Spinning wheels

This past week has seem a few old tired items refreshed. Mostly bike items...not this old tired writer. The Bianchi received a new chain, new middle front sprocket (thanks to Pedallers) and the Garmin Edge 305 was replaced.

As summer marches on, the miles pile up. After more than 4500 miles this season parts wear out and break. Over the years I've owned and operated a lot of equipment. With that said I'm a firm believer in the fact that "If you use the equipment..things will break and wear out". So deal with it!!!! Being somewhat mechanically inclined I do as many repairs as possible and continue to educate myself as to the finer workings of bicycles. Yet there are a few things that a good bike mechanic can tweek just so.... So using one does make good sense. The guys at Pedallers have treated me well. A couple local bike shops seem to use rather young help in their shops. I feel a little better using a shop with a more mature support cast. I highly recommend them to any and everyone.

Cycling this week was in two areas, both local. I have grown to like a challenging ride on the eastside that wanders through Rush, Bloomfield , Victor, back to Brighton. This route is a modified version of (made longer to accommodate Middle Rd hill, and River rd) RBC #233, offers some nice short steep climbs. I've run this both clockwise and counterclockwise this week. The rest of the week was spent riding near home trying to add a new twist to old routes.

One new discovery has been the ability to load maps in the Garmin 305. It is a multi step process which includes creating the route in Bike Route Toaster ,then transferring this to Training Center. Bike route toaster automatically enters all the course markers (turning prompts). This also helped me figure out how to add course markers to pre-riden routes in Training Center. There are still a few bugs in the system (mostly on my end,)but I'll figure them out in due time.

The next big event is the Highlander. That is the BEAST of the EAST as far as rides go with over 12,000 ft of climb. I normally do the Lowlander which has over 6000 ft of climb. My goal is to complete this in under 7 hours. My best time was last year with a time of 7h 29m 22s. Shaving 31 minutes off this will be a real challenge. I plan on using the hills around Middlebury , Dale and Perry as my training area.