I mentioned in the 2022 Races post a couple gravel bike events. Which reminded me, I have a couple recent bike upgrades to share.
First off are some new wheels. I am pretty excited to be able to now be able to have a couple sets of tires mounted up and ready to go when headed to a race. I picked up this set of DT Swiss CR 1600s for a song at VeloSwap late last year. You can see them in the top picture of this article by the title. Pretty snazzy, eh?
Since the wheels have a splash of pink on them, and my bike already had teal accents, I decided to lean into the Miami Vice / 80’s vibe a bit and added a hot pink bottle cage too. And some other pink tape accents. Fun stuff 🙂
The other big add is that I finally pulled the trigger on some power pedals. Now I can better monitor power on gravel — and, ideally, use that to pace myself (yeah, we’ll see how that actually works out… gravel is so variable). I got the Garmin Rally XC100 pedals and am super excited to try them in the first race.
I rode them in a short test ride the other day and it was quite an eye-opener. We definitely push power higher on gravel. I worry that I may have been better off not knowing… but do think they’ll work out for the better.
(Late) Adult Onset Triathlete 