Have done a couple of long rides recently on my old BZ (Before Zinn) bike.   Was an interesting excercise.

In short – I hated it – and it re-affirmed my love affair with my Zinn Dolomite Ti with it’s 210mm proportional length cranks.  I used to absolutely love my old road bike – but my Zinn has spoiled me.

So – I’ve done a couple of 100km+ rides.   The old road bike has 175mm cranks – and I figured I’d be fine with that as I’ve been doing a bit of riding on my Hase Pino Tandem that also has 175mm cranks.  But I wasn’t fine.   On the road bike I was on a reasonably quick group ride with some fit riders, and on the tandem (which is a heavy big beast of a thing) I’m tootling around with my kids.  Nothing remotely like the same thing.

The thing I found was that I was back to struggling…

Both rides were reasonably flat – and I could hang with the group on the flat without much problem – but what hills there were – I was out the back immediately.  On the Zinn – I can keep up on with the weight weenies on rolling hills (longer hills is a different story).  But the rolling hills, and even small rises that the Zinn’s proportiional length cranks flattened for me – I could feel again.  And the surges and accellerations that you get in a group of road riders – I was struggling with again.    I remember when I first got my Zinn – that one of the biggest revelations was when I was racing – and how the accellerations that used to spit me out, became manageable.   And that was immediate.  The week after my first race on the Zinn – I jumped up a race group – and the following week – up another group.  So here I was back on shorter cranks and immediately stuggling again with accellerations.  And these things add up over a 100km ride.

So absolutely – without any doubt whatsoever – there is no going back for me!   I will be back on my Zinn with relief and reaffirmed respect for what it enables me to do.

🙂

Adrian.