Upgrades!!

As most of you may know, I have been racing my Veloforma D’lusso this year with some fairly good success. When I first acquired the bike, I put on it what I had, which unfortunately was an Ultegra 10 speed kit. After racing that for most of the year, I finally got the funding (mostly through gift certs and such) to upgrade. I had been eyeing the SRAM Red set for a while and finally answered SRAM’s marketing question; “Will you make the leap?” Yes I will. The stuff installed very quickly and after a little bit of tweaking, it was all ready to go. It took a few minutes to get used to the shifting, but it quickly became second nature after a week of riding. In my first race, I fumbled a little bit with it in the heat of the race, but quickly learned not to do that anymore. In yesterday’s race, I think my shifter cables had stretched a bit. My shifting was working fine, but the chain was not lined up exactly right, and the one piece hollow powerdome cassette was making all kinds of noise. But a quick twist of the adjustment nut fixed it very quickly. So far, I give it a 5 out of 5 as there is nothing I don’t like about it and a lot that I love. Crisp shifting, adjustable brake and shift levers, great downshifting for sprinting, internal cable routing and very light weight.

I also splurged on a new Arione CX Carbon saddle. This thing is light, like half as much as my old Arione. It has a carbon body and full carbon rails. After I got it mounted, I took it for a spin and was amazed at how much more stiff it was than my other saddle. This was a bit surprising for my bum, and I think that I need to break it in a bit.

Overall, I took around a pound off the bike and it is running great.

Also, I got my Cat 1 road upgrade!!