Started to lift again

I started to lift again. Thank god for the advice in Dave Morris's book to do a 3 week transitional lifting period. this first week we are talking 2 sets of 8 at super light weights. It is so tempting to rush it in order to get to the hypertrophy phase. But I have to calm myself.

Even at super light weights I am still getting soar, and my knees are feeling it. In looking back at last years transitional lifting it does ramp up pretty fast but just gotta be patient.

Went on a ride with the cross bike yesterday. Just can't get dialed into that bike. Still not sure what it is. When I am on it on the road I wish I had my road bike and when I offroad with it I wish I had my mountain bike.

Part of the problem is the handlebar I am using. On the road bike I have a TTT morphe which has supper short reach to where the hoods are placed. I had a narrow morphe on the cross but it was tooo narrow. Now with a regular bar on there the reach to the hoods is too long and I don't like it. But regardless I just am not comfortable offroading in the drops or on the hoods. I am just a mountain biker at heart.

I've tried putting a mountain bar on it, and it was fun when climbing but other than that it was too scrounched. I am going to try a 150mm stem with a mountain bar to see if I an get some more reach to make it doable with a mountain bar.

Interesting that there is very little written about this on the web. I'd think there would be way more customs of this type of bike- a cross bike with a longer top tube designed around mountain bars. You just can't slap on a mountain bar onto the same road geometry and really make it work, I think. There are lots of these flat bar road bikes making their way into main stream by the big name builders, but it is just a flat bar/stem placed on the same geometry as their road or cross frames.

But with a road frame you use drop bars, and 90% of the time you are on the hoods. climbing is done on the tops. So just putting a flat bar on puts your hands at the position of the bar tops an even more inboard of that because of the bend in flat bars. So you really need like 10cm of extra top tube in order to use the same stem length to place the mountain bars in a similar reach position as your mountain bike.

I sooo much want to learn how to build frames and this is the first one I'd try. The Ritchey Mount cross and a custom from a builder name Judkins are the only real ones I've seen where they took a cross frame and specifically designed it around flat bars.

thing is with my long legs and short torso, I might have been able to find a stock cross frame that has a longish top tube and made it work for a flat bar. Wish I knew this before I had my custom made. I might as the builder what he'd charge to swap out the toptube/down tube for longer ones, might be worth it. who knows.