l'écoulement

Apologies in advance

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 15:56:55 +0000

Once again my updates have been reduced to one every never. I aim to change that and over the next few days/weeks/months I will be moving away from Tumblr and setting up a proper blog, which I’ll hopefully be able to set up to cross post to here, although if not then I’ll be doing it all manually.

Training has been going okay, only okay though, there’s been some big changes in my life (read as: girlfriend) and currently I’m trying to manage work, cycling and seeing her. Weekends always suffer, while I usually end up sitting around all day Saturday chilling I never seem to have time to ride, usually because I have company and I feel bad saying “yeah I’m just gonna hop on the turbo for an hour, don’t mind the noise”. Not the most polite.

So yeah, training has been going okay, but as is always the case, due to shit getting in the way my weekend rides before Portugal are going to be few and far between, I think I might be able to squeeze 2 or 3 in, 4 absolute max. However now the weather has picked up a bit (despite the current rain) I will start venturing outside probably as of this weekend, I don’t want to do crazy distances straight away, probably just some slowish local loops with a few climbs just to test my legs and fitness. As the Portugal trip gets closer I hope to do some longer stuff, stretching out to 90-100km would be ideal but that depends on company and weather. But even with my winter training, I still feel that I’ll be heading to Portugal in better condition than I was in in November, while I had a full season of riding in my legs, fitness was definitely on the decline and I think I might have suffered slightly because of that.

So with any luck I’ll start writing up more posts as the weather gets nicer, but until that happens you’ll have to put up with the sporadic updates, which I apologise in advance for. Once the new site is up it’ll hopefully be a lot more content rich than this one, and I hope to engage the readers (that’s you) much more.

First update of 2012

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:19:24 +0000

Thankfully my riding has been more regular than my postings on here. I apologise to all of those who give a shit about my lack of writing here, although I’m sure that’s very few of you. I did write a post a few weeks ago but I just never got round to posting it…

So what to write… training has been going okay. The whole three on one off thing didn’t really work, instead I’m doing short and long weeks, so a short week will be stuff like 5x3m@105% FTP, and a long week will be 2x15m@95% FTP. I’m trying to get a good balance of the two. I’m not sure which is being more beneficial currently, but I know they’re definitely working. Rides I couldn’t finish at the beginning of January I’m now working through at higher power outputs which is really encouraging, however the shorter, harder stuff (3x7m@110% FTP) is still defeating me.

I only managed 7m,5m,3m yesterday, although to redeem myself I did some short ramps, keeping my cadence around 95rpm and shifting every 10 seconds until I’m going flat out, 120rpm, 53x11 for about 20 seconds. The resistance on my trainer is set so that sits around 450w, so while it’s not the highest power output I’ve ever put out, it still feels good hitting that kind of wattage in training. God knows how the pro’s hold that shit for an hour, then again if I was being paid to ride my bike every day, having a day-by-day plan of exactly what level to ride at, eating properly, and had the support of an entire team behind me, I’d probably be a fair bit stronger than I am now. But we can only work with the time we have available, and that will always be my downfall.

I’m not going to write reams and reams, in fact I’m going to leave this pretty short. If you’re that interested in my progress it’s all up on my Strava which there is a link to at the top of my page, so you can see how things have been going for me. Again if you have any questions or would just like to chat you can leave a comment on this post or email me, jonmackinnon AT gmail DOT com.

Winter training specifics

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:05:19 +0000

A friend of mine was asking about my winter training, and I told him i’d go into more detail than I did in my last post so I thought i’d explain some of my intentions.

As I said previously, I spoke to Tony at flammerouge.je and he gave me a free 8 week training plan, and I’ve also spent some time looking at the other pages on his website which is what gave me the three on one off idea. The year before last, which was my first cycling winter, I spent time reading “The Black Book” by Pete Read and although I didn’t dedicate the time I should have to training, it was still good to read and get an idea of the kind of program I should be following. His ideas are a mix of traditional and modern training programs, he recommends no “heavy” work until a few months before the season, but also talks about the best way to increase power, and has a lot of turbo specific interval workouts which is how I spent my last winter. So like I said, a good mix of traditional and modern.

So this year I’m going to be starting out very slowly, I’m going to bite the bullet and finally start riding my rollers properly. The problem last year was that I started riding them, then my mother went nuts at me because I started wearing through the carpet we had only had fitted literally a week prior, not a good move by me, so under the bed they went which is where they sat until I moved rooms a few months ago. New room means new carpet so I kept some of the old one to put under my rollers, so hopefully I wont have the same issue as last year, if I do I’m pretty sure my mother will actually kill me. That’s completely off topic, but nonetheless, rollers is where I will be starting, purely because there’s no resistance, I can start getting my legs and heart working without absolutely wrecking them with intervals. Plus the last time I rode was in Portugal which was pretty hard, so I just want to give them a nice steady work out for a few weeks before the intervals start. Ideally I’d like to get out on the roads but my problem is that I hate the cold so chances are I’ll just be doing an hour here and there when I can. I’m not sure what days I’m going to ride yet, Tuesday Thursday and Saturday sounds good but I don’t think three sessions is enough really so I will look to do 3 week days then Saturday morning and Sunday evening.

Come January I should have a few hours in my legs which is when the turbo will come out. First things first I’ll be doing an FTP test. There are a number of train of thoughts on this, Tony believes one 6 minute test is accurate enough to work from (with some special maths), Chris Carmichael I think suggests a 2x8 and more maths again, either way I’ll get a good idea of where my FTP stands, which will then be retested at the end of every 3 week block to see any performance gains.

Tony has a number of different names for his exercises, there’s plain FTP Development, Blitzer, SHITS, VO2 and then WILT. I’ve linked through to the relevant pages on his website so you can read about them in more detail, but each of the 5 (except WILT) has 3 or sometimes 4 different levels. They can vary, sometimes the power levels will be higher, or the recovery sections can be shorter, and every now and then, both get combined so you’re doing a high power short recovery repeat workout. None of them last longer than an hour (again, except WILT), but they are all based around a percentage of your FTP and designed to improve it, which as I mentioned last time, is my goal.

Month one week one will be the A workouts, I’m not sure which I’m going to be doing yet, chances are I’ll take a look at the 8 week plan and take it from there, but I know it’ll be tough. I’ve done a few before and they are not enjoyable, but winter training isn’t supposed to be, it’s supposed to get you stronger for summer so you can go out on those weekly club runs and drop all the guys that dropped you last season. Week two sees me moving through to the B workouts, and then week 3 is the C. There will more than likely be a mix between turbo and roller sessions so that I don’t burn myself out completely, so it may be Monday turbo, Tuesday rollers, Thursday turbo, Saturday turbo, Sunday rollers, meaning that if I’m riding back to back I’ve got a recovery day on the rollers. I might also switch it up so that the week starts on a Saturday for example, so I get Monday and Wednesday off. The last thing I want to do is injure or burn myself out so I’ll be taking it all as it comes. I will try and keep you updated with my intentions on a week by week basis, either what I have planned, or how it went.

Week four will be a steady week on the rollers, probably 2 or 3 sessions, just keeping the legs ticking over, with a midweek FTP test done on the turbo so I have a place to start my training from for the next month. Then I’ll follow the same pattern as before, with the 1/A 2/B 3/C workouts, but using my new FTP value, meaning hopefully, I should continue to get stronger.

I think that just about wraps it up, it should all make sense but if you need more clarification just hassle me on Facebook or via email again, jonmackinnon AT gmail DOT com. With the winter starting to come in in the UK and it being well underway in some parts of the US all I can say is stay safe, none of us want to hear of more injury or worse happening because of poor road conditions or bad driving, so just keep your head in the game.

Winter training

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:31:23 +0000

Something which is really all over the place in terms of thoughts is winter training. They all boil down to the same thing really, which is take it easy over the winter, and then start to ramp up the intensity a few months before your “season” starts. There’s the classic “base miles” train of thought, do loads and loads of long slow miles to keep your legs ticking over, then start doing faster stuff in the late winter/early spring. The reason this is so popular is it’s because it’s what the PRO’s do. However the PRO’s all live in european countries and get to go on winter training camps for a month to the Algarve, or Majorca, or somewhere else which is a pleasant temperature and has nice roads, whereas we are expected to go for these 4/5/6 hour 20km/h rides in the shitty UK which is no fun, plus very few of us have the time to do those rides regularly, which kind of defeats the point. I’m sure it wouldn’t be as bad if there was a decent size group of you, say 30, and you had a support car in tow like the PRO’s do, but unless you have a very generous parter that was willing to do that, and employer that doesn’t mind you either starting at lunch time every day, or finishing in the the middle of the afternoon, I don’t think anyone will ever be in that situation.

Another train of thought is the one that I followed, which was to just ride. Last year I started my training in the first week of November. Interval training every other night, until March. 4 months, indoors on the turbo. Yes it was mind-numbing, but it worked. I saw an increase of about 2-4km/h to my average speed on most rides, and with the exception of the Somerset 100 (and the trip to Portugal), I did a lot more longer rides and didn’t suffer on any of them. The Somerset 100 was my own fault, riding so fast that I didn’t think to eat and bonked at 110km and pulled out, and then the Portugal rides were just tough, but I still finished all of them.

So those rides were testament to the fact that you can do short, intense work (my longest turbo session was only an hour) and still perform okay, but I know that there is room for improvement without too much alteration to the initial plan, and it’s what I’m going to try out this winter. You should all know this already, but I’m no coach, I’m just a guy that likes riding his bike and reads far too many cycling blogs.

A couple of months ago I had some correspondence with Tony from flammerouge.je, after Zac put me on to him, and after exchanging a few emails, he gave me a free 8 week training plan with workouts designed to increase my FTP, which is what I hope to target over winter. It’s clear I can cover distance, and while some improvement there would be nice too, I think it’s easier to concentrate on increasing FTP as it’s something that can be tested pretty easily. The best way is obviously a 40k time trial (which should take around an hour, significantly less for top riders), but you can also see it on things like attacks, sprints and hill climbs, which are the specific areas i’d like to see improvement.

So my winter training plan is simple. I’d like to start on the 5th December and carry on through until the 2nd January on the rollers, just ticking over and keeping the legs going, probably 30-45 minutes every other evening at 100rpm, putting out as little power as possible, which is where rollers are perfect. Due to the fact my wheel is currently with Zipp it may mean having to borrow a set of wheels from a friend, but that’s no problem. Then come January I will do either his 6 minute test, or Chris Carmichael’s 2x8 minute test to work out my FTP.

With my FTP set it’ll be 3 weeks on, one week off (which is an idea I got from his website too) following these work outs that he’s sent. THe workouts are available on his website so I’m not going to go into detail about them, but after doing a couple of them in the run up to Portugal I can tell you that they hurt. But the basic plan is week 1 is the “easiest”, although these are still very testing work outs sitting around your FTP power which I’ve found to be horrible on a turbo. Week 2 then gets harder, and week 3 is hardest. Then I’ll be taking a week off, and starting the whole process again after retesting my FTP in the same way as before.

Obviously because they’re 4 week programs they don’t quite marry up to January/February/March, but it’s close enough. January and February are going to be solely indoor months. I don’t cope well in the cold and don’t particularly want to be going out with the SRC boys from Bridgwater up to Burnham and then back to Bridgwater every week as after doing it once, I know it’s a fucking boring ride, but come March I am going to do exactly that, as it’s a fairly easy ride, the pace is highish but sitting at the back of the pack lets you sit at a low wattage and get towed along which is very nice.

The start of the fourth week of the March program will fall on the 19th, but due to the fact I’m going to Portugal on the 4th April I’ll be doing some easy stuff this week, depending on weather it’ll either be indoor on the rollers keeping my legs fresh, or outdoors if the weather allows. Then the week before the trip will be again a very easy week following the exact same routine, but stopping on the Friday to give my legs a few days to rest up before jetting off to Portugal.

I’ll endeavour to keep this site updated, it’s difficult finding the inclination to write when I know there aren’t many people reading, but I’ll see what I can do, I guess weekly updates would be nice, if you have any thoughts on the issue of frequency or just want to comment on the blog then please either add me on Facebook or drop me an email to jonmackinnon AT gmail DOT com. Thanks for reading.

My Tour De Algarve

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:57:00 +0000

For convenience I’ve added anchors at the beginning of each day so you don’t have to read the whole post at once. Day One | Day Two | Day Three | Day Four. The title of the day also includes a link through to the Strava ride, feel free to check them out while reading so you can get the full experience.

Day One

Day one started with a very early rise, 3:45am for me, I had packed all my shit together the day before so I lazed in bed for 15 minutes, grabbed some last minute bits from around the house and jumped in the car ready to head to Karl’s at about 4:30. I arrived at dead on 4:45, we wrestled my bike into the car and went just round the corner to pick up Justin. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing we managed to get his bike in the car too, and then we were on our way to Bristol.

We sailed through check in, although my bike bag was quite literally dead on the 32kg limit, and went and grabbed something to eat and drink from Burger King, a healthy start. After an hour sitting around discussing all sorts of topics from cycling to mummifying people, the gate opened to get us onto the plane. At 8am, 15 minutes later than expected, we took off.

Considering it was my first ever time on a plane, I was pretty comfortable, I can’t see what the fuss is all about, you sit down, the plane goes in the air, flies for a bit, then lands, I was fortunate that we didn’t hit any turbulence but it was still a nice flight, I’m not sure how people survive on crazy long flights to Australia or whatever, but 2.5 hours to Portugal wasn’t too bad.

We arrived in Faro and apart from the shitty wait in the airport due to the roof being blown off and us having to rely on public transport to leave to meet Karl who had sped ahead to get the hire car, it was all pretty good. Just under an hour after getting in the car we were in the house, getting shown around and then building up our bikes.

Thankfully the baggage handlers were nice and our bikes were in one piece, I’m sure the hour or so I spent wrapping it in pipe lagging also helped but it came out completely unharmed, about half an hour later and the bikes were built and ready to ride, a quick heave ho on the pump and a mad dash to get changed and we were ready to get out on the bikes.

Karl rode down to the village to meet another rider who visits regularly, Ron, and brought him back up to the house. Justin and I finished getting our act together, did the standard last minute checks on the bikes, and with that it was time to hit the start button on the Garmin.

This was due to be the “warm up” ride, but I had no idea what Karl had in store other than about 75km of local roads. The first 20km or so of riding was on and off uphill, you’d hit a bit of a rise, 100ft or so for about 1km, crest, then come down the other side. Rinse and repeat.

Rinse and repeat is a fitting phrase, I should have followed Karl’s lead of wearing arm warmers and I also should have grabbed my jacket, however I was stupid, in a rush and thinking “we’re in Portugal, it will be fine” so I didn’t get them out of my pack. As such when it started raining after about an hour, I was very cold. We were going at a steady pace, 25km/h or so, and with another 50km to cover with no stops I knew it was going to be tough, the combination of the rain hammering down, the wind hitting us here and there and the fact I was so nervous due to the weather that I could barely ride in a straight line meant that I was suffering. My core temperature wasn’t an issue at all, it was just my extremities.

After 30 km we hit a little climb for 1km, and then at 34 km we got to the first proper climb of the day, 350ft of climbing over 2km, that led to a 6km descent dropping us down 150ft, before hitting a 5km climb with just over 500ft of elevation gain. The climb itself was great, nice and steady with wide roads meaning the cars could give plenty of room to pass, however when we got to the top, I was still soaking wet, my arms, hands and feet were absolutely freezing, and I had a 4km long descent dropping 500ft, in the pissing rain, needless to say I wasn’t looking forward to it. Add to that the fact that I hadn’t even managed to polish off one bottle yet, and I knew it was going to be really testing.

I struggled down it, after my accident earlier this year where I slid out on a corner in the rain I was taking it very very carefully, so much so that when Karl and Justin got to the bottom, they turned around to come and find me to make sure I was okay. From that point it was another 10km of gentle decline before we started hitting the lumps and bumps of the last 15km of the route. We got back to the house after just under 3 hours of riding over 77km, averaging 26km/h.

After warming up in the shower we headed into the village to one of the local restaurants which we ended up eating at for all four nights, the atmosphere there was the same as the rest of the country, despite being owned by English people, everything was chilled out, there was no rushing, super polite and just a really great place. I had myself spaghetti bolognaise and a J2O and Karl and Justin hit the beers. After there we went to a local bar where pretty much everything was 1€, and then headed back to the house.

With the day I had had I was ready to pass the fuck out, so when we got home at 9:15ish I went straight to bed and slept through until 8am the following morning.

Day Two

The good thing about all staying in the same place is that there’s no pissing around waiting for people when it’s time to ride, there’s always someone who has forgotten to pack their toolkit, or pump their tyres up, which inevitably means you end up leaving 10-20 minutes later than planned, but when you’re all together, those sort of things don’t take much more than a few seconds to sort, and then you’re on your way.

So Day 2 saw us on a medium length route, 120km of mainly rolling roads, no major categorised climbs, so it should have been fairly straightforward, however the weatherman had other ideas.

We left at 10am, after a couple of hours of mooching around the house eating breakfast and watching TV. The sun was out, the cloud didn’t look too bad, but I still decided to play it safe and take my arm warmers and jacket. We headed out the back of the village towards Bensafrim at first, warming the legs up with a steady 20km/h pace, and to be honest it didn’t speed up much from that. It was 30km of steady rising roads (including a stretch past a huge lake, Albufiera de Oxiåxere) before hitting the bottom of the first real climb, a nice 3km spike rising up 600 feet, perfect to be able to able to settle into a rhythm and just bash it out.

The views were absolutely spectacular, riding through beautiful valleys on roads which gently meander up the side of mountains, overlooking lakes and vast expanses of countryside which could be compared to the Australian outback the way it is so barren and desolate.

I don’t remember exactly when the rain started, truth be told I’m writing this on the train to work almost a week after the trip so my memory is a little hazy, but I know that when it started, it didn’t stop for almost the whole of the ride. Thankfully I was slightly more prepared this time, I had worn my arm warmers and packed my jacket, so when it did start raining it wasn’t as bad. However as I previously mentioned, something I always have issues with in the rain is keeping my energy levels up, I find whenever the rain starts, my hands stay on the bars and I never reach for my bottle so end up suffering even harder, this ride was no exception.

Something incredible happened while we were riding along, it was the kind of thing you wish you could film, because it would have become a YouTube success overnight, but the last thing I wanted to do was detach the camera I had strapped to my chest. We were riding towards Marmolette, and I had to stop because my chain dropped. Out of nowhere this wild dog appears, and starts following me. I bridged up to Karl and Justin and this dog was still on my wheel, so we carried on riding over this rolling landscape, and the dog was still there. Karl tried getting rid of it by splashing it with water but it wasn’t phased, it just carried on running along with us. We’d lose it on the descents but as soon as the road was flat or heading up he’d catch back up with us. It was nothing like you’ve ever seen before. When cars came up behind us, this dog was growling and barking at them, as if he was protecting us, apart from that he was completely silent, content with just running along next to us. He was with us for about 7 or 8km until we hit a longer section of down hill and he couldn’t stick with us. It was so surreal, just thinking back to it now makes me laugh, he was so happy just running along next to us bless him.

We stopped in Monchique for a break after 56km of riding, and the rain had let up slightly. At this point Karl made the decision to cut the ride short, so after a half an hour break we jumped back on the bikes. I was absolutely freezing cold (turns out it doesn’t matter how many hot chocolates you drink at a cafe, at 1600ft when you get back on the bike still soaking wet from the constant onslaught of rain for the last 2ish hours) when we started heading down towards Portimao. It’s a brilliant descent which averages 4.5% over the best part of 9km. Despite the rain and the core temperature feeling pretty low, I still managed to get warm and we still averaged around 40km/h down it. From there I felt slightly better as I was warm, albeit wet, but knew it was only a 40km almost flat ride home through Portimao and Lagos.

Another coffee stop at Lagos gave us time to warm up a little bit, and by this point the rain had thankfully stopped so getting back on the bike wasn’t quite as difficult as it is half way up a mountain. We took it steady over the last 10km or so and got back into the village after about 4.5 hours on the bike, covering just shy of 110km. Unfortunately my Garmin ran out of juice at 79km so the ride data doesn’t quite show the extent of the suffering, but we were all grateful to be home.

After chucking our kit in the wash and ourselves in the shower, separately I might add, we headed down to the local restaurant in the village again for another well-deserved meal. Chicken Kebab was my choice, and with a double helping of rice I found myself replete and happy to retire to bed by 9:30pm! The joy of the long days on the bike means it doesn’t take long to fall asleep, and before I knew it was time to be getting up to eat breakfast ready for day 3, aka the long one!

Day Three

So this was due to be the testing one, I had no idea of the terrain, but I knew it was going to be a long one, my longest ride ever in fact, 166km. It started at 7am for me, I woke up with sore legs, and Achilles tendon which was aching when I walked up and down the stairs, and a bit of a niggle in my right knee. In all honesty, I really didn’t want to ride it, but after breakfast, shower, mental breakdown, mental preparation, bike preparation, and having Karl and Justin around, meant I didn’t have a choice in all honesty. It started with the standard ride out of the front of the village, where we met Ron and headed towards Lagos.

The road to Lagos is really nice, it’s about 8km long, undulating, wide and smooth. Perfect for waking the legs up, I spent most of my time riding with Justin, and when he told me that he also felt like shit and could have quite happily sat it out, it actually made me feel slightly better, as I knew we were in it together.

So we rode into Lagos, out the other side, and that’s when it started… more rain! Looking straight ahead there was clear skies, to the left, clear skies in the distance, but above us, rain clouds. Thankfully the bad weather was heading a different direction to us, so we all grabbed our rain jackets and dealt with it. 20-30 minutes later and we were through it, the sun was out, warming us up, and Portimao was only a few k down the road.

It’s strange how familiar you become with somewhere after only a few days there. Remembering all the shops, restaurants, and terrain like you’ve been cycling there your whole life, so when we got to Portimao we all knew exactly where we were heading, straight up to Monchique, again.

The climb up to Monchique is really, really nice. It’s about a 5% average for the best part of 10km, you won’t find anything like it in the UK. Sure there’s the Cat & Fiddle which for some reason is considered one of the UK’s best climbs, but that’s only 5km long, and has a descent for nearly 1km half way through it. But the climb up to Monchique is something else entirely, with the views, the friendly traffic and the roads, it makes riding up there a pleasure, even in the rain, which is what we experienced about 1/2 way up. I had stopped for a pee at the bottom with Justin, Ron had carried on and Karl had stopped with us, we got back on the bikes and just decided to go at it at our own pace, there’s no point trying to ride with someone faster/slower than you, because you just won’t be able to get comfortable. So I went off, I saw Ron in the distance, and while I wasn’t trying to catch him, when you see someone getting closer to you, it does make you want to work slightly harder, but I just carried on at my pace, and looking behind me I could see that Karl was coming up to me, and we pretty much managed to bridge to Ron together.

Now I’m not sure exactly when it was, I can’t remember if it had started raining or not, I think it was just about to, but Ron decided he didn’t want to get caught out so all of a sudden turned around, as I rode past he told me to keep going, and I guess he told Karl he had had enough so was going home. Not long after that a shower started to come down, so I stopped to put my jacket on, despite being quite warm, I didn’t want to risk being freezing cold again like the day before. So with my jacket on I continued the climb, I was losing Karl as he had slowed down to make sure Justin was okay, but we all knew where we were going so I carried on up. About 3km from the top I came to a familiar spot, the quarry. This is where we had joined the road on Day 2, when my legs were absolutely shattered and I wanted to get off the bike and cry, but my legs were feeling completely different on this occasion. I decided to stop and wait for Karl anyway, after a couple of minutes he turned up, and we carried on up into the centre of Monchique together. Justin caught us about 10 seconds from the cafe stop, so we all rolled in together, 1/3rd of the ride completed.

After a short stop we carried on, this time through the valley, with 200ft of climbing, before we started a 20km descent down out of the mountain range and out of the Algarve, from there it was a 30km slog through some of the best but worst terrain I’ve ever ridden. Karl turned to me as we hit this stretch of road and said “now you understand why they call it the marathon of Monchique”, at the time I was clueless to what he meant, truth be told my legs were absolutely shot, but we all went up this climb and over the top it was just this crazy landscape. Justin likened it to Mexico and Australia, I was just blown away. You never get this kind of landscape in the UK, usually because there’s hedges either side of you for the duration of your ride, but this was just nuts, this desolate, barren landscape, with the odd house and restaurant dotted along the sides, it was brilliant. The riding however… that was tough. Nothing major, just little spikes like you get in the UK, a few hundred metres at 7/8/9%, normally quite easy, but when they’re relentless, kilometre after kilometre, and your legs are burning, and all you want to do is have a break, grab some food and rest your legs, that shit hurts, a lot. But after an hour or so, we were coming to the end, and it’s only then that you start to realise how fortunate you are, having the ability to ride through landscapes like this.

We stopped for lunch in a nice little town called Sao Teotonio and once again, the beauty of the country hit me. We were sat outside a little cafe stuffing our faces with cake and the sun was shining on us, a local scout group were wandering around the village centre while their leaders had some lunch, not only was it a welcome break from the bike, we’d been out of the house 5.5 hours at this point and still had 60km to go until we hit home, but it was another great opportunity to sit and appreciate the culture and way of life that they have over there. Even now, a few weeks after the trip, I still can’t get over how massively different this country is, just everything about this place seems so ridiculous and unnecessary once you’ve spent some time experiencing another country, that’s only 2.5 hours away! It boggles the mind.

So after a gorgeous pain au chocolat and 20 minutes rest we cruised round the corner to find the local supermarket and grab some supplies, a couple of cans of coke for me (which really, really helped my legs, and made me feel PRO at the same time) which I emptied into my bottle, topped up the others with some water, and then we started climbing, nothing major, 2km or so, but by the time we were 750ft above sea level, we were only about 5km from the coast itself, so there was a bit of a headwind. That was until the road took a turn to the left, where the headwind because a cross/tailwind, and we had a 30km run all the way down the west coast of the country before it kinked in slightly and took us further in land. Those 30km were absolutely awesome, the first 10k dropped 625 feet, at one point we were cruising along at 36km/h, I was on the front, putting out about 120 watts, it was exactly what I needed after the metaphorical assault I had to deal with prior to the lunch stop.

From there onwards it was pretty standard, rolling Portuguese landscape. About 5km before the turn to take us inland the road started to rise, nothing steep, just another steady climb, averaging about 3-5% on the first 2km or so before flattening out, then another 2km of 5-7%, a bit more flat, then a final 2km of 3-5% again. A nice climb that you can really just settle into, a few bits of flat help break up the climb but as the whole climb comes in at under 10k, it’s just a nice little test of the legs, especially after 135k.

Upon cresting the top of the climb, which we had also ridden on the first day, we started the descent into Bensafrim, which is about 8km of almost solid downhill, varying between about 2 and 6%, not a descent that’s going to help you break any land speed records, but certainly one that’s nice on the legs. Bensafrim marks the last real town before home, so at that point the pace slowed 5km/h or so, and we just cruised the last 15km, watching the sun get lower in the sky, and reminiscing on what had been a ride of epic proportions. It’s not until you get home and check out the stats that you realise just how far you’ve ridden over really varied terrain, but when you see the profile of the land and see the numbers, 6500 ft. of ascending, it’s a bit of a shock to the system.

I’m a similar fashion to the previous two days it was another case of get back, get in the shower, chill out for a few minutes and then go down to grab some food. After such a hard day’s riding I didn’t really want to move but on a tour like this you have to eat or you’ll fall to pieces. So I decided to go with a nice starter of chilli with tortillas, followed by chicken kebabs again, very good. We spent a fair old amount of time sat at the table, just chatting about all sorts of shit, reminiscing on the days riding and looking forward to the next day, the mountain stage…

Day Four

Waking up with almost 400km in your legs (and no post ride massages) isn’t a nice feeling. Knowing you have a mountain to climb in a few hours in a few hours is a petrifying feeling, but also a very exciting one. Show me somewhere in the UK where you can ride a real Category 1 climb, and I will be surprised. Climbs in the UK are nothing compared to the climbs abroad, and todays ride was due to be no exception. In all honesty when I woke up I really didn’t want to go on the ride, but at the same time I knew the roads, I knew that once the climb was done, it was a long downhill and nothing but pretty much flat until home.

A 120km out-and-back (with a minor detour) was the plan, so after a bowl of porridge while sipping on an energy drink, a quick shower and donning my favourite kit, (2011 Saxo Bank Sungard), it was time to hit the road.

The ride took us along a now very familiar route, into Lagos, across to Portimao and up to Monchique, where this ride differed from the rest however was that we weren’t going to be stopping in Monchique for a drink and some food, but we were going to be carrying on up, right up to Foia, which would become our main stop of the day.

The warm-up into to Lagos was as always, a nice steady ride before picking up the pace slightly down to Portimao. At Portimao we started to head inland, and eventually got to the base of the mountains after just under 2 hours of ride time. Having ridden this section of road 24 hours prior to this, it was easy to settle into a pace. The day before Justin had been conserving energy and as such we left him behind, which he wasn’t very comfortable with, so this time round the deal was stick together until Monchique, and then just go at a pace which suits you up to Foia. The nice thing about the climb is that it’s very consistent. It’s not steep ramp, mellow off, steep ramp, mellow off, it’s a constant 3-5% for 10km until you reach Monchique. I was busting for a pee by the time we got there so decided to stop off, in the mean time I filled up a bidon (which turned out to be a pointless exercise) and we carried on up. Karl had hyped this climb from Monchique to Foia to be a big one, a climb that’ll make or break a rider, 12% up the bottom, then a constant 8% to the summit. Now I look back on my Garmin data I can tell you that while it does get up to 12%, it’s more like 8-9% for 1km, then the rest of the climb varies, as low as 4%, but there are 9 and 10% sections in there too. That’s not to say it’s easy, it took me an an hour and twenty minutes to cover off the whole climb which works out to be about 18km, so it’s not something you can blast up in a few minutes, and it’s definitely something that could tear a rider apart if his buddies decided to attack at just the wrong (or right) moment, but that’s because it’s long, and relentless, if you push yourself too much out of your comfort zone then you’ll really start to suffer, but I look back on it and I think the next time I go up it I will try and go harder, try to beat my old time. I’ll also make sure that I’m only carrying things I need to, not having that extra 750g of weight that the bottle gave me would have actually knocked some seconds off my time, not major, but it all adds up.

So we got about half way up, and Justin and Karl started to pull away from me, I thought they would, I was going very steady keeping an eye on my power meter and making sure to keep it below 200w, I spent most of my time stood up on the bottom section of the climb to try and rest my legs, so I could be more comfortable on the top part. It seemed to work, as I was pretty comfy going up the climb, I just didn’t want to push any harder than necessary as I knew that while we had to come down the 20km of road we’d just come up, we also had to cover off those other 40km that got us here. So they went, and I stayed.

I spent a lot of time taking in the views, you don’t really think about it when you’re in the UK because you don’t get a choice but to look at a hedge or maybe a field with some cows in, but the views here were breathtaking. We were only 60km from the coast so it was easy to look out and see the gorgeous sea. Add to that all the other valleys and lumps and bumps and it really made for a great ride. A few km from the top is where it did admittedly get quite tough, I knew the summit was close, but I didn’t know how close, and I really wanted some food! As you get out of the cover of the trees the wind starts to howl down at you, We had had a pretty horrible headwind for all of the ride so far, as it was coming off the mountain and down to the coast, so up here that wind was amplified, it definitely made for some tricky riding, especially with my Zipp 404’s, but still I pressed on, hoping to see the guys waiting for me round every corner, but that didn’t happen for about another 15 minutes.

Salvation came when I saw on a rock, Foia, 1.7. I knew that at my current pace, I wasn’t more than 10 minutes away, so I tried to pick up the pace slightly just to get me to the top quicker. A few minutes later and I was there, coming round a right-hander to a junction, left to the food, right to the weather station. As much as I’d have loved to sit at the weather station I decided food was the better option, so I rolled down to see Karl and Justin waiting for me. They’d only been there for a couple of minutes, but still let me stand and take in the views for a few minutes myself. Everyone had said that the weekend was going to bring the good weather, and they had not lied. Other than the 20-30 minutes of showers we had had the day before, it was absolutely gorgeous. Clear, blue skies, a bit of wind but that’s to be expected, and glorious, warm November sunshine. We were riding in 20-21º heat and it felt like nothing, truth be told I was quite worried about the heat before I left, I thought it was going to get really hot, but it was really nice and comfortable.

We stopped for about half an hour at the top, chatted about how enjoyable the ride up had been and then after we had all finished our food it was time to head back, With every kilometre we were getting closer to home and closer to the end of the trip, but that didn’t stop us from hitting the descent hard. I’m no descender, I used to be okay but due to lack of weight I tend to get up to a cruising speed of about 50km/h and that’s about it, so despite setting off first so Karl and Justin could come past me to look cool for the video footage that I had been taking on and off throughout the trip.

The wind on the first few km was absolutely fucking killer, I was shaking because we had been sat down and so my body had cooled down, and then the wind was hitting my rims and blowing me off track really easily. I’ve never had any issues with my 404’s but this was no fun at all, not only was I trying to concentrate on making it look cool for the video, and not taking too long to get down it, I was also having to look out for crap on the road which I had spotted on the way up, and deal with the wind! But once I got down under the canopy the wind pretty much disappeared and I was able to relax a lot.

So we regrouped at the Monchique roundabout after the first half of the climb, and set off again down the lower slopes. With the camera still rolling I tried my hardest to stay with the guys but once again I got dropped (it was a recurring theme through the whole trip), when the descent started to flatten out I wondered when the hell I was going to see the guys but they had been chilling and I caught up with them soon enough, with 40km left on the trip we decided to take it steady and make the most of the weather.

Some how the wind had swung 180º from when we left the summit so we didn’t have the effortless ride back I hoped we’d have, but we still managed to do okay. We were going to stop off at a cafe but Karl was worried about time and it not being open so we headed straight back to Lagos, turning this into an out-and-back ride. We hit Lagos at about 3:30 so the sun was still nice and high and we decided to take a final cafe stop at the marina.

Sitting at the waters edge, with the sun coming down on us gave us some time to look back on the trip and the lifestyle in general of the Portuguese. We all had a good laugh about the weather and spoke about our ups and downs of the trip, it has to be said my lowest moment was definitely on day 1. With the rain, the unfamiliar roads and questionable bike setup (I had only unpacked it a few hours prior and was worried about it) it made for a very unnerving ride. But apart from that, the whole trip was absolutely incredible. I keep using those adjectives but there aren’t enough words in the dictionary to describe how enjoyable the trip was.

At one point on one of the rides, I think it was day 3, I turned and said to Karl as we’re climbing a gentle slope “I’d much rather take a Friday and Monday off work and take a long weekend over here than ride a sportive in the UK”, and that’s the honest truth. It doesn’t matter when the sportive is scheduled for, it could be the middle of August, it always seems to rain, it’s as if the weather knows that there are going to be hundreds of cyclists out on their bikes, and so they deserve to be soaking wet for trying to enjoy themselves. Always happens.

The reason I said that was because not only do you get good weather, okay we had two days of rain, but the fact the roads are clean, smooth, and empty makes it infinitely worth it. Add to the fact that the sides of the roads are open and allow you to take in breathtaking views, and it seems almost stupid not to. £65 entry for Etape du Cymru, plus petrol to get there at the best part of £1.30 a litre, plus accommodation for the mandatory sign on which took place the day before, soon adds up to over £150.

For that you get one days riding on “closed” roads packed with cyclists of all abilities (meaning the fast guys ended up sitting behind the slow recreational riders until the road opens up slightly to allow them to pass) hedges either side giving you no view of the landscape what so ever, crappy weather, empty food stations, no real categoriesed climbs, just 500m 20% spikes and roads which eventually had cars all over them because the road closures weren’t thorough enough, a road surface which is littered with potholes and manhole covers which have to be dodged every few minutes.

The alternative of course, is a couple of hundred quid for 3 days riding on some of the best roads in Europe. If you’ve never ridden abroad then you are missing out, firstly, the roads are absolutely incredible, Justin and I spend the entire ride counting manhole covers and got to the total of about 4 before giving up because it was useless. The scenery is absolutely incredible, eucalyptus trees, huge pine trees, land so barren it looks like you’ve stepped into the Australian outback, it’s just down right beautiful. Back to the roads again, there is almost no traffic what so ever, and when there is, it’s polite, patient and passes with plenty of space, you even get people putting their thumbs up and tooting at you, it’s a wonderful environment to cycle in. Not only that but the roads have seen numerous PRO riders on them, be it on training camps or professional races (check the 2011 Volta ao Algarve stage 2 route and then check the routes we did), you are rolling on the same tarmac as riders such as Contador, Hushovd, Gilbert, Wiggins, Armstrong, etc. To me it seems like a no brainer. It may seem expensive, but if you add up the amount you spent on sportives last year, entry, travel, accommodation possibly, I bet it comes to not much less than a trip over to the Algarve.

We finished day 4 with a very relaxed ride back to the house. After a shower I started the disappointing task of putting my bike back into the bag. Removing the wheels, deflating the tyres, which after nearly 500km still hadn’t seen anything which could even cause a puncture (in fact for the whole duration of the ride, we didn’t have one puncture or mechanical, the only times we had to stop were to pee, to put on clothes, or to sit down for some food), taking the seat post out and the bars off. and packing it all away. It couldn’t have come at a better time though, 470km in my mind, is a lot of distance to cover, it’s even more impressive when you think that we covered it over 4 days, 2 of which were plagued with practically torrential rain, but we didn’t let it dampen our spirits (ha ha), we just carried on and got on with it. We’re cyclists after all, in this country if we only rode when it was dry we’d be out about once a month and that’d be it.

So once the bikes were boxed up, all our clothes and belongings were packed away we put it all in the garage ready for the morning and walked down into the village square for the last time, into the restaurant which had become some what of a dining room away from home, and sat down for some food. The lack of ride in the morning meant we stayed up a lot later than the previous nights, I ended up hitting the sack at about midnight.

It was slightly disappointing waking up on the final morning. Rolling my sleeping bag up, checking the room to make sure I hadn’t left anything behind and then walking out for the last time. We loaded the car up, said goodbye to the house and set off for the airport.

Check in went fine, Justin had some issues again due to not booking his bike in properly, but it wasn’t long before we were on the plane and in the air. Getting back into Bristol was horrible. It was cold and misty, the airport is horrible compared to Faro, and the people are just so rude and miserable. The whole drive home all we were talking about was how depressing the roads and attitude of drivers was, it was a real shock to the system, you don’t realise how unfortunate we are living and riding in this country until you go somewhere else, you think a 100km ride here is good because it didn’t rain, in Portugal every 100km ride is good because as I’ve written so many times, everything is different.

We got back to Highbridge and dropped Justin off, then got to Karl’s and chucked all my business in the car. Driving back to Weston I still had the same thoughts in my head, and they stayed for about a week after, in fact I’m finishing this off 2 weeks after I got back and all I can think about is how I can’t wait to get back out there in April. I worked it out, the flights have cost me £250 (including bike (£25 each way), luggage (£29), and £15 for paying with a Visa card), the trip itself is £225, and I took £100 of Euros spending money. £575 for 5 days riding in Portugal, in April, my flights for the November trip were even cheaper than that. £115 a day. £115… per day, for everything, absolutely everything I’ve described in this essay.

Think about that the next time you have a “great ride” at a sportive. For now, I’ll stick to riding abroad.

One last thing… I have to mention just how comfortable my Cobb saddle was. In the past I’ve had major issues with saddle comfort, but this was something else, no issues what so ever, absolutely amazing, cannot fault it. I bought mine from Bike Science in Bristol (which is the same place I had my Retül fit done) and I highly recommend them. With that, I’m out.

last of the summer weather

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 11:05:36 +0000

It’s always nice getting out on the bike, (okay, except when it’s raining), let me start again… it’s usually nice getting out on the bike, except when it’s raining, and Saturday was no exception.

Boom, intro done, time to get into the details.

I found myself waking up at 6:10, 10 minutes late already, nuts. I threw down a mean bowl of porridge, got all my shit together, made up 5 bottles, got down to the garage, put my saddle bottle holder on, threw the bike in the car and drove to Asda. I was running late. I quickly darted inside, grabbed some jelly beans and headed to Burnham to meet Karl and Justin.

Karl said he wanted to be leaving at 7:25, I got to his house at 7:25, I literally saw him standing at the side of the road waiting for Justin, 2 minutes more and I would have missed them. That’s what waking up 10 minutes late does for you, had I had those 10 minutes in hand, I would have been perfectly on time. I digress.

After chucking my jersey on, cap, helmet, shoes, glasses, the whole shebang, I was ready to go. Clipped my Garmin in, got introduced to Justin, and hit the road. I didn’t start my Garmin straight away, for some reason I thought we were only doing a few km to meet some others, but after about 5k I asked what was going on and I was told we’d be riding to between Bridgwater and Taunton to meet up with Somerset Road Club (SRC), and then heading back up to Burnham. Righty-ho then, better start the Garmin.

We had a nice chilled out ride down to whereverthefuck we were going to be picking up the ride, and then we waited, waited and waited for about 20 minutes, more people turned up slowly but surely, and in the end there were about 15 of us waiting by the side of the road. As the “leaders” came through, we all hopped onto the back and started heading back up to Bridgy. I had no idea where I was really, and while I was sat on the back with Justin and Karl, we kept losing a couple of metres due to us being lazy and not wanting to ride a tiny bit harder although we were only putting out about 120w, but every time we got to traffic lights we caught them and it wasn’t long before we were sat right in the mix.

Riding in a group is so nice, for some reason I always tend to sit near the front when I go out with the Saturday morning Weston group, but I really should just sit at the back and get dragged along, at one point we were doing 45km/h and I was putting out under 200w! No wonder these pros average ~250w for a 6 hour race, although they can comfortably put out a fucking high wattage during TT’s and attacks and stuff, (450w threshold anyone?), with a few more hours training a week I could probably get fit enough to sit in the pack all day! Although I’d be useless at doing anything else, so probably not the best way to think.

There wasn’t any excitement until we got to Burnham. I knew where we were, and saw Karl and Justin moving up the pack. I figured they must be going up there for a good reason, and then BANG, SPRINT! The front guys took off, I was just about to slow up as I was getting to Justin, but he took off, fuck, everyone took off, and I was about half way down the pack. In a situation like that, when there are riders all over the road (we’d been riding two abreast for all of the ride so far) the chances of people coming past in cars is minimal, so after about 10 seconds in the hoods I thought “I don’t wanna be Fabian Cancellara) and got into the drops. Still accelerating, time to take it down a gear, and another one, fuck this is fast, fuck there’s Justin and he only has two guys in front of him, people are starting to bonk, FUCKING GO! I came through 3rd/4th with Justin, not bad for an informal sprint that I had no idea was going to happen, had I known about it i’d have been slightly more prepared. Still, managed to put out 1044 watts and accelerate up to 58km/h so my legs do have a bit of go in them when they’re asked to (and when you’ve been cruising for the last hour at around 150w, not exactly taxing riding).

We got to the sea front and Coxy was waiting there with his lad, they’d just popped out to say hello, everyone grabbed a coffee, I necked the last 1/3rd of my bottle and filled up another just to be on the safe side, then after about half an hour we got back on the bikes. Karl told me the pace would probably be a bit quicker on the way back, but it wasn’t really, not sat at the back anyway. Same as always, being towed along, laughing at my wattage, trying to explain to people how funny it was that we were doing 35k at less than 200w but them not really getting it, I guess that’s what happens when you ride every session with a power meter and they don’t have a clue what it does or what wattage even means…

We got through to Bridgy and Karl and I peeled off to head back home, through Woolavington and Watchfield and then back to Highbridge. The ride was pretty much flat the whole way except for a bit of a bump where we went to meet the guys and a little 1km 4% rise up to Woolavington which was nothing really, so we were able to keep a decent pace the whole way, especially when in a pack of 20 cruising down the A38, it was a blast.

It was a great way to finish off the hit-or-miss summer we’ve had (in terms of riding and weather), and was also a nice test for my Cobb saddle (which gave me no issues at all). It’s given me a bit of faith for Portugal next month, so hopefully that will all go to plan. I’m going to be taking photos/video of that trip and doing a write up every day so hopefully the weather will be kind to me and you won’t end up reading about how I had a shitty time getting soaking wet a million miles from home.

A long overdue update

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 13:14:14 +0000

Firstly, I should apologise, I haven’t written here for a while because I’ve not had much motivation to, I haven’t had much motivation to ride in fact, it lost that “spark” as summer ended and I looked back at the last few months and realised I haven’t ridden nearly as much as I wanted to. June was good, 700km, July, 388km… Practically half, which isn’t too good really. August was even worse, for some reason I had no inclination to ride what so ever, which fucked me up when I went up to Stoke to spend a few days with Zac. Those two rides were probably the hardest rides I’ve done. To make matters worse I had no power readings, my Quarq out right failed, so I had to go on feel. I’m usually not too bad at going on feel (I know what VO2 Max feels like and can work from that) but when I’ve not ridden for two weeks it throws everything out of whack.

September… September started slowly, one ride every here and there, in the first 2 weeks I rode 5 times, not too good really considering I’m supposed to be training to go to Portugal in November, but then things picked up, over the last 6 nights I’ve done 150km, including a fair bit of anaerobic threshold stuff which is what I’m going to be concentrating on over winter, that and lactate threshold are my goals, oh and a bit of strength training. Basically everything, I want to get stronger, fitter, faster and become a threat to other riders.

But something that has been bothering me for the last few weeks is a cold/cough, it’s really frustrating going out having that constant tickly throat and feeling like I need to cough when all I want to do is get in the drops and put the power down, or get my legs ticking over nicely for the short climbs I take in on my regular loop, but I’m sure it’ll disappear soon, it’s been over 2 weeks so it should be on the way out!

In the mean time I’ve been looking at next year, looking at what I need to do to make the most of my summer. Last spring I looked through road.cc and planned a number of sportives I wanted to do. The only one I ended up doing was one which wasn’t even on my radar when I started planning, and that’s the Somerset 100. Called that because it’s 100 miles long, I managed 100km before I destroyed myself and called it a day at 110, so nowhere near the 100 miles (160km) I was supposed to do. I also did one race, just one. It went really badly and I got dropped within half a lap, it was dreadful, I didn’t prepare properly, I didn’t warm up properly, I forgot to reset my power meter, everything went badly, and that was before I even started the race. I’ve written about it before but looking back at it just makes me cringe, everything that could have gone wrong did, and it just wasn’t a very successful event.

Next year though… next year will hopefully bring some new challenges and new experiences. Karl is organising another Portugal trip over 5 days at the beginning of April which I might tag along to depending on money, apart from that I have no plans. I would like to do some races, but after riding once with a guy called Marcus, I realised I need to step my game up massively before I am fast enough to win races. He was an ex Cat 2 and when I was starting to dig on climbs he would attack, every time without fail. I then saw him riding home one day and he was cruising at about 45-50km/h pretty comfortably. I can hold 38-42km/h for about 5 minutes and then I’m dead, so I really need to step up my game if I want to win any races, or at least place in them. I’d like to commit to some sportives but whenever they’re arranged it seems to piss down with rain, so I don’t really want to get my name down and then wake up on the morning of the ride and it be torrential rain, last Sunday was a perfect example, I woke up in the morning and it was absolutely pissing down, by the middle of the afternoon the sun had come out and I was able to ride in the evening and you’d have thought it’d been sunny all day. However, in the morning it was the Bristol Belter sportive, one which I’d really like to have done, but there’s no chance I’m riding in that kinda weather (not that i’d have been able to ride anyway as I forgot about it so didn’t ever book in) it’s just not enjoyable for me.

So the plan now is to do some short fast stuff and plenty of turbo work as I’m not going to have much time to get out on long weekend group rides before Portugal, then once that’s out of the way try and plan my training so I start to come on form around April/May, and then I’ll hopefully be able to hold that form (or stay close to it) through to August/September, then the cycle (excuse the pun) starts again.

In the mean time I’ll try to update this with progress and there will be a couple of posts from Portugal going up on my new site Nttld (which is yet to launch) so keep your eyes peeled!

For Jon and Zac

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 21:49:05 +0000

For Jon and Zac

Ramblings of a bored train passenger

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 08:48:00 +0000

As I look out of the window of my train the fields around Backwell look rather peaceful, there doesn’t seem to be ay wind in the air what so ever, and apart from the soaking wet floors and the rather angry looking clouds, I’d have said it’s perfect riding weather. The only issue I have of course is that due to my crash last month I now don’t want to ride in the rain, ever. A few weeks ago I went out with my usual Saturday group who I go out with 1/2 times per month, and within a few minutes it had started raining, I had felt a few spots on my head when I was getting my bike out the garage so had my waterproof with me, but when we set off and the rain started coming down, I really didn’t want to carry on riding. It wasn’t heavy, it was just there, that annoying drizzly shitty rain that gets you soaking wet without actually ever feeling like rain, just like a really, really damp day.

This post was going to be about my ride last night, but that first paragraph went completely off track, but I’ll go back in the direction I wanted to head in in the first place, last night. I haven’t ridden for a week, it keeps happening, I start the month, I say “this month is MY month” and then I’m a week in and i’ve ridden twice… Shit. It’s the 11th today, yesterday was my third ride of the month, I should be on ride 8! There are always things that get in the way though. Just this week alone I’ve had three opportunities to ride but have only taken one, Monday night I was busy, Tuesday night I was asleep by 10pm, and then finally last night I managed to get out. Initially I resented it hugely. I know that goes against everything I wrote about passion, but that’s the joys of cycling, within 12 hours you can go from wanting to get out on the bike more than anything in the world, to never wanting to sling your leg over again. Usually those mood swings come after a long ride which has taken everything out of you, but for me it was just the thought of riding the same old route on the same old roads at the same old speed. There are nice routes around here, but they require daylight, and time, two things which I am lacking massively, I really wanted to go up Canada Combe yesterday, but when I looked outside at 8:45pm the street lights were already on. Canada Combe is dark and dingy in the middle of a bright summers day, it would be absolutely ridiculous to even consider going up it in the dark, I’ve driven up it numerous times in the past and while it’s great during the day, at night it just becomes a massive inconvenience.

Once again I digress… I didn’t want to go out, but I sucked it up and went, and about 5 minutes in I asked myself, why was I resenting this so much?! It was great, it was a comfy temperature, slightly cold on the skin when stepping outside but unnoticable on the bike, there was a wind, and it was horrible, but on a loop like mine, for every km you do with the wind in your face, you get to do the same amount of km’s with the wind behind you, pushing somewhere around 40km/h down the sea front and usually 34-38 down the main road to the far side of weston, it’s bliss, although you do have to be very weary of cars that are completely unaware of your presecence, especially when you catch up to them in a corner and they use the whole road, which they’re totally entitled to, it just makes it a bit frustrating when I have to slam my brakes on because they can’t decide where they want to drive. But generally the ride was good, there aren’t really any memorable bits, other than overtaking a couple of cars, dropping cars, and a cheeky “sprint” I had out of a corner which funnily enough was to get away from a taxi I had just overtaken up the inside, thankfully he took a nice line around a corner which allowed me a bit of space, I’d usually go round the outside but the inside was the only place to go so that’s where I chose to go, as soon as I could get back on the power I was out of the saddle, pushing a gear slightly heavier than what I’d usually be on, and then miraculously I found my legs being quite happy pushing that and not starting to hurt at all, so I dropped another gear and carried on, I only started slowing because the lights infront of me were red, but on my approach they changed to green so I cruised past the car that was sat waiting for them to change and into the next set of decidedly red traffic lights.

While the ride was a minute off my PB I still had a good ride, and it made me wonder why I worry about the roads I ride on. I know most of the roads in Weston, I know the hills, I know some of the smooth bits of road, some of the shitty bits of road, but I find myself riding on the same ones day in day out. I really should look into a new route, I love mine, it’s the perfect length for a quick 45~ minute blast (24.9km), but it’s always nice to mix things up a bit, writing this I am thinking out roads in my head, trying to decide where I could change things and add in bits, I’m currently drawing a blank but I’m sure I’ll think of something soon.

Then again the roads are all wet and it looks like it’s going to rain on and off all day, so maybe I’ll just have another night in wishing I could be out riding

Passion

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 11:51:45 +0000

This is a topic which has been on my mind for a while now. It’s one which I think people will be able to relate to easily, because it’s the reason why I enjoy cycling so much; passion.

I am passionate about cycling, although I don’t ride anywhere near as much as I should, or as much as I’d like to, the weather was gorgeous last night but I went to bed at 10pm instead of going out for a ride, because I know if I go out for a ride I get a crappy nights sleep because my brain and body are so excited, but it is always on my mind. I see a photo of a hill, I want to ride up it, I see a long, smooth piece of tarmac as I’m on my train journey to work, I want to ride along it, I’m constantly assessing roads, the condition, the holes, areas I’d need to take care, manhole and drainage covers, just in case I end up riding on them one day. I have my google reader open all day and am always checking for the latest bits of news, Thor Hushovd signs for BMC, Tony Martin hasn’t decided on a team yet, Simon Gerrans wins Tour of Denmark, Peter Sagan wins Tour of Poland… this stuff comes into my reader every hour or so, and I’m always reading it, someone mentioned something to do with the latest cycling news and for me it’s always an “Oh yeah I know, I read that a few days ago” situation. From training articles, to the latest and greatest product reviews, to results, I am always reading about cycling, and it is so frustrating.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love my job, I work with a great team of guys (and girl!) who I get on with really, really well, I get to talk to them about cycling as they have a slight interest, the money I earn working there funds my cycling habit, in fact, it’s just a perfect job, it’s what I’ve wanted to do since the age of 12, and I am really thankful to everyone in my past who helped me, pushed me to finish my education, anything, anyone who had the slightest input on me and my career choice, I want to thank them, because without them I’ve no idea what I’d be doing.

But… yeah there’s always a but, I’d love to be in cycling. I’m not talking working at a bike shop, I hate retail and really wouldn’t want to go back to retail unless I had no choice, but I’m talking about properly working in cycling, working for a pro tour team, working at a cycling manufacturer, being a photographer following races all over the world like Graham Watson, even working for a cycling website, I would love to work in a job that IS cycling. I know there’s the chance it would completely kill the passion I have for cycling, but it’s a risk I’d be prepared to take.

I don’t think I’ll ever get the opportunity to though, other than working for a website like bikeradar, where I’d inevitably carry on my current role as a web developer, it doesn’t seem like it would actually ever happen. I can dream about moving to France, or Italy, or Switzerland, to work for Mavic, Look, BMC, Colnago, Pinarello, Cinelli, all these brands require staff, but they have no use, really, for someone who only has experience in web development. I have a degree in graphic design, sure, but I am so rusty and shit at design, that there’s no way I’d ever get a job in that department, plus I’d probably have to learn another language, and there are all sorts of other things to take into account, moving to a foreign country, finding somewhere to live, getting used to the culture, all these issues… Such a shame.

I read articles about cycling companies, the kind of people who after a day at the office, go for a 2-3 hour ride, that’s what I want, I want a job that IS cycling, ride to work, have a shower and get changed, do my job, immerse myself in cycling in one way or another, then go for a ride after work with the team before going home. I really, really want that. I am going to keep my fingers crossed, that one day an opportunity arises that allows me to do what it is that I really want to do, but for now I’m happy doing the other thing that means the most to me, web development. I just wish that I had the passion for that that I do for road cycling.

So as I leave Bristol Temple Meads station for another day in my office, reading about cycling, and wishing I was out cycling, I take some joy in looking forward to 7pm, when I can sit down and eat some pasta, make up a bottle for the evening, and chill out before going for a little road ride, only 25km, but every little helps. Getting my fitness and strength to a level I’m happy with is a post in itself which will eventually get posted I’m sure, but for now, I have this evening to look forward to. Those 45 minutes of solace, when it’s just me, the bike, and the road, bliss.

My Retül bike fit

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 19:20:51 +0000

After wanting one for a long time, my parents were kind enough to pay for me go have a bike fit done as an early birthday present. The fit took place at Bike Science in Bristol, and I’m going to give a short run down of how it went.

I arrived at around 8:50 and had no idea where I was going, a quick walk around the little car park and I saw the sign above the door, so knew I was in the right place. I went in and Andy introduced himself to me and told me to go and get my stuff, so back to the car I went to collect my bike and stuff, and that was that. I handed Andy my bike and he pointed me I’m the direction of the changing rooms. After getting changed I had a quick spin on the bike, which was now in a turbo trainer mounted on a rotatable platform in front of a TV screen, just so he could take a first look at my current position, then we did some flexibility tests.

Turns out my right side is much more flexible than my left, which to me was unsurprising as I’m right handed/footed. We then did some core strength work, and after Andy saw that my right leg is ever so slightly shorter than my left, and I have very bad pronation in both my legs. He showed me some pilates exercises I can do to strengthen my glutes. A few minutes later it was back on the bike to have my cleat fore/aft position checked and get covered in sticky velcro dots.

My cleat position was pretty spot on and the pedal axle was almost directly under the ball of my foot, no adjustment needed. After that it was a case of sticking the corresponding Retül sensors onto me, then Andy gave me a brief rundown of the system and how it works. Three sensors on the front of the device record the position of the LED’s which are stuck to my body, and there’s a regular video camera for taking recordings. I then did a quick 30-45s spin at threshold to get a video and a recording of my right side, I was then spun around on the platform so he could check my left side, then ran me through the measurements he had taken and the kind of angles and measurements we wanted to be achieving.

The first thing Andy did was raise my saddle significantly. In the past I did the ‘heel on the pedal’ to get my saddle height which I thought was fine, but turns out I was miles out. The fore/aft of my saddle was nowhere near where it should be either, because I had it set up so low I had to have the saddle all the way forward on the rails to get my feet in the right position. With the saddle raised 55mm he was able to move my saddle forward a long way too, putting it in the centre of the adjustment range. A quick 15 second ride showed me that the saddle was slightly too high as my right leg was feeling way too outstretched, so he moved it down a little bit and the saddle forward again, before sorting out my hand position.

He knew just by looking that my bar position was way too low so he raised the stem 25mm. I previously had it slammed purely because I wanted to get as much saddle/bar drop as I could with my saddle height, but with the new position the bars had to come up too. I was still slightly too outstretched so my 120mm stem was swapped out for a 100mm which put me in a much better position. After a few spins checking my right and left sides the last thing he looked at was my cleat float, which I had previously set up to get rid of the slight “clicking” I had in my left leg, he didn’t touch them at all except for moving the right one forward to fix my leg length discrepancy, as he didn’t have any Speedplay cleat shims. The final thing to do was take a post-fit video, so I did another 30 second spin which he recorded, and then I was done. He did mention that there wasn’t any need to move them because my feet were pointing in a natural position and everything was tracking nice and straight, what’s nice about the Retül system is that it allows you to see your knee position in comparison to the frame, which is very useful.

He then got this wonderful tool called the “Zin”. Using the Zin he recorded all the contact points on my bike as well as front/rear axle position, wheel radius and a few other bits so the machine could work out all my crucial measurements, which were emailed to me at the end of the fit so I can replicate my position on any bike I buy in the future. After that was done he emailed me the fit data, we sorted out the money owed for the stem, and then I was all done! The fit only took about an hour and although we could have, we didn’t look into saddles, he said it was best to see how the new position was with my current saddle, and if I was having issues I could go back and try out a couple of options. Truth be told I’m still not completely happy with my Concor Light, so may well end up swapping it out for something, although with so many different models available it’s difficult to work out which to go for without spending lots of money and house in discomfort hoping the saddle will “bed in”, but that’s just part of cycling.

Overall I really rate the fit process. I think without spending serious time in a lab trying to maximise power output in relation to comfort and aerodynamics, it’s a great starting point. There is the argument regarding systems like this that all fitters do is adjust you to get within the ranges of measurements that they have decided is optimal, rather than taking into account all the variables that come with each person, but in all honesty there’s enough research behind this system that I trust it. That being said I’m sure if I went for a Specialized BG fit, or any other kind of fit, that my position would be altered slightly, but that’s just the nature of the beast, the human body is a complicated and incredible piece of engineering. I’m not taking this position as gospel and I am happy to adjust things as and when I need to, but I do think it’s a great base to start making minor adjustments from. If you’re having niggles with your current position, or are unsure how right it is for you, then the first place I’d point you in the direction of would be Bike Science.

In search of a goal

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 15:23:52 +0100

Something I’m missing when it comes to my “training” (if you can call riding 25km every few nights as fast as I can training) is a goal. The plan last year was to use this year to start racing, the issue there is after riding at Ilton once and getting dropped within half a lap, I decided 2 things: Firstly, I don’t like that circuit very much, secondly, there’s no point paying money to enter races where I just get completely smashed to pieces and end up riding for an hour on my own, I can do that for free at home on roads I actually like. But there are other races in the area, the issue is I still don’t feel like I have the strength. I’d love to go and do a proper road race, but what scares me as always is getting dropped, and ending up riding on my own for X hours chasing a group I’m never going to be able to catch, I think if I was focussed with my training, I would be much more successful.

The age old issue there is time. Unfortunately I can’t get home from work any earlier than 7pm, and then as I’ve mentioned before, by the time i’ve eaten and chilled, it’s 9pm and that’s when I get my riding done. I’m thinking of trying something new in August, I’m going to try and have a main meal at work, around 5/6pm, meaning I can get home get ready and go straight out. I don’t want to do it every night, I enjoy sitting down for dinner with my parents, but I think to try it once a week would be a good idea and would let me get out on some longer rides without having to worry about getting home stupidly late and keeping my parents awake running a bath and crashing round the house.

If it goes well then I’m definitely going to consider doing it regularly, just one longer 60~km ride every week, and maybe try some different things on my shorter rides. At the moment I just try and go as hard as I can for as long as I can, but that doesn’t improve my strength or fitness as much as it could, I still end up averaging about 80% HR which isn’t great. Everyone knows that intervals are a great way to get faster as they push you beyond your limit, and I think I need to start doing some properly. I spent 3/4 months in the winter doing hard intervals and they really paid off, my strength increased a huge amount, but as soon as it came to riding out on the road again they stopped, the strength is still there but I know there is more potential in me, I just need to get it out. I’m also thinking about doing some hill repeats again. I did some last year, and earlier this year, but I tend to go as hard as I can on the first one and then get slower and slower as I do more, not good. I don’t live in a hugely hilly area, there are some briliant climbs around but due to the UK lacking a mountain range, the kinda stuff I’m going to be doing is very short, snappy climbs, usually under 150m and only about 6/7/8% average. Undoubtedly those kind of climbs help my confidence when it comes to attacking on a climb, which I do most times I’m out riding with a group, but they’re never going to prepare me for 30k up the side of a French mountain.

My winter training was great, it was consistent, difficult, and made me about 10% faster than I was before. If I can get that kind of increase again this winter, then carry it on through the season, then eventually I’ll have a level of strength that I’m happy with. I always forget that I have age on my side, I’ve written about it before but I regularly ride with guys two or three times my age, and I’m currently as strong as most of them, I know as I’m only young I should be strong, but with 2 years in my legs and only 9 months of decent riding, I don’t think I’m doing too badly really.

My first crash

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:13:55 +0100

Friday wasn’t a good start to the weekend. There are so many things I keep thinking about that were different from my usual routine, or ways I could have skipped riding.

The first way I could have got out of it is typical me at the moment, as for some reason I’m all over the place. I left my laptop charger at work and was going to drive up to Bath to get it, instead my sister said I could borrow hers because she was out for the weekend. Secondly, it had been raining on and off all day, I usually wouldn’t go out in the rain/wet, but as I had a ride planned for Sunday I thought it would be a good idea to get some miles in my legs. When I went out it wasn’t raining, and the road was damp, but not soaked, this soon changed while I was out, which I’ll go into in detail shortly. The final thing that was massively different was that a road I usually ride down is closed for 6 months, it means I end up taking a different road from one side of Weston to the other, and it was on this road that I crashed.

So I’m going to tell you the story of how I crashed. As I said, I usually don’t go out in the rain or even the wet, because I don’t like riding in it, but July has been a really bad month so I thought I should probably go out. The road was only damp and it wasn’t raining, I put the usual amount of pressure in my tyres, as it didn’t even cross my mind to put less in because of the weather.

The ride started off really well, I zoom down my road and hit a right up a little hill, it’s a really nice rise and it’s only about a minute from my house so it’s a nice warm up, I’ll probably start doing some hill repeats on it soon because I enjoy it that much and it has plenty of recovery time, either way I went up there at a nice pace, concentrating on my leg speed and making sure I was changing down when the road flattened out, then staying in that gear until the crest. From there it’s a straight run to the far end of town, over a couple of little bumps, then a nice long downhill to a 180º corner, which is horrible. It was just after that corner that I had my first bit of trouble, a tourist. Living in a sea side town absolutely sucks because you get people cruising down the sea front at 10mph not knowing where the hell they are going. Fortunately this one was going slightly faster than usual, but still not fast enough for me to overtake and then drop it. It was about the same time that the rain started, I was actually thankful for the rain because I haven’t ridden in it for so long, but I should have known just how foolish I was to think that.

For the first time in months there was no wind, all the way along the seafront, nothing, looked at the flags on the buildings I go past, absolutely dead flat, brilliant. Looking at my Garmin showed speeds between 32 and 36km/h depending on the road surface and terrain, so for once I was doing a decent pace and would be able to carry it back round with me. Usually I hit 40+km/h one direction and 25km/h in the other, it’s HORRIBLE. But today was not one of those days, I carried my loop on as usual and was flying towards Worle, like I said earlier, a road I usually use as part of my ride is closed so to stop myself from going through loads of traffic lights to get back on my usual route I just decided to carry on the way I was going, because they converge eventually.

All the way down that road it was fine, I was on a belter of a run, 34km/h most of the way, just flying along, as I came to the S bend onto my usual road, the rain was coming down kinda hard, not sheets, but hard, so hard in fact that a few minutes earlier I had considered going home instead of carrying on, then I reminded myself of Rule 47, and carried on. Big mistake.

Approach the corner at normal speed, 33km/h, cut it slightly, as usual, because it’s 9:30pm and there’s nothing around, think “if I’m not careful I’m gonna come off soon”, feel rear wheel go, have a split second where you think you’ve saved it, hit the deck.

That was the series of events. As I slid towards the curb on my hip all I could think was “for fucks sake”. I thought my shorts might have been really badly torn, but they only had a few little holes in, I hoped my bike had managed to survive without any damage. I knew my elbow was hurt but I was ignoring it. As I tried to unclip my left foot a guy going the other direction in a car asked if I was okay, I told him I was fine, picked up my bottle which had come out and went to get back on the bike to ride home.

Nope! Rear mech in the spokes… fuck, £190 down the shitter. Closer inspection, just the hanger, phew. A quick phone call home and someone was on the way to come and get me. I waited a few minutes before my mum turned up in my car, I’d already taken the wheels off and knew I had tarpaulin in my car so just threw it over the back seats and put the bike in.

After getting home and bathing I threw some clothes on to go down to the garage to check out just how bad the bike was. Bent hanger, scraped rear mech, scraped right shifter, slight tear in the saddle, torn bar tape. I’m very much a material person, it’s a horrible trait to have, but I love stuff. It’s so frustrating having what was once a beautiful pristine bike, that is now scratched, but at the same time it all still works, and in a few years I probably wont even own any of that stuff any more, or it’ll be on my winter bike, or something, no big deal.

So until my wounds heal up I’m going to be off the bike, I could ride, but every evening since has been shitty weather so it’s best to stay off, just in case. They’re both healing up nicely and I’m sure it won’t be long before I’m back on the bike. Well I have to get on the bike on Saturday, I’ve got a bike fit at bike-science in Bristol, which I’m really looking forward to, but I don’t consider time off the bike to be a bad thing, it’s frustrating of course, and if I was training for something I’d be very annoyed, but I only ride for fun, so it’s no big deal. The only thing I have to make sure I’m in shape for is the Portugal trip, but with some new kit and a few more longer rides under my belt I’m sure I’ll get on just fine.

A week away

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:26:18 +0100

The weather. It can be a wonderful thing at times, as I look out of the train window I see fields on either side covered in a layer of mist, this train journey is absolutely wonderful at times like this, going past gorgeous scenery, houses dotted around here and there with horses coming into view every few minutes. But at the other end of the scale, it can be so disgusting at times, it makes you not want to leave the house. Last week was one of those weeks.

Monday was the only sunny evening last week. I had ridden Saturday and not Sunday, but planned to go out Monday, however I received my new flatland BMX so decided to go and ride that for an hour instead, which was a lot of fun! But then when it came to riding Tuesday evening, the rain had other ideas. On Wednesday, the same thing happened, Thursday was probably worst of all, I was in the garage fitting some new bits to my BMX and when I came to leave the rain was so heavy I couldn’t even get up to the house, a few minutes later it passed, but those three days of horrific weather stopped me from riding every single night. I then decided to take the weekend off and start again today, so I’m looking forward to that, but I always worry that taking a break is going to make me lose any riding i’ve done in the last 8 months and I’ll become a frail shell of a cyclist. Of course that’s not going to be the case, but it is a worry that I’ll lose significant fitness. I’m sure I’ll lose a bit, but not loads.

So today is going to be my first road ride in 9 days… holy shit when I put it like that it’s kinda depressing! I’ve not been completely off a bike, I’ve ridden my flatland BMX 5 times for about 45-60 minutes each time, but that’s a completely different workout to road riding. But I’m going to plan a ride today to do this evening, I may just do my regular loop to see how I’m feeling then do the Canada Combe ride later in the week, or I could do the Bleadon loop this evening if I’m felling okay. None of this means anything to anyone reading this of course, I guess I’m just thinking out loud.

I’ve got a 50 mile ride planned for Sunday, the Great Weston Ride, it goes from Bristol to Weston taking in some nice scenery and hills. I’m looking forward to doing it even though no one I know will be riding it. I’m just gonna get into a group that is pushing the kinda pace I want to be riding at and just sit back and relax. Unless of course no one wants to go at a pace I’m comfortable at, in which case I’ll just go at my pace all the way round and hope for the best.

I am one stop from Bath so I’m gonna end this here, I hope you’ve all had great weekends filled with awesome weather and cycling, and not rideless weekends like me, Peace.

Finding my place

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 11:23:28 +0100

I have finally found a group I am comfortable going out with. I have only been out with them twice so far but it is always so much fun, the routes are enjoyable, there’s a nice mix of hills and flat stuff, and for some reason I’m already considered one of the strong riders and have mixed into a group which has riders of a similar ability. Most of them are stronger than me, but I can get them every now and then, throw in an attack when they don’t expect it, which always seems to go down well…

There are certain times when I am reassured by my riding, mainly during climbs. I don’t like going hard on climbs I don’t know, purely because I don’t want to blow up half way up then have the pack come past me as I struggle up the rest of it. On Saturday we were doing a route which everyone else was familiar with, so they all knew the terrain. I was cruising along around the middle of the pack on my own when one of the guys I’ve become friends with comes past me just as we were approaching a nasty climb. I didn’t jump (I usually do) but just carried on up, we went round a right hander about 2/3rds of the way up and there were people zig zagging to get to the top, I just stayed stood up, chilled and rode over the crest. I think Nick had relaxed by that point (he later told me he had intentionally gone slightly harder than usual on the climb) because I overtook him and he jumped onto my wheel, I wasn’t having any of that so I dropped a gear, then shifted up onto the big ring, and just rode away from him, chasing down the few guys which had already been up it, and catching them just before we all stopped for a junction and to let the older guys catch back up again. It’s always nice being reassured that although I consider myself to be small and not a particularly great rider, I can still drop the older, more experienced guys at times.

It’s mainly Nick and his friend Ivan that do the attacking, they ride together a lot and from what I’ve been told, often play cat and mouse with each other, it’s quite nice latching onto their little sprints, the first one always comes just before we get to the first water/pee stop, it’s a little set of toilets in a village called Wrington, and the group always end up getting there following the same route, because it’s a nice, safe, easy ride out which helps warm up the legs. I remember them attacking on there the first time I went out with them, but I had completely forgotten about it this time round. We were stopped in a lay by waiting for the rest of the group to come through this set of traffic lights, then as they all came round we set off. I was sat on Nick when all of a sudden Ivan comes round my right, attacking. Nick straight away jumps, and I do too, so all of a sudden there are three of us, pushing 40km/h+ and speeding up. As always I just sat on one of their wheels and got a free ride the whole way into Wrington, although at one point we got to a little rise and Nick started to falter and Ivan attacked again, so straight away I jumped on him, followed him up this rise into the village, round a couple of fast corners, and along to the toilets, it was so fun. Nick came in a few seconds later and admitted he wasn’t able to stay with us, although I’m pretty sure he was sandbagging.

Reading it back that whole paragraph sounds like I’m bragging about how strong I am, which isn’t the case at all, it’s only three weeks ago I was being told that the “strong guys” always go hard down there, and then on the next ride out I’m one of those strong guys… it’s insane. I know there is plenty more that I can do to improve my riding and am by no means at 100% of my strength yet, so I really can’t wait for that moment to come, when it’s me that starts dropping people, instead of the other way round.

The rest of the ride was pretty normal, the pace fluctuated depending who was on the front, and we stopped for food at 46k. Something I was trying out was carrying four bidons with me, which I found really worked. Everyone was surprised, asking why I had 4 with me, but it was somewhere around 20¬∫¬†C for most of the ride and like I experienced on the Somerset 100, if I don’t stay well fed and watered then I just fall apart. The Somerset 100 was a big of an exception as we were doing 34km/h for the first 95k, but still, I found I had to watch how much I was drinking because I only had two bottles with me, if I had had 4 I would have been a lot more comfortable. It is something that really worries me, the lack of fluid that people take on, most of the guys only had one bidon, which is going to be either 500 or 750ml. When we stopped for lunch most of them just topped up their half empty single botle, and carried on riding. It makes me wonder how much better they’d ride (and feel) if they were staying adequately hydrated. My saddle mounted setup cost me ¬£30 all together, for the bracket, cages and the bidons themselves, it’s so convenient and such a simple setup I am kicking myself slightly for not buying it before, it’s definitely going to become a permanent addition to my bike.

We had a nice bit of of higher pace riding just before we got back into Weston, I was sat on the front wheel which was going a bit slow for my liking, but knew that sooner or later someone would come past and take it up a notch, which they did after a few minutes, from then on the pace was significantly higher, and with about 300 metres to the junction Ivan came flying past which I knew was going to happen as I had seen him on my wheel, so I jumped but couldn’t catch him, still ended up coming in second though.

There was one more sprint which I didn’t pay any attention to so ended up coming round last, but then on the final tiny rise of the day I attacked and dropped everyone. It’s a fun little rise, it’s not a hill per se as it’s really small, but it still requires you to go up a gear to keep your legs spinning over nicely, I got told afterwards that it was a “devastating sprint” which filled me with hope for my riding.

This post has gone all over the place as usual so I’m going to call it a day, sorry that the posting hasn’t been too frequent, I haven’t done any events recently and don’t think you’ll be interested in hearing about my 25k evening rides! I hope you enjoyed reading this, peace.

Somerset 100

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 18:47:00 +0100

My day started out like most other cyclists, up at 6:30am to get some breakfast down my neck. I had put my bike in my car the night before so all that was left to do was fill up my bottles which I had prepped, assess the weather and dress accordingly, and leave.

As always I chose arm warmers and vest base as opposed to long sleeve base, I’ve already worked out that 90% of the time it’s the best way to go, being able to take the arm warmers off as the day goes on is much more convenient than having to stop and strip half naked to lose a base, plus if it gets cold and you wanna put it back on… You get the idea

The ride started off at sweets, which is somewhat of a local cycling mecca. I’ve been there before while out riding but never started a ride there, googlemaps told me 45 minutes so at 7:15 I jumped in the car and hit the road. The only thing that was worrying me slightly was my sore neck, I went out on Friday night and must have slept funny because all day Saturday it had been aching, despite ample use of deep heat and a nice hot bath. I had dropped 2 Ibuprofen before I left and that seemed to be helping it.

Thanks to the time of day and my slightly illegal driving I arrived at about 7:45 and was greeted by a couple of familiar faces, Karl, the guy who’s organising the Portugal trip in November, and Mark, the organiser. The car park soon started to fill up with plenty of people I had no idea of and a few I did (Brett and Sarah) and at after signing on we all got on our bikes and headed off just before 9am.

The plan was to keep the entire “peloton” together so to speak, but after a few minutes a lead group of about 4 or 5 had gone off ahead from the rest of us, we let them do their own thing and carried on at a comfortable 27~km/h. Despite the headwind keeping the pace was nice and easy due to the amount of risers, and we managed to stick together until the road started to rise about 8k in, it seemed to undulate for another 8k or so before we had about 3k of flat and another rise, once we dropped down the other side of that which was after about 40 minutes the pack had split pretty dramatically.

Efforts were made through the undulations to try and keep everyone together but knowing there was another 130km left meant people weren’t too keen on hanging around and wanted to keep on trucking. Some how I had managed to get to the head of the group, I was chatting to Karl at the time, and I found the pace started to rise, apparently people weren’t happy “only” pushing 27k and wanted to take it up a notch, into the 30’s. I can’t put my finger on when it happened because I was spending as little time looking behind me as possible due to suffering with a very sore neck, but after the road flattened up our group had diminished to about 10 riders, all of which looked to be quite strong, I knew I was going to be out of my depth but I figured I’d hold on as long as I could (which turned out to be quite a while in fairness) and just try and wheel suck as much as I could.

I don’t really remember details as to when things sped up, (looking on my ride report it was about 20k in) but I do remember getting to a junction, Sarah crossed first, then me, and for some reason I decided it would be fun to chase back to her without the pack, so I put in a bit of a surge, chilled with her, then the pack caught up and we started to go at a pretty decent pace, the wind must have been to our side at this point because undoubtedly we were going 35+ k (I had my garmin on map for the whole time so have no idea of distance/time/speed)

The majority of the ride was pretty standard, you could tell it wasn’t much of a social ride because most of the time we were single file, sitting on wheels and hiding from the annoying wind which seemed to be coming from all angles pushing around 30-35k. When a climb came up the pack order would go all over the place and depending on legs and strength we’d end up all jumbled up. What was frustrating for me was being an okay-ish climber and still having legs that felt okay I’d find myself moving up through the pack when I had been quite happy sitting at the back, meaning I was closer to getting on the front and having to do a pull, not fun when I was feeling shitty (despite constant topping up on Ibuprofen)!

At the top of the climbs the pace would slow up a little bit while everyone caught up, we’d have a quick chat and then within a few minutes we’d be back in formation. Some excitement came around when the route diverted from roads and took on some cycle paths, one of which went through some woodland which was a bit of a welcome change, then we got onto the river path which was smoothish gravel. Although we werent going that fast and it wasn’t very bumpy is did remind me of the smoother sections in the Paris Roubaix, or the Strada Biancha in italy. What was slightly annoying was having to dodge the oncoming cyclists from a charity ride going the other way, and all the fishermen. Still a few minutes later we were back on the road and going at a nice pace again.

I can’t remember wether it was before or during the rain, I think it was before, but at around 60k we came across a bit of a sloggy climb which split the group until we all got together at the junction at the bottom of the descent at the other side. It was around then that I checked my Garmin and saw that we’d been riding 2h10m and covered 68k, so my assumptions about the pace we correct, we had been going pretty well.

Coming over the other side of that climb we had started to enter the start of the climbing, the pace dropped from a steady 33 down to about 27, the climbs werent steep but they were kinda long, 4-5km of just constant gradient isn’t the most fun, but still, speeds were kept pretty reasonable, dropped to about 25k at one point, but they were sticking around 32.

The issue for me was my legs. I knew they were going to give up sooner or later, and due to my lack of body fat I had been taking on as much liquid and jelly as possible. Must have been around 50k that they started to hurt, and 80k that they really started to go, I just had constant pain in my quads, but knew that the food stop was coming up soonish (60 miles according to the printed map) but the fact I wasn’t looking at my Garmin meant I had no idea how far that was, the rain also meant I had stopped taking on fluids because I was just trying to battle through it, and so my legs were just getting worse.

The climb to the food stop started at about 90k, but because it wasn’t too steep at first, we were all able to hold a decent pace, still around 32. Then the legs really went, the pack split, and I found myself crawling at the back, in the lowest gear, 96k in my speed had dropped to about 26, by 98k, it was down to 19, at 100k we reached the food stop.

I took a pee and tried to take on some food. My body pretty much rejected any solids, and I was hoping we’d be able to hang around for a bit for some more riders to arrive. Unfortunately due to the rain that had stopped a few minutes prior, we were all pretty wet, warm due to the climb, but we all knew that if we stuck around, the chills would come soon.

2 of the guys we had been riding with had carried on to find a cafe, and after a few minutes we got back on the bikes to start the few km of descending. The few minutes off the bike had done me good, my legs hard started to pick up, but I forgot to grab any drink at the food stop, and so I was down to about 2/3rds of a bottle. We had stuck together through the descents, all 5 of us, but when the road started to go up again, Karl and the two guys he was with carried on going a decent pace, and my legs stopped working. Sarah was still in my sites up until about 106k, where she got to the top of the climb, onto the main road, and dropped the hammer. I had only been about 250m behind her but when I got to the top she was nowhere to be seen, I settled down, started giving it all that I could, and hoped that there would be a cafe in the next village.

There wasn’t, in fact it can barely be described as a village, it was a garage, a little general store, and that was about it, it was mostly descents, but any time the road started to go up, my legs just went, I remembered looking down at my garmin, and seeing Lap 22 pop up on screen, 110km. As that came up I looked up and saw what I thought was a junction, turned out it was a layby, which was even nicer. I came to a stop, got my phone out my pocket, and rang Mark to come pick me up.

25 minutes later he arrived, as did Brett, and after chatting to him for a few minutes I jumped in the back of the van, and spent the next 2 hours being driven all over the last 40km of the course. Turns out I had done most of the hard stuff, but I know the little climbs I did come across would have completely wiped me out, especially with nothing to drink, no real will to eat, and no money.

I got back to HQ at about 3, and was greeted by a couple of friendly faces. I hung around and chatted for about an hour and a half, had a nice pork roll, and when everyone had got back, decided to get in the car and come home.

I was happy with the ride, I still managed to average 29.5k despite my last three splits all being in the 23’s, without those I would have done 95k at an average of 30.6km/h, which for someone who only usually averages 32k for 25k, isn’t too bad. I am going to start going out more regularly with this Saturday group I met up with last weekend, so hopefully that’ll condition me for some longer rides. In the mean time I’ll stick to doing the short high speed stuff, and hope that increased strength and fitness comes with those.

All in all it was a good day despite the rain, and I look forward to the next one in a years time!

http://app.strava.com/rides/766702

The art of leg shaving

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 15:34:00 +0100

I got asked a question on my personal blog yesterday about leg shaving,

“I just wondered how long you’d been riding before you started shaving your legs, how much of a difference it actually makes, and what you think about it.”

I answered it on my blog and got quite a bit of feedback about it, in reality it boils down to three, maybe four things, I’ll write them in order of importance, to me.

Vanity. Shaving makes your legs look better, the muscles look more defined, they feel nicer when you’re rubbing them down, and it just makes me feel good having them shaved.
Imitation. The PRO’s shave their legs, the reasons for that are going to be in point 3 and 4 but I find if you want to be taken seriously as a cyclist, you either have to be able to prove your ability by riding hard, or you have to have to shave your legs. Doesn’t matter how weak a rider you are, there are plenty of excuses for poor performance, if you shave your legs you’re entitled to use any of them whenever your riding is criticised, and people will let it slide
Crashing. When cyclists crash, it’s inevitable their legs are going to get grazed, if you’ve ever tried cleaning a wound which has hair congealed into the blood then you’ll know it’s not a pleasant experience, when you shave, you don’t get that. I had a coming together with a car a few months ago and when I got home I noticed my knee was grazed. I got in the bath, got a flannel and wiped it down, it took a few minutes and was a much less painful experience than it would have been had I not been a leg shaver, where I would have had to soak it until it softened up, try and get the hair out of the way while I picked the gravel and crap out of it, not fun.
Massages. Not something I experience ever, but for a PRO, they’re getting them on a daily basis. I’m sure soigneurs would much rather massage a nice shaved leg than one covered in thick hair. Shaved legs undoubtedly make for a more pleasurable experience for both the rider and the soigneur.

So those are the main four reasons. You may notice I missed one out which non cyclists often seem to mention; Aerodynamics. Yep that’s right, shaving your legs DOESN’T make you faster, it definitely makes you feel more PRO which in turn makes you feel faster, but the wattage savings from leg shaving are completely negligible. If anyone ever claims that it makes them a faster rider, then call them out on it.

As I mentioned in my answer on my personal blog, for me leg shaving definitely shows the difference between a serious amateur, and a regular cyclist. I know some guys who could out sprint, out climb and out ride me in all areas, but they don’t shave their legs, so for me they’re one step away from being what I’d consider a serious amateur (aka a wannabe pro).

For the first time shaver, I have a few handy tips that may help you in your endeavour to become a wannabe pro like me.

Clip your legs first, by that I mean go stand outside with an extension lead to your hair clippers, and buzz them with a #2 or something. If you try and do it without clipping first, you’ll blunt a shit load of razors. If you don’t have clippers, scissors will suffice.
Soak. Go run a bath; a really hot one, get in, do your usual routine, wash, hair, etc. Then sit there for another 5-10 minutes, then start shaving (with a fresh razor, and shaving cream). The heat allows your pores to open up so you’ll get a cleaner shave. If it’s your first time doing it you’ll find all the shitty areas no one ever warns you about; knees are horrible, both the front and back! Then you wonder how far to go up (the answer is all the way to your hips basically), and you’ll probably be wondering how the fuck do women do this on a regular basis. It gets easier, I promise, but for now, slow and steady wins the race, split it into sections, knees, thighs, shins, calves, back of knees, back of thighs… You’ll have to move around a lot, probably stand up for bits too, and it’ll take you about an hour, but it does get easier. It used to take me about 45 minutes every week, now I can do it in 10-15 and don’t even need to use shaving cream, or stand up. If you’re anything like me then skin will probably be pretty soft and sensitive and you’ll cut yourself a few times, now I don’t really have to worry about that, probably took about 6-9 months for my skin to admit defeat and allow me to shave it without any cream what so ever, but that moment does come eventually.
How to tell people. If you’re in a relationship, it’s no big deal, you should be comfortable enough with each other to drop it into conversation easily. If you’re single, like me, then it’s slightly awkward when you find yourself getting close to a girl and you have to tell them you shave your legs, chances are they’ll relate it to the cycling (you HAVE told her you cycle, right?!) and be fine with it. If they ask why, use my handy 4 point guide up top. If they find it creepy and weird and act differently towards you, show them the door, you don’t wanna be with someone who can’t appreciate the way of life of a dedicated cyclist :P
How often to do it. I do mine weekly, Friday night usually, ready for my weekend rides with my lovely smooth legs. Never do them on the morning of a race, that’s bad luck!

So… hopefully this will answer any questions you have about leg shaving. It’s quite an amusing subject to write about, and I’d imagine if people knew what I was writing about when they saw me tap tap tapping away on my iPhone they’d all point and laugh at me and call me a sissy. Then i’d get my legs out, tense my calves and they’d all shut the fuck up.

All that’s left for you to do now is go run a bath, grab a fresh razor, and get those legs super smooth like a PRO. You DO wan’t to look PRO, don’t you?!

Please note lots of this was written with my tongue pushed firmly into my cheek, and also should be taken with a spoonful of salt, rather than just a pinch.

My facebook

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 23:33:37 +0100

My facebook:

I’d quite like to have some people on my facebook who I can talk to about cycling, if you want to add me feel free, we can talk about training, our favourite riders, all sorts of shit. And then if you want to talk about something other than cycling, we can do that too.

l'écoulement

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 23:06:54 +0100

I wanted to rename my blog to something more cycling related. I wanted it to capture the essence of cycling, and still be a nice sounding word. Blogs like Ecyclista, Velominati, le grimpeur, etc. all have wonderful names, cycling related names. There’s Cadence, the store/clothing company, morvélo, the clothing company, and they are all cool, catchy, nice names. Then you have the cycling brands, Cinelli, Cervélo, Bianchi, Colnago, all beautiful names, I wanted something like that. I know I’m no one compared to those guys, just one guy who rides a handful of k’s every week and loves every single moment of it, even those horrible moments where I look down at my Garmin and see myself pushing 26km/h on the flat into a shitty headwind. But either way, I wanted a nice name for my blog, so here it is.

There were a number of words I considered, I was pumping them all into google translate trying to find something nice, stuff like simplicity, smooth, quiet, tranquil, rhythmic, then I busted out the thesaurus and combined some words, simple cycling, smooth cycling, rhythmic cycling, then i moved onto cycling flow, and eventually found myself at “the flow of cycling” or “l’écoulement de vélo”. Perfect, just what I was looking for, very french sounding, very delicate, somewhat beautiful, and exactly what I had in mind. l’écoulement de vélo is a little long though…

l’écoulement - roughly translates to “the flow”. For me, it describes cycling perfectly, I wanted something that starts to describe that “zone” you get into, the reason which is given to me whenever I ask someone why they cycle is always the same; “when I go out on my bike it’s just me, the bike, and the road, nothing else, I lose all my thoughts and I just concentrate on my riding”. It’s therapeutic, an absolutely amazing feeling, the feeling which i’ll now be describing as l’écoulement.

Okay so it’s not quite “the zone” or “the groove” or anything else, but it’s still a huge part of cycling. Wether it’s getting into your rhythm on a climb, pushing those light gears hard into a headwind, taking those roundabouts as if you’re in an ITT in the Tour de France, or getting into the drops, flattening yourself into the downtube, and hitting 70km/h on a descent, that rhythm, the flow, l’écoulement, is always there.

l'écoulement

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 11:29:52 +0100

I’ve changed the name of the blog.

It will all make sense eventually.