Much of updates missing from this page, so let’s continue with something I was going to write here already during winter, but have somehow forgotten…
Life’s been pretty much all work and no play for the past months, my only real ”hobby” being cycling to work and back – but an important achievement for the year was that I managed to extend the bicycling season almost through the whole winter season! In this case ”almost” was caused by a nasty flu I caught in February, so I missed almost a whole month of winter biking. Also some heavy snowing combined with poor maintenance of roads and mandatory work trips made me use car or bus in couple of occasions – perhaps in coming up winter I’ll have time to make a set of documentary images about how bad the conditions can be.
Distance from my home to work is 14km, which makes round-trip of 28km. Also terrain is quite varying as there’s roughly 80m altitude difference on my biking route and logged elevation towards work is over 160m! I’ve never done such a long and regular biking trips before on winter season – mainly because clothing is quite a challenge for such a varying temperatures and weather. Second important factor was that my hybrid bike that I use during summer, is pain to use in snowy environment. During this winter, I’ve logged ~1200km of bicycling from November to March so excluding February it makes average of 100km/week. Yay for my self, but goal for next winter can only be to make the average higher 🙂
Clothing was actually much easier to arrange than I thought, a set of sports underwear combined with good wind-proof outer layer served me well down to -10 degrees… Colder than that it just means more layers or thicker jacket.
But on to the bicycles, to overcome the limits of my hybrid bike, I equipped my MTB for winter season with some spiked winter tires (and SPD pedals). Succesful approach in a sense, that amount of snow wasn’t an issue anymore. Only time becomes now a limiting factor, on a very bad conditions it would take more than double the time to get to work, so it was not practical anymore… Did a one little test run (~2km) after a heavy snowing, logged average speed of 7km/h, so I turned back and took a bus.
Extending bicycling season […and some other things.]
Second thing I recommend for everyone biking in moist or cold conditions, are neoprene shoe covers! What an awesome and cheap piece of gear. Keeps your feet and ankles warm and dry, no matter the weather. I was able to use my ”summer” SPD shoes down to -15 degrees Celsius!
Neoprene shoe covers
Third thing, getting bored of cars trying to run over me, I needed a better light so they can see me better (and I could also use some unlit streets or trails). Light is equipped with Seoul semiconductor led, rated a bit under 1000 lumens with full wattage. There’s a high and low mode, latter being suitable for public roads (being bright enough to be seen – and dim enough not to blind anyone.) Light came with a lithium battery pack, run-time is several hours depending on usage. I had to charge it roughly once a week, run-time being nearly 10hrs in low mode!
Let there be light!
Testing the light But as the snow has already melt there was also a need to service my summer bike. I’ve had my hybrid for almost 10 years now and it has served the time well. I’ve only replaced a rear cassette and chains couple of times, and have logged quite a distance with it. Bike has roughly seen 35.000 to 40.000 km of road, most of it is logged, so the approximation should be quite accurate… It has all original ”Alivio” branded parts in place, excluding the rear cassette. There’s been some noise from the bottom bracket bearings for some time now and also the front sprockets were in quite a bad shape, so I decided to replace the whole drivetrain for this summer.
For the sake of upgrading (and minimal price difference), the replacement parts are now Shimano Deore branded – at least they should be a bit better, but that remains to be seen. Being so many miles behind with the original gearset, I doubt these will last longer.
I’ve never done such a throughout replacement of parts for a bike before, but it was very straightforward. Took about hour to complete, only couple of special tools were required (which are quite cheap). The whole drivetrain upgrade – including a new rear wheelset (hub, rim, spokes, cassette) and tools cost me less than 100 euros. Some pictures of the upgrade below.
Deore Crankset 
Old Alivio crankset 
Old bottom bracket removed 
Installing new hollowtech BB cups 
New crankset in place 
New wheelset Replacing the rear wheelset did more to stability than I had imagined… The old rim must have been very soft, even it didn’t seem so bad. It feels now like a very different bike. Prior to replacing there was noticeable wobble at higher speeds, but it’s now totally gone.