Cannondale Slice and My TT Race

Pre-Race Week and the Slice

I have some mileage in the saddle and I am entering the final week before my second time trial race at the Healthy Newton Omnium. 

I didn't follow my own advise (living in ignorance) and I checked out the results from last year's race. I was in last place. SO, my goals for this year are pretty simple and I list these in order.

1. Improve my time (average speed) from last year.

2. Climb out of the cellar and not finish in last place

3. If I am having a good day average 21mph or better 

If I have a decent race, I plan on entering a couple of more TT events. I have every inclination of entering some road races in the future but I am still not fast enough to be competitive with even the cat 5 guys. If you haven't seen or deduced from my pictures, I am not your average cyclist. I am 6'4" tall and currently tip the scale at a sleek 255 pounds. I think that I raced at last years event at 270 pounds. I have the watts to be competitive but not the physique....YET. I am on a mission to get down to 210 pounds, but it is going to take some time to get there all the while building my cycling base. 

I am having a blast training and preparing for this race which means absolutely nothing to anyone but me. I am definitely trying to buy some speed in addition to losing weight and training. According to Strava I ride an average of 83 miles per week. If you are at all interested you can do an athlete search on Strava for Lee Hanson. I am the one in Temple, GA. Also, yesterday, I drove 1 1/2 hours to the race site and pre rode the course. I completely rode the course once then went back and did some specific work on hills and tried to determine proper wattage at specific places. Will this help? Probably not. I am sure once the race starts I will let adrenaline do the work and completely blow up half way through the race.

As far as the bike goes, I am still loving the Cannondale Slice. I have made a couple of changes to help me out. The first of which was to change my aero bars. The ones that came with the bike were basically straight and I found that felt funny and put a little strain on my wrists. I guess I pull when I ride. I switched to some bars that bend up and put my hands at a more natural angle. This made a HUGE difference to my comfort level in aero. Also, I had to move my cycle computer (Garmin edge 800) out in front of the handlebars. When the computer was mounted back on the stem there was no way for me to see the display when I was down on the bars. I purchased the K-Edge and it is awesome. In fact, it was so rock solid that I purchased another one for my road bike. A little pricey but you will not ever think about your computer mount after you install this. Garmin should include a mount like this for their higher end computers. Who wants to trust their expensive gps gadget to a couple of rubber straps that will eventually break. 

After a little riding time the rear derailleur needed a small tweak which was probably due to cable stretch, but this was a minor thing. It seems that every time I ride this bike I get faster on it. I will say that it does not seem like a climbing bike. The bike is heavier than my Synapse, and I am still not great at changing the gears when not down on the bars. As a result, I find myself mashing up the hills in the wrong gear and wasting my legs in the process. I am still getting used to the neck fatigue and the Adamo seat but I am slowly improving and getting more comfortable.

Cannondale Slice Ultegra

I am going to try to give a review of the Cannondale Slice, and let you guys know the good and bad of the bike. Please bear in mind that I have ridden quite a lot on my Cannondale Synapse, but I have NEVER ridden aero before.

Last year I rode in the Healthy Newton Omnium. Well, actually I rode in the time trial on day one and the road race on day two. I did not do the crit. In retrospect I should not have ridden in the road race because I was not ready. The distance was fine but those guys were a lot faster than me. I entered the cat 5 race but I need some more training to even compete at this level. However, I did not do so bad in the time trial. I have not actually seen the results because I THINK that I did fairly well (not last place) but I could be completely wrong. I choose to live in ignorance. 

The thing that I noticed was that, in addition, to being less fit than my fellow competitors, I had the wrong equipment for the time trial (TT). I was excited to go there and race and I knew that I had good equipment. Was I ever wrong. I had the wrong bike, helmet, wheels, stationary trainer etc... 

This year I want to alleviate some of those problems. I have been reading several reviews online and doing a fair amount of research to determine the best bike for my TT endeavors. As it turns out, all of my research was in vain because it seems that Cannondale was the only company that made a bike to fit me properly. Most of the companies show models in their catalog that would work, but no one had stock and even the factories had a 6 month lead time. Good thing that I was favoring the Cannondale before hand. I went in to my local bike shop and they ordered my bike. It only took one week for it to come in. I went today and had my fitting session. 

First impression during the fit was that the aero position was as uncomfortable as I had feared. I finished up at the shop and headed to the Silver Comet trail for a "quick" 30 miles. The ride was great. The aero position was a little shaky at first but I got used to it within a couple of miles. It is going to take some time to get my neck used to looking up from that position. That is the only negative thing that I have to say after my first ride and that is not the fault of the bike at all. The bike performed flawlessly. I purchased the slice with the Ultegra group set and it is awesome. My Synapse has 105 components with an Ultegra rear derailleur and it shifts ok but nothing like the crispness of the indexing shifters on this bike. I am not sure if it is the Ultegra group or the fact that these shifters are not incorporated into the brake levers like my road bike.

 As you can see, I added on the Adamo seat and that is going to take some getting used to as well.

 The Ultegra brakes work great. I included these photos so that you can see what the wind sees. This is the front profile of the bike and it is very slender unlike the rider.

 The bike handles a lot differently than my road bike. The steering is more quirky. It is not anything that  is insurmountable just different responsiveness.
I plan on adding some different components and accessories and I will update you here with some pictures. The main thing to do for now is to get some saddle time.

Stay Tuned!!