your daily bicycle log

Damn. Where are you Hunt3r?

denver. hey at 6 am its MINUS 17 DEGREES. srsly ive never seen it this cold here. i dont think ive ever seen it below minus 7 or so.

55 to -17? fahrenheit is a mystery to me. countriesthatdon'tusemetric.jpg

btw some shots i took the other week:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3015/3092894054_af183d9cc3.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3041/3092053031_ef8411e95d.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ledgr/3092883594/sizes/m/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ledgr/3092045991/sizes/m/

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3245/3092883594_061bea4977.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3132/3092045991_9154c0762a.jpg

okay lol @ that tandem jump

-17 F ~ -27 C

Wow. I can hardly even imagine what it feels like at that kind of cold. I doubt I've ever experienced much less than -5 C or so.

Joined the local cycling club last night and will definitely be racing to some extent next season (even if it ends in humiliation). Off work now, so had a gentle 20-mile ride this morning then went to a bike shop to ask about my gear trouble on the new bike - they reckon it's just the cables stretching and told me to bring it in once I've done a few more miles on it. So all is right with the world.

25 miles this morning. I rode over to the new Hog Hill circuit on the fringes of east London, which they've opened up as replacement for Eastway (which has been bulldozed as they're building Olympic venues on the site). I tried out the 2km circuit (there are various smaller ones you can do as well). For such a flat area it was a surprisingly hilly course: one minute I was flying down a hill at 38mph, the next I was grinding my way up a really nasty climb to the finish line at just 8mph. I thought I'd push it as much as I could and managed to average 19.5mph, but after four laps I'd had enough - the climb's OK once, but when you have to do it every three or four minutes it's really sapping. Also, I don't trust myself to ride in a bunch there - too many fast corners. I'm a dangerous descender/cornerer because I'm too cautious, so I'll be easing off, braking, and cutting right across other people's racing lines.

I didn't know about hog hill. I used to love going to eastway as a kid.

wahoo we're past the solstice come back to me sun.

probly my coldest full commute-- 7 degrees downtown. broke out the neoprene pullover booties. the only things that were cold were my legs (midweight dress trousers only) and my fingers (lobsters with lobster overshell on top).

there was a beautiful fluffy red fox hanging out in Harvard Gulch park this morning.

started ride to work again (after 2 hours on the rollers in the AM.)

every east river crossing is covered in ice. it was like a CX race on ice.

i rode my new studded tires today, as its sposed to snow, but its not snowed yet. they are very loud and make the same grindy crunchy sound as studded car tires.

i found some long patches of solid ice to ride on just to see if they work. they do!

this is encouraging! i'm planning on getting some soon, as it has been a v v snowy winter thus far

the studded tires are the cheap innova 26 x 1.75/1.95. im not clear on where the 1.95 part is- they are 1.75s, pretty narrow. surprisingly hard to mount. the casings are like as stiff as car tires. in the snowy sections i rode, it was a bit squirrely, but no worse than riding without studs.

I've been making the most of the holiday period and racked up 155 miles so far. Finally broke through the psychological 20mph/30mins barrier for my ten-mile circuit this morning, so the fitness is coming.

my fucking commute:

http://img99.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img1002tq4.jpg

for those who are not as experienced with fixed chainlines as they are derailler mechs, dont sprint on a slack chain. head swimming (that ancient helmet is basically a hardshell and thank fucking god i had it).

oh man! :/

why were you sprinting on your commute?

eager beaver

sometimes you just gotta make that light, i know

i was so momentarily happy when my wheels were still true. slike im all fucked up and shirt and jacket are shredded but wahhey! bike is oh-kizzay!

just like racing

wait i don't get what happened

i stood up for a few hard pedal strokes and threw my chain. then i landed on my back and cracked my skull like whip.

i can never make images work right anymore

http://i486.photobucket.com/albums/rr222/Chass3ur/IMG_1002.jpg

;_; vintage 1994 team helmet complete with I VOTED! sticker ;_;

Damn, sorry to hear that. I'm glad you're OK, though.

Was the chain pretty slack?

probly less than 1cm of sag on return under tension? tho i dunno really.

happy new year. 14.5 hours on the bike this week, 290 miles.

VOLUME

dude u outside on that? thas nice.

icebike ride 1 was successful last nite with the roads covered in 1/4 inch of crusty ice mixture with 2" of pow on top. worked great.

7 hours outside this weekend. everything else inside!

the mixture of indoor specific training and outdoor base really works well

That's a hella lotta miles. I've been taking it relatively easy of late. Getting lazy. :-(

i may have posted about it before but i think steve larsen trained almost entirely indoors one season while he was honching the mtb circuit in the late 90s. he said it was because it was all quality, no waste.

36 miles in the cold this morning, taking it to over 250 miles during my Xmas break, but back to work tomorrow :-(

yeah, and i recently got the trutrainer rollers (http://www.trutrainer.com) which means i can do 3-4 hour sessions inside on the rollers. my steady state endurance rides are so specific. no waste at all.

i rarely went over 90 mins on the rollers, and eventually stopped doing anything but warmup/warmdown on them. first, it bored the fuck out of me, but also i got freaked out because id get taint numbness on rollers during long sessions, which i never experience outside.

that's common on rollers--on trutrainers you can totally get out of the saddle for extended periods, move around, get comfortable, even sprint. pretty awesome.

I will have my bike assembled and be trundling round schenley park in a couple of days. I am looking forward to a city with hills. (they claim to have the worlds steepest street at 37% but I am willing to dispute this)

61 mile circuit of the Isle of Wight on Saturday, 3700 feet of ascent, and two hours of the ride done in the dark in sub-zero temperatures. It was utterly miserable for a short while and fantastic the rest of the time. Want to do it in summer now.

nice work.

Cycling on the isle of white is lovely. Both on road and off. Some lovely downland riding.

Ed - there was an article in Cycling Weekly recently about the world's steepest street, which was supposedly in New Zealand somewhere, but I don't think it was quite as steep as 37%. I assume that's the result of imposing a grid system of streets on a landscape that really could do without it?

I've joined a club, got my British Cycling membership sorted, and am waiting for my racing license to turn up. I'm getting excited.

It's in Dunedin - I've met two people who claimed to have lived on it (perhaps in the same way at least 100,000 people went to the first Beatles gig etc.)

Rear flatted today crossing a maze of grooved trolley tracks on probably not the most properly inflated tires... first flat since may 08. maybe it's the holiday lbs?

3700 feet of ascent
Do you have a program or website to calculate this for you, or is this guesswork from looking at a map, Mark? I'd love to find something that can give me those stats. Google Maps Pedometer is handy for recording routes, and gives a profile of your route (with high point, low point, and starting altitude), but doesn't give any stats about total climb. GMP is set up for imperial units OR metric units, but not for that oddly British combination - I want to know my distance in miles, but my climbs in metres.

22 miles yesterday in really horribly freezing weather. Nearly came off when I hit some slush at the bottom of a hill. All the advice seems to be to do interval training to prepare for road races, but I'm a bit concerned about the sapping climb on the Hog Hill circuit where I'm hoping to race, so I've found a little loop with a nasty climb on it: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2481329. I only did it twice yesterday, but I'll try to build that up.

34 miles this morning, the first 20 on a club run.

you are going to race this year? nice!

3700 feet of ascent
Do you have a program or website to calculate this for you, or is this guesswork from looking at a map, Mark?

One of my co-riders had a Garmin 705 and that was where the figure came from. Of course, that will include 5 foot "ascents" and the like which you don't even notice - probably half the footage was accounted for by gently rolling roads and the other half actual more-or-less challenging hills and hillocks.

I did a 27-mile ride in the freezingness of Saturday morning, but it was how slow I was that bothered me more than how cold I was. Being alone means no-one to draft and no-one to keep my spirits up, but at least it meant that I got to eat an enormous curry in the evening without worrying about calories, sigh.

Its snowing hard and imabout to do dis here wish me well.

SNOW BIKE! BIKE LAWYER! DO IT!

I need fenders/mudguards.