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Archive for the ‘Rides’ Category

As my days in the UK have come to a close I decided to complete my “TODO” list and finish some tasks

So I took a weekend and did the “tourist” thing, went to Bourogh market, then seen the Tower, I skipped the Bling as the line was more the 2 hour long and I didn’t feel like standing in it.

On my Last work day, I finished early and headed to the train station with my bag and bike to get the train to Fort William. As it is always my luck the day I picked to climb Ben Nevis was the worst day of that week, with cloud cover all over the mountain range. So cold, and wet I started to climb up, it took me 5 hours and it is a 8km each direction.
By the time I reached the summit I was drenched and on the verge of Hyperthermia, also my phone was soaked wet and fingers unresponsive so i could not take any pictures.
As soon as I was done with the photo attempts I did a short calculation and started rushing down the slope in hopes to get to a dry and warm place.

It took me about 2 hours to get back to the base, my racksack was torn and soaked and every bit of clothing wet to the bone, I stepped in to the “Ben Nevis Inn” and asked for the soup and Hot choclate just to get the cold away.

Once I managed to get some heat in me, I climbed on the bicycle, oh yes – I cycled to the base of the climb from the train station – where I left most of my gear in a locker, and went to pick up my stuff.
Thankfully I managed to read the code for my locker from the soaked piece of paper that was my locker reciept and take my things, then I walked to the nearest B&B I found and got a room.

The lady saw me and said without hesitation:”Give me everything,I’ll wash and dry it for you” when she heard I just got off the mountain she had an even bigger sorrowful expression.

A good night sleep and a hot shower did me good.

Next morning, after a good Scotish breakfast I got on the bike and left from Fort Willam on my way south, I cycled through Glencoe intending to reach Edinburgh, but the weather had other plans for me, so I headed to Glasgow in the end.
When I inquired about the price of a hotel room for the night I found out it was cheaper to get the train back to london then stay the night in Glasgow, which is what I did.

So Satuerday morning saw me back in Hemel with sour muscles and a hugh smile of managing the climb I wanted to finish for the last 5.5 years.

Strike 3 things of my TODO list

Many things happened since I last posted here, Not all of them good.

I’ll start with the painful and move to the others.

Today I had my longest trainig ride to-date in this season – 133km, this was a ride event of 100k and the ride to and from the event. Now the event was well planned and executed but, and this is a big BUT the weather decided to mess with us, during the first 68km of the ride we has headwinds of 23-25 km/h, needless to say that made the ride more difficult (on top of the fact that the area is the Chiltren, so hills are the default terrain).

On the 2 big hills I had to get off the bike and walk, but belive it or nor I was not the slowest rider in the event. Not I have to flesh logs under my hips, I just hope they wil resume functioning tomorrow mornig.

To add to my pain – I managed to lose my driver license during the ride (Some for of ID was advised to be carried and I did) and manged to lose it somewhere, I plan to call the orgenaizers and see if one of the marshals might have found it, but I do not have high hopes.

Now for the Rant part: NBC have announced that they are canceling the show Revolution. I liked the show dispite all it’s flaws, and there were plenty.

If you havent wanted the show the premis is that the power went our one day and the show picks up 15 years after that. Some aspects thet did well, but they also ignored some major aspects of the premise – like what will happen to all the nuclear plants without electircity to regulate water flow to the cores and so forth, but the thing that realy got me upset with the writers was the end of season 1, I will not disclose all the details so if you want to watch it I will not have spoiled to much, But will say they they show a person turning on a reading lamp.

Now this might be good TV but it was rubbish writing and worse it was horrible science – If there is no power for 15 years and all the power plants are dead, where does the electicity for the lamp come from ?
That was just blatant “bite me” moment from the show creators and I still haven’t forgiven.

Another thing in the show is some of the relationships are so far fetched it is hard to beleive they occur, one of the characters have betrayed the others so many times, yet they keep of accepting him, where any other person in thier boots would have just put a bullet in his head so many times.

Ok, Ranting over.
Time to mourn “Almost human” that was also cancelled.

Today I have done my 2nd training session, which included a longer ride route and a lot more hill climbs, sdaly it also meant a large section of the ride was against a 26km head/side winds.

The only good thing about it was that the last 8km,when my legs,back and neck felt like could take no more,the wind became a tail wind which gave me the push I needed to the finish.

A leap from normal commute to 38km and from there to 62 km is good progress, and the body is complainign just about the right amount.

As I am so badly out of shape, and with the looming TDF stage ride only 2.5 month away, I knew I have the start putting in the saddle time and the miles on the road.

So today I did my first “traning ride” meaning I pushed harder the usual, looked for the more challenging bits to ride and tried to not let myself go down the the “slow” comfortable pace, to say I succeded in all would be lying, but I did managed to do 38Km with a total of 300m of climb in the ride.

This is the longest distance I have done in one go since september, and it is about 1/5 of the total ride I plan to do, so I have a long way to go before I’ll say I am showing signes of readiness.

If you want to follow my trainig, you can find it either on the Strava site/app (registration needed) or on the Sports Tracker, I will be stateing which rides are training rides and which are normal commute/fun rides.

Oh, and a side benefit of this, for one of the app’s I am using a heart rate monitor, and it shows the amount of kalories I am burning, I might just loose a few kg if i keep this up.

If you have been reading this blog for a while you may be aware that I am somewhat of a masochist when it comes to cycling, More often I aim big and bite more then I can chew.

And this time it seem is not any different.

There is a Little known cycling event in Europe called “Tour De France”, and this year it starts aptly in Yorkshire, England.

Now there are many charity organizariong that sell a participation to ride the route a day before the event starts when the road is closed, I thought about doing it but it required about £600, and I do not have the time to strat fund raising so I gave that up.

Months past and I thought I was past the urge to do the ride, and then a cycling shop I use frequently posted the option to participate in the ride for a very low price, and low and behold I now posess a ticket for the ride.

Then I saw the details on the event :

Road: 	Yes
Difficulty Rating: 	Hard
Event Date: 	28/06/2014 
Course options: Stage 1 :200km distances are approximate

So now that I have signed and noticed what I put my head on to, I started to understand that I am in way over my depth and need to pick up my training by an order of magnitude. I am strugling with doing a 30km ride with some hills, and this being the TDF, what I now call hills the other riders will call flats.

All I can hope for now is that I will be able to finish the ride and be able to hobble to the massage table (included in the admission price) on my own legs and with my head held high.

Wish me Luck!!

A couple of days ago I got an email from the company that did the logistic behind my London to Paris ride inviting me to participate in 3 Cities Bike Ride .

The dice roll was a natural 20 and with out much thought ( though I did take a look at the route and the distances) the mail was discarded and I moved on .

I can’t say that I don’t miss the fun of the ride , but not now , Maybe for my 50th birthday.

During the weekend I’ve participated in the Glasgow to Edinburgh Challenge ride , for me this was closing a circle .

As last year I considered this ride the starting point of the training for the L2P , completing this event today was my inner way of closing this chapter and moving on.
This years ride was along the same route as last year but the weather was not as accommodating with winds and some rain , I had a much easier time with the physical aspect , but also it was a one long cycling trail as we were told there we 16,000 ( yes ,you are reading correctly) rides taking part in the event .
This caused the entire length of the path to be full of riders and also in some place made overtaking the slow rides difficult ( and some time down right dangerous ) as the morons where riding two abreast and blocking the path, and if you wanted to go past them, you had to move in to the car’s lane.

So , as this is the last entry regarding the L2P cycling and related activities , the Blog will change it’s focus in the coming weeks , But do keep coming back as this will be the place to hear about my next Failed saving Throw.

We started the morning in Beauvais , with a day of staggared start and a goal of 90km to the finish line at the Eiffel ,as my bike had it’s chain replaced very early in the morning the start of the ride was delayed untill the change took place and then I Hit the road .

This morning another rider and I decided to ride together drafting and alternating positions , so when we got out of the town we picked a nice pace of 34km/h and started piling up the miles , toward the first water stop .

A Hugh hill along the way ,3.2km /2mile of slow climb gave us a pause and we were caught up by two lovely female riders that joined our pack to enjoy the speed and the company – and for us Y chromosome beings , the view ;-)

Along the path we saw some of the other riders that stopped at a Cafe or a pub for a short drink and we greeted them and joined in once.

About 8km /5 miles to the lunch break I had to pause for my knee to take a breather and the group did the “Top Gear” approach and stormed on , so again I was riding alone and in a slower pace , and we hit a town roads , twisting and winding via one way roads that are so full of pot holes I thought by spine will break and the bike frame will shutter .

Red lights began to dominate my path and I had the misfortune to hit all of them , not one of the traffic lights i approached was green so every time it was to unclip my shoes and get a good position to start , this went on all the way, but i wanted to catch up to the group , so I kept on paddling .

All of a sudden , the Lunch point was there and it was all clear , only the truck and 2 more bikes , and the table had no food , my first thought was ” I am the last one in and all have left already” , turns out i was the 3rd to arrive , and the food was not yet ready , about 15 minutes later my group arrived , the ladies had to have 2 pit stops and i just went past them not knowing they were behind me .

The stop was on teh banks of the Seinne on the outskirts of Paris and from there we had 14km/8miles  to the “changing point” . I joined the group and we cycled all the way in a nice pace with the rain keeping us cool but not to soaked .

In the change stop we got our T-shirts and I replaced my Clits paddles to regular paddles so it will be easier to Stop/Start in the streets of Paris , I sent Linor the place to meet us and off we went in a large convoy making and much noise as we could and taking pictures while riding .

From the change point to the Eiffel Tower is was 3.2 km /2 miles and we did it in 20 minutes of tedious slow ride .

As we got to the Arc De triumph we hit the traffic and we all had a bit of a shake about the horror stories of it’s traffic , but we managed to clear it out with not major incidents.

Seeing Linor at the end was worth all the pain and hurt as I did it …I Cycled from London to Paris !!!

Total Distance 480km /300 Miles

I am a Muppet … to those not familiar with the expression , it is a polite way to say a person is an idiot .
Imagine you are going on a long ride/hike/run , a sensible person will make sure he has as many things he can arrange to make the journey as painless and as comfortable as possible right ?? Well , apparently I don’t .
In all my planning and preparing I did not account for a padded shorts or padding on my saddle , So by day 3 even the thought of placing my bum on the seat gave me shivers of pain .

During the night i managed to charge up my phone so I can use the tracker software , or so I hoped , but as I started in the morning , the cloud cover was so think that the App just couldn’t get a Satellite signal and I had to shut it off.
We had a staggered start this day , meaning slow riders leave early while the faster riders can leave about an hour after , I opted to start early , so I will not be the last to arrive to the hotel that night ,relative to the other days this was an easier day , we were riding via rural France with small villages and not too many big hills , after about 30km I felt an odd roughness on my rear wheel , and knew I was riding flat . I stopped at the side of the road and saw everyone passing me by as I fixed the flat .
When I put the tube in, I decided to save time and use one of the compressed air canisters I have to pump up the tube, it went great in the first 10 sec and then there was a loud pop and all the air was out again – it actually burst the tube – creating a huge hole in it.
So I had to start it again and this time I used the manual pump to get me road ready.
Once that was sorted I started moving again , I noticed two riders closing in on me and as they passed I started Drafting them, I think that was the best decision I made the whole day , as they kept a good pace and at some time we were averaging 38Km/h and going up hills with a fast pace I was not even noticing it was hills .
We covered a long distance , past the lunch stop and then we hit a hill where my chain fell off , and I lost the guys .
I fixed it and kept on , but the pace was slow and the rain decided to come back again .
In one of the villages I saw a couple of the riders stopped at a Cafe , and joined them for a hot Chocolate , which was a good thing as it warmed me up just enough to give the boost to cycle to the hotel , but unknown to me at the time was that my chain was bent and due to that it kept on altering the gear during the ride , and I had to do 14 km with gears rattling and shifting with out my control .

When I got the hotel I handed the bike to the mechanic and only in the morning we found this issue .

Total distance covered today 107 km

We woke up In Calais with the sun thinking about making an appearance , but the clouds decided to cancel that show , a quick breakfast and on to the bikes , “turn right when you leave the hotel and follow the signs” , turn right we did and hit the wall of the head winds , I don’t know how fast the wind was blowing but riding head in to it was rough to say the least.
Having my knees sore from the day before I put on the bracers ( applying Vaseline under it so it won’t chafe to hard) i paddled
on , for the first 11km I was using the two lowest gears cause I just couldn’t put more pressure on the knees .
Then we hit the “undulations” or in the riders plain terms “Big F*&king hills” , sore bum , aching knees and a hill do not go well together but I managed to soldier on to the first water stop of the day where I took the knee bracers off only to see that they rubbed me so bad i had clotted blood in the under side of my knees, No worries , it will pass.

From there on I rode with out the bracers and it was actually better , I managed to pick up some pace and made the lunch break ( a lovely spot near a pond – don’t ask me for the name of the place) , where the Nokia phone battery decided to die , taking the GPS tracker with her, so now I don’t have a track record of the route from the water stop to the end ( this was at the 80km point ).

Lunch was a welcome stop as they broke out the hot food , a warm plate of Pasta with Chicken , was brilliant , I didn’t even bother looking at the rest of the food.
After that we climbed on the bike and we resumed our way to Abberville which will be our resting stop for the night , with the crew saying 40 km to go , in relatively smooth and easy road , My Ass will testify other wise !!!
The road was rubbish and the hills were not flat … unless you are a Sherpa !!! , and to top it all up the wind died down .. to our joy .. only to have a serious pissing heavy rain come down on us for the next 40 km.
The water proofs were a bit of help and we put on our rear lights , to say that by the time I got to the hotel I was soaked will be an understatement in the least .

Day 2 over and another 120 km done .