Broken WTB Titanium Rocket V Saddle

My WTB Rocket V came apart on a recent ride. The weird thing is it wasn't a crash; I was riding on rolling singletrack when it separated from the rails. You can see from the photo that the plastic cracked at this nose. I bought the seat used on ebay and the seller said it was only a few years old. I did have a one minor crash on this seat but I crashed the hell out of my WTB Pure V and it never had problems. I always thought the saddles were something that would last just about forever, assuming no catastrophic crashes. I contacted WTB and they said it's not repairable. This is disappointing because the titanium rail is in perfect shape. It seems the rail is heat molded into the plastic on the saddle, so there's no way to repair it. I read on mtbr forums that some have been able to coerce a rail into a seat but it takes exceptional hand/arm strength.

Hydration Drink Mixes Price Per Pound

I've tried a several sport drink/hydration mixes at varying prices and wondered if you really get what you pay for. The lowest cost mix that I know of is good ole Gatorade. I've found the lemon-lime at Costco for around $7 for a giant container -- I think it was 6lbs. I don't care for lemon-lime so this just wasn't palatable at any price. I can get the orange flavor at Target for $4.44 for 1.125 pounds. This is quite affordable a $3.95 per lb and I find the orange flavor quite tasty. Ingredients include:

sucrose, dextrose, citric acid, salt, sodium citrate, monopotassium phosphate, natural flavor, modified food starch, calcium silicate, yellow 6

Fortunately it does not have high fructose corn syrup as most cheap drinks do. It does not contain magnesium and I could do without the artificial color.

Last year I decided to try Cliff Shot Electrolyte. This sells for about $18 on Amazon for 2 lbs, so $9 per pound. I got the cran-razz and found it to be the tastiest of the drink mixes I evaluated. The Cliff product labels itself as organic. The Cliff Shot ingredients include:

organic brown rice syrup, organic dried cane syrup, citric acid, salt, natural flavors, beet powder, dipotassium phosphate, dicalcium phosphate, magnesium oxide and green tea extract.

The last mix I tried was Scratch Labs. This is a local company and the ingredients are all natural, so I thought I'd give it a chance. At $19 per pound it's by far the most expensive mix around. It's not as sweet as the others but of course sweetness can be controlled by just adding more mix. The orange flavor was decent. The ingredients include:

sucrose, glucose, sodium citrate, citric acid, oranges, magnesium citrate, calcium citrate, potassium citrate, and ascorbic acid.

Interestingly, the main ingredients in both Gatorade and Skratch Labs are essentially the same (Dextrose is Glucose according to Wikipedia). I suppose I could add magnesium citrate to gatorade and get any missing benefits. Oddly enough this ingredient is best known as a laxative

In conclusion, I didn't feel like a performed any better with the more expensive drinks, so I'll be sticking with Gatorade for the near future and saving money.

In preparation for a ride I usually drink about 16-24 ounces about 30 minutes prior to a ride. Then I bring another 8 ounces or so in a water bottle, in a concentrated form. Then I put water in my Camelback. For long rides I'll put Gatorade in the Camelback but it's a pain since if any sugar is not rinsed out it starts to grow mold.

Strava GPX import from MyTracks

Occaisionally Strava crashes and loses data for a ride, so as a backup I typically record with both MyTracks and Strava. To import into Strava you just make an export of MyTracks as GPX. The default export to drive uses the KML format, but Strava needs GPX. So, to get GPX you must choose the export to external storage to get the file type option. Then you can email to yourself. Then just upload the GPX file to Strava at http://app.strava.com/upload/select_new

Sole Footbeds

I bought a pair of Sole footbeds last summer after I got painful plantar fasciitis, which lasted about a week and best I can tell was from excessive calf raises (one of my other experiments). I choose the Sole over Superfeet since they can be heat molded to your foot. Sole has a satisfaction guarantee too which is nice. Not sure about Superfeet. The shop where I bought them cut them to for my Sidis and put them in the oven for molding, all at no charge. They screwed them up several times, first cutting them too short, then too long, so they rippled in the shoe. But two pairs later they finally got them right, sort of. The footbeds reduce the volume in the shoe and in my case I almost needed to move up a shoe size. Lately, the left footbed is pushing hard on my arch, such that is uncomfortable. I examined both footbeds and the left has a higher arch. I have no idea why it's just a problem now. Anyway I'm going to try to reheat them (200F for 2 minutes) and get the arch lower. If not I'll try the Superfeet.

Rival Compact Crankset

The road bike I bought used a few years ago came with a 53/39 Rival crankset and a 11-26T cassette. I never had the engine to get up some of the steeper grades (up to 16%) in the front range effectively with this setup. I was always looking to shift into a lower gear. The 53/39 Rival is 130 BCD, so you can't simply put smaller rings on them. I found a compact Rival on ebay for only $85, essentially new. The compact is 50/34T, so it changes the max low gear quite a bit. Previously my low gear ratio was 39/26, or 1.5 and now it's 1.3, so a 13% improvement. I could go up to 28T cassette to reduce the ratio by 7%. That's the maximum cog a short cage will accomodate. A medium cage supports a 32 cog, but that would be a bit ridiculous on a road bike. Now I can get up the steep grades much better and I don't lose too much on the top end.

Cleat Woes

I never pay much attention to my cleats. I always carry a few spare bolts since the time I lost a bolt on a ride and the cleat wouldn't disengage. Recently I started to feel soreness in my left foot and decided to experiment with moving the cleat position. I look at the cleats and realized the cleat bolts appear to be rounded out.

I spends the next 10 minutes digging out sand mud and whatever else out of the bolts. I try to loosen it and the hex key slips. Now I'm starting to sweat, imaging having to drill the bolts out of my Sidis. I sprayed some silicone on the bolts and things got better from here on. The bolts were very tight, at the verge of rounding out, but eventually they gave way. No surprise that they were completely rusted.

I decided this was a good time for new cleats an bolts. I had new Candy and Eggbeater cleats from previous purchases. The Candy cleat is a bit beefier and is what I ride on most so opted to install those.

Candy cleat left, Eggbeater right

I installed the dotted cleat goes on the right shoe for the 15 degree disengagement. About 6 years ago I spent a few hours riding in Moab and falling on my side until it was black and blue as I couldn't get out of the pedals. I later realized the cleats were on the 20 degree setting and my ankles don't like to twist that much.

Oh yeah, and I greased the bolts this time per the instructions. I didn't have a torque wrench that goes as low as 5 NM so I had to guess on tightness.

Update Second ride and both cleats almost came off near the end of a ride. Perhaps a torque wrench is what's need but in lieu of not having one I'm going to try anti-seize on the threads instead of grease. I miss my rusted bolts already.

PowerLink Hell

I love the idea of the SRAM PowerLink but I find removing them to be a nightmare. I've talked to other riders who say the same. I refuse to drop $15 on the park tool, so I started to think about techniques to remove the link. First I started with a wire hangar. This worked once or twice but the last time it just kept bending the wire and the link wouldn't budge. Some time later when replacing my shifter cables, I found myself staring at the old cable. I started to think the cable might work. I threaded it through the PowerLink and pulled the cable ends tight and the PowerLink popped right off. The last time I removed the chain it was a bit more difficult -- it took two vice grips to pop the link. Perhaps there is a better method but this works for now and I'm $15 richer.