New and improved workout blog and homemade bike modifications.

I am going to make a concerted effort to provide more useful information along with pictures of stories instead of just updates. Updates will still happen on a monthly basis. To start off the new blog I will show what I did to my bike that involved some hacksawing and lots of dremeling.

I basically wanted to create my own internal cable routing while adjusting the cockpit to to the bike. I took 1 inch off my aero extensions. I dropped my pads by 12.5mm and moved my seat forward about 1/4 of an inch. My seat is now 15 cm above my elbow pads. My seat nose is 3.5cm in in front of the bottom bracket. My effective seat tube angle (sitting back in the saddle) is 80.81 degrees.

Here is the dremel hole that I made in the bullhorns. There is also one right under the white bar tape exactly where it needs to be. Oddly I actually like where the bullhorns are in relation to the rest of the cockpit which is good bc that is one thing you cant do anything about except buy new ones and these where only 10 bucks.

It took quite a while to dremel through. I used a grinder to get a grove going and then an engraving cutter to do the rest. The hard part was getting the tubing through (since real internal routing has little funnels to help I had to reverse thread the wire and then tape it to the real wire and then lead it through. I messed up a couple times with either the shifters or housing not in the right order so I had to unthread. Here is the final product.

The homemade computer mount fit in the same place since the tape isnt as far back this time. I also leveled the water bottle cage and purchased a locking bottle from camelback since it tends to leak in this position. I was also able to level the armrest pads bc I had them tilted down so the extensions felt right. Basically everything changed bc I have not gotten to it for ever. The biggest thing is that the bullhorn grips are about 1/2 as thick as they used to be and it just feels so much better. It will be great for the turnarounds and sprint hills at my next Tri.

Here is the final product. I have the trainer tire on the disc so I dont have to change cassettes to ride outside.

The only thing I haven't done is to cut the steering tube above the stem. This is for two reasons. One, it is really hard to get it level without a pipe cutter and two it helps keep the water bottle cage secure and provides a better attachment point for it. Now that I am dialed in I should be plenty fast this year. Will try and get a video of me on the bike to check my positioning sometime in the next couple weeks.