your daily bicycle log

oh bollocks, sorry.

waiting out latest round of tstorms in starbucks :(

hey i put a salsa shortnshallow 44cm bar and new wtb saddle on iro. life is waaayy better. since the rails are long i can slam saddle back to where it belongs, which also lowers it like a cm. with the new bar, this bike finally rides properly, it feels almost like my road bike.

wow, raining buckets out there.

60.5 miles b/w Sunday & Monday: combination of city streets (neighborhoods) & paved bike trails. At this point, I can comfortably go 30+ miles in a single run w/o completely wrecking myself. Averaging around 15.5 mph per trip (about 17 first half & then......). I broke my gearshift recently & can only use half of the settings, so hopefully my average speed will increase once I replace it. Then again, I'm basically starting from scratch stamina-wise, at least as of a few months ago, so that probably has more to do with it than anything. I'm going to try to fit in 100-150 miles/week for the rest of the summer.

good stuff, good goals!

maybe try a century by the end of the summer?

lightning strikes to the right of me, tidal waves from passing buses to the left of me, through the gutter tsunamis of death rode hunt3r. (the lightning was legit really scary--share your scary lightning stories)

Hey you guys - I did my big 24-hour relay race on the weekend - man that was tough. I've written about it on my blog, so please have a look! 2 parts up so far - a third and final one to come.

http://lanternerouge.tumblr.com/

you never told us you had a blog.

Meh, it's barely a blog. But, y'know, I occasionally write stuff in it.

All 3 parts now up. Thanks for looking.

just sliced 45 mins off my "cambridge lap" time. not getting lost and being lucky with, or rather, ignoring traffic lights definitly helped. as did trying to keep up with pro looking cycle wear bike dude for a considerable stretch.

really wish there were some better roads round here. cambridge city centre is excellent, sometimes seems like there are more bikes than cars. most of the time you can have the whole road to yourself because the cars have to go so slow. as soon as you get out of the city there are loads of little almost single lane bendy back roads where cars like to do 60-70mph+ don't feel entirely comfortable on these.

did a good 25-30 miles with some friends on sunday, i always feel good keeping up as i have a single-speed. when it gets hilly you have no choice but to charge them

good stuff, good goals!

maybe try a century by the end of the summer?

Thanks. Didn't see this earlier. Anyway: Sure 100 miles sounds impossible now, but two months ago 35 would've seemed absurdly excessive, so we'll see. I'm definitely planning on taking a trip to MI b/w various cities to visit old friends at some point in the upcoming months and that will entail 40/50 mile legs b/w stopping points, so I guess I'll just to that & go from there.

One thing is for sure, though. The dog days are seriously cutting into my stamina/mileage. mid-week last, shit got up into 90+ w/ extreme humidity & it was really hard maintain. I hope it dies down and stays that way, but those kind of highs in June are a bad sign..

just make sure to increase the drinking and eating, also pouring water on your head works great

yeah love pouring water on my head

is that sarcasm?

sarcasm detector not working

no!

Crackle Box - instead of mapping your route using google maps and having to set endless 'via location' bits in order to get it to give the correct 'directions', try this:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/
Click on 'more options', then choose 'United Kingdom' from the drop down menu at the top, then type 'Cambridge' into the 'jump to' box, then click 'go'. At the next page, select the 'automatically (for cyclists)' option on the left, click 'start recording' on the top left, and then double click on your start point. When you're done click on 'save route'.

pouring water on your head can make you test positive

</floyd>

BTW Mark, well done on that 24-hour thing, very impressive!

yeah, enjoyed the blog posts!

Cheers guys! Am starting to psyche myself up for my very first sportive this weekend. I've chosen a relatively short, relatively flat one - the New Forest Road Challenge, I think it's called. Looking forward to it apart from the fact that I'm the slowest rider of my little posse...

caught a ride into work today so i can bike home with a co-worker, about 15 miles. once i learn the route i'll give both ways a shot (although the way in has a lot of uphill).

I ordered some aero bars from a bike shop. They arrived about ten days ago, but I was away last weekend and I've been too busy at work to get to the shop. So I was planning to ride there tomorrow morning, but then I noticed I'd got a puncture in the back wheel.

So at 9pm, in the fading light, after working all day and then doing the weekly shopping, I get the wheel off and get to work. Once I'd found the puncture in the inner tube I had a look at the tyre to see if there was a shard of glass or something in the equivalent place: instead there was a bald patch, as if the grip had been burnt off. Very odd.

Then, when I was putting the wheel back on, I somehow managed to twist the chain into knots. This took quite a lot of time to sort out. I'm a bit worried I've caused some lasting damage to it. I was thinking of getting the chain replaced anyway (it's done about 2,000 miles), but when I asked them in the shop a couple of weeks ago they said not to bother - just wait until the gears stop working and then replace the chain, cassette and chainrings. They said if you have a combination of new and part-worn parts it won't work properly. I've been told completely the opposite by other people (i.e. replace the chain early enough and the cassette and rings will last longer), so I don't know what to believe.

When I finally got that straightened out and the wheel back on I tried spinning everything and changing up and down the gears to check everything worked. I'm now convinced the back wheel is buckled and the brake blocks aren't lined up properly. I'm giving up now - I feel that every time I try to sort something out I find two new problems.

wow, brits really say "tyre"? i had that as a crossword clue the other day ("what might go flat in front of a flat" or something).

Shouldn't that be "...in front of an apparment"?

nope

Gears have been playing up all week, so I just decided to try and sort them out, and the cable's snapped at the front shifter. Woe. Had been thinking about a SS conversion for a while anyway.. anyone done one?

yes. it is well easy.

i rode up the canyon into the ominous weather this morning. as i crested and turned onto a ridgeline at 8500 ft, a cloud moved across the mountainside below me then up and over my location. it was eerie, with wisps and tendrils of cloud blowing in front of me. behind me the road i had ascended was gone, the neighboring peaks and neighborhoods were whited-out as well. since it looked like an excellent place for an orc ambush, i put on my jacket and began descending.

\m/

First ride with the aero bars fitted. I did 25 miles (with three tough climbs in) at 18.6mph, which is much faster than I would normally ride when training (typically about 17mph). It's difficult to say if that was all down to the bars or if I was just trying harder than normal, but I can't wait to try them out in a race (next one in a fortnight).

lol @ orc ambush

i would like to move to colorado (altitude training), can i get a job at your firm hunt3r

my old bike commute: http://tinyurl.com/oteayg

my new from october: http://tinyurl.com/ryda65

i am going to get my ass kicked

new commute time lapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl4BPo_vjNA.

i think this is a more scenic, slower route that i would take on the day to day, through the park that runs parallel to the autobahn. this video goes right the way into downtown munich, where i wouldn't be, but it does at least show the change in elevation: not much.

Fifth...in an alleycat. Fun as hell iirc

BBQ after, some beers and w___, felt v v fast on the way home. 50some minutes, 15-20 miles?

I did my 95-mile sportive this weekend - pretty enjoyable, finished it in 5:46 (rolling)/ 6:31 (total time, including food, water, foot (see below) and waiting-for-mate stops). It wasn't a hilly sportive, but it was rolling, with a few nasty ones - Furzedown, only 5 miles from the end, was the real men-from-boys-separator, a couple of miles at 5-10%, fairly steady but it just kept on coming, with any number of soul-destroying blind corners and false peaks. All told, it was about 1750 metres/5750 feet of ascent.

I managed okay because I spent the middle part of the race with two guys I picked up (as it were, one of whom was decidedly slower than me or his mate), and we went at his pace, which was nicely relaxing on the flat but frustratingly halting on the hills. But at least it made up for my early pace, when I'd tried to keep up with my two fast friends and got to 8 miles feeling completely knackered! After the second water stop we abandoned the slow guy and rode the remaining miles at a lovely near-maximum, and finished very tired but not quite burnt out.

However, it did make me realise that while my legs and lungs are fine, my extremities aren't quite so comfy:

Saddle interface: not too bad, no nasty chafing, but not hugely comfy. Can live with it.
Lower back: aches after 20+ miles, though even a short break helps it recover. Core strength exercises needed?
Hands/gloves: hands were very stiff after the ride, and during I was changing grip position regularly as they were getting uncomfortable. Nothing terrible, but not ideal either.
Shoes/feet/pedals: the most annoying element of the ride was how, after 60 miles, I found myself getting painful toes on my right foot which I am guessing is a result of eggbeater pedals not distributing weight evenly. Had to stop on two occasions and wave my foot around as it got so painful. But I really don't want to get road pedals!

The sportive was "won", as it turned out, by a lady triathlete who was 2 hours quicker than me :O

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v222/biondino/TVT.jpg

im riding mt. evans tomorrow with a recent cali transplant who will be racing bob cook in a couple of weeks. hes doing recon of only the first half of the climb, up to 10'600. i think i'll go to the summit (14'100), if im gonna drive all the way out there.

my ride home from work last week went well. if i can get my showering/change of clothes situation figured out, i'm pretty sure i can get into doing the 30 mile round trip as a normal thing.

how long does it take you?

a little less than an hour coming home, a little more than an hour going in (15 miles each way but there is a definite grade. kinda wish it was easier going in, harder coming home).

Well done Mark. 'Deadman Hill' doesn't sound too promising. It's difficult to make out on that map, but I think I've ridden a little bit of that route (down by Linwood and Lyndhurst).

route from the race

almost fifteen miles on the dot, completed in 57min (according to 'official' judging). so a hair above 15mph avg, which is not bad given that there were 10 stops on the way, and some dodgy traffic

gives "hey kid go play in traffic" surprising traction

caek just saw your timelapse vid. i love it! what camera etc do you use?

that's not mine, i just found it on youtube!

(far from clear from my comment, i know)

darn! well it looks like a lovely ride anyway.