs

So im going to continue to claim my old bike was heavy in order to justify buying my new toy

DogBoy

If you must...I just really like my JTS and find it odd when someone refers to it as being "heavy."

oboeguy

Bring a $1 bill next time too. A twenty for a boot? Nuts! FYI, a folded Powerbar wrapper makes a great tire boot too. You didn't mention what sort of road bike you got...

Oh, and nice job!

Jarery

HAHA ! Ya the $20 went into our resident females tire, it was her second flat in 10 min, we said "when you get your third, theres your cab fair home "

And the bike I purchased was a scott cr1. Pretty comfy frame for that length, although most likely a tad too aggressive for longer brevets.......i may have to justify a third bike