Sunday, December 9, 2007

Damn its cold out there / Fuji CF2 Conversion

So I feel a bit guilty, I went 3 days went any workouts. It makes me itchy. I was cranky last night and I am sure that it was in large part to not having workout in a while. It is like I can feel myself getting fatter or something. Well, between not riding and eating 3 hot and fresh Krispy Kreme Donuts last night. I had not eaten one in a couple of years. I feel good to just have eaten 3. I could have doubled that easily. As it was I felt nauseous in the middle of the night.

Anyway. The Fuji CF2 conversion to a regular old road bike. Well maybe not a regular old road bike, but a bike with out the aero bars. It makes it much safer for riding in traffic with this dropbar set up. It rides very nicely. I still need to dial in the position with a shorter stem. The Ultegra shifters are very nice. This is my first pair of these with the 10 speed. Bridget has some 105 shifters on her Cannondale. The Ultegras are noticably smoother and less clunky than the 105's. To those people who have told me otherwise over the past few months--you are idiots. The Ultegra shifters and the 105 shifters may weigh nearly the same, but they don't feel the same. And the Ultegras not only feel better they shift better too.

The ride was rather cold. It was my coldest ride of the year. I was 30 degrees here at the house so I am sure that it was colder up on Skyline Road where I spent most of the time. I forgot to put on my shoe covers. I didn't remember until I was out for about 15 minutes and by then it was too late to turn around. I was riding under a time limit and so if I turned around I would have time to do much of anything up on Skyline. Besides, it wouldn't be that bad would it? Yep. My toes still feel cold and it is as I write this about 4 hours later. It is like the chill won't leave them, though I am toasty everywhere else. Maybe it is just the memory of the cold or something. Still I wouldn't think that 28-30 degrees would be that bad, but apparently my shoes ventalate very well.

I was a little nervous about riding with the American Classic carbon wheels. They really are for competition use, but I didn't have another wheelset ready with road tires and even if I did, I would have had to swap out my brake pads for non-carbon ones. But what it came down to is that I wanted to ride with them. I paid way too much for those things to have only ridden them 1 time in four months. So now I have ridden them twice. Braking works well. Sometimes I can feel the brakes pulsing a bit, as if their are certain spots on the wheel that are a little grabbier. But the feel at the brake lever is the same I guess, It is more like my rate of slowing is pulsing as the grabbier parts of the rim slow me down more than the other spots. I suspect that this will change as the rim and brakes get broke-in a bit. The other time I rode these wheels whas during a sprint triathlon back in early September. I didn't really have to use the brakes much at all.

I don't know about the whole tubular thing though. I don't know that it felt that much different. I had the tires up to 160psi--that I could feel. But that seemed to be the only difference between them and the clinchers I usually ride. But it was pretty cold out, so maybe when it warms up the rubber will feel different.

The next ride on the bike I will put on the heavier wheels and see what happens.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

How do you like your Fuji CF2? I am thinking of getting one (I want to add a TT bike to my stable) and I'd like to find out what people think. How's the geometry feel? Thanks.

Mr. Flynn said...

I quite like the Fuji. I actually like it better as a road bike than as a TT bike. I think that my TT issues are purely setup.

If you are looking for a pure TT bike, then honestly there are some better ones out there. The Felt for instance is a little more aero and lighter. But for the price that I picked up the Fuji (sub 2K for it new) I can't complain at all.

As far as geometry--the only way it works is with the additional seat post they send with the bike. It has multiple positions so that one can sit at an effective 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, or 78 degree seattube. If I use the more normal no offset seat post I think that the bike has a 73.5 seat tube. The reason this bike has worked so well for me is that I am using as both a road bike and TT bike. I have a TT bar setup and then a road bike bar set up. To switch all I have to do is loosen the stem bolts and the cables at the derailleur and then pull everything off and then put on my TT bar and stem. Then I connect the cables with bar end shifters. So for that bike I have 2 bars, stems, shifters, and brake levers. It is a bit of a hassle but it is much cheaper than two bikes. I don't do TT that much, maybe 2 times per year, so have the bike set up for road makes a lot of sense for me.

Anyway, bottom line: If you are looking for only a bike to do TT's it is a great bike. If you have to pay retail, I would go with something else that has geometry that doesn't require a post to put you in normal TT position. If you look at the CF2's geometry, with out that post it is very close to normal road bike geometry. But for me it is the perfect bike since it can perform very well at both with the set up I have worked out.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your comments. I found your blog by googling for Fuji CF2, trying to investigate how peeps like it. I definitely appreciate your input on its geometry. It does look built pretty much to a standard road geometry, and you mentioned elsewhere that the forward seatpost is a bit heavy. A minus. On the plus side it comes with awesome components. Sounds like you got yours for an unusually good deal. I don't know that I'll be getting that kind of a deal, and rather than fork out $3k for it I think I might rather look to Kestrel or Kuota.

Anyway, hope you get over your blues soon and back into training.

Mr. Flynn said...

Thanks a bunch.

Yep, the geometry frankly sucks for a true TT bike. The multi position seatpost deal is a real bandaid. Luckily the bandaid works really well despite it weighing 3 or 4 times what a normal seatpost would weigh.

For 3K I would not buy this bike. I will tell you that I got this through an employee deal and that I bought it for less than a Cervelo P2 SL with an Ultegra kit lists for.

As I have said before, this bike fits my needs very well. With my aerobars on and American Classic carbon wheels it rides very well. As a road bike it similarly rides great. There are a few compromises each way, but for a privateer like me with only the money for one good bike for road and tri's, it fits very well.