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Have done a couple of long rides recently on my old BZ (Before Zinn) bike.   Was an interesting excercise.

In short - I hated it - and it re-affirmed my love affair with my Zinn Dolomite Ti with it's 210mm proportional length cranks.  I used to absolutely love my old road bike - but my Zinn has spoiled me.

So - I've done a couple of 100km+ rides.   The old road bike has 175mm cranks - and I figured I'd be fine with that as I've been doing a bit of riding on my Hase Pino Tandem that also has 175mm cranks.  But I wasn't fine.   On the road bike I was on a reasonably quick group ride with some fit riders, and on the tandem (which is a heavy big beast of a thing) I'm tootling around with my kids.  Nothing remotely like the same thing.

The thing I found was that I was back to struggling...

Both rides were reasonably flat - and I could hang with the group on the flat without much problem - but what hills there were - I was out the back immediately.  On the Zinn - I can keep up on with the weight weenies on rolling hills (longer hills is a different story).  But the rolling hills, and even small rises that the Zinn's proportiional length cranks flattened for me - I could feel again.  And the surges and accellerations that you get in a group of road riders - I was struggling with again.    I remember when I first got my Zinn - that one of the biggest revelations was when I was racing - and how the accellerations that used to spit me out, became manageable.   And that was immediate.  The week after my first race on the Zinn - I jumped up a race group - and the following week - up another group.  So here I was back on shorter cranks and immediately stuggling again with accellerations.  And these things add up over a 100km ride.

So absolutely - without any doubt whatsoever - there is no going back for me!   I will be back on my Zinn with relief and reaffirmed respect for what it enables me to do.

:)

Adrian.

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