your daily bicycle log

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.

i have no idea how long ~8 miles takes. i haven't ridden that far for ten years.

jealous of german bike ride. are drivers pretty good about bikers there?

no idea, never been to germany. going there for the first time when i move there! my understanding is that cycling in munich is not quite holland, but pretty close.

It's odd - where Deadman Hill is marked on that map I remember it being absolutely flat! In honesty, Furzedown was the only hill that was a real struggle, though the short 12%er a few miles before didn't fill me with glee at the time.

It really is a beautiful part of the country, though - it's the second long ride in the New Forest I've done and I want to go back! Maybe we should organise an ILXcursion...

here's something i must have known as a kid but just re-learned: on a hot highway, the tar they use to fill cracks will feel like the grossest material ever if you run down a groove of it lengthwise. suddenly it will feel like your wheel has turned into a dali clock.

dead sprint across town on an empty stomach after being awake for ten minutes to an appt with a yellow fever vaccine = oh geez

evening bike ppl, been starting to get into my cycling lately with a couple of beautiful 65+ mile fairly hilly rides cross the pennines in the last few weeks that pretty much destroyed me (never done anything over 25 before that) but still whet my appetite, but all on hold after coming off on an unfamiliar bike at the wkend breaking my collarbone (pothole too much for weedier road tyres and my panicked braking too heavy on much harsher brakes, so over i go - laugh away). ambitions temp. shift from getting up to 100 miles a week to learning how to eat and brush my teeth left-handed. keen to get back on tho, just not on that bike.

2 months off the bike and my last 2 days of riding have been T_T

i lost about a dozen pounds which i mistakenly thought would transfer into any lost fitness gained... lol

dealing with saddlesores, callouses, sore shoulders/back/ass again is not fun.

sympathies? advice?

butt cream, gloves, epsom salt bath

that should do it.

my mt evans ascent was thwarted because my buddy is not mt. evans ready in terms of acclimating to altitude. i couldnt leave him behind, as i was the only car. :( we rode to the high point beyond the top of juniper pass instead (~11,200?).

actually, butt/chamois cream is more the preventative measure, once you've actually got the saddle sores/funkiness down there i'd suggest some desitin. yes, the same shit you put on a babies butt for diaper rash.

i bought a cheap-ass cruiser the other day, which is my only bike right now and will eventually become a bike to ride down the path from malibu to venice. gonna probably get a nice trek at some point in the near future, but for now the cruiser is what i'm riding around the 'hood as well. enjoying it a lot, went about eight miles around l.a. the other day, four miles last night.

i've been using udder balm

is this a bad idea?

http://pics.drugstore.com/prodimg/14164/200.jpg

assos chamois cream is still the best. accept no substitutions.

gbx do you even wear lycra?

uh

keep riding around in jeans bro

i am not going to wear lycra to school or the grocery store

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HltxGBXiTWA

i also don't wear jeans!

scrubs

had a good bike to work today, 15 miles in 55 min. hopefully i can do the ride home even faster, since it's more downhill.

Iiiii'm picking up my biiiike this weekeeeend! God I haven't been so excited about anything since...actually let's not go there. I hope to have rides to log about soon.

my beater got stolen : (

Aw caek! That is sucky. What happened?

locked to itself outside my flat while i was out of the country for two weeks. worth about £10 so not the end of the world. friend is lending me his until i leave for munich in september.

Okay that is pretty much an engraved invitation. Locked to nothing, day and night for TWO WEEKS?

there's nothing convenient to look it too every night and it's too much of a pain to regularly carry it up onto the balcony. should have put it there for the trip, but whatevs. seriously, it was a terrible bike.

most bikes are not locked to anything in this town. i have now lost two in ten years. only one of those was worth anything.

what town?

oxford. university town without hills. cycling sole mode of transportation for most people living within 1/2 mile of the city centre. lots of students so the bikes are mostly worthless. theft endemic but no one cares.

bike etiquette: coworker is waiting for me to finish so he can bike home with me, but i'd rather just bike by myself. :/ do i tell him that or just suck it up and not hurt his feelings?

probably just suck it up and not hurt his feelings this time

Wrt rashes, I find that sudocream, nappy rash cream, is very effective, I always pack some fore long hiking or biking adventures. You can use a cortizone cream as well but they say that leaves you more open to yeast infections.

25 miles in 1 hr 15 mins exactly this morning (dead on 20mph). I'm staggered that I could manage that on a training ride (especially with about ten miles on London streets) - these aero bars seem to have made a HUGE difference. Really looking forward to racing with them.

I understand Sudocrem "gets everywhere", though I haven't tried it myself.

Nice work Jamie! Are you def allowed to race with them in the races you race?

Nothing extreme, just used bike for transpo around Bklyn this weekend. The road surface on Nostrand sucks, but for some reason it seemed way shorter than going over to Wythe even though I still had to cut west at the end to get home.

Hooray! I can't believe I did without a bike for 6 months.

Oh fucking fuck, Lee actually BECOMES Nostrand? If I'd realized that a couple of years ago, it would have saved me SO many aborted trips home and much wandering around the hasidic ghetto.