add friends

Slept without setting an alarm today, first time in a long time. Took my time to get up, to eat breakfast and thought of my day which wasn’t planned. Thought of riding my bike, maybe on my winterbike with a friend I haven’t met in a long time. No answer made me think even of riding on the trainer, or not at all. Maybe just go into town for a coffee being casual.

Then it all got saved by Emil who just wanted an easy spin around the cx loop, great for my sore legs that didn’t work today. Felt hard but great to do a little spin at Erstavik:

Ended it all with panncakes, talking about etap, Spain and how many people it was at Le Mond. 🙂

Map and stats: Strava

Did all I could to be pro to cover up for my legs today. Glasses like Ted King, clothes like Veronica Larsson, bike like Christoph Sauser and riding gravel like Fredrik Kessiakoff 😉

crushed by La Chemise

Tuesday gravelriding, CX Peloton by night. Last year it was a lot of people and I thought we would be at least 15 riders today too. But not, just 5 guys at Cykelcity and 1 met up at Hammarbybacken. 3 fast, 3 ”slow”.

Started a bit easy and then Jonas went up and smashed the rest of us, I had to drop with Mario on my wheel. He passed me a bit later and I was last at Erstaviksvägen were the rest waited. Full speed again and I tried to hang on a wheel. Magnus took a picture:

Got dropped in the beginning of the gravelclimb but could pass Mario. Rode as hard as I could and got up to Björn. Got passed him at the golfcourse and it felt good not being last 🙂 The others waited back on erstaviksvägen and from there full speed towards the Adventure track. And noticed it was hard going downhill with a guy behind me with a much stronger light than my 550lumen Silva Pavé 😉 had to take it easy and Mario and Björn passed. On top of the bad climb we became a group of 4 with a guy I don’t know the name of, I passed and rode in front of our group down to the Adventure track 🙂 Fast bike sometimes.

Rode together for some hundred meters before it got split up after the steepest climb and Magnus and Jonas disappeared again. We chasers tried to ride as good as possible and it went pretty fast until the unknown guy missed a turn 😉

Full sprint to the finish and it was over. An hour, my 3rd best time that loop and even when I didn’t feel so fast I rode pretty fast 😉 And while we didn’t say so many words to each other while riding we (or at least me) had a great time 🙂

Map and stats: Strava

The new Crux!

13 months ago I got a Specialized Crux Elite X1. Was a great cxbike but I gave up and went gravelgrinding with a Specialized Diverge Comp Carbon 3 months later.

This year my plan was Adventures, ride new roads and explore with Transferrides, Emileadventures and Basemilecamps. Wanted to follow the new hype. Specialized made the Sequoia which seemed perfect, who doesn’t want a cool fast steelbike made for everything? but it won’t arrive before the end of November…

So until that I got a Crux again 😉 Got a alu frameset, alu handlebar and a used Sram Red crankset with a Garbaruk Melon chainring. Borrowed a couple of awesome custom Roval wheels and got a pair of cheap Chinawheels which are waiting for tires and a cassette. Took the Force1 parts from my Tarmac, got a saddle and mounted it all together.

It may not be the flashiest Cyclocross in Stockholm but it’s really good for the money. After all the thing you’re after is the geometry and framestyle for the your riding and Specialized knows their cyclocross 😀

Thanks to Specialized Concept Store Stockholm and specially Patrik who let me borrow his wheels and gave me a saddle 🙂

And the weight then: 8,16kg, don’t think it will be so much lighter with the new wheels but maybe some as I’m changing QR and rotors too. Now I’m ready for autumn