your daily bicycle log

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.

beautiful commute this morning, just warm enough, legs felt strong (maybe even had a bit of awesome in them), scalped a few fully lycra-ed roadies and despite doing an extra mile, was only a minute and a half off my PB. And I didn't have to use my AK.

It was nice, wasn't it, though apparently my average speed was under 9mph which seems unliely even for traffic! Might do the Hampstead Heath loop again tonight, get some climbing in (though not much if I'm honest - anyone know how high the Heath is?).

if you're doing that you may as well do Swains Lane..... or did you do West Hill? > http://www.goinggoingbike.com/blog/the-great-road-climbs-of-london-2-highgate-west-hill/

That looked like a nice loop though, Willesden Green/Harlesden excepted.

I got a tweet calling me a wuss for not doing Swain's Lane! I'm hardly a local, though, I didn't know I was missing out. I'll try one or t'other tonight maybe.

finally tried playing around with strava. all of my good "results" are downhill :\

i think i need to go on a 'real' ride today but man i am just lazy as heck

^ this. until saturday, i hadn't been on my bike in over a month. texted a friend to do a ride today (i have today off too!) or else i would have been too lazy to do anything. also, sf is having a 'real' summer right now (at least until it turns back into winter)

just had a swell little ride around the city, just under 20mi.

bike is super janky at the moment, though, wondering if it might be time for a new frame

my bike is still in a box from removal to deutschland :-(

is it true that front and back brakes are on opposite handlebars in left-hand drive countries? i have borrowed bikes in europe/the us and did not die, so i feel like this must be rot, but maybe i wasn't paying attention?

i dunno i always thought it was a moto v. cycling thing? i think some cx'ers switch it up. and i'm pretty sure sheldon brown has an opinion on it somewhere

apparently it is to do with indicating when turning against traffic. maybe i should swap mine when i rebuild it.

i have always switched my levers for cross.

so with cx in the us which side is the front brake?

right

yeah that's how bikes are set up normally in the uk

i can't think of anyone i knew who switched as i did.

so, do front calipers in europe have the clamps on the opposite side? because wouldnt switching your levers w/ calipers make the cable routing on front kinda shitty?

i guess in mainland europe they are the same as in the us.

will check my uk bike tomorrow. struggling to picture it.

i guess in mainland europe they are the same as in the us

You know what they call a quarter pounder with cheese, though?

a sheldon brown?

went on said ride w/friend. we're going pretty fast, him in front. car makes u turn in front of us. we're in the bike lane, and my friend was riding sorta aggressively, so i thought he'd keep going, but he didn't, and he didn't tell me he was stopping. i hit the breaks and did a super endo. i couldn't clip out and fell. knee is totally raspberried, but i did a crazy roll out of it directly to standing and nothing else on myself or my bike is hurt. it was on the beginning of a 2hr ride and luckily it didn't hurt until i got home and had to clean the rocks out of it.

god I need a "real" road bike

we got that front brake = right lever thing goin on down here, u kno

yep, countries that drive on the left (and cx) apparently

best countries imo

Did 30 damp and windy miles round Devon lanes last night in a little over 2 hours.