your daily bicycle log

this sounds idiotic, but i didn't know there were trains in california that ran north/south.

http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?c=AM_Route_C&pagename=am%2FLayout&cid=1241245649505

part of the route we took today went on the roads they used for the 1984 olympic road race in mission viejo, I think.

bit chilly this morning - used new long-finger gloves in retaliation. followed kinda hardcore powarclimb ride i'd heard about for first time, with mild change to route through park that added three short but steep bergs. back toward city on slippery-at-points unpaved path, shadowed MTB dude cos i didn't like the ostentatious clicking from his hub. on steep uphill bit of path that leads back to road, i went up two gears and got out of the saddle - bang! RIP chain. got taxi home.

u_u

Chris (porkpie) and I went for a great bike ride yesterday. The idea has been to go to the Dark Star brewery - not sure exactly where it is but it was 52 miles south-west of Chris's house in West Sussex. We almost abandoned the trip the day before when the forecast looked properly wet, but by the morning it wasn't too bad at all, apart from the persistent headbreeze.

Chris had chosen the "quiet" route when planning the journey, and it was fantastic - lots of empty country lanes, unpaved gravel roads (which led to puncture #1), 1930s concrete tracks and a diversion through lavender fields and horse paddocks.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v222/biondino/photo20.jpg

But it did mean our average speed was about 8 mph, and 52 miles started to look less and less possible. After almost four hours and 29 miles, we stopped for lunch at Gatwick. And I mean actually IN the airport - astonishingly it's apparently entirely acceptable to wheel bikes through the terminal and up the stairs to the cafe with nary a glance from security.

After a delicious bite to eat we decided it'd be foolhardy to try and ride 25 miles further, what with time running out and the weather looking more ominous, so we followed a decent country road route to Horsham, completing 43 or so miles in total, and not getting wet. Puncture #2 waited until I was 3 miles from home after getting the train back to London.

There were quite a lot of hills, from rolling to short and sharp with one or two real buggers thrown in - Chipstead, I'm looking at you. But the countryside was mostly gorgeous and it was a great way to spend a bank holiday.

It's great round there, isn't it? My parents live in a village in that Horsham-Crawley-Haywards Heath triangle. All very hilly and loads of trees.

just got back from doing some "urban singletrack" on my cx bike at a park that's a ten minute ride away. nothing wild but still, it's like right there. heart mpls

56 miles to Brighton in 5 hours (4 hours riding). And there's nothing wrong with that. God knows how I managed London to Cambridge in 3h 40 last year.

Did make it up Ditchling Beacon this time though, pretty chuffed with that. Certainly no walk in the park but not the absolute killer I thought it was.

I went on a club run this morning, something I do very rarely as my club's one is based on the ethos of "everyone is welcome, nobody gets left behind" which is almost always too slow for me. There was a headwind for the whole of the first half of the ride. I left the others when they had a cake stop after about 30 miles, because I desperately had to get back to London (I'd gone much further than I'd been planning to), and zoomed the last 20 miles home on my own with a tailwind. 51 miles today and 181 miles this week (I had most of the week off work - that mileage is going to plummet later this month).

I rode with ilxor "lucas" today with a couple other people on a 40 mile ride. It was supposed to be an easy spin but it turned out to be rather um... spirited.

i got dropped on climb by a fitness jackass, but im recovering nicely. *swigs wine straight from bottle*

did some more singletrack with a buddy I just learned was a HS mtb star---like, almost didn't gobto college because he wanted to try his hand at being a pro. now the most accomplished med student I know.

kicked my ass

granted I was on a cross bike and he had a pretty trick ss, but still. pwned

shasta i'd like to remind you that ride is called "easy like sunday morning"

smh

haha, i meant LUKAS. Hope the remainder of your Sunday went well. ^__^

went on a hard 'group' ride yesterday on new CX bike - 47mi on and off tarmac with sketchy gravel descents and near 5800 ft of climbing - 'group' pretence was disposed with as the pack of 70-ish riders blew apart on first hill, was a bit :0 by the end of it

xp it was fun, although less exciting than going anaerobic on the first set of hills this morning!

that cx ride sounds brutal haitch

still feeling it in the legs two days later!

Tried to go out for a little evening ride. My chain came off three times in the first 12 miles, each time when I was changing down from the big ring to the small ring. I stopped and tried adjusting the lower limiter screw. Inexplicably this prevented the chain from moving onto the big ring properly. I tried adjusting the other screw. This didn't help. I tried adjusting the tension. This made things worse. I repeated this many, many, many times. I will take the bike to a shop tomorrow.

Had a head-on collision today with some dude going way too fast around a tight-turn, and my front wheel is totaled now. How do you go about replacing it? I'm a bike newbie.

Just buy a new one. If you're not sure, take your broken one into a shop - they might be able to repair it, if not they'll know what kind of replacement you'll need.

each time when I was changing down from the big ring to the small ring

Well there's where you went wrong ;)

Seriously though, leave the limit screws alone unless you are replacing parts or KNOW that they've been changed.

Leave everything alone always would be a safer motto. Almost nothing I attempt in the maintenance department comes off.

How often do chainrings need replacing? I took my bike in to get the front mech sorted. I explained that I'd initially been having trouble changing up from the small ring to the big ring, before I suddenly started having problems with the chain leaping off when changing down, and before I totally messed things up by adjusting everything. The guy took a look at it and said that my chain rings looked very worn.

The advice I've had before is that it's generally better (though obviously more expensive) to change the chain, cassette and chain rings at the same time, rather than just change the chain. I've just been adding things up on spreadsheets and this is how it's gone on my racing bike since I bought it:

Original parts: 3,500 miles
(then chain got completely fucked and I had everything (rings, cassette, chain) replaced simultaneously)
New parts: 1,600 miles
(then chain snapped and was replaced, but kept on the same rings and cassette)
New chain only: 1,500 miles
So my current chain ring has done about 3,100 miles - time to change it?

former racer and shop tech buddy told me that chainrings ought to be a yearly expense.

Hmmmm. This is going to get expensive again.

no.... chainrings = never! so long as you're good with chain (~2500 miles) and cassette (5000 miles) maintenance.

when i had my chainrings replaced, my local shop (staffed with mostly current/former elite racers) said they had never seen a chainring with the type of damage that i'd done to mine in such a short amount of time. i used to be awful at maintenance though, so that's what they thought. also, i was riding in awful conditions all winter without properly caring for the bike.

so today i was winding up my legs for a little pre-race opener workout and when i launch into my sprint out of the saddle my front hub makes a "pachoing" sound and a speck of matter flies off perpindicular to trajectory at a very fast clip. Very soon after my front wheel turns to jello and spokes are pinwheeling against my fork.

Turns out I cracked the hub, most likely in a recent race when a dude dove a corner to my inside and i leaned back hard into him and he pedaled through my wheel a little.

My LBS is gonna rip out old hub and spokes and replace with triple butted aero spokes and a DT Swiss hub rescued from a wheel they had laying around. Stoked.

You escaped injury?

no.... chainrings = never!

I phoned the LBS this morning and told The Man to replace the chain rings if necessary. He said only the outer one was worn, so he'd do that, but he'd have to order one in. So I'm without my racer until late next week. However, this is no great problem as
a)I don't have any races until next weekend
b)I'm hideously snowed under with work and can ill afford to ride my bike whatsoever at the moment
c)If I do somehow find time to go for a ride it will be on the HEAVY winter bike, which is obviously quality training, as any fule no

Yes sir.

Back to you: Leave your chainrings alone imho, keep cassette and chain in good shape (scrubbed/cleaned before lubing). 3500 miles on a chainring is nothing. 2nd opinion?

Nice ride out today despite:

1) Garmin deciding I had done a total of 5m cumulative ascent. I noticed the hills so why didn't it.
2) Dragging a break block for 30km
3) at 40km deciding to put the hammer down and my legs telling me to fuck off, spoiling a potential sprint to Pulp's "Do you remember the first time?"

however

1) garmin can kiss my arse
2) this is like riding a heavier bike -> better training
3) this is actually a good thing it was a nice even, ramp in both legs, which means I have sorted out my position so that one leg doesn't sing out after 20km. (left cleat -2, right cleat 0, saddle fully forward, I might get all eddy merckx and put the bike through the CMM machine at work so I never lose this position). Besides the only pro trick I can do is stretching my legs bike hooking them over the saddle so I rang them out and managed to speed up for Breakthru by Queen.

All in all pretty good. 9kg down in three months of dieting. Still want to drop another 7-8kg but doing well. Also properly carbed up before this ride, I must always remember to have an eclair aux pistaches before riding. Just when I was looking for a Soigneur I ran into the three rivers arts festival and bought yself a sugary fresh squeezed lemonade.

Computer says 377m after downloading the route. Wonder why garmin wasn't displaying it?

Got far too much work on at the moment, but managed to spare an hour and a bit this morning for a 21-mile ride in the rain on my winter bike. Only had time for 36 miles in total this week and will be hard pushed to find time for another ride before doing a 56-mile road race next weekend. This is obviously awful preparation (heavy bike aside), but I'm trying to convince myself it's cunning tapering.

attacked the fearsome mt pleasant rd on CX bike yesterday, failed to snag new PR by one second. stupid fat tyres!

rolled home through parklands in darkness, saw like 20 rabbits run across path.

got a "new" townie up and running after letting it languish in the shed for god knows how long---phillips step-through pootler. durped around the hood, got some ice cream, sat by a lake and read a book, u kno

trackstands while eating ice cream and reading book :)

damn, daydreamed about being able to do ^^that, went for an easy morning spin out to the ocean instead. sick but i was making myself even crankier by not getting on the bike.

Seems as good a place as any to link this - http://sickmouthy.com/2011/06/19/i-like-to-ride-my-bicycle/

http://a.yfrog.com/img734/4066/qzhx.jpg

might like bigger in larger format:
http://a.yfrog.com/img734/4066/qzhx.jpg

fantastic

i hate you ;-)

NBS, if it's any help, cranksets seem to be the most heavily discounted things for sale by online retailers. I got a £350 crankset for £60 a while back and it was a massive upgrade even on my best bike.

mileage fell off a cliff in june, but maybe the break was good for me. 60 miles, 4k feet of climb, felt good. pulled our bikes into a pho spot at the end and inhaled everything.

My front mech problem still hadn't been resolved, despite buying a new big chainring (see post upthread from 2-3 weeks ago). Most of the time when I changed down from the big ring to the small ring it would get stuck in between: almost on the small ring, but kind of floating over it rather than gripping the teeth, leaving me fruitlessly spinning.

At the end of today's (28-mile) ride I went back to the bike shop. The guy had a look at it and said that the problem was that the two rings were slighlty too far apart (because the design of the new one made it stick out maybe 2mm further than the old one had) and that there wasn't much he could do about it, but that I didn't need to worry as it wasn't unsafe. I'm not really one to argue my case much in shops, but even I didn't think this was a satisfactory response - I pointed out that I could hardly race if it was going to take me 20 seconds of freewheeling to sort out every gear change. Eventually he hit on the solution of flipping my inner ring inside out* as this would bring the gap down slightly - seems to have done the trick. I hope so, it's been driving me mad.

*not a euphemism

My club's Saturday morning ride ends at a cafe about 8 miles away from where it starts. I was spinning easy, strictly zone 2, ya know, making it way back to the start to pick up my car and go home when I rolled up on an old guy in the club kit who I didn't know. I gave him a little 'what's up' chit-chat and out of absolutely nowhere he immediately starts telling me about a website that has news reports going back 12 years and is 'not that unfair and unbalanced fox news' and how corporate ownership of media empires is leading the country towards fascism. I give him a 'right on and a nod' and he continues on, saying how this country is taking the same path that Nazi Germany and Italy went down. I kind of back off on the chat at this point and he gives me (no kidding): "Yeah and I don't trust the flouride they're putting in water these days. Hitler did that in Germany...." I couldn't believe I was hearing this and had to stifle an open-mouthed scoff. I wanted to tell him something about keeping his Purity of Essence or something but instead I slowed a bit to let him get up the road, and HE sits up too to come back and continue talking. Luckily the ride came to a little bit of an incline and I was able to subtly pick up the pace enough to leave him behind without looking like I was trying to sprint away from him. Amazing.

Are you meeting up with him next week too?

45 miles in 3hrs 26mins yesterday, through rolling Devonshire countryside in sweltering heat. Fastest mile was 2:30: slowest was 10 minutes, up a steep 600 foot ascent. Exeter, Aunk, Ottery, Sidmouth, Budleigh, Exmouth, Exeter again. Great day.

With the day off, a few guys from the club and I headed out into the boonies (north/eastern Escondido, CA) for a ride. I rode like complete crap, got dropped significantly on every climb. Nearly heat-stroked out at the end. Brutal. Post-ride In-N-Out (maybe why I get dropped? hmm...) was righteous though.

http://app.strava.com/rides/871163

did the same mtn loop in two different directions sat and sun- 47 mi, about 4100 ft climbing total. on sunday it was nearly 100 deg down low, but still pretty hot up high.

at 8000 ft when your garmin says 16% slope, 98 deg, and youre looking at the snowfields on the high mountains way off to your right~ you know that if you could reach them, you'd scorch a big steaming fat mantis shaped hole in the snowbank, and a leave a big cloud of steam on your way to the bottom. and it would feel awesome.

instead, you keep going, and you buy gatorade from _both_ stands of totally adorable 7 year olds selling gatorade up the way.