Copperopolis RR – Are disc brakes prone to failure?

Hey cycling community, this is Steve Grusling Greek. For those of you familiar with the channel, you’re probably looking behind me right now and thinking, “Hey, that’s not your regular office.” And you’d be right. My wife and I recently moved. And you’re probably thinking, “Moved? You moved to the other house about 18 months ago.” And we did. Any reason I can give you for the move that we did just now starts with the words my wife. So everything else after that doesn’t matter. But in the middle of that move, I’d race at Copperopoulos. And that’s part of the reason, a small part on why I sucked. The other part is I’m heavier than I was in last year. And I’ll be doing a video in the future on why that is. Now, you probably also notice the title. And yeah, it is a little clickbay, but maybe not that much. You’ll get a better understanding once we do story time at the end of the race. So, let’s go to that race right now. Not quite. You get the point. All of a sudden, you feel like Yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much. Quickly turn your attention to the asphalt. About four miles out of the 21 mile loop is asphalt like this. Nice and smooth. The rest of it ranges from sucks to I’ll never ride this again. One of the things I like about this race, other than that it has a separate start 65 plus category is that it starts in the second flight. I didn’t have to get up at O dark30, drive over 2 hours, and be ready to race by 8:00 a.m. Before the gun went off, there was a little bit of discussion about the notes that the promoter sent out regarding the new pavement on the Widowmaker. The Widowmaker’s on the back half of the course near the finish. That’s a twisty, steep descent, which is exceedingly bumpy and very dangerous. I never read the notes because I was in the middle of moving. And at that point, I wish I had because then I could have used my lighter wheels instead of these training wheels that I’m on now because they’re a lot stronger. Oh well, it just g me another excuse for getting dropped on the climb. Because of what I had available to me, I was on 24 mm tires and I was running them around 80 80 plus pounds. It seemed like I was bouncing up as much as I was going forward. In spite of the move and the time off the bike, I was feeling pretty good during the warm-up. I was also feeling pretty good on this first section leading up to the feed zone. I was biting my time, making sure I put myself in good position by the time we got to the feed zone because the feed zone is at the base of the main climb. And boy, those roads are bumpy. They’re much worse than what you’re seeing right now. Jumping forward a mile and a half right before we enter the feed zone, you can see why you need to be warmed up because the climbing starts almost right away. I’m kind of in the middle of our 13 rider pack. Now, there’s a rider way out there, so I’m not sure if it’s one of ours or not cuz I’ve just been concentrating on the bumps and then getting over them. So, as this is the feed zone hill, and right now it’s about 4% and it works its way up to 6%. And and again, those bumps just make it absolutely hideous for me. Extra power that I apply seems to go more toward the bounce factor for me. Now, I’m sure everyone else has the same situation, but they probably have a better wheel setup than I do. As my frustration rises, so does my heart rate. By the time I get to the top of the feed zone bump, my heart rate’s in the mid 140s. My max is around the low 160s. My FTP, by the way, is probably like 260. Certainly no higher than 265. Jumping ahead just a bit past the undulations, we are now on the proper climb. There was a bit of a gap going over that bump. And then I used Matt’s wheel here to help get me back up to the group, or at least the six strongest that were in front of us. My heart rate had recovered just a bit. And even though my heart rate was well above my FTP, I wasn’t panicking quite yet, especially since those in front of us seem to be calling a temporary truce. This entire climb is 2 and a/4 miles and there are some steep pitches right in the middle. Those are going to be tough for me. Now, David McGomery here from Davis Bike Club is deciding to have a little bit of a dig. And so, I was in position. So, I just got on his wheel and uh it looks like we have a little bit of a gap. Now, I did know we had a gap at the time, but it wouldn’t matter cuz I was just going to stand his wheel. At a certain point on this climb, there’s actually smooth pavement. Earlier, I said that there’s maybe four miles that have smooth pavement in this entire loop, but I think it’s more like uh 6 miles. Earlier in this video, before the actual race started, I talked about my weight, my increased weight, and we just passed a curve there that uh uh took us to about between 9 and 10%. I’m rather surprised that people didn’t pass me on that and I’d be toward the back. I now want to turn your attention to the writer in the S works that just passed me on the left. That is Lindsay Blount and he’s being followed by Steve Clifton. Lindsay is in the Southern District. Heals from Santa Barbara and I remember his name back in the early 2000s during my Palestinian gaming days. Now, we didn’t do a lot of racing down south, but we did a little bit of racing down south and he was one of the writers to watch. And now, 20 years later, looks like he has not missed a beat at all. He’s making a move and he’s splitting the field. And of course, I’m on the wrong part of that split. While I do reconnect, my heart rate isn’t anywhere near what I’m feeling right now. That reconnection is tenuous. We are now on very nice row. That gives me extra energy, but it also gives everyone else extra energy. There’s another counter. And then we’re just all split apart in groups. And my group, unfortunately, is a group of one. And I’m at the back. Well, that’s it. At 3.8 miles, I am dropped. The climb goes for another mile. Soon after this climb, I connect with another rider and we trade poles for the rest of the race. Not killing ourselves, but wanting to get to the finish where then we can go for the sprint. So, let’s take this opportunity to go to the Widowmaker to see what the pavement is actually like. Okay, jumping forward. We just started the climb and right now I’m pretty happy that I have the wheels that I have because I don’t know where that uh that pavement starts. Apparently, it starts about halfway down. So, I’m following uh Randy Floyd from Body Concepts, who was starting to put some distance on me. Now, last couple years, even in my old age, I was racing this thing. I was going down it with wild abandon. But now, I’m being super conservative. I’m in the middle of a move. I don’t want to get hurt and then my wife is really going to hurt me after that. And I don’t want to push my luck. To give you an idea how bumpy this is, the GoPro has a smoothing algorithm, so it’s probably worse than what you’re seeing. Also, I’m doing my best not to white knuckle this, but I have to keep a good grip on it because I don’t want my hands bouncing off the handlebars. So, that of course translate to my shoulders, to my back, to my neck, and to my eyes. But the fun doesn’t stop there. I have my helmet hitting the top of my sunglasses. So, we have that little bit of bounciness that’s going on. So, what you’re seeing going on right now is a lot of focus, a few opas, and a little bit of cussing. About a third of a mile later, I finally make it to the smooth stuff. I was so glad I didn’t read that promoter’s note because I would have been tempted to stick on my lighter race wheels. So now I have to catch Randy before the finish line. Now this is the first lap and but the same thing happened in the second lap. Each time I caught Randy with about 500 m to go with both of my forward cameras running out of battery. Let’s go to the last lap at the finish and see how that turns out. This is probably one of the few sprints I’ll ever win. You’ll notice when I cross the finish line, they’re putting it away. This is how long we were out there. All right, let’s go to story time. Story time. Lindsay Blout and Steve Clifton broke away. I’m assuming that happened on that first lap, first climb. On the second lap going down the Widowmaker toward the finish, Lindsay’s uh front or rear brake failed and so he had to back off quite a bit and that gave Steve Clifton enough where he won the race. Lindsay came in second. Now, Lindsay wasn’t the only problem. It wasn’t the only person with disc brake problems. Matt Peterson, Body Concepts, he was in that first chase group. He lost his front brake and as he put it, half his rear brake and uh so he missed out on the podium. He came in something like six. Now Lindsay said he had bled his brakes before the race. I don’t know about Matt’s situation. Now I’ve always spoken before every once in a while about needing to buy a new bike. I mean, the Konago I have is pretty cool, but it’s 2005 and uh I’m just not a fan. And I’ve never been a fan of disc brakes. Uh probably because it’s something that I can’t work on. I’m sure if I studied it, I could work on it, but you know, rim brakes for the type of riding on it that that I do are is fine for me. Uh let’s see. Next story is that Lindsay was telling me that he had a friend that was going to come down and do the race and he wanted to know about the course because he’ never done it before. And I had done this video on the Copperopolis uh course uh some years back. And so they’re watching it. And the problem is that his wife was watching it too. And so when he when we get to the part or when he gets to the part about the widowmaker, his wife says, “No, you’re not going.” All right. I hope you enjoyed this video and you got something out of it. As always, remember, comment, like, subscribe. Oh yeah, and hit those comments. And speaking of comments, I posted that question on the disc brakes on the NCNCA Facebook page. Uh, check it out. So, there are some valid comments made. All right, that’s it. Until the next one.