Originally Posted by
CrimsonKarter21
My first bike that was all mine. 1987 Cannondale Criterium. Very stiff, very fast, very twitchy. I had the chance to race this bike in the local crit last season. I finished top-10 and it got tons of second looks. It was like death with the training tires and brindled headset, but it was very fun. I got to show off to the other guys how to shift downtube levers in a sprint.
I grabbed a field sprint for 5th and a 3rd place on a bike with downtube shifters at a local crit series this summer. It was all I had in town (I was living in an apartment with literally no furniture, sleeping on a Thermarest, really roughing it). Put down some good, hard jumps and attacks on that bike, too. Yeah, my Rival-equipped race bike is a hell of a lot better, but you can still give some hurt with DT shifters and a 6-speed cassette. Yeah, and Biopace rings.
Honestly, I don't shift a hell of a lot when sprinting out of the saddle on E5, either. Maybe one or two, more than that means a long sprint, so I'm either seated and spinning hard during the run-up, final meters or both, or seated and spent. Long sprints aren't my thing; get up to speed in the wheels, shift, jump, shift again, that's about it usually.
/hijack