Upping the Average

It was 20:24 when I set off this evening, the bad weather had all but gone leaving a few bewildered looking dark clouds scattered about the setting sun. Lights on from the start and Hi-Viz jacket, a race against the failing light. From the outset I put some effort in, leaving the village at 24mph and joining the main road 5mph faster than I normally do. Turning off towards Dilton Marsh I was averaging 17.3mph already, not bad, I normally only start reaching that when I go through Westbury at 21mph. Even so I guessed that the short but sharp hill into Dilton Marsh would disabuse me of the fanciful notion that I might be able to up my average speed for this fourteen mile ride. However, even though I climbed at a rubbish 9.7 mph, the average was still sitting on 17.2.

Right, I thought, I’m going to see if I can manage to reach 17.8 as an average for this ride. Powering (for me anyway) out of Dilton and into the back end of Westbury I saw a fantastic sight. There are a couple of huge evergreen trees in the middle of a field of long grass and tonight the low branches were supporting around twenty or so children playing noisily. Against the background of the sunset it would have been a great photo, but it’ll have to stay a little magical memory as I wouldn’t let myself stop to take it.

Through Westbury at 24mph, some cheeky kids shouted gleefully that I was going the wrong way as I hit the A350. There’s a whole section of that road, from the turning to the cement works to half a mile along, where the surface is incredibly bad. It’s like a micro Enfer du Nord and it’s not much fun on an aluminium frame, there’s no flex to absorb the vibration. Past the weird roundabout at Yarnbrook, site of a recent fatal accident and still festooned with flowers, into North Bradley. By now my legs were aching and I had hit 18.6 mph as an average. It’s a bit of a slow drag into the village and I was trying to gee myself up to keep above 18mph. By the time I turned onto the A361 the gradient was beating me and breathing was hard, I had a double stitch, but my legs still felt strong. The hardest thing was trying not to think too much about Rode Hill, I knew that quarter of a mile rise would strip the mph off my average and I was dreading watching the digits fall on the computer. With that in mind I tackled the straight at 25mph.

As soon as I started Rode Hill I knew I was reaching the limit of my endurance and was in danger of hitting ‘the bonk’. Only the thought of the ignobility of trickling up the hill in the Granny Ring or, God forbid, walking the bike up, had me out of the saddle grinding up. Sure enough the readout was falling, I hit the base of the hill at 18.5mph and crested at 18.3. I kept the average up to 18.3 all the way home. There was still plenty of light around as I put the bike to sleep in the workshop. Recovery time was good, I was showered and sat down within ten minutes of arrival at the house. I’m really pleased that I managed to get my average up for that ride (14.3 miles) by a whole mph. I’m a long way off Time Trial standard, but I feeel it’s a step, or pedal stroke, in the right direction.

Evening Milk Run

Well the wind dropped down to nothing, the rain stopped and we were out of milk. Having just come off from a skype call with my colleague and chum Jez, author of the blog Novemberfive, I siezed the moment and decided to take the Brompton out into the fading light to the garage. The Moon had just eased into the sky and was just hovering above the horizon, full, fat, a hint of red on its plump circle. The main road was deserted save a slumbering refrigerated lorry in the layby that joins the A36 to the hidden, near forgotten old Beckington Road, with its overgrown milestone and crumbling, dead elms. Apart from the light, it felt more like eleven p.m. than half past eight. The Brompton handled the hill easily. On the flat, you could pedal in a Brompton’s lowest gear furiously and the bike would probably just fall over, on a hill it glides up effortlessly; slowly, but effortlessly nonetheless. It wasn’t long before I had loaded up the stuffbag with goodies from the garage and was my way back. Dusk came down incredibly quickly, In the few minutes I was in the garage the moon had slimmed down and climbed high up, the cars all had their headlights and.. gulp! I had no lights. Luckily I had my Respro Super Hi-Viz vest. The greatest thing that I have discovered about the vest is that will easily carry a full portion of saveloy and chips in one pocket (see image for example).

It also lights up like a Christmas tree if even the teeniest beam of light hits it.

Over the roundabout, first left and back into the village, bringing the milk back just in time for a cup of tea. Lovely.

Sigh!

Looks like I’ll be riding the next two or three rides in the rain. Shame, my shoes haven’t dried out since the last rainride.

Poster

I’ve made a poster image in a retro style. Click on the image below to see the full-sized picture.

Horribly rainy today it seems unlikely that I will get on the bike. Unless… I go in the next five minutes…

Nope!

Too windy!

Landis, LeMond, Cooke

I have tried to steer clear of any detailed news about the Floyd Landis doping case, I find it so depressing that the sport has reached this low a level. A recent article in the American magazine Bicycling to which I subscribe, gave readers the option to make a judgement based on the key evidence submitted by both sides of the story. I have to say that I came out against Landis, a lot of his defence is irrelevant to whether or not he actually took an illegal substance during the Tour, and from what I can see, it looks like he did. However my wife bought this week’s Cycling Weekly and there was a story of how Landis’ camp tried to blackmail Greg LeMond (the first American to win the Tour) into not testifying against Landis. It has completely shocked me and ruined what remained of Landis’ tattered reputation, in my eyes anyway:

See this link to Cycling News for the full appalling story.

We desperately need a clean Tour de France this year. Thank goodness for Nicole Cooke. As men’s cycling slowly implodes into doping, corruption, blackmail and scandal upon scandal, women’s cycling is stronger than ever, with a British champion at the helm. What a pity that this fantastic athlete receives scant coverage outside of the cycling press.

Folkin’ Hills

The weather started off in an appalling fashion this morning, a quick look at the rain gauge showed nearly quarter an inch of rain fell last night and it was still spitting, it looked like there was going to be nothing bikey going on today. Every year on the bank holiday weekend at the end of May, a Folk Festival takes over the centre of Chippenham, so the whole family went to have a look. I dressed in my moleskin trousers, braces and thick white cotton shirt so I would blend in with the crowds of Morrismen and folkies, I drew the line at clogs, though I do own a pair. By the food tent, someone had chained up an old Peugeot racer, seriously used. It still had suicide levers and some pretty tatty bartape.

Not long after the children had gone to bed, the sun came out, so while my wife read her new Jodi Picoult, I sprinted off for a spot of hill climbing. By The Mill there’s a turn which takes me up an easy hill to Telisford, thereafter the hills get a little more interesting, a combination of short and steep and… long and err steep. Not long by mountain standards, but long enough and steep enough to steal the oxygen from my lungs, though anyone who races even a little would probably find them easy going. The last one up to the sign for Farleigh Hungerford is a struggle, though I’ve doing it for a few months now and it’s certainly easier than the first time I attempted it. I hadn’t ridden the road for two weeks so I was surprised to see a missing hedge and a new semi-surfaced road that goes I know not where. At the moment I have a sneaking suspicion it’s a new drive for Farleigh House so I’m not going to go racing down it until I have some idea where it goes.

I hadn’t changed into my cycling gear so I was pedalling in my trousers and shirt, complete with braces, my shoes didn’t fit into the clips too easily either.

It was a lovely evening, not quite lighting up time, the corn on either side of the road glowed a rich golden colour as the low sunlight raked across the fields. The hedges were alive with blackbirds, sparrows, pipits and thrushes darting about, and a magnificent cock-pheasant seemed to be in no particular hurry to get across the road in front of me.

There is a point on a cycle ride where you think to yourself “if I go down this hill, then I have to come back up it on the way home”. If you have never travelled that route before, your enjoyment of a particularly fast downhill may suddenly be marred halfway through as the thought of struggling upwards in the opposite direction enters your mind. But once you are committed to a downhill, that’s it, you have to go. As soon as you’ve passed 25mph, you’re beyond the point of no return and you’d better hope you’ve got the legs, and the lungs to get back up again without walking. This little route has two hills like that; fun down, pain up. To make matters worse, the cable of the front mech on the LeMond has stretched slightly so downshifting was tricky. The granny ring was not an option, not because of some macho attempt to storm the hills, but because I couldn’t get onto the bloody thing, and not for the want of trying. Weaving all over the road, out of the saddle, gasping for breath, it’s a good thing I rarely see anyone on that road. Hurtling down the final hill to The Mill, I realised with sudden horror that my camera had come out of my pocket at some point. With the light fading I turned back to look for it. Of course it was right at the end of the final hill in Farleigh Hungerford, so I did the whole ride twice! I was in such a hurry to find the camera which I correctly imagined would be in the middle of the road, that I didn’t realise I had taken the first three hills in the big ring without finding it hard. That felt pretty good, it was almost worth the panic of losing the camera just to achieve that.

Rider in the Storm

True to my word, I went for a ride on the LeMond today, though it was raining heavily. Actually, I don’t mind cycling in the rain, but I hate cycling when it’s windy. One look at our homemade windsock (the Windfish) lying perpendicular, told me that although it was pouring, there was thankfully no wind. Saddling up at 0915 I headed out to the A36 wearing my ancient waterproof coat (which as it turns out, is no longer waterproof) and my hiking boots (normally I wear IPath Bigfoots for cycling, but I didn’t want them to get wet). Immediately, I was soaked and the main reason was my lack of mudguards so I pulled down the waterproof over the saddle as best I could and dug in to the ride. To begin with it was freezing, numb fingers and saturated leggings had me feeling pretty miserable, but before I’d made it to the main road, the effort of cycling had warmed me up. It’s often the way when I start in bad weather, the first five minutes are spent thinking “What the hell am I doing?”, then on the sixth minute the sheer joy of being on a bike kicks in.

There was a fair amount of traffic on the road, still it was easy going right up to the base of Black Dog Hill. No heroics there, I slipped into the middle ring and just took it in a sensible gear. The Black Dog is not massively steep, but it does go on a bit, here and there on the steep banks are the remains of plastic wrappers from bouquets of flowers, reminders that Black Dog is an accident blackspot. The combination of a seemingly straight road and an extra lane that both directions of traffic can use occasionaly tempts a driver to try something stupid in traffic already going over 60mph. There’s a hidden dip before Dead Maid’s Junction, visibilty from the top and bottom is not as good as it appears and the gap between oncoming traffic in both directions closes at over 120mph. Add in an impatient driver and you have the recipe for one of the Wiltshire Times’ regular ‘Horror Smash’ headlines.

Anyway, cresting Black Dog and flying past Dead Maid’s I thought I saw a flash or two of lightning, but I could well have been hallucinating as by that time cats, dogs and pitchforks were coming out of the sky and my cycling goggles had filled with water. So straight on into Warminster. I’d never cycled into the town before and it’s funny, but you just don’t notice gradients until you actually cycle a road, rather than driving. The gradient up from the Little Chef roundabout had never registered with me before, I remembered it as all downhill into town, but that came a quarter mile uphill later.

Out the other side of town, some wag had spraypainted the road…

I was just about managing 20mph at this point, my average for the ride was sitting on 17.3mph, which is what I normally average on a ten mile ride (pretty rubbish I know). Onto the roundabout, strangely devoid of traffic and into Heytesbury. Having cycled to the end of the village, I dismounted and as it had finally stopped raining, tried to take a picture using the self-timer that didn’t make me look stupid. This appeared to be impossible and the one below was sadly the best of the bunch.

Supping water and having a leg stretch felt pretty good, but I rapidly started to get cold so it was time to set off back again. On my way out of the village I passed an all-woman cycle group heading in. I’m one of those cyclists who always acknowledges a fellow rider, (usually it’s only serious-looking blokes on roadbikes who fail to reciprocate) and the female peloton waved back, some even adding a breezy “hello there!” or “alright?” as they shot past. Unfortunately the wind was starting to get up and pretty soon I was putting a lot of effort into keeping the average speed above 15mph. Luckily going down Black Dog as fast as I dared at 34.6mph got me up to 16.8mph in time for my least favourite part of the ride; the long grind from the Dilton Marsh turn-off to the Beckington roundabout. Picking through the miserable looking traffic queuing to get into a washed out car boot sale, I struggled to keep above 13mph. However, pulling my sodden bum off the saddle I put in a herculean effort (well herculean by my unfit standards) to sprint down the dual carriageway.

Back home I checked the computer and tallied up the ride, 26 miles, max speed 34.6mph, average speed 16.3mph. Reasonable, and a lot of fun despite the rain. Time for a hot shower.

New/Old Crankset

The postman brought me a package of sheer joy today. A few days ago I ‘won’ a crankset on ebay (it was easy, I was the only bidder). I’m going to use it on my rebuilt Alpine 10 (see the Bicycles of the Highway Cycling Group page for details of this bike). Although it’s new to me, it’s actually a 1949 Raleigh set, and that’s what really excited me, the ’spider’ as it’s now known (the material between the outer cog and the hole for the shaft, nowadays that is ususally made of two separate materials bolted together, the spokes that join the cog to the centre now resemble a spider’s legs, hence the name) is cut from a single piece of material and instead of spokes, it’s cut into the shape of three herons’ heads, the heron being the symbol of Raleigh bikes, as seen on the headbadge of Raleigh bicycles, even today.

As I’m converting the bike to six-speed I figured I needed a slightly smaller drive on the front, this one is about halfway between the two current rings on the Alpine 10, so it will give me a higher cadence in cruising, but will make the lower gears a little easier on the hills. To be honest I anticipate a lot of getting off to push on the big hills, but it is going to be a heavy bike with all the racks and stuff I’ve got planned for it. ‘Grinding the big gear’ to get up to 30mph is out of the question, I have to admit that at its best it only ever hit around 26mph on the flat anyway. I’m a long way off putting the cranks on, but it’s good to get everything ready, and at the princely sum of two of your British Pounds for the crankset, I just couldn’t resist buying now.

Right! No matter what the weather, I’m going for a big ride tomorrow morning.

Bike Messengers Roll to the Stones

I know of the pre-dawn ride from Salisbury to Stonehenge every Midsummer Solstice, and I’ve always managed to miss it due to only having my Brompton available when I was a resident of Sarum. What I had no idea about until now, was the heroic ride by London bicycle Messengers from Hyde Park to the stones in an effort to beat the sunrise. THAT’S what I’m talking about! More details here at the Moving Target Zine. It’s a 90 mile ride in the dark through the year’s shortest night and it must be saluted.

Pasty Run

Hunger struck hard as I was working away in my workshop/studio/shed this morning, the wife and youngest child had gone out to get some shopping, come twelve o’clock I couldn’t wait any longer for food. Powered only by a large mug of Santos and Java extra strong coffee I took off for the local 24hr garage, my vehicle of choice was the Brompton. The carrying cage in combination with the stuff bag means I can carry a surprising amount of quite bulky things (my record is four copies of Nick Mason’s history of Pink Floyd, it’s a VERY big book, handling was affected). Pootling out of the village under very heavy skies, I meant to cross the A36 to get to the old Beckington road, but a lorry was being towed and the resulting tailback made it impossible to cross the two lanes of traffic without being hedgehogged to the tarmac.

With the threat of rain becoming more tangible and the almost immediate onset of boredom, I scooted left and slipped down the inner margin of the road, about 50cm out from the gutter, merrily tinging the built-in bell as I ambled past the slow-moving traffic. A somewhat hairy right turn on the very fast Beckington roundabout saw me onto the garage forecourt to purchase a cheese and onion pasty with some lemonade (in a glass bottle, fancy!).

On the way back I noticed some wild poppies in amongst the edges of a field and stopped to take some pictures, something I never would have spotted from the driver’s seat of a car. There were a lot of other wildflowers too, but poppies are the only ones I recognised. I got back to the house to find that the shopping had only just arrived, therefore it seemed to me quite obvious that if I hadn’t gone on the pasty run I could very well have died of hunger during the wait.