your daily bicycle log

god, those rides are the worst. sympathies NBS.

terrible. also, kill all crappy mini pumps (unless their only function is to back up co2)

I have done basically zero riding, and have been feeling like a lump

Argh, NBS, that sounds like no fun!

I did 23 'miles' on the exercise bike today, 65 minutes; dropped the resistance and walloped the rpm, managed to keep it over 100 for the first 15 miles. I'm pretty pleased with that.

It wasn't that bad - at least I was able to ride home. The time my chain snapped and I had to walk four miles in cycling shoes was much worse.

rode trainer, tried some position changes. figured out my tt position robs me of about 10% of power afaict (which is not unheard of, i guess). took some videos of positioning after workout and geeked out on motion capture software kinovea. i know all the angles now.

during workout i watched some documentary about going to patagonia to surf and climb on a boat with ultra beach guitar bro soundtrack. on the way, dude picks up easter island surf honey. patagonia looks nice.

NBS, that sounds dreadful.

Had a good ride yesterday despite being off the bike last week, ill, I felt pretty good, weather never got as warm as promised.

A dry weekend, the snow we had earlier in the week has gone and the sun even came out today. Yesterday I went out and did the 33.5 mile ride that mechanical hell prevented me from doing last weekend. Today I went out again and did exactly the same ride, but on my lightweight racer instead of the horrible winter bike, partly as an experiment to see just how much difference it made. My average speed yesterday was 16mph, today it was 17.2mph. Same average heart rate, but I spent more time in zone 4 and zone 5 yesterday, so I think I have to work quite a bit harder on that bike.

I did 19 miles on the static on Tuesday, but I was sick then and I'm still sick so I'm laying off the training until the lurgy passes.

Fell off my bike in the snow on the way back from the bar last night, landed on my wallet and have a dead leg, no real harm done.

I got studs for Xmas and they are maaaaagic

Down in Dorset for the half-term break, managed three rides (25-30 miles) in the last three days, all in windy sub-zero conditions. Thursday and Friday I tried doing lengthy intervals on a three-mile lumpy triangle (three miles hard, three miles recover, etc.) in a desperate attempt to get ready for the racing season (I might be doing my first race of the year next weekend). Today I drove further west and did a very hilly ride: about 200m in the first few miles, then down a 1-in-6 hill having to slam on the brakes to overtake horse riders, then straight up another savage hill, down the other side, over a ford, and up yet another savage hill. The first 10.5 miles had 427 metres of climbing and 274 metres of descents - you don't get that in Essex. Much of that was into a headwind as well, so I was just crawling along. One more horrible climb (taking the total to about 720m in a ride of less than 28 miles) and then a mostly downhill-tailwind section where I had planned to try to set a new fastest speed, but it was snowing by this stage (though I still got over 44mph). I can't wait for it to get a bit warmer.

no ride on trainer today, i did a 56 floor "tower run" for charity. hardest 9 min effort ive ever done, i still feel sickish 3 hrs later.

other workout is shoveling driveway and walk twice today, big snow (finally).

yesterday i discovered the true state of my jockey wheels :o

lol that sounds so ominous.

my attempts at doing that 100 mile strava challenge on the weekend:

#1 - head out just after midday on saturday with plan to hit usual loop of short hills, then extend as required. take advantage of nice smooth resurfaced road on the first real climb of the day to set improbable personal best; pace slows somewhat as it dawns on me how frickin' hot it is. empty both bottles by end of mt pleasant loop, roll down to research and stop for drink, start up the hill to kangaroo ground but end up peeling off towards trail running along disused aqueduct where there's some shade. slink home. 47 miles.

#2 - spend most of morning fussing over job application, get everything wrapped up by 2.30 and decide to have another go despite relatively late start time. head north on boring straight road through suburbia for 40km, then hook right onto brilliant rollercoaster-like stretch through rolling countryside. stop for food, then take old humevale climb up to kinglake and am greeted by excellent sunset views. decide to catch next train from hurstbridge station, so drop down the mountain and hustle along darkening road, get to station only to find trains off due to track works, so hit road once more. fire the one bullet left in the chamber while getting up awful 15% steep 100m pinch, luckily that was the last hard bit for the day; have semi-altercation with dickhead in car a couple of km from home after I claim lane at red light. roll in just after 11pm. 82 miles. damnit!

so afaict this one guy did 100 miles on a .7 mile oval at like 22 mph, which is awesome and stupendously mental.

if it's the same guy and this is right, even faster than that

https://twitter.com/misterlump/status/305771310477365248/photo/1

insane. insane!!!!

haha, different guy, but that is even more sick.

The different guy that Hunt3r is referring to was on a road bike (i.e., not on a TT set-up with TT helmet/skinsuit/etc.) and also was not attacking the civilized pace line like the gentleman pictured above was until barely anyone was left (kinda of a dick move etiquette-wise, esp as the guy who called the ride!)

The different guy that Hunt3r is referring to wanted to complete the 100-mile challenge but also attend a birthday party in the afternoon so was pressed for time.

steve shasta!

nice delivery :)

nicely ridden, shasta! I was hoping for a visit in here.

He lives!

nasty, Shasty

I did my first race of the season on Saturday at Hog Hill. It was very cold (about 2C) so I had full winter gear on. I hadn't done a road race since June and I haven't really been able to train / get many miles in - this was pretty obvious from the start. I managed to cling on for 20 minutes then got dropped, took it very easy for 10 minutes to recover, waited to get lapped then did another 15 mins in the bunch, then called it a day. We'll call it a training ride. picture

Hmmmmm. I seem to have messed up that link: http://www.davehaywardphotos.com/Cycling/2013/Redbridge-Circuit-Races/28273498_hcmWgV#!i=2392205643&k=QKrKR5P&lb=1&s=A

I took my new bike out for the first time today. One lap of Richmond park and my neck seized up, but I managed a decent speed and didn't fall off. Mostly I just wanted to get the feel of it and practice riding with cleats. It was a lot of fun after all those boring gym rides! Same again tomorrow.

stripped down commuter bike to frame (left only headset cups), cleaned it, regreased and reinstalled bb, new chainring, new shift lever (dear jtek, if you can't afford to include a barrel adjuster with your overpriced $80 barend shifter, i think you're doing something wrong), new cables, new brake pads, new (used) handlebar, new tape, new rear rear cog, new rear cassette joint, clean and reinstall fenders and rack. then next day, get inline barrel adjuster, scrounge 4mm ferules, cut just-installed shift cable, and reinstall. fucking bike. i love you.

that bike gets a lot of miles, and NO regular maintenance, so i shouldn't bitch too hard. also, i found a wrench who knows how to overhaul the nexus 8 igh, so soon, it will get its ~15k tuneup.

last weekend i rode with behind a 16-year-old cat 2. he peeled off before we hit the climbs. set several PRs, then on the way back bonked harder than i ever have. nearly passed out on the bridge. not sure if it was the effort or downing a brownie the first half of the ride and then nothing the second half.

Puncheur sportive today - average temperature less than 1C. A very hard slog, but I finally got gold standard (by mere seconds following a desperate sprint at the top of Ditchling Beacon).

first time back on bike for four months after crashed to avoid getting knocked off and broke collar bone and tip of radius at elbow. neither still fully healed, but I cba'd any more. a cold and sleety - and slightly wobbly - 12 miles was more than enough, thanks.

that sounds grim

well i won't be going up ditchling beacon any time soon, but was v pleased to be back on my bike. had a biggish operation on my right side a few years ago, and almost the entire right side of my torso has seized up.

Sunday morning did the LA marathon crash race - people on bikes race the marathon course while the streets are mostly closed, but before the race (about 4:30am.) Rolling start, with two miles before the actual race start (although it's first to the finish line, so.) Racers with bibs in front, folks on beach cruisers with boom boxes in back. The three of us originally planned to take it chill, so we started right between those two groups. We got excited and started cutting through the crazy swarm, keeping an eye on each other while we evaded hazards like a dude downhilling at 28mph on rollerblades and fixies skid-braking. Once we hit the first straightaway and saw everyone working solo we started licking our lips. We did steady rotations eating people up. At one point we had eight people hanging onto us, all very polite about letting us back in when we pulled off. Hadn't looked at the course map since we hadn't planned on racing so the final turn / straightaway took us by surprise. Done. Time for McDonalds.

The most fun I've had on my bike I think. Thinking about starting racing now.

marathon routes seem perfect for bike racing (or at least what I think would be the funnest bike racing). short, linear (no laps, no forcing crazy corners into the route), and in the city (probably).

crits make for good, high-speed spectating, but the bar for entry seems high---at least with regards to confidence/experience in a peloton. but a 26mi dash on open roads (open enough for a lol hueg marathon) seems like it would encourage exactly what you describe: flurries of breakaways with small teams not exactly in contention with each other. mixed abilities/cats in the field and there's enough chaos to prevent a boring self-aware peloton. and a short course w/drafting could see some neat battles between TTists and sprinters. climbers would be SOL but who cares. and if its in a city, you automatically get casual jerks (j/k) to show up and give it a shot. i know ppl that would/could never compete in most standard road races (stage, TT, crit or otherwise), but would murder in a 26mi all-out gun. not surprisingly, these people also do well in alley-cats, which are basically 20-30mi sprints anyway.

cf mass-start nordic ski races. these are alarmingly popular in the upper midwest, with tens of thousands of people, of all abilities, just showing up in random towns in mn and wi and skiing really hard. the only cycling equivalents that i can think of are all unsanctioned: alley cats, things like the wolf pack hustle, and gravel races. one-day short- or middle-distance rides that anyone can do.

like, i've always assumed that one of the reasons that road racing in the US wasn't that popular was because, done in a trad euro way, it required closing 100+ mi of road a day, for too long, and at inconvenient times. so we have tight little crits, that shut down a few blocks or maybe a small-ish town for less time. and yet any half-decent urban area will kill 26mi of street (easy to come by, in the city) for an event that takes the average male ~5hr. the avg person does not need that much time to ride a bike that far.

lonely guy thinkin baout bike racing

wolfpack organized the crash! still supposedly illegal but LAPD was assisting at some intersections.

i approve of your ideas and hope they are widely adopted. roadies are so hung up on tradition sometimes.

roads r for cars, duh.

you'd be amazed how fucking ~upset~ people living in the middle of fucking NOWHERE can be when they encounter a road with a bike race on it. the best was the guy who harangued me, the lonely marshal, who chilled at the end of his driveway 5 miles south from idaho springs in like 1996.

Guy: GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY DRIVEWAY WHAT THE #($(# 393(#(q#( @(*@( YOU MOTHER(@(*(@! $(@#)(@@$> GODDAMN BIKES SHUTTING DOWN MY ROAD YOURE ALWAYS IN THE FUCKING WAY! (@@(@#(u$(@ (etc., for 5 minutes)
Me: hi, i'm hunt3r, i'm just making sure nobody gets killed, hopefully including me. you really need to calm down. do you want coffee?
Guy: GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (()!@(*@()(@(

another year i occupied a tiny piece of dirt on the side of the road 200 yards from the parking lot to the mud puddle where you can "CATCH WILD TROUT"! nobody was visiting the trout puddle. :^( i was alone for an hour, with nobody around. then the head trout wrangler walked down the driveway to the road, up the road, and sternly requested me to leave because i was taking up parking space.

i've always assumed that one of the reasons that road racing in the US wasn't that popular was because, done in a trad euro way, it required closing 100+ mi of road a day, for too long, and at inconvenient times. so we have tight little crits, that shut down a few blocks or maybe a small-ish town for less time

Apart from at the very top level (i.e. The Tour of Britain pro stage race) road racing over here doesn't involve closing down any roads. Nearly all road races are done on circuits in the middle of nowhere. The idea is to find a loop 6-12 miles long on minor roads, preferably avoiding any villages and definitely avoiding traffic lights, and have marshalls/police stopping traffic at every junction when the race is approaching. You kind of go round in a bubble between the lead cars and the trailing cars, but it gets complicated when the bunch fractures into groups and traffic infiltrates its way into the convoy. Also, nobody stops oncoming traffic (except at the junctions) so the rules say you can get disqualified if you cross the white lines in the middle of the road, but I've been in races where we've covered the full width of the road on country lanes with blind bends (which seems suicidal) and generally you have to cross the line to find space to move up (and then pray you can squeeze back in before the oncoming traffic hits you).

Finally finished my new bike!

http://krakow.zenfolio.com/img/s1/v54/p1491563830-3.jpg

She's a blast to ride so far.

The never-ending winter is severely restricting my cycling. I was supposed to race last Saturday but there was non-stop rain so I gave it a miss - I only managed 20 miles all week and haven't ridden since then. I was going to enter a race this Saturday, but they're now forecasting snow again. I think I might need a different hobby.

krakow, did you kindly explain to your new bike that your are an insane bike maniac, and that her destiny is to be ridden unfathomable miles in despicable conditions, until she begs for mercy, and receives none?

Haha, indeed. She's supposed to be my nice weather bike! It's tough during a rather unpleasant late Glasgow winter though.

Armstrong got a new bottom bracket yesterday so that he doesn't feel neglected.

Heading to London for 4 days next week, then Belgium / North France to spectate the Spring Classics the next week! Super psyched. Going to try one of those public share bikes in the UK and try and rent a decent road bike to tool around Belgium (staying in Ghent). Can't wait!

cool

http://www.cyclingtips.com.au/2012/04/ghent-cycling-culture/

would like to see the ronde someday

Snowing heavily, my race has been cancelled, looks like another weekend without any riding. I'm beginning to despair of ever actually getting close to race fitness.

(In the end I did a 20-mile ride through horizontally-blown face-stinging sleety-hail-snow stuff)

So... just days after finishing the above new bike, on her third or fourth ride, I was hit by a car on Thursday night in the east end of Glasgow!

It was about 7:30pm, so properly dark here, and I was heading along a main road when a car coming in the opposite direction turned across/into me to turn into a side road. I was well lit, travelling about 15-20mph, and it was entirely their fault - they didn't stop to make the turn, but didn't see me and simply went ahead, far too late for any evasive action.

I hit the passenger side, up near the windscreen, which was smashed, bounced back, flew through the air and onto the middle of the road. They pulled in and I hobbled with the bike to the side of the road. Ambulance to A&E, was there for 5 hours getting x-rays and cleaned up. Thankfully no breakages or head, neck or back damage, just a nasty cut to one leg and nasty bruising to the other and various minor grazes and bruises/bumps and very shaken. Very lucky indeed given the force of the smash.

Definitely my worst one so far.

I'm already feeling much better thankfully, though taking it easy - not sure when I should or will ride again, will wait a while rather than rush it.

I was away for the weekend to celebrate my mum's 60th birthday, which luckily I was still able to go to, which really helped, as it was a weekend of luxury, good food, gentle walks and good company, so kept my mind off things as well.

When I got home yesterday night I started feeling a bit more down, looking at my bike in the hall and remembering the smash and thinking that the idea of getting back out on the roads battling traffic actually scares me right now.

Bike is a bit bent up, wheeling it today or tomorrow to the bike shop for checking over and repairing, which the driver says they are happy to pay for. I have their details and they were very shaken and sorry and have phoned to check I was ok.

Shit, that's terrible