One benefit to weighing my bike after assembly is that I have a baseline for doing things like… determining how much mud stuck to it while riding. During today’s 5.5 hour ride comprised of many dirt roads I ended up collecting quite a bit of mud on the frame (mostly on the downtube), which came out to 0.64 pounds after it dried.
Today’s route can be seen here on Strava. This was a good ride, and was possible thanks to the flexibility of my current workplace. I was able to work half a day yesterday (Sunday) while it was raining to wrap up some scripting stuff I’d been doing, and then took the afternoon off today to ride. This let me meet my weekend training plan ride requirement: a bunch more hours of riding in heart rate zone 2. Except this time and contrary to the plan I added in some bigger / sustained hills, but made a point of keeping my heard rate as close to the prescription as possible.
It asked said to “Get at least 50% of ride time in heart rate zone 2. Avoid 3-5 zones”, and I think I did that. Total moving time was 5:53:27 (81.91 miles), with 4:17:12 of that in Zone 2, and only 00:13:12 above that when I’d accidentally cross over to Zone 3.
I’m really liking the Salsa El Mariachi Ti that Trail’s Edge was able to get for me. It felt great on all the washboard and single track I ended up on, and with today’s mud I’m really thankful for the the full length cable housing routed along the top tube, which was one feature that had really sold me on the design.
I still have to sort out my stem choice, but I rode with the 100mm stem today I feel surprisingly good. There were a few times where I felt like I was holding myself up by my hands, but it might actually be a pretty good fit…