Bowerman and race shoes

Bill Bowerman basically invented jogging and running shoes. He went on to co-found Blue Ribbon Sports, which was later changed to Nike.

I'm hoping to conjure up some Bowerman magic and do some cobbling on the racing spikes I recently bought. 

Specifically, I'm going to remove the sole, then the spike plate and then resole with a pair of Vibram soles I just bought on eBay for $12.

The goal is to create a very lightweight racing shoe, have some tinkering fun and save a little cash.

Rear Aero Wheel Weight

Spinergy Rev X rear 1018 grams (Xtra lite version), 1135g, 1140g
Renn Disc 575 1272g
Hed Jet Disk 1250g
Zipp Sub 9 disk 1003g
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CH aero cover  ~ 400g

Racing Flats part two

Got the Saucony racing flats today. They are light! My training shoes weigh 902 grams and the racing flats 461 grams. For a difference of 441 grams which is 15.6 ounces which is almost a pound!

The rule of thumb is that a racing flat is 1-2 seconds per ounce per mile.

So conservatively @ 1 second faster per ounce per mile:

15.5 oz * 1 sec * 5 mi = 75 seconds

@ 2 seconds per ounce per mile:

15.5 oz * 2 sec * 5 mi = 150 seconds

So anywhere on the order of a minute to 2 minutes faster over the distance of the race faster, that is significant. They fit pretty snug (my toe hits the end) but they are supposed to be more snug. We'll see.

Bike Fit again

Just in case it wasnt totally obvious how different my two positions are, I overlaid them in Photoshop:

Bike fit: before and after

The top pic is from March 2006 and basically the position I rode at the 2006 Great Race when I got third in the Ironman division.

The bottom pic was taken just now. Notice how much lower and more aero. Also, my Cervelo is about a thousand times more aero than the Cannondale from 2006. Exciting.

Fork part 4: done

Finished the fork this week. Realized I spent about 20 hours working on this, which is a lot, but it was worth it. I think it looks great, there are some small imperfections, but you have to be within 6 inches to see them.

Blade dimensions are: 14.2mm wide and 80mm deep.

I had been tossing this idea around in my head for a bit, but then it was confirmed as a possibility when I read this post from Mr. John Cobb.

I had been tracking fork blade width and depths to try and see what already exists and came up with this table:

I couldnt get the width of my Cervelo Chord fork down into the range of the Lotus or Time Bandit (~10mm), so I made it a little deeper. But stayed within the depth Cobb suggested. If I started with a Jetstream could get it to be 8:1 ratio!!

Anyway, enough talk, here she is:

Racing Flats

Just picked up these track spikes that I'm going to try and use as a racing flat.

This guy has a local cobbler put new soles on track spikes with some good luck. But, I'm hoping I dont need to do that because the full sole on these look to be rubber and the spike holes seem to be sunk deep enough down.

For $22 shipped, not a bad price to try this out. Also, the heel appears to be narrow enough to fit easily into the footbeds of my Huki.