your daily bicycle log

16 miles in an hour out to strathblane and back across a new route w/some heretofore unknown hills. felt good except when some tiny tanned alberto cat6ador (who I had only passed out of politeness to allow him to cycle with his group up the hill) attacked me on the col du milngavie and ripped my legs into wee pieces as I tried to stay with him up the hill. he beat me to the top obv but I held my own and beat the rest of his pack up the hills.

had some words w/him at the bottom of the descent in my pidgin luxembourgese to the effect that it's unsporting to attack just as my lungs have a mechanical...

Haha, nice.

do I go out on the club fast ride (~110 miles round to loch katrine) on sat: y/n

oh shit! don't kill yourself in the beginning. eat/drink/eat/drink!!! have a proper lunch mid-way.

man no cycling shoes means a pretty dire bike log

http://i486.photobucket.com/albums/rr222/Chass3ur/tempimg.jpg

top of first gran fondo climb

oh hell yes! but this was not the italian food themed one that i keep having dreams about?

restaurant comped our groups entry, but our kewl kits have not arrived from belgium, so i wore my most comfy shorts and vanilla-est jersey. on second loop we had a follow car with panini, biscotti, salt tablets, wine (which no one took)and oranges, heed etc.

Q_Q jealous Q_Q

hunt3r do u have....a moustache??

ha no, im unshaven on my chin and moustache for a few days there though. during shavedowns ive test viewed the moustache-only for yucks and i look sorta ned flanders :^O

btw i will rep for centurion, they did a magnificent job. there were TONS of staff and volunteers, copious amounts of grub- just really strong support. impressive, i'm surprised there weren't more riders. i sorta wonder if boulderites didn't participate as strongly as they could have since they can ride those roads any old time?

8^EO

i think i posted it on ilx in 2003 or so and got told i looked like a friendly cop. u_u

img down memory hole :(

dangit, ned

did the same route as above again this morning... thought I was going to collapse going up the climb - here's the profile... I'm a fat mantis :__(
http://img.skitch.com/20100722-dpq1dtbnc5ehhk5y6dui38yups.jpg
http://img.skitch.com/20100722-ppgmbpht2ces3fntnhnm6hi3pp.jpg

forgot to mention the pretty dramatic scenes that greeted me at the top, there was a massive fancy house fully on fire just where the red line finishes!

that 16 miles in another hour

10% is no joke imho

I did a short sharp hill that ramped to 16% at the top on my fixed the other day. I stopped 10 yards short of the top - didn't have the strength to turn the crank. Annoyingly, my fellow single speed rider with the same gearing made it up no problem.

go diagonal

Hah I couldn't - there was a car full of people alongside me cheering me on but taking up my room!

I FORGOT TO MENTION THAT ON MY LAST CLUB RIDE I WON THE SPRINT

COZENDISH

--new bike shoes yayyy

congrats cozendish, did u weep

did this one
http://www.universalsports.com/mm/Photo/Sports/General/47/09/66/470966_M23.jpg

No more mountain biking for me, it got stolen. Bugger.

>:[

Yeah, I've been numb/miserable all day. FUCKING thieves. I hope the cunt gets at least £500 for it otherwise I'd feel even more angry.

It did lead me to discover this, though - a site that automatically builds a real-time library of bikes being sold via the most obvious stolen-bike channels - ebay, gumtree (like the UK's craigslist, sort of) and stuff:

http://www.bikeshd.co.uk

woah, that's ace; wish you could feed it a post code

http://i486.photobucket.com/albums/rr222/Chass3ur/DSC_03771.jpg

our 100 mi crew - 257, 19, 22, and 29 and me - as we rolled out to start our long day.

14.28miles in 55mins; felt alright going up that big hill and got to smoke a cat 6 old man who waved me through saying 'I've no idea what I'm doing!' as I passed

just updated my dailymile w/that run and noticed this ~spooky~
http://img.skitch.com/20100728-fe4xcncgjxhbehe4eicbqg5teb.jpg

Did a 51-mile ride in 2 hours 57. Not sure if this was a good idea: did a race last night and have another race tomorrow night.

was that solo? fast!

nbs what category do you race in?

28.97 mi in 01hrs49 today

Yes, solo. I mostly ride solo. I've got a 4th cat licence. I've done 4th-cat-only races, races for 3rds & 4ths, and Go-Races (4ths and novices). In theory, a 'Go-Race' is supposed to be a simple easy race for newcomers to try out: I've heard of some being as short as 5 miles. However, the races I've occasionally been doing on Thursday evenings are categorized as Go-Races, but I think this is just for admin purposes (I think it means they can get away with less admin as nobody can score points for their licence) - the pace is quite high (23mph average) and the race quite long (1 hour) and none of the riders appear to be beginners.

thanks - I think I'll talk to some of the ppl in the club run on saturday about racing to see what's the deal; I'm swithering about whether I want to or not... don't want to embarass myself

A typical way to start off would be by doing a ten-mile time trial. You don't have to enter an 'Open' event (i.e. with 120 riders from lots of different clubs and entry forms sent in at least a fortnight in advance), there should be a 'Club 10' somewhere near you, maybe even run by your club. These are less formal affairs, usually done on a midweek evening in the summer, with maybe 20 or so riders taking part, most of them from the same club. There might still be time to do one this summer, but they're drawing to a close now that the evenings are getting shorter, so you might have to wait till next May. In the meantime you could find a ten-mile circuit and just time yourself doing your own personal race over it. Maybe set yourself a target of getting under half an hour (i.e. over 20mph) - if you can do that you'll be ready to race.

went out with the harder group today; what an eye-opener

very sobering

81 miles in 4hrs50 continuous (the longest continuous run I've done) over hills with names like THE REST & BE THANKFUL and HELL'S GLEN in driving rain

had a weird mechanical at the bottom of the r&bt road when trying to shift into the little ring where my chain got stuck outside the big ring between it and the front mech - only way to unjam it was to remove the front mech. when it was put back on it wasn't properly adjusted and so I had real issues getting into the little ring when needed (there was a particularly tortuous few k where I was wrestling with the gears to shift, all the while negotiating the rolling hills in the big ring)

not surprised I was out the back on each of the big climbs - and tho I wasn't the slowest up the hills I was significantly slower than the fast guys (tho to be fair they've been cycling for years and one had just come back from doing the col du souleur and tourmalet in the etape)

still now I know my level and have something to aim for

absolutely STUNNING scenery going through hell's glen, so beautiful, even in the horrible rain

pretty sure I just don't have the legs yet but I'm not convinced I got my nutrition right and I find it really hard to get power in the cold/rain when my legs go numb

ah didn't realise the rest and be thankful was in simon warren's book of best british climbs. ace! check one of those off

Good going Cozen. I've started a thread about that hill climbs book:
Britain's 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs

I'm on holiday now, so I'm trying to get some miles in and ride in some different places when I'm not parenting. On Friday I rode in northern Sussex / southern Surrey, taking in the climb of Leith Hill. Today I did 37 miles in Herts/Cambs/Essex on tiny country lanes hardly wide enough for one car, never mind two. This was a problem when a farmer came towards me on a tractor / combine harvester / some kind of agricultural machine. I had to climb into a field while carrying my bike and blundered into some stinging nettles.

I don't know where the summer's gone - the weather's been a bit mediocre recently. It's not really bad, just not as hot as it should be, hardly ever sunny, and with spots of rain that last just long enough to be annoying, but not long enough to leave you properly wet.

Denver! Join me & Gov Ritter @ the Capitol 4 an exciting announcement Wed @ 10am. Bring ur bike because we're ALL going for a ride after..

http://twitter.com/lancearmstrong/status/20181343934

should i go ride w/ la? *imagining the likely 5000 ppl swarming on this shit*

just a few blocks away tho

I did that last year when he did the same thing in Paisley and I thought it was awesome fun. I recommend it.

my brain switched the 'Denver' and 'Join' and thought you were going riding w/john denver

even though he's been dead for like 12-13 yrs