60 is the new 50

I did my first 60 mile ride on Saturday so a new longest distance.  Stacey has not been on the bike for almost a month so he opted to join in part way to reduce the shock of getting back on the saddle but it was really nice to have him along side for 40 miles.  I took a 13 mile route to Stacey’s place via Farnham castle hill / fox hill so was “warmed up” when Stacey joined me.  We then proceeded to do our 40 mile route past Frensham Pond.  Had to stop at Frensham Pond to fix a puncture on Stacey’s bike and was a good chance to see how my little pump performs (it was great).  Leaving Frensham Pond I was very aware that there was two big hills ahead of us so was conserving energy, especially after already scaling the Farnham Castle / fox hill combi.

First climb went well and whilst I got up the (naughty word) hill at Holybourne it still is not something to look forward to.  Big respect to Stacey as he got pretty much to the top of the hill before discovering that his back wheel had twisted in the stays (its an old 90’s bike and you could adjust the position back then) and was rubbing on the frame so hard that it could not be turned by hand!!!.

Whilst riding one section of tree lined road next to Golden Pot we had a bird of pray swoop down from the tree line, along the road and back into the woodland just in front of us.  Was an awesome spectacle to see, wing span was huge.

We took Froyle Lane at a pretty good lick of speed (up to 30 mph), it’s an undulating and twisty section of single track country lane which would be absolutely awesome if you could close it so knew there where no cars coming but with it being public use at the time we may have been a bit cavalier on this occasion.

We had a short break to eat a twix at the 40 mile mark and I left Stacey at his place before heading home to complete the 60.09 miles.

Was a great ride, thanks Stace.

Fathers Day cycle

Been tied up with one thing or another for the last couple of weeks so only just getting round to posting this.  Joy wanted to go see her dad on fathers day 17^th June so with it being a good 40 mile distance I decided to cycle to her parents place and meet her there. 

It was a cracking morning with glorious sunshine and temperature around 15c so I head off on the route I had plotted into the satnav.  This proved interesting for me as I know the roads for the first 8 miles (to Pirbright) but then had a complete unknown for 15 miles followed by sections of area which I vaguely knew so I enjoyed taking the scenery in.

All went well save for one glitch in Knaphill where I had unwittingly plotted going down a private unmade road so had to turn round and take a detour for a couple of miles.

I rode through Great Windsor Park which has to be the highlight of the ride and I think I will ride back there with Joy on a nice sunny day to have a good look around.  Details of the ride are here. 

After lunch with Joy’s parents I did another 16 miles with Joys dad, Brian.  Brian is a member of a cycle group, the Uxbridge Loiterers and does a ride every week with them so he took me out on a nice loop around some of the villages where they live.  Joy and I lived down the hill from her parents for 8 years and I use to find going up the hill to be an absolute killer but the training certainly seems to be working as it was a breeze now.

Didn’t quite do the 60 miles I was hoping to cover in the day but still pleased.

Romero, Romero, wherefore art thou Romero?

My employers have been sponsoring a few select Olympic athletes over the last couple of years on the run up to the London 2012 Olympics and I was amongst a group of employees who had the pleasure of meeting, Olympic champion, Rebecca Romero today at the Wales National Velodrome and to try our hand on the track.

It was an early start this morning as I had been put on the 10:00 slot for the track so setting off in the car at 6:50 I had a hundred and twenty miles to think about how several people (including my boss, who’s son has done plenty of velodrome cycling) had told me I would be slamming onto the wooden surface of the track at some point!  Needless to say that when I got to the track I was a bit nervous, and upon inspecting how steep the 45degree angle the bends at either end are from the top, this did not get any better.  It’s interesting as having skated concrete pools and up to 14feet high vert ramps for many years and ridden half pipes on the BMX as a kid you would be forgiven for thinking I should just brush the irrational fear aside, but it’s the bikes themselves which change this.

The bikes are fixed gear (you have to constantly peddle, no coasting) without brakes (you slow down by the power of your legs) and due to the use of pedals which no one else outside of the velodrome circuit seems to use any more all bar one of us where using the old fashioned, toe clips and straps.

The toe clips proved to be a problem for me from the get go as first of all my foot pulled out of the pedal half way round my first lap (having used SPD’s on all my bikes for the last year I had forgotten how much of an improvement clipped in pedals are compared to using strapped clips) and second I managed to slice my finger on the metal of the strap mechanism when trying to tighten them back up.

I am a right bleeder when I take a scape or cut and blood gushes out of me for ages so I had to stop twice to put fresh plasters on so as not put blood everywhere so with the toe clip issue, thought of slamming and blood pouring out of my finger I found it really difficult to get settled on the bike as we were going round learning how to ride the track as a group.  Add all this to being on the track with 12 or so other riders and being aware of everyone’s potential to slam and cause a pile up was not good for me and I found I couldn’t get the confidence up to achieve the necessary speed to keep the bike up the banking on the bends so I was doing a terrible snake up and down the banking at the back of the group.

They then split us into two groups and had us racing round the track two at a time starting opposite sides of the track and going against the clock.  This consisted of an out lap to build up speed followed by two timed laps and then an in lap to slow down.

Got round to my turn and immediately on the out lap I was a lot more confident as was not having to watch out for running into anyone else and I actually managed to go round the first bend following the desired line (instead of the wibbley wobbly one I had managed so far), second bend the same so I accelerated a bit more and held that speed all the way over the next two laps.  This is the regret of the day for me is as being two thirds into our session I figured we would be going round on timed laps again (expected to be told our times and therefore have a target to beat) so used the timed laps to get use to the feeling of the bike and the track without using my energy up.  We were then instructed to go round the track at a slow pace going up and down through some cones laid out on the track.  Had this been done before the timed session it would have been great as enabled more confidence building on the track but having just done a half-hearted sprint all I wanted to do was have a go at full throttle.  Sadly our time on the track was over as the 11:00 riders where ready to start so I had to settle with a time of 41seconds.  I would never have expected to be one of the fastest as all my training recently has been about slowing down and completing longer distance but with someone managing something like 36 seconds in the later sessions I would certainly have liked to have closed the gap.

After lunch Rebecca gave a really interesting talk on her career as an athlete as well as taking a question and answer session from the group.  Rebecca came across as a genuinely nice person who has stumbled into her career but then dedicated her life to achieving the highest goals possible.  

Today was fantastic, it was a real eye opener for how different track cycling is, I didn’t slam and when Rebecca pulled out her Olympic gold medal after telling us about everything she had put into getting it I felt honoured to have spent the day in her presence.

Thank you Rebecca.

Blow me over

Set out on my own to do a 50 mile ride again this morning.  The wind had died down a lot from yesterday but I soon found out that it was most certainly not gone.  I had intended on taking it easy compared to last week as whilst I was pleased to manage the 17.3mph average over the distance I have to face facts that I need to conserve energy for the longer (80 mile) rides and to be able to get up and do it all again the next day for three days.

This plan was in a way scuppered by the wind as it meant I had to constantly push quite hard just to keep going, but coming across a nice couple of other cyclists at Thursley who were heading in my direction helped as I chatted with the two of them for the eight miles to Puttenham and this helped me settle into a conserving pace.  I did the same 30 mile ride followed by 20 minute tea and twix break followed by 20 mile plan again.  I explored a bit of the area south of Farnham for the second part of the ride and did not intend to do Farnham Castle hill / Fox hill this week but as I was passing the bottom of the hill I told myself I had to do it because I didn’t want to.  Took it pretty easy up these this week and felt pretty good starting Fox hill having accomplished Castle hill firmly seated in the saddle but head on wind soon changed the smile to a frown.  Managed the 50 miles in 3hours 8 minutes with an average of 16.2mph so pretty pleased with the result.

Jubly Jubilee weekend

Considering the amount of rainfall we had over the weekend I managed to get a good amount of time out on the bike over the four days.

All started on Saturday when I managed to persuade Joy (my wife) into using the bikes for a shopping trip to Farnborough.  I say persuade as whilst Joy likes going out on her bike (she use to commute 7 miles each way to Fleet 2 to 3 times a week until her work relocated to Reading last year) she does not like coming out on the bike with me as I am a terrible husband who does not understand the concept of cycling “together” as have a tendency of going at my own pace and leaving her behind and then nagging her for not going fast enough (bad Justyn).  We rode 8 miles “together” and I did a quick 2.5 mile sprint round the block after

 

Sunday was a wash out as it never stopped raining here and whilst I will ride in the rain if I have to I decided to give it a miss as Monday looked promising.

Monday decided to do a 50 miler with a 30 / 20 split.  I set off on a 30 mile route I have done a couple times before and was deliberately not pushing as knew had to pace myself for the distance and also had the pleasure of finding that the council has been using its “just throw loose stones on the road and they will eventually stick” resurfacing technique.  No idea on why they do this as from a car driver perspective it’s terrible for the paintwork and for a cyclist it’s nothing short of lethal.

Rant over (sorry) I was therefore surprised at the 30 mile mark to find I had averaged 17.5mph over the 30 miles so after a 15 minute comfort break, cup of green tea, a flapjack and water bottle refresh I set off to do another 20 miles with the target of keeping the average up.  All was well until I was nearly at the top of the hill at Farnham castle, some twerp honked their horn at me for no reason what so ever and the noise made me jump and so lose my rhythm on the climb.  This combined with the head on wind, exhaustion and mile long fox hill immediately after castle hill had me face a “brick wall” for the first time.  Not pleasant to say the least and had me thinking about how I have a long long way to go before ready for the G2P_ride.  Good news front though is that after every climb there is a descent and despite holding back because of not knowing the road I hit a new personal best for a top speed as reached 44mph (70kmph).

 

Woke up wanting to do a 10 to 20 mile ride on Tuesday just to see if the legs would co-operate.  Somehow managed to talk Joy into joining me for a ten mile ride.  We were at Farnham high street around the ten mile mark and I asked Joy how she was feeling to which she replied “fine”.  Me being a terrible husband translated this to “great” so I proceeded up Farnham castle hill !!!  Joy did a fantastic job and made it to the top of castle hill where I greeted her with a round of applause and a drink of water.  We did 22 miles and save for the castle and fox hill combination we pretty much stayed together for the whole ride, which is nice!

Oops I did it again!

Have just uploaded my cycling data to be reminded that I have a new personal best time for my commute to work having taken the time down to 21:11. 

Pretty stoked at this as had not set off with an intention of attempting a fast time and had just been keeping up a decent pace until I spotted how well I was doing at two thirds distance so gave it welly from that point in.