The Magic Bike's specialty is long-distance climbing rides. I rode it to a women's 9th place finish in a gnarly series of races this past spring. Three races over 6 weeks, spaced 2 weeks apart, with a total of 335 miles & 34,000 ft elevation gain. Ninth place does not seem too great, but my goal was a top ten finish which was pretty ambitious for a newby like me. I was very very happy with it. The first of those races is still to-date the freakinest hardest ride I've ever done, 124 miles and 13,000 ft of elevation gain, done at a race pace. Just totally gnarly.
The Sparrow is my back up road bike but is totally lovely unto itself- just a quick, light little bike, fun for riding madly around town with my friends. I've recently made a number of upgrades to the Sparrow- namely electronic shifting & some nice race wheels- suddenly I love to ride this one too.
But the thread is about the Grasshoppa, my newest bike. Grasshoppa is a time-trial bike, which means it is a go-fast race bike. A time trial is a race against time. You compete against other people on any given day, but the race starts are staggered by 30 sec to a minute. So it's not head-to-head racing like you see in a mass start race. Time trials are about being aerodynamic and producing power, they're usually run on flat courses. It's very technical how you ride then, mainly it has to do with understanding physiology and parcelling out your power perfectly to ride at your maximal pace without causing too much build-up of lactic acid. Many features of the Grasshoppa are present because of its purpose as a time trial bike- for example, the aero bars and the wheels which have a specialized aerodynamic shape. Grasshoppa has special gearing designed for TTs and a power meter that measures my pedaling force which makes it easier to parcel out my power 'just so' during a race.
I might sound like I know a lot about time trials, but I'm actually a newby. I rode my first TT back in June on the Magic Bike, came in second place and was immediately hooked. I bought the Grasshoppa in July and have been getting used to it ever since. I rode my first TT on it last week and hot damn I actually won the thing! No one was more surprised by this than me.
Next race is in a week from Sunday, I still have a little more gear to get for Grasshoppa and I'm not sure I'll have it in place in time. This next race will have tougher competition, so I'm not expecting too much- I just want to ride it well from a technical perspective & beat my current personal best 20k time.
That's it, just love my new bike and thought I'd tell y'all about it.
