Week 17

Date
April 29, 2016

Distance
104 miles

Strava Link
Week 17

Route Map/Profile

Weather

You may have noticed that the weather graphs are different. I really liked the old graphs, but they are no longer available from the website where I used to get them. I'll do some more searching for a better alternative. Let me know if you have one in mind.

Ride Report 
No Everesting this week. The weather was bad all week and high winds were in the forecast for Friday, so I decided to wait for next week. The wind didn't end up being as bad as expected, but it did rain fairly heavily in the evening, so I didn't regret my decision. Unfortunately, next week's forecast looks the same, if not worse. As I write this, there's an 80% chance of rain. I may put it off for another week until the 13th.

As mentioned, I was expecting bad weather this week, so I decided on the Red Rock loop. The weather ended up not being all that bad. I started early, so I missed the worst of it. What was bad was my Hutchinson Equinox tires. I had two flats today- one on the rear early on in the ride and one on the front towards the end. They were both tiny little punctures and neither one was a goathead, so I'm pretty sure neither would have happened on my normal Maxxis ReFuse tires. I bought these Equinox tires on clearance for a really good price, so I can't be too upset. I definitely wouldn't buy them at their normal price. They don't offer much puncture resistance, they cut easily, and the rear one is already squaring off with somewhere around 1,250 miles. It's not completely bad yet and will probably make it to the 2,000 mark, but if I get one more flat (I had another one on Sunday) I'm going to throw it away. Every once in a while I'll try something other than a ReFuse hoping to find something that's a little lighter but still has decent puncture resistance. I always end up disappointed. The grass isn't always greener.