your daily bicycle log

one section about 80km in was one of those morale-sapping steady drags up a 10℅ gradient for a couple of ks, pretty happy there's nothing like that tomorrow!

Did the Amy's Gran Fondo today. I met haitch waiting for the Apollo bay transfer bus and chatted all the way to Lorne but lost him when he went for his number.

When I signed up for the ride I had a goal of doing it in under four hours, didn't think I'd trained enough but I managed to complete it in 3:51:12. Drilling it along the coast in the sunshine was just the best, even shedding my chain couldn't spoil the fun.

It's a really well organised ride, really beautiful scenery and the weather today was just perfect. Only complaint is about 40km of fast riding in the latter half of the ride is really rough tarmac and it really makes me want a domane or a roubaix, I was really feeling it in my lower back.

Been having fun on tubeless cx, raced my first race of year at 35/33 psi. Couldn't understand why it felt so squirmy and shifty- that's not v. Low pressure. I burp flatted the rear, thEn later crashed when the front basically rolled over (no burp tho). So I got a new tire gauge- turns out I was racing at 22/20. Hfs. Feel pretty good I didn't die.

Got a new bike, smaller with more aggressive steering - which is fine ... but since my weight is further forward, and maybe for other geometry reasons, the rear wheel is more likely to slip out. I've had this happen a few times on flat, wet surfaces (that I'd gone over a million times with my old bike without those slips.)

I descend like a scared kitten right now. Not sure if I can gradually learn to shift my weight back on descents, if I'll just get over it eventually, or if this is going to be an issue.

when youre riding down a hill at 15 mph and the road is shiny wet but textured but still not quite shiny enough is it, and no spray is coming up and so now you know youre actually on a huuuge sheet of ice 20 microns thick covering the entire street going towards a red light at an intersection with people turning right and you have like 10 or 15 seconds to think about how youre gonna handle this without breaking bones again.

it's sad, he liked to ride bicycles

what'd you do btw

i was on my station mtb with my pannier and flat pedals, so i just stood gingerly, put my left foot out and down and gradually hit the rear brake about 20+ feet out (i slowed but the rear tire broke free within a couple yards) and just slid tripod style (two tires and a boot) all the way through the crosswalk and stopped about 2 or 3 feet into the shoulder of the cross street. the car fixing to turn right knew i was there, and just waited as i slid by on its right. i then swung the bike to the right and got up on the sidewalk, which is a de facto mup going into the light rail station. ~exciting~

is your new bike road or flat bar? i spent years riding too small mtb frames that put too much weight on my front wheel, handling was terrible. ugh and narrow bars. lol 90s.

road. yeah i'd say "terrible handling" is fair. and my seatpost is extended the length of the seat tube ... so ...

holy moley btw

hello ILTRMB

currently doing around 8 miles a day on a Trek 7.3 road bike

I am a total noob at "real" bike commuting, this is my first week of full time riding (last year it was like once every week or so)

is there a thread on this board for stupid questions? I don't have any yet, but I'm sure I will. Just dealing with the Schrader (?) valves is hard enough.

ayup noob questions

although apparently i post noob questions here too

http://www.grandmasmolasses.com/wp-content/themes/grandmas/images/jar.jpg

I've got an eight week old baby, dunno wtf your excuses are.

barring a couple of trainer sessions, i've not really ridden since state champs cx. that's over a month, it is weird and my clothes don't really fit. didn't even need an excuse.

I've kind of disappeared into a netherworld. Massive work problems. Illness over Christmas. Repeated inclement weather at the weekends. And a temporary reversion to my previous existence as a matchgoing football supporter. I've scarcely ridden this year. I feel bad about it, but with ice/wind/snow/heavy rain forecast this weekend, it's not going to change any time soon.

I've got an eight week old baby, dunno wtf your excuses are.

my new story is that these sniffles are really keeping me from reaching my full potential

My new story is that I have great potential as a 200 pound tub of goo but that's still 28 lbs away so maybe I'll get riding again.

Being a new dad was like my fave thing ever and ages 1-3 are quick so my advice would be to forget bikes if necessary for however long the technology isn't going away.

Ok I think I'm coming across wrong but I hope everyone gets to where they wanna/need to be. *sips wine, eats chips ahoy cookie*

I was at the velodrome (the one used in the Olympics) tonight for a training session (accredited riders only). For the warm up activity we formed two lines and at the end of each lap the front two would drive up to the top of the banking, let the bunch come past, and then drop down and slot onto the back. My pair got to front for the second time and as we finished our lap I was the man on the outside, so I was behind the guy on my left as we drove up to the top. You have push quite hard to get up there, but he suddenly eased off. With no brakes and quite a lot of momentum I rapidly realised I was going to hit him - I desperately tried to go outside him but I would have got squeezed right into the barrier. I hit him then went tumlbing headfirst down the steep banking right into the bunch taking out and injuring several other riders in the process. Ouch. My neck is sore and I'm bashed up all down my right hand side, but other than that I'm OK. Some of the others couldn't continue though. Not great, considering we were about ten minutes into a two-hour session.

sorry to hear that. track does seem cool but scary.

the new velodrome in boulder/erie is in the process of opening but i doubt i'll ever get to use it. i now have a track an hour south and an hour north, and little realistic chance to make either work.

Ouch.

^ quite

I was always taught to fall to the right (uptrack) if it ever comes to that. Shorter distance to fall and gravity is helping you slow down. That track looks plenty wide enough to ride four-abreast without anybody getting squeezed into the barrier. It sucks he squeezed you out like that. Sounds painful.

I had my first track workout in a year (since my heart attack) on monday and it was amazing to be back out there.

Oddly, all my injuries (bruises and 'road' rash) are on my right hand side, but I can't work out how I could have fallen that way

made plans to do a 60 mile ride to work this morning. miscalculated my wakeup time and had to rush to get to the start point. or would have, if i hadn't woken up to a flat tire. mood was dark as i changed the tire, knowing i'd miss the ride. then cursed myself for lackadaisical maintenance as i noticed how dirty my hands were getting doing the change.

then i rode out to the ocean where everything was gray and overcast - not much wind though - before climbing a hill in the middle of the city where i saw three people setting out a blanket to have a breakfast picnic. normally a spectacular view of san francisco but today they'll be staring at the fog and imagining.

so, good start to the day.

http://kirasan.kenne-ich.net/pic/red_lantern.jpg

My Fiancee and I made the Rapha Tour of California blog. Lol.

http://pages.rapha.cc/photography/through-the-lens

I'm the fat mantis in the red/black striped Rapha (natch) gillet gawking at the dude in the speedo. My Fiancee is next to me in the equally fashion-forward Attaquer 90's funk kit.

Nice view.

This is what we're doing tomorrow: http://www.mapmywalk.com/routes/view/743461021

Two of us are then doing the extra 13 miles to get us to Dawlish...

Nice. I will be trapped in a car moving at about 25mph for several hours while occasionally speaking into a walkie-talkie in my role for the club's road race.

First 40 miles was awesome; great weather, great company, good pace. Then we got to Bridgewater, which is a foul dump of a place populated by serial killers emeritus and failed minor drug dealers. Here we picked up the canal path to Taunton, only before we'd done a mile of it I misjudged a low Victorian canal bridge, and the interface of gravel and grass. Despite my 30mm tyres, over I went, and crunched my entire bodyweight onto my right forearm. Not broken, but nastily swollen, bruised and gauged. I managed 12 or so more miles of towpath, grimacing all the way, and then bailed at Taunton to get the train back to Exeter.

i would love to be able to ride somewhere where i could hitch a train ride home

sorry about yr arm :-/

Ouch. Don't do that :/

55 miles yesterday, featuring swooping coast road high above waves crashing onto rocks. Then got a text from A Certain Someone (contents: "Hi!") that had me gunning the last quarter of the ride. Good day.

I feel like I fall off / get hit by cars way more often than anybody else. What am I doing wrong?

:(

I asked my orthopedist why I break bones all the time, when others get up and continue on - "do I have weak bones, doc?" A: "you do risky things and fall a lot."

(I think I have weak bones.)

scick mouthy - would you say your main incidents are on rural or town roads? i think you do a fair bit of cycling on uk rural roads? these seem to me to have become a *lot* more dangerous in the past twenty years.

GTIs, fast boy-racer style driving (but not at all confined to boy racers) narrow twisting lanes etc.

also interfaces of gravel and grass are just designed to mess up all that balance and weight stuff...

I've just invested in a Virb (Garmin bike camera thing). Used it for the first time today on a ride with a mate from my cycle club. I thought I had footage of a thrilling sprint victory against him where I came off his wheel at the latest possible moment before the village sign. I also thought I had footage of some total prick in a convertible trying to run the two of us off the road (footage which I intended to take to the police once I had muted the expletive I chucked in his direction). But when I got home I discovered that I had somehow failed to record half of the ride so all of this is lost forever. I've been trying to use the editing software and it keeps crashing my laptop, but I've finally got together a clip of the 'highlights' of the opening 2.5 miles. It's...not particularly dramatic. But if you like seeing London buses, then this is the footage for you:
https://youtu.be/VgUPuD1j8jo

It's a little disorientating to watch when you get to junctions and the view point doesn't change - was instinctively expecting a glance to the right, even though I know that it's a fixed camera. I find myself looking to the right at junctions when I'm sat in someone else's car, or a bus.

I'm not sure my rides would be exciting enough to justify a Virb.

As an aside, is the altimeter on anyone else's Garmin wildly inaccurate? My 510 is often 20-30% above the corrected Strava data, and differs from other Garmins on the same ride.

mine has always been consistent. Are you calibrating it at ride start and setting auto calibration points?

My clubmate also has a Virb and has uploaded to youtube that incident with the convertible. He went to the police station immediately afterwards, but they didn't seem too bothered. They said they wanted footage with two minutes before and after (to check if there was any wider context to it), so this is it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kdVv5HDsQs
It starts with us climbing out of a village into the forest - you can see at 0:49-0:53 the speed that other cars were passing us and the space they were giving us when there was no oncoming traffic. At 1:04 I sprint off (I'm the rider in the orange and black Molteni top) (well, obviously the only other rider in shot) for the '40' sign at the top of the hill (which we often race to). At around 1:20 you can see that I'm riding VERY far to the left, practically in the gutter. At about 1:35 my mate catches up with me and we ride two abreast for 20 seconds - during most of this time there was no oncoming traffic so it would have been easy to pass - when there is an oncoming car, my mate drops in behind me again. About 5 seconds later the convertible comes past - much faster than anything else that had overtaken us and very close. Bear in mind that I'm riding actually on the white line at the side of the road - my mate was probably a foot futher out than that and says the car missed him by an inch. After this I disappear up the road in an adrenaline-fueled pursuit, but we never caught up with it.
The thing is, there was a third rider with us who we had dropped at the bottom of the hill and was at least a minute behind and riding on his own. When he eventually caught up with us he said exactly the same thing - that the convertible had passed him as close as humanly possible - so this was definitely a deliberate thing, not a one-off mistake.

Still bad at riding in pacelines I guess. Kept surging and dropping people yesterday. Not a humblebrag, I assure you, I'm in shit shape.

Finished work last Friday, now it's my summer break. Did 16 gentle miles on Saturday, then 81 on Sunday (train up to Cambridge and riding back on a circuitous route), 70 on Monday (out to Colchester and train back), 18 miles on Tuesday (to a bike shop and back), nothing yesterday (dad duties) and 100 miles today (down to Eastbourne with over 2000 metres of climbing and quite a bit of sunburn).

Jealous.

actually went mountain biking today -- had sort of forgotten that there's a really decent network immediately behind the hospital

Another big one today: down to the Sussex coast again, this time Hastings. 85 miles in total. Reckon I'm ready for the Ride London evennt on Sunday now.

Here's a video clip of my climb of 'The Wall' on my way down to Eastbourne last week: https://youtu.be/tWMCsee0GdA

that looks agonizing, the climbs around here are long, but mostly so easy, 5-6%

that's the garmin camera? very cool, i've never seen a vid from one of those.