your daily bicycle log

50 easy miles in cloudless 80 degree SoCal weather yesterday. First long solo ride in a while, and also the first ride I listened to music for a while. Playlist: giant steps, playgroup dj-kicks mix, shed's summer house mix, and a couple techno mixes I did. So fun

Jealous

Should have done 64 miles over exmoor today but I'm not up to it after the crash last week. Sad face.

took advantage of today's public holiday...

http://i43.tinypic.com/9v9nbc.gif

the big climb there is the bowden spur road, 8km on dirt, the highlighted bit (4km avg 9%) with long ramps near 20%! i walked a good bit of it, frankly.

I hit a woman on the way in today. In the right lane of a three-lane, one-way road (Finborough Road in Chelsea/Earls Court, heading north). Although the other two lanes were traffic-filled this lane is usually empty as few people turn right, as I needed to, so I was riding about 15mph up it when a woman steps out from behind a van, not looking, and although I shout "watch out" and slam on the brakes, we're too close and I hit her hard enough to cause her some fair bruising. I endo elegantly and manage not to fall off, though the handlebar catches me hard on the right knee.

We're both more or less okay, I think - had I been going faster (or been, say, a car) then it would have been a lot less pretty. I guess it's not a bad thing to be a bit shaken up, to get a reminder every now and then of how dangerous it can be out there, but I dunno - I hate anything that makes me less keen to ride.

Distance: 245.20 mi
Time: 18:17:19 h:m:s

busy, shitty, shitty, shitty month.

xp was she suitably contrite?

Hunter - that's an extreme day's cycling!

(Yes, yes, I know, it's on the wrong thread)

Excellent, after 2 weeks off the bike, the osteopath has fixed me up and identified my problem (torn neck muscles and an upper back in need of repair). Back on my lovely new kaffenback on Friday after a tentative gym session tomorrow.

5x15 second sprints, max effort

― cutty, Wednesday, October 17, 2007 5:58 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

rest 5 mins in between

― cutty, Wednesday, October 17, 2007 5:59 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark

ha! that sounds easy!

today sucked. slow.

It sounds easy until you understand where your max watts is!

Getting from 50% to 90% takes a bit of work but getting from 90% to 100% is miserable.

Winter tyres on, hoods straightened. I could ride tomorrow.

135 miles, 6k feet of climbing including 1.6 miles averaging over 10% grade (pure pain).

Felt.... okay. Great in parts, miserable in others.

12 miles, gently. First outing since the crash a fortnight ago.

16 miles around the surrey hills yesterday, 10 miles at swinley today. cycling in autumn is so beautiful, well worth the mud and slippery tree roots.

It was the most astonishingly beautiful day here, though properly cold - 70 miles around the Campsies were wonderful. There was some amazingly dense mist sitting in the valleys, which was rather chilling and eerie to ride through; rather stunning to see it sitting solidly beneath one with hills and mountains rising like islands from a murky sea after climbing up to Killearn and Balfron though.

lovely image.

ok, so now i know i can ride 50 miles with a hangover trying to kill me.

http://i40.tinypic.com/15cmvie.gif

Did about an hour and a quarter of mountain biking with my chunky tyres on the cyclocross - good fun but scary!

27 miles today, down the estuary to Dawlish and back through country lanes. Glad of my winter tyres; autumn leaf mulch, cow pats, puddles, gravel-strewn estuary trails... I'd have died on slicks given what I did the other week.

Inspection brewing at work, so have worked right through the weekend :-(
No cycling, no fun

went via a new take on the usual route out to the hilly stuff. rain opened up right as i hooked around the hairpin to start the hard bit on mt pleasant rd - had to stop to put rain vest on at highest point, no strava PB for me. dried out after a coffee and went back towards city, some on road, some on dirt paths. ended up going south of city on flat roads and down to bayside nouveau-riche suburb to get some extra distance in, ate some calamari rings on the shore and watched the storm clouds build again. 67mi all up, 4900ft climbing (p much all in first half).

got a text on saturday that read "i've nicked your bike"

turns out my neighbour had nicked it to give it a good seeing to. truing, brakes, hub thing was on it's way out apparently. WHAT A HERO

Woah! That's kind, but unsolicited it's a bit... invasive? Also, giving hubs a good seeing to isn't exactly a quick superficial fix!

On the other hand, yay generous neighbour! Does it run like a dream now?

I'm not usually crazy about late autumn, but bugger me, riding conditions have been blissful the last few days.

28 miles today, first time on the bike in 12 days (due to work pressures, rather than reluctance to ride), was huffing and puffing a bit - surely I can't have lost my fitness that quickly? Maybe it's Heavy Bike Syndrome. I'm going to get the mudguards replaced in a bid to stop the endless rubbing.

34 miles this morning, first semi-big ride since I knackered my shoulder, which is now back to about 90% health. Have lost about 2-3mph on average speeds due to chunky winter tyres, wet roads, leaf mulch, and wind.

91 miles, 5k feet of climbing, 18.1 mph... with a possibly toxic blood/alcohol content from the events of the night previous...

frisky!

You're a machine.

37 miles this morning.

So..................

I did a ride in thick fog - this seemed worth mentioning the day ILX died, but much less so now. Not that it's stopped me. I did a couple of 50-mile rides with a chaingang and suffered - mentally (and physically) I've been in hibernation mode and just wanted to do some gentle miles to keep ticking over, whereas these guys were averaging 18.5mph. I could cope with that in June, but not in December - on both rides I turned back on my own after 30 miles and left them to it.

This Christmas break I've done a few 20ish-mile rides on country lanes that are inches deep in mud in places. My bike got so filthy that today I bought loads of cleaning products and actually gave it a good going over (a real rarity for me). I visited my brother, who is now temporarily based in Gloucester, and went for a ride round there with him doing sprints - he won the flat ones and I won the climbs, but he won his more convincingly than I did. I don't seem to have much of a sprint.

absolutely destroyed my PR on my morning hill climb today - in fact, achieved my goal for the year 2012! the lesson is really that i need to set more aggressive goals, but for now i'm just going to enjoy it.

Had a dentist appointment at 9am so cycled down to Dawlish (never transferred to an Exeter dentist when we moved) first thing. Had taken the rest of the day off so instead of coming straight back, 13 miles in 50 minutes up the river (as I'd done on the route out) I went up over the big hills at the back of my parents' house instead, and took a 2-hour, 20-mile, 2,000 feet of climbing journey back. Blue skies, cold air, rolling gorse bushes, forests, amazing views of Devon. Brilliant.

And then I bought 3 Lindt chocolate Father Christmases on sale for 89p each in Sainsburys because I'd earnt the calories.

Out on a clubrun this morning (not my club's one - my club does a far more 'social' one "at the pace of the slowest rider", not terribly useful for preparing for races, so two or three of us gatecrash the ride of a bigger club from the same area). There was a decent sized group (13 riders, I think) - we organised into two lines, moving up on the right and back on the left with everyone doing about three minutes or so on the front. It was working well (and meant you got to talk to lots of different people as you were next to a different person every few minutes) and we were going about 18.5mph. After about 25 miles I dropped off the group - not because I was dropped, but because I had to get home in time to see the Man Utd v Man City match on TV. I actually felt much better today (though the last 10-15 miles of the journey back on my own were a bit of a grind). Final distance 51.5 miles, average speed 17.2mph.

i put away 450km in the week after christmas. including the one legit HC mountain close to melbourne!

You should have done the Rapha 500!

I had my first 'neds wielding improvised projectiles' incident of the new year last night. It was just an empty plastic juice bottle, so no harm done, except to the moral fabric of society.

30 mile daybreak route north of Exeter, vaguely inspired by the piece with Tom Staniford in this week's Cycling Weekly (he's a student at the uni where I work, and seriously inspirational paracyclist). Did the 30 in just shy of 2 hours, doing some roads I know well but backwards, and some new roads I'd never done before. It was beautiful.

ha krakow, i got in 60km on the friday before, that put me over!

Cold first proper ride of the year. 50km despite not putting on ear band, freaky warm weather is good. All my lycra feels tight after xmas though.

Fantastic haitch, well done!

A friend of mine actually got into Rapha's picks for the best of the Festive 500's!

35 miles for breakfast.

I had bacon and eggs

Paceline riding through the valley. 85 miles. Didn't blow up for once.

22 miles for breakfast. Next weekend I hope I can do a nice long ride with company.

I'm still getting over a cold I've had since Tuesday, but dragged myself out this morning. The group was about half the size of last week's (just 7 of us), probably due to the much lower temperature. We stuck to main roads on the way out to avoid any ice. Me and another guy who needed to be home by 12 peeled off after 20 miles and came back via the lanes. 44 miles at an average of 17mph and my toes are completely numb. Gorgeous sunshine today, even though it is cold.

140km over the weekend, two rides on the trainer. I know it doesn't count but its alternating between snowing and raining at the moment.

Doesn't count

GET WET!

was too wimpy to go out on a 36f/2c morning ride today