As always, great advice @WattsUp! And, yes, I agree with you regarding making decisions regarding gear 10-12 hours in. I ran the Lauf fork by someone as a solution, and he said it was “unnecessary” - in most circumstances, I would likely agree. However, after feeling the resulting head-pounding from the track after 4+ hours, I feel like I might have some fairly good anecdotal data amassed on this, so I’d call the Lauf fork very pricey as compared to reducing tire pressure, but if the tire pressure solution doesn’t work, then the Lauf may in fact be necessary ; )
I’m heading to my fitter / local bike shop tomorrow, and will see what they say. I agree with you that the track bike might be a limiter, but I haven’t even gotten to cadence being an issue - that will likely come at the 10-12 hour mark ; )
My current plan is as follows…
a) add some spacers to the bars to have a less aero position (I think there are a couple of spacers left in the original box… online seems to be sold out, but I’ve tried to source some to raise the bars even higher - we’ll see if those work when they arrive). I have a hunch that will help my head and neck issues, and…
b) try to find some tubeless wheels and get some wider tires (to the extent my track bike allows for that) and drop the pressure to 50-60 PSI to see if that helps
If the tire clearance is the limiter, I may switch from the Fuji Track Elite frameset to my Surly Steamroller, which fits 38 inch tires (per Surly’s website) and has the added advantage of having a water bottle cage. Admittedly, that still puts me in the track category, but with a steel stretched out frame. Will see what the fitter says.
My big push is to get this solved (or more solved) before my long ride on Sept 9th. If that ride doesn’t work out, I’ll have to figure out some other solutions.
Here is my $0.02 for what it is worth. Comfort is everything. Nothing kills average speed like the 0’s that come from time off the bike. With that said:
Go for tyres as big as you can AND run a tyre pressure calculator to see what to run them at. Silca has a good one, SRAM’s is better but rather complex.
raising the ski’s will help but switching to drop bars won’t really.
having a back up road bike is a must - from all of the ultra track records I have seen, almost all of them have finished on a road going bike (TT or road) but with gears. Change in position even just for part of the time will make things easier.
set a nutrition target and have one of your support team monitoring compliance.
@Kicikacsa Would love to hear about the “ultra track records” that you have seen. : ) Also, I’m interested to hear more about their strategy of switching up bikes!
@WattsUp and @Kicikacsa Thanks so much for your advice. I really like the look of my Fuji Elite and the nice deep section / disc wheels. It looks fast with those Vision bars. However, in reality, it isn’t comfortable over a long distance if my head is bumping around and pounding as a result. You both gave me great advice last time around, and as such I’m throwing out vanity. So, here’s what I worked out at my local bike shop today…
Switch from my Fuji Elite to Surly Steamroller. Advantages include: steel frame, more relaxed fit, ability to fit much larger / tubeless tires - something like 32-34 (we will see when they fit the tires on there) and low tire pressure, and regular spokes on the wheels. All of that should improve comfort considerably. I’m going to switch the aero bars on there too and put more spacers in. As such, I’m hoping that those changes will make a big difference from a comfort perspective - and enable me to avoid “the 0s” that @Kicikacsa mentions.
I pick up the updated bike and do a refit on Friday. Then, I’m going to try it out in a 10-12 hour ride on Monday Sept 9. If it doesn’t work then, that’s a whole other conversation - crossing my fingers!
Markoh Baloh has just set a bunch of records on an outdoor track 1-2 weeks ago. They were all set on a Spiegel TT bike.
When I lived in Geneva, there was a guy who came to our local cafe who had a bunch of long distance track records. He set them on the really short Geneva velodrome on a TT bike. He had his age group 6, 12 & 24 hour records and several of the intermediate ones like 200km etc. I watched a couple of his sessions there and he was definitely set up for comfort.
I was able to get my hands on some 32 tubeless wheels and have switched over to my Surley Steamroller (steel frame). Hoping that significantly improves things in tomorrow’s 10-12 hour test ride.
Extra stack spacers and cups still arriving this week. (Cups were a nice recommendation from @WattsUp.) They will I think make things a ton better. Have a shorter 4 hour ride planned for Friday. Hoping that gets all my equipment fully sorted for my 9/21-22 ride.