I’ve been continuing my no-solvent, lube-only maintenance schedule on all of my chains.  In the last chain wear post the Dura-Ace 7901 chain on the old Trek was showing 1/10 wear. It’s now just about three months and 1000km later and the chain is still showing 1/10 wear. I was expecting some measurable wear after a few very wet rides, but that hasn’t been the case. So, this Dura-Ace chain is just shy of 15 months and 3500km and still shows almost no wear. Not bad.

On the other hand, the cyclocross bike and it’s Ultegra HG-93 9-speed chain arean’t doing so well. At the last check, the chain was at 6/10 wear. Now, after three months and only 300km it’s at 10/10. Likewise, the HG-93 chain on the 1×9 hardtail was at maximum wear and replaced four weeks ago after 1390km and 17 months of use. The chain was replaced with a Dura-Ace 7701 that’s been used for about 100km.  The cyclocross bike will get the same 7701 chain.

• Road/Dura-Ace 7901 (10-speed): 15 months, 3500km, almost no wear
• CX/Ultegra HG-93 (9-speed): 19 months, 1735km, to be replaced
• MTB/Ultegra HG-93 (9-speed): 17 months, 1390km, replaced
• MTB/SRAM PC-1 (SS): 6 months, 235km, didn’t bother checking

It’s been a few weeks since I swapped the bars on both my Eriksen and the Kona for some On-One Fleegle Pros, and I think I’m ready to report my findings.

First, what’s a Fleegle?  The Fleegle Pro (and Fleegle non-Pro) are flat bars with a very comfy 15° back sweep.  The Fleegle Pro is about 660mm wide and the non-Pro is roughly 720mm.  Prior to the Fleegle Pro, the Eriksen was sporting a custom 615mm Ti flat bar from Kent (Eriksen), and the Kona had a 635mm Easton low-rise EA50.

My primary reason for swapping over to the Fleegles was for 1) a wider bar, and 2) something with a bit more sweep.  The Fleegle is both of these.  However, the Fleegle isn’t a riser (if anything, it may have a slight drop), so I had to make some changes to the Kona.

The Kona had a Thomson 90mm/5° rise stem, but to get the Fleegle up to the right height I swapped it for a Thomson 90mm/15° rise.  I swapped the Thomson 110mm/5° rise stem on the Eriken for the Thomson 90mm/5° rise stem off of the Kona to accomodate for the extra bar width.  The 110mm Thomson joins another 120mm Thomson in my stockpile of 25.4 stems.  All of these stems are the endangered Thomson Elite 25.4, which are apparently worth their weight in gold.

Anyway, riding both bikes/bars has been nice.  The change on the Kona wasn’t dramatic, but the extra width is nice, and the extra sweep is very comfy.  The Eriksen handles much more like the Kona (29er) than it used to, and that’s a good thing.  The shorter stem and wider bars really work well.  On the down side, setting the stem straight ahead with these bars is tricky.  The bars are very curvy/bent, so setting them straight takes some patience.

In addition to the Fleegle Pros, I also got a 720mm Fleegle.  It’s a bit wide, but I may try it on the Kona at some point.  Overall, 6.3 out of 6.5 stars (-0.2 stars for not being available as a riser).

Last weekend I helped build some new singletrack for the AMTBC Cromer 6hr Enduro, and yesterday I raced it in the solo singlespeed class on the rigid Kona 29er.  The course was well-suited for a singlespeed, though only five of the 85+ entries were in the singlespeed class.  I used a 32×20 gear, while most of the others I talked to were on taller gears.  Most of the track would have been faster with taller gearing, and I think I could have gone with a 34×20 or a 32×18/19 without too much difficulty.  On the other hand, I was quite happy with the 32×20 gearing towards the end of the race.

I was much more careful with fluids, gels and food, and as a result, my lap times were much more consistent than on the Foxy 1000.  As far as the bike went, it had no mechanical issues; no flats, no dropped chains, nothing.  The Ignitor 29×2.1″ tyres were very grippy, predictable, fast, and I’m still very happy with them.  Also, I’m beginning to see some of the benefits of hydraulic brakes.  Even after six hours, braking with the Elixir CR Carbon brakes was easy and I had none of the fatigue that the old Paul’s rim brakes, and to a lesser extent the BB7s caused.

The rigid fork was great for the first four laps/3.4 hours–  the last three laps/2.9 hours were less than comfortable.  Most of the discomfort was in my fingers and arms, and it made some of the choppy/rocky sections in the last few laps a little difficult.  On the other hand, my wrists were fine.  Could this be due to the super-cork wrist-saving Ergon grips?

In the end, I completed seven ~13.5km laps, for a total of around 94.5km in 6:13:46.  I did manage a top-five finish, but as I previously mentioned, there were only five in my class.  Even so, I’m very happy with my lap times, and will be racing in more enduros this autumn/winter.

My lap times:

Complete results: Cromer Race 1, April 3