your daily bicycle log

floated at the front of small group i led round my fave loop on sunday - in contrast to same road with ed a fortnight ago, where i was chewing stem to stay on his wheel (and failing at a couple of points, let's be honest).

how do I shot HRM

I've just started using one but not sure what to do w/the info

can I use it to go faster y/n

Y

basically you'll want to learn what your training zones are, and then find a training plan to get faster at particular durations or intensities, depending on your objectives.

for general fitness, hrm is sometimes useful to figure out when you are under-rested, or to keep you from coasting when you should be working a little harder.

My club's annual hill climb championship this morning. I managed to beat my PB by two seconds, though I was aided by a savage tailwind. The four previous seasons I've done it I've come second out of the riders from my club (and won a lovely shiny medal as a result), but this year we've suddenly got loads of good new riders so I dropped to fourth. An excellent photo of me grimacing as I sprinted for the line:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/harrysewell/10653226876/sizes/l/in/set-72157637274054075/

good work!

man, today was a crisp 70 degrees with a light breeze, i hit a local singletrack circuit that is just like a bike roller coaster. i did the first lap with my kids, it's perfect for them, yet still super fun for me on my cx bike, just pouring downhill through the scruboak with a view of the mountains behind it. then i did a second extended loop solo, and rode home the long way. euphoric.

normal ride to work that i do 1-2x a week, 40 miles, flat.

headwinds today that i don't know if i can describe as brutal, exactly, but i do know that i was panting and waiting for my heart rate to go down at every stop light. wasn't all the wind, for whatever reason i was just not feeling it at all. under-rested? (doubt it) mental weakness that needs to be scourged via hill repeats? (probably)

settled for what felt like a significantly lower pace, ended up being 16.6mph avg vs 18.3 from monday and i had plenty of time.

Did what I think was my first strava HC climb on Saturday. TBF it wasn't too hard, it pitches up to 14% near the bottom but averages only 4.5% for the total and is pretty gentle near the top, still 932m between the bottom and the top. I was part of a local series of group rides to do 7 climbs up to seven ski stations round here. Pretty fun all round.

http://www.strava.com/segments/6032081

Quick 30 on the Cube this afternoon as the roads were dry. Needed my lights properly for the first time too.

i've been told that mavic open pros are bad for cx tubeless, but i got some gorilla tape and stans cx rim strips and gave it a go on an antique 12 yr old rear wheel. i put a new vittoria xg (not tnt) and an old rear wheel with 30gm of stans, and blammo, tubeless. the tubeless conversion went great, i used 27 psi and did about 20 remounts, and spent over an hour on extremely tight smooth-medium rough singletrack. i had at least 5 rear wheel drifts and i had 2 hard bottom-outs. the way i bounced the rim, there's no way that i wouldn't have pinch flatted on a tube. i thought i might have burped one other time, but i did a quick inspection, no goop, no perceptible loss of pressure- i think i just folded the casing over.

the joke is that i found out why that rear wheel was on my shit pile- it needs to be rebuilt, there's like no tension on it. i can feel the whole wheel squirm due to lack of tension. :(

i went mtb-ing today for the first time in ages and got to spend like 10mins on my buddy's fatback (w/suspension fork no less) and i'm beginning to get why fatties are kinda awesome as plain old trail bikes.

correction ftr i was at 37psi, not 27psi, or else i'da been bouncing that rim ALOT.

tf is going on in london this month

6 deaths in two weeks : /

all due to buses/lorries, I think

Clocks just changed didn't they, not that that excuses anything.

Went out for a quick spin after work and got a puncture 9 miles in, while on a cycle path that runs alongside a dual carriageway. It was dark, it was 3 degrees centigrade, I phoned my brother and got a lift home.

was going to join local group ride on saturday morning but slept in due to having the gang over. rolled out of bed anyway and went for spin solo. get to bottom of first big hill and who should roll by but the local group ride. score

introduced myself and tacked onto the back. you go so much faster, who knew

Couldn't sleep last night but still got up before six for the group hill climb. 20 miler with a few distinct segments of hard effort with easier rolling (depending on the mood of the group) in between. And yeah I do go faster when I'm trying to impress people. The closest I ever get to intervals. Plus, the view!

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7405/10949393826_e6a5349e5a.jpg

(that's from Sunday)

Have been getting bored of the flat unvarying 40 mile slog to work, was good to change things up.

Out tonight for midweek club run followed by pub visit. Bastard cold (-1c).

beautiful pic.

so, i got doored yesterday for the first time. not badly, the door bounced off my forearm, hip, then caught by pannier and rack. the bike stopped, i kept going and whacked my knee pretty hard and landed in the street, but nothing too bad. broke my rack and ripped a strap off my bag.

Shit, that sucks. How did the doorer react?

he was cool, it wasn't his fault imo, i was coming up the right side of the vehicle, relatively slowly. he was pretty pro actually, asking politely if i was ok and whether i had hit my head, was i SURE i hadn't hit my head, but didn't say much else. he stood with me for a good 4 or 5 mins, saying nothing else really.

the funniest thing in retro was the eddie murphy drunk guy getting sorta in my face while i was doubled, over i shit you not

OH DAMN, THAT DOOR IT GOT YOU! DAMN I SAW IT YOU DON'T LOOK WHERE YOU GOING YOU GONNA GET HIT BY THAT DOOR FOR SURE! DAMN THAT'S RIGHT, *whirling to passersby while the passenger and i try to ignore him* YOU SEE THAT DOOR GODDAMN I SAW THAT!!!111! etc. i just kind nodded to acknowledge his existence and said thanks, i was good.

for the amuricans - Support the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Act
http://t.co/0CfrbeYkbS

joined the club run proper this morning. absolutely baltic out, about -1ºC

85 miles at >16mph ave tho, happy w/that

Wow.

38 miles yesterday with a colleague. A lot of waiting at the top of hills for her. Beautiful blue skies. Very cold at 8:30am.

My club's first winter training ride this morning (with the aim of getting a team of us racing together next season). After 20 miles we hit a slick patch of mud and diesel on an obscure country lane and it caused carnage. I was the third man down, the fourth ploughed right into me, think six went down in total. After a lengthy delay to deal with various mechanicals and injuries we turned around and rode back. I don't know quite how I managed it: I seem to have pulled several muscles in my groin and am struggling to walk/sit down/ put shoes on etc. I'm at the hospital at the moment waiting to get checked over in a room with about 200 other people waiting to see a doctor :-(

terrible, sorry to hear it. gws.

oooooft terrible. gws indeed

my last hospital visit while sitting in the er (for almost 4 hours) i just blew up my friends w texts, trying to keep my mind occupied, it kept me sorta sane.

Don't want the battery to run out though. If I'm here for another two hours my car park money runs out.

That's awful dude. Hope you're ok.

Hope you turn out ok.

By the time I was seen my car was parked illegally, but fortunately nobody seems to patrol the car park on a Sunday evening. Torn muscles the main problem (but also the usual road rash and bruising), but no broken bones, so I'll probably have a very uncomfortable week or so but hopefully riding again in a few weeks. Not great, but probably the best time of year for it to happen. I'm off work and shuffling around like a 100-year-old - can't work out how the fuck I managed to ride 20 miles back home again.

adrenaline?

glad to hear ur OK. would a heavier bike have helped?

Well, this is the first winter I've decided to get mudguards on my proper racer and not ride Ye Heavy Wintere Bike. Fate is obviously telling me something.

after looking at all the guff that's accreted to my road bike from the weekend ride I'm considering promoting the pink missile from pub bike to winter bike

will have to upgrade the wheels and change the tyres tho. what's the best winter tyre? gators? they can be a bit skittish in the wet

I switched from Continental GP4000Ss (23c) to Continental Gatorskins (25c). They were a bit skittish in the wet. Apart from the incident where we all fell down, there were several times when I felt the tyre pressure was too high. If I'm racing I have it up around 110, I think I had them at around 100 yesterday, but I'll probably put them down to 80-90 next time (whenever that is).

I've got Schwalbe Marathon Plus on the Tricross I think. Touch wood, never had a puncture, and I've ridden it down the dirtiest fucking lanes you can imagine.

I have them at 80 in winter.

gatorskins are tough, but it's really the only good thing about them. i just got grand prix 4 seasons 28s for the cross bike and will be fitting them shortly - have heard good things.

There is a certain coterie of male Melbourne bike riders who really need to attend to their threadbare bibs. Far too much arsecrack on display today.

71 miles today, still pretty cold for a ~mild~ day

was too slow paying up at the cafe stop so had to tack onto the back of the fast group for the return leg. definitely felt a lot faster in the legs but held my own except on one of the climbs when I started to filter back through the ranks pretty quickly. wasn't dropped tho ^^;

65 degrees shorts and shortsleeves, miles of perfect cx singletrack, what a perfect day. It started poorly- I went to race and discovered I forgot my helmet just before I was to register. Blew it off and went ridin

it's -9 deg F here now, but i'll say -22C since that sounds way colder. i'm committed to riding my mile to the train, but my headset is nearly completely frozen. i have no idea what the deal is with it, it is an antique threaded 1 1/8" for which i have no wrench to even attempt adjustment, and the condition made riding on the snowed-over bike gravel path very difficult last night.

last night, on the way home, i saw two sets of fatbike tracks on the path, wished i had fatbike.

bloody cold & wet 68 miles today

makes for some ~metal~ photos tho
http://distilleryimage10.ak.instagram.com/9f2c9d7e5f4711e38fad1290e8e859c5_8.jpg

NICE!

Pulled a calf muscle. Wonder if I did it at football on Friday and 45 miles yesterday exacerbated it. Humph.

gws

think I may have to retire from football, played first time this week in 3 months and my knees have been creaking ever since. blech

My friend jumped into a basketball game instead of riding and ruptured his Achilles a couple weeks ago, so awful.