Tomm Willians

We are doing the short ride as well. It’s our first Eroica and we didn’t want to do an extended ride on our Wiliers. It should be a great day !

Kilroy1988 

Well, the crowd has spoken, so I'll definitely be taking the Carlton Super Python for the lighthouse ride! If anyone around here sees me out there please feel free to say hello. My uncle will be riding the 1972 Raleigh Professional that he restored last year with my assistance, and which I shared at the time. We'll be sticking together I'm sure.

-Gregory

Brad L 

Here's the Templeton forecast. I had checked it prior to my earlier post, but decided not to mention it due to the mild temps.

Classtime 

I hope to keep up with you guys so I can hide from that headwind on the way back to Cambria. Maybe team Cinquentas has been lax in their training for this year and I can hang/draft.

Motorhead69

I just went to download the heroic route and realized they have changed the route. It went from 107 to 97 miles. It looks like we aren't going through Paso Robles now.

tmnguuyen 

I did the Santa Lucia route with a few buddies on modern gravel bikes last July. We all completed with a couple of casualties. Lucky I was unscathed. Mine was a Niner with tubeless Hutchinsons road tires, 700x28. I ran 80psi there about. One of the guys ran conti GT5000 tubeless on carbon zipp. He hit a rock a cracked the wheel so we ended up putting a tube in it so he could finish. The other casualty was a serious wipe out after the cypress climb from another rider who ironically the only rider in the group with knobbies.

This time I’m running Vittoria Zaffiro 700x30 on my 1984 Nishiki Prestige. A friend suggested I should run lower pressure, 70-75 psi. What say you? Also, I have a set of Gatorskin 700x28. Which tire do you think will minimize potential flats?

Thanks

gugie 

Widest tire that will fit. Lower pressure helps with traction on gravel, but also increases the risk of pinch flats. Generally speaking skinny, high pressure tires flat more often than wider, lower pressure tires. That's been my experience.

Rene Herse publishes a tire pressure calculator. It seems like a reasonable tool.

Classtime 

That is also the long Nova route and they can use the same arrows. If I was a complainer, I’d say they should go back to a 130 mile heroic route. In Italy, they don’t allow old people to do the long route so perhaps they are worried about us old farts in Cambria.

keithdunlop

I rode Santa Rita and Cypress on Sunday to see how things looked after some recent light rains we've had along the Central Coast.

Santa Rita: The road is in really fabulous shape and has been tamped down a bit from the recent wetness and regular vehicular traffic. There are just a few drainage channels running across the road, but these are shallow and easily avoidable. It's riding like fast hard pack DG right now.

Cypress: The approach to Cypress after Halter Ranch Winery is Klau Mine Road. This road is in really bad shape (it usually is) with lots of broken pavement and potholes. You need to pick your way through here with care otherwise it can be a bone-jarring experience. The Cypress climb is in good shape. The lower section that runs along the creek is still a bit damp and you need to pick your way through some small rocks on occasion, Otherwise, the condition on the climb looks the same as it did in 2019.

Cypress Descent: This is where care is needed -- I have not seen the descent to Santa Rosa Creek Rd. ever look this bad. For whatever reason the lower sections of the descent (and the steepest) are really torn up until you get the pavement of Santa Rosa Creek Rd. Take it really careful here! I was on a gravel bike with 40mm tires and hydraulic brakes and I thought it was sketchy on that bike.

Have a great ride everyone!


Santa Rita Rd.

gugie 

Thanks for the scouting report!

gaucho777 

keithdunlop What a great and dramatic photo. Thanks for the road report.

Straightblock

Never make changes right before an event.

Last weekend I swapped a modern compact crank for a period-correct Sugino Mighty on my Nishiki Pro. I took it out on a 40 mile ride and all was well. Yesterday I went out again, and after a while I started hearing a creaking noise from the drivetrain. I looked down and the left crank arm is loose, and when I stopped, the bolt was gone. Bad, for sure, but worse if it had come off. I was stopped at the entrance to a gravel quarry & found a smooth baseball sized river rock, picked up a piece of cardboard from roadside trash (thanks, local rednecks) to use as a cushion, and tapped the crank arm in place. I one-legged it 8 miles back to the second-closest LBS (my favorite), got a new bolt, and used their shop wrench to tighten it. About 2 miles from home it had loosened again and I one-legged it home.

I've been riding and servicing square taper cranks since 1975, including a couple of years during college working at the LBS, have never used a torque wrench on a vintage bike and never had a crank come loose like this. I understand the science of why it's nearly always the left arm that loosens, but the torque wrench in my elbow that says "that's about right" has served me well up to now.

This crankset is one of the most-used square taper ones I own and I'm sure it was removed and reinstalled several times to service the bottom bracket or move to a different bike, but has been unused for about 20 years. The crank arm doesn't appear to be galled or deformed. I have a micrometer/click-type torque wrench that I use for my modern bike and other things. Park Tool says torque the crank bolt to 300-450 in-lbs. I've reinstalled the crank and torqued both sides to the Park Tool spec, and that's noticeably more than my seat-of-the pants torque value. Lesson learned, I guess.

Now I'm concerned about taking the Nishiki to to Cambria, even for the short Piedras Blancas route I'm planning to ride, so I'm going to take a ride on it today and check the left arm every few miles. Any doubts and I'll change to another bike that would only need pedals changed.

gugie , I hope nothing like this never happened on your Super Course!

merziac

Vigilance, Loctite or super glue, spare bolts, tools and dust caps.

rccardr 

SpaghettiLegs, please take note

gugie 

Never had a crank problem on that bike, I think you tightened them up to last at leat from 1975 to 1984, when I sold it.

Classtime 

Straightblock, Use hex head crank arm bolts so any multitool will give you peice of mind. A 14mm socket wrench is a bit bulky.

Andy_K 

That's helpful. I thought I was unprepared, but my training plan has set me up perfectly to suffer and barely (if at all) drag myself to the finish line. I see some Type III fun in my near future

Classtime 

I had to google Type III fun.
"What does Type 3 Fun mean?
Explained: Type III fun is never fun while you're doing it, you often feel your life is threatened, certain doom is usually at hand, and half the time it ends in a harrowing rescue. Afterwards, you swear to never attempt anything similar ever again."

bikingshearer 

It looks like I'm a "go" for this weekend. Color me pleased and a bit surprised.

So is this ride still on? Even though I'll be doing the Peidros Blancas ride on Sunday (maybe even extending to Ragged Point if I'm feeling the love), I think a warm-up Saturday jaunt to San Simeon with a bunch of C&Vers sounds like a very fine idea. So unless someone calls off the dogs, I plan to be at Velo Cambria on Saturday by 10:45 or so. I'm looking forward to a great weekend that I was afraid I was going to have to miss.

Spaghetti Legs 

I only switch out cranks when there is an entire bike attached.

gugie 

Yeah! So glad it worked out for you.

Saturday 11am start still on.

Andy_K 

Yep, that's about the size of it. I've done Eroica twice before. In 2018, I did the 80-something mile three climb route out of Paso Robles. The approach to Kiler Canyon was Type I fun (fun while you're doing it). From the start of Kiler to the top of Cypress was mostly Type II fun (not fun at all while you're doing it, but fun in retrospect). From the descent of Cypress on, in large part due to my poor fitness at the time combined with a slow leak that I refused to let anyone try to fix, it was mostly Type III fun. In 2019, I did the lighthouse route, which was Type I fun all the way and left me fresh enough to explore the area around Cambria a bit on my own after I finished.

This year, I haven't done anything longer than 55 miles and on the 55 mile ride I took a bailout option to avoid some of the planned climbing. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do at Eroica. My plan is to ride to the top of Santa Rita and then evaluate my physical condition before either continuing on to Cypress or turning around and heading back to Cambria. Even in the best shape I've ever been in I'd be walking large portions of Cypress, so unless I feel like there's a danger of serious overuse injury to my joints I'll probably try that.

One of the lessons I've learned from cyclocross racing (which is the gold standard for Type II fun) is that if you wait until you're fit enough to do something you'll never do it, but if you do things even knowing you aren't nearly fit enough it's often fun anyway. As philosophies go, I guess that's kind of a weird mix of Rule 5 and Hakuna Matata.

keithdunlop

You forgot duct tape!

keithdunlop

Santa Rita is a very doable climb even if not in the best of shape. It's longer than Cypress at 6 miles, but the gradient averages 4% and only maxes out at around 8%. The road is also in really beautiful shape right now. The thing about Cypress is that it is steeper, but shorter. It's a climb of 2 miles less than Santa Rita, but it hits over 12% near the end. That said, it's super walk-able because it's short and most people who walk end up bailing within the last 1/2 mile or so. About half way up, maybe a little more, there's a nice little respite spot that levels out for a short distance. It's a good spot to take a break and contemplate the finish. In my opinion, the worse thing about Cypress is not the climb, but the descent.

merziac

DT is optional.

I know many like to run without dust caps and I get it but they are a safety item in this capacity and could have kept you from having to go caveman on it.

We can go on ad nauseum about it but the delete option was for the mechanics at the races where they were checking or working on them daily or more often.