your daily bicycle log

nice guys

been sick and off the bike for a week, argh. going to take a v short spin this evening and see how it goes.

continuing to follow goal of one mtb ride/week. perfect, cool, 50 degree day for a long sloggy singletrack climb. i've had a hard time getting used to technical uphills on the dual sus- the bike is so damn tall, for one thing. otoh, the higher bb makes clearance and pedal strike issues much better.

<iframe height='405' width='590' frameborder='0' allowtransparency='true' scrolling='no' src='http://app.strava.com/runs/6728224/embed/ca61dbad234d5e0f4753abe990aca4fa3e282020'>;</iframe>

sorta regret not going 29er, with all the rock gardens around here i'm sure the bigger wheel would be better rolling.

(sorry i was pretty sure that wouldnt work but was curious)

oh man that sucks about having an ish with your DUAL SUSPENSION BIKE

LAWYERS

(can't wait to be the fattest doctor mantis, gonna bottleneck everyone while i wheeze on a g-d moots)

flossin my huffy 2012

ask me about todays strava kom

ima go get smashed on red wine and hope my household dont care

when mootsed, send pix doc

will do(c)

so about that KOM

It happened lol

picked up nu bike from shop and rode it home (30km) in blazing autumn sunshine

...then went to pub to watch football, haw

to stop the slightly knackered bracket for the light on the commuter loosening up over bumps, have applied 'shim' ...made from blu-tac. #subparmaintenanceskills

arnet u sposed to post a pic of nubike already and what is blutac?

blu-tac is 'the original re-usable adhesive!

http://i42.tinypic.com/2rf52bk.jpg

not in shot: pie plate that i haven't taken off rear wheel yet, haw

I do like the look of the Giants.

me too. i dreamt last night that i had bought a rabo strip giant, i dunno why.

does that have a fixed seat mast instead of seatpost?

i know that it should go on "bikes u lust" thread, but another hot giant- 22 lbs dual 9er?!

http://www.bikemag.com/files/2012/04/anthemx29advan.jpg

er
http://www.bikemag.com/files/2012/04/anthemx29advan.jpg

regular seat pisr hunt3r - aero shape tho. advanced sl has ISP.

'seat pisr', rather sausage-fingered of me

I'm supposed to be doing a 42-mile road race tomorrow (my first race on the open road and >25 miles since last June). My build up has been fairly hopeless: in the 7 days up to yesterday I managed a grand total of 9 miles. First of all I had a cold / sore throat / cough. Then I picked up conjunctivitis off my daughter. I still foolishly set off for a ride last Sunday morning wearing normal glasses (usually I have contact lenses), but I could feel my eyes filling up with goo, it was only 2C and very windy, and I felt like shit, so fortunately common sense kicked in after about 20 minutes and I came home again.

On top of all that I had to go to a specialist dental hospital to have a tooth removed earlier this week. I'm still a bit sore and swollen and I've spent the week living off a diet of paracetamol, eye drops, cough medicine and salt water rinses. However, I managed to get out yesterday and ride 32 miles just before the thunderstorms hit. There's heavy rain forecast for tomorrow and all logic is telling me not to bother with the race, but at the moment I'm still planning to do it.

sounds like your body is under enough stress. even if you've paid, i say don't do it.

argh the eye goo story is so nastee!

nice spin out in the hills this morning w/ two friends-of-friends, couple of short but steep bits, then the kinglake hill. not too far, still adjusting to new saddle a bit.

Just cycled the London marathon, closed roads mmmmmmmm

Is that allowed?

I ignored common sense and did the race this morning. Fortunately the rain held off and I didn't feel ill (though I did suffer pre-race insomnia and didn't get much sleep last night). I managed to stay in the bunch for about 19 miles then started to cramp up a little bit and sunk off the back - I don't know how it's possible to get cramp after less than an hour. The pace wasn't too fast (I was averaging 23.1mph when I was dropped, but that includes the neutralised zone) but I just haven't got the speed to go with the surges - I was dropped on a flat section and couldn't chase back on on a descent even getting out of the saddle and sprinting. Went for a ride afterwards to get some miles in, did 38 miles at 20.2mph (including the race).

Is that allowed?

weeeeeeeeeellllll probably not. We never got told to get off the course by a policeman though.....

We were well ahead of the race - set off before they started closing the roads at 7am, but by the end some marshalls were getting a little more nervous. We did end up sprinting (as much as I can) down an empty embankment and Mall (spectators already there cheering us), including crossing the actual marathon finish line.

We were waiting for the 6th member of our group (turns out he got sent off course by a marshall in a military uniform..) when a nice lady came up and asked "erm, how did you get here in this footprint [footprint? what?] as it's my job to ensure this is a sterile area - we do have visitors here including royalty" to which fellow rider Andrij replied "well, we started in Blackheath a couple of hours ago" and Jurek made things a lot worse with "all your marshals were very friendly and accommodating..."

"Please guys, go up that road and get out the area" OK, bye......

on 'training ride' (lol) at the boulie. relaxed pace on first lap, turn it up a bit on last climb. loop round for lap two, first long climb and i can hear someone puffing pretty hard. he creeps past with no ackno ohwledgement. it's on! i latch onto his wheel ande off a couple of times to avoid half-wheeling. i roll off the pace on the downhill 'bike lane' section (there's been some head-ons here in rhe past; i think it's prudent) and he gets a gap. over last rise, stop to clip on tail-light at halfway point, and the chase begins. sight him on second downhill, rail through fast dipping left-hander that's been freshly resurfaced, stomp past on the next rise on the big ring. not troubled by my pursuer for the rest of the lap. satisfaction!

Eye infection came back. Endless rain fell endlessly. Yesterday was my day off. Sat inside waiting for the rain to stop. The rain didn't stop. Went out in the afternoon (wearing glasses again as contact lenses are impossible at the moment). Got very wet and muddy. Took my frustration out by doing hill reps. Chain inexplicably fell off just quarter of a mile from home. Got very oily. Today sat inside and watched the endless rain falling endlessly.

Respect.

big tailwind allowed me my best time up the canyon in like 3 years. i know it's all a lie, but i felt so fast.

Took my frustration out by doing hill reps.

Pervert.

Four thousand fixed-gear miles in four months completed today!

Pervert

Went and watched the Steel City Showdown Crit this afternoon. Also back on the bike properly after a couple of months of excuses (travel, illness, gf moving to Australia).

Nothing much to report, was running the pressure in the tyres a little lower than previously due to a series of Lennard Zinn articles. Definitely feels better.

you're mental, alex, but i admire your tenacity.

up and down some bergs

rested yesterday after the above on friday, then out this morning with friend on the usual loop. clanging headache was interfering for a while, but then i notched up new PB on the hard section of the loop - 30 seconds under! was it the extra motivation from trying to chase someone, or am i coming into some semblance of form? only time will tell...

i did a long ride on a trail system that has had some restricted access for a couple of years. it seems to have made some locals pretty bold:

http://i486.photobucket.com/albums/rr222/Chass3ur/May5ride.jpg

there were actually two groups of males, i got within about 15 yards at one point. i forgot 1) how big this dudes are and 2)how intimidating too. as the second group that i saw descended a very steep grade to a field a couple of the sheep turned to face off, and lowered their horns-- i thought there was gonna be action, but no.

I rode to Brighton today, it was a bit damp. It was also a lot faster than I normally go - felt alright though, and managed to get over the south downs without walking for the first time - not at Ditchling, but it was still a bit of a bugger (Carlton hill?)

Do you know what your route was?

I've had an eventful time of it. As usual I got pre-race insomnia - I'd told my wife I'd sleep on the sofa so I didn't wake her up in the morning, but for some reason I couldn't get to sleep at all. At about 3am I tried sleeping on the floor instead - this worked, but my alarm clock got me up again at 6am. My clubmate arrived and drove us for an hour to the race HQ. When I went to sign on I realised that I'd lost my race licence. For a while I was facing an extremely anti-climactic few hours sitting in a village hall waiting for my clubmate to finish, but I managed to negotiate my way in by buying a day licence.

We were on a 12-mile circuit with two racing taking place simultaneously. The E/1/2/3s went off ten minutes before us (and were doing 6 or 7 laps instead of 5) then we followed. It was ridiculously cold for the time of year - I had to wear leg warmers and three tops - and the course was full of nightmarish potholes. About 15 riders dropped out of my race in total - a lot of them due to instant punctures caused by hitting massive potholes at high speed. The first couple of laps I felt OK (apart from losing one of my water bottles through clumsiness) and managed to move up every now and then, but then my legs started to feel it. After 37 miles (at 23.7mph) we were suddenly brought to a halt - the road ahead was closed due to an accident in the other race. We thought it was all over, but surprisingly we got started again after five or ten minutes. There was blood in the road, an ambulance at the side and a helicopter coming in to land to airlift one rider to hospital - not good at all.

About five miles later a guy came past with no race number and wearing full Sky kit. I assumed it was just some poser. He then launched himself right past our bunch and attacked off the front causing people who were actually in the race to give chase. He then eased right off and smiled at everyone as we came past - it was Alex Dowsett (the Sky pro who lives somewhere in Essex) on a training ride infiltrating the race. He then left us, but his 'attack' had livened things up and I was having to dig deep to stay in contact. Both my legs were cramping up now. For about the 8th time in the race there was a shout of 'Hole!' followed by a rider puncturing - I had to swerve to avoid him and as I did so I heard a shout behind me and immediately felt contact as my rear wheel hit someone's front wheel and he came crashing down. About five minutes after that (after 47 miles) I finally lost contact with the bunch. I wanted to stop then, but I needed to complete the race to pick up points for my club in a championship, so I had to grind my round the final 13 miles, first of all alone and then in the company of another dropped rider - we got passed by the elite race and Alex Dowsett again before we finished.

jeez NBS you're having a ruff time of it lately!

the dowsett thing is p. hilarious though. i got passed by jez hunt on my way to work in december, he spends the northern winter in melbourne. effortlessly darting through the traffic and rolling along 10km/h quicker than every other bike.

Dowsett tweeted about that yesterday, it was his first fast ride after having the pins out of his broken elbow.... On Wednesday...

I'll dig out the route NBS, we zoomed out of town on the a23 which is not all that but post gatwick we were on the old London-Brighton road which went through some cracking villages.

Yeah, I know lot of the roads in the Horsham-Crawley-Hayward's Heath-Brighton-Worthing area as my parents live round there - some great cycling and scenery.

Just seen this posted (elsewhere) by another rider (from yesterday's races):
There were a couple of crashes*, one bringing down a single rider who broke his collar bone, and the second taking down two when the first hit a big pothole on the sweepy s-bend just before the church. It was a pretty big impact at 30mph and he sustained a nasty bash to his face. Fortunately no teeth broken though he was air-ambulanced off to Addenbrookes no doubt for a head scan and further patching up - hope he is OK.
The potholes were a bit of a nightmare - some really big and deep and it was a struggle to avoid them all - I managed to snap my handlebars after going down a smaller one. I certainly wouldn't want to ride the course again until the majority have been filled in.

*in the elite race, not my one

Snapping handlebars is not cool, where was the race?

Oh, our route followed this:
http://www.hcvs.co.uk/page1-events_results/L-B%20Route%20Map%202012/New%20London%20to%20Brighton%20Route.jpg

We followed a whole load of old buses and stuff, really helped as the roundabouts were marshalled in Places

where was the race?
The middle of nowhere - northern Essex, west of Saffron Walden, in/near these villages: Radwinter, Wimbish, Thaxted, Great Sampford.

our route followed this
The A23 down past Gatwick and through Crawley can't have been that much fun. Handcross/Staplefield is my old stamping ground - I had a 10-mile training loop which went up a long hill that you would have gone down.

Just found Clayton Hill on the map - can't believe you were on the A23 for the stretch from there to the outskirts of Brighton - that's practically a motorway!