Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS)

Whatever activity I partake of I alway suffer from GAS. Computing, Music, Photography, Oenology, Cycling, always got to have the best gear. I think the saying “All the gear, no idea” was coined after me.

Anyway given the recent revelation (to me) that beyond the very basics, kit doesn’t really make much difference for CX, lets actually get back to basics… Ok, when I say basics, lets not be ridiculous. I like the nice stuff. Lets just not buy any more and lets par down what we have.

Rules for 2018

• One bike to rule them all
• Forget about weight and thus GAS (apart from mine!)
• Forget about power (meters)

Provisos

• Keep the KICKR (obviously) for indoor training and KISS racing!
• Extra set of disc wheels to swap from road/gravel and for spare next CX season

The Plan

• Ride the Ridley (yes, I know it’s not basic) for everything
  • Road (if I ever actually get outside)
  • Zwift racing (on the KICKR)
  • Indoor training (on the KICKR)
  • Road racing! Let the CX’ers take it to the Roadies this time… :-)
• Switch to 50T/11-36T for the Summer (from 42T/11-32T)
• Stick on some fat 28mm road rubber
• Sell all the other stuff
• I might even keep the egg beaters on :-)

Sticky points

• Hopefully I don’t miss the extra 2T up front for sprinting
• Hopefully the gear spacing isn’t tooooo terrible
• Hopefully I don’t get dropped during the Honnington race series on a Cross bike, with 1x and 28mm rubber.

Should be interesting. Wish me luck. :-)

EDIT

The initial work is done: 1X all the things