Planet X Pro Carbon Track - pursuit set up

London Phoenix Team Pursuiters!

Dolan - reborn!

Having recovered the battered remains of my stolen Dolan CX commuter in December from a second hand bike shop in London (with help from my team-mates), it is now back on the road! Lot's of TLC required, plus a fair few new parts, but it's looking good again.

2010 TRP Euro-X alloy brakes

I ordered a set of 2010 alloy TRP Euro-X brakes in the new red colour from Zepnat.com recently. These are destined for my new Focus Mares Team, to replace the very fancy but slightly impractical (for cross) FRM V-brakes that came with it as stock.

The TRP's have been upgraded for 2010 with a very neat barrel adjuster on the left arm allowing easy adjustment. They also have the In-Place Adjust cartirdge pad holders as standard, which were an expensive upgrade to last years alloy brakes. The brakes come very nicely presented in a well paded box and are supplied with standard AND carbon specific pads. A great deal for £95 in my view. I fitted them to the Focus last night, and although not finally fettled, they have a great action and seem to pull consistently. This is a good thing, as they don't have spring tension adjusters on each arm (like V-brakes), so you need to rely on the locking straddle bridge to adjust pull. Mine pulled nice and even at first attempt. I have swapped out the pads to Swiss-Stop yellows, as they work really well and can reliably be used on both alloy and carbon rims.

Update on race performance to follow.

Bad news: bike stolen!!

Last night I had my bike stolen. Here she is in happier days -

For sale: Pinnacle Team CX

Review: ZipVit Energy Plus Gel

Apparently this is what Carlos Sastre has to say about ZipVit gels -
“ZipVit as a nutritional supplement is very important to us. The gels are very good and have a really good taste.”

I can only assume that you are not talking about the orange flavour caffeinated gel that I recently tried. I was attracted by the claim that it had more caffeine than 2.5 cans of Red Bull. Jeeeezus, that would be a lot of cafffeine even for my espresso-addled body!!! So I shoved it in my back pocket before the start of this year's Etape to have on the foothills of Mont Ventoux as I felt if I ever needed some caffeine, that was going to be the place. The conditions were not ideal as it was horribly hot in the forest, but I can honestly say that this gel must rank as one of the most unpleasant substances I have ever had the misfortune to eat. It has a paste-like consistency (a bit like a PowerGel), which I really dislike, preferring the more liquid gels like High5 or Torq. It is also high volume (like GoGels). So it was pretty nasty. Bad consistency, and lots of it. It actually made me gag and I had to wash very small mouthfuls down with water. It may have worked, but it was truly horrible. OK, so it was a free sample so I shouldn't be too ungrateful, but sorry, no stars!!