Mike Jandreau

Writer.Musician. MovieSnob. Web Guy.

I did my longer route today (almost 20 miles on the new bike). Out of the 8 segments on the ride, I PR’d 6 of them and missed the other 2 by 6 seconds and 3 seconds. So close!

Here’s my ride:

versus my last ride on the mountain bike

Cut a bunch of time, went a bunch faster and feel a lot better.

So my last ride, as we know, took me through Callahan State Park and down a big ass hill, which caused me to break my back brake (say that 5 times fast!).

The cost of the repair, plus a tune up to fix some issue I was having with the gearing on my old bike was about 40% the cost of a new (road) bike, so I bit the bullet yesterday and bought a new bike, even though the Schwinn mountain bike is less than a year old. It’s my fault, really. I bought the wrong bike for the type of riding I ended up doing.

Here’s the old bike, a Schwinn Protocol 1.0 (stock photo):

Here’s the new bike, a Trek Domane ALR 4 (stock photo):

The ride was a little rougher on the new bike, which is expected since it doesn’t have as many shocks on it as the mountain bike (for obvious reasons). The seat is a little harder than I’d like (I think I just need some better bike shorts). But man the ride is so much better, so much faster, so much smoother. The gears are making a little bit of a grinding sound when I go into a lower gear, so I’ll bring it back into the shop for them to take a look.

The thing I’m happiest about – aside from my improved times – is that there’s no numbness in my hands or fingers. With the Schwinn, my right hand – specifically the tip of my right ring finger – would fall asleep when riding. Presumably, because I was postured funny or hitting a nerve in some weird way. Though I did a shorter ride that I have been doing to test it out, there’s no numbness at all.

Here’s the activity feed from Strava for my ride this morning:

And here’s the same route the last time I rode it on my Schwinn:

Comparing just the overall times, I shaved 20% on the total time.

And, according to Strava’s in-depth analysis, I set a PR (Personal Record) for every segment (a small part of the overall route) on this ride:

I’m so beyond thrilled with my test ride this morning and can’t wait for the next ride!

Apparently, my route planner thought it’d be fun to take me into a state park, through ankle deep mud, up a hill that was way too steep to ride, and then down a hill so steep and full of rocks that I broke my rear brake trying to stop.

So, I’ve modified that route to not go through the state park. The rest of it wasn’t terrible, so I’ll keep it.

So many caterpillars hanging from trees this time of year. I spent so much time dodging, ducking, dipping, diving and dodging so they didn’t hit me in the face.