Last call for votes! Please (pretty please with a cherry on top) vote for The Cycling Mayor as best Women’s Cycling Blog at http://lovingthebike.com/crank-directory/. Voting Closes at Midnight EST on June 1, 2011 so I promise I’ll stop bugging you about it soon! 🙂 You can vote once a day…thank you :).
In other news, rain, wind, and lack of company drove me to the gym instead of the bike today. One week to the Dragon!
Today was an ACG ride. Due to half term, and the Tour of Wessex, there were only 3 of us out this morning. Well, to be fair, we did have a newbie turn up to join us…on a very heavy mountain bike. He’s going to try again on a road bike soon, since he only made it as far as Cheddar before making the (very wise) decision to bail. So I can’t really count him.
That left myself, IH, and today’s ride leader, DM. Being as the route was none of my concern, I’m afraid it gets a little hazy in places as usual. One of the things I love about the ACG is that other people know roads that I don’t and I get to ride them. Novelty is great. In this instance we headed out via Wedmore, criss-crossing the scarey pelotons of Tour Wessex riders, around all sorts of ingenious back lanes to get us to round the back of Wells and to Croscombe so as to go up the big hill there to reach our coffee stop at Hartleys. I’ve never been up that hill before, only down it, and although hard work it wasn’t quite as bad as I was expecting it to be. Always nice when that happens!
IH had been out on the Village last night and whilst not hungover was feeling the effects. Shall I polish my halo a little? ;). It was as windy as ever, and distinctly chilly, though the wind was mostly in our favour on the outward leg. We took it easy on the way out, in order to be a Group, but I have to admit it was hard. It was another indication of the fact that my new wheels rock. I was putting in the usual effort, give or take, and finding myself having to reign it in to keep with the others. More of which later.
Hartley’s was just as lovely as on our last visit, if anything even friendlier. Mind you they’d just had to feed a large contingent of bikers who were preparing to leave as we arrived, so it might just have been the relief to have gotten them all fed and on their way *grin*. There were a couple of other rather serious looking cyclists in there too – we did consider following them on the way back but came to the conclusion that there wasn’t really enough of them (darn whippets) to hide behind so there wouldn’t be much point! Speaking of whippets, we got chased by one going past a farm, and they can’t half move! Made for an interesting couple of minutes I can tell you…
It was even colder and windier when we set off again, and now we were properly into the wind. I had to push off for a bit just to get warmed up again. IH was flagging now, and DM and I stopped to wait for him, in the drizzle, from time to time. We met a few more ToW riders – including some lost ones – who didn’t look like they were having much fun at all, and I was glad that all I had to do was head for home! Once we got out of Priddy and on to the long flat road there, all bets were off. I wanted to push my wheels around a bit and being crap at going downhill I knew DM would catch me in the Gorge. Oh my it was fun :D. Those wheels really do love going round fast. It’s very hard to describe it, but it’s like having an extra gear without having to push any harder. And yes, DM did catch me 3/4 of the way down the Gorge. We don’t call him a mountain goat for nothing 😉
Cycling time: 2:43:11 hrs
Distance: 40.33 miles
Avs: 14.8 mph
ODO: 8648 miles
Another quick blast down the bypass and it was back home again. Not the world’s most enjoyable ride, due to the weather, but kinda fun nonetheless. If it hadn’t been for the ACG I’d probably have been sheltering in the gym instead, and that wouldn’t have been half so nice or so sociable :).
It has occurred to me that I have now had my bike for (a little over) two years. Clearly I have made up for being late in celebrating the fact by buying it lots of presents *grin*. In fact I think the only bits that are still original are the frame and the gears/pedals/cranks! In those two years it has done around 8600 miles which, if you’re me, is pretty impressive. I’m me. I’m impressed! So Happy Birthday bike 🙂
Today was the first time I had the opportunity to get out for a ride since Andrew pimped my ride. Mim had to cancel on me, leaving me at a bit of a loss and somewhat stumped for routes. I exchanged texts with GB and decided on a route. Rather than make you play dot to dot as I describe it to you, here it is. Ever since last Sunday’s sportive I’ve been really, and unusually, tired. I don’t think it’s just a post-event thing – maybe I’m fighting off a bug or something. There’s been a lot of sleeping, early nights, and general zombie like behaviour. As a result I decided a flat-ish not challenging route would be the way to go, as you can see.
I tried really hard to enjoy it. Well it was relatively warm, and fairly sunny. But, and no surprise here, it was bl**dy windy again! Well, not again, still! It’s not like it’s gone away recently, now is it? I really should pay more attention to wind direction when planning my routes. Winds of a westerly persuasion are no good when your route goes east a bit, south a lot, west a lot, north a lot and then a tiny bit of east to get you home. Doh! I am assured that it’s very good training, but it’s not very good when it comes to enjoying the ride.
Being illogical in many ways, pre-ride I was actually a bit nervous about riding the bike with all its new bits. I know, I did say it didn’t make sense. I shall break it down as follows. The new narrower handlebars were more comfortable in a sort of intangible way, but my shoulder still went. Since the whole ride was feeling pretty smooth, I’m guessing the bottom bracket was an improvement. But the new wheel/tyre combo? Well from where I was sitting, it was kinda hard to tell. Given a decent road surface (and that’s not a given) they felt lovely – very smooth and quiet. Round corners they may well have been a tad grippier, but I was trying to avoid being knocked over by crosswinds so was being as cautious as ever. But hey, they sho’ did look purty…
So I rode. Bits of it were better. I didn’t puncture on the softer tyres. No more of me hurt than usual. On that basis a good, if not great, ride.
But, oh my giddy Aunt, have you seen my average speed?!!!
Cycling time: 2:21:03 hrs
Distance: 40.16 miles
Avs: 17.0 mph
ODO: 8606 miles
On a ride like that, I’d expect a 15mph average if I was lucky, what with all that fighting into the wind. But no – look! Every time I looked down to assess my degree of struggle, I was going faster than I thought I ought to be. I’m guessing the new wheels and tyres are a good thing 🙂 And did I mention they’re kinda pretty? 😉
GB is doing the Tour of Wessex this weekend and if today’s weather, and the forecast, is anything to go by, good luck to him! Rather him than me…allez allez! 🙂
click for full size version
My bike has now been pimped. Just look at my lovely new wheel/tyre combo. Co-ordinated or what? And just a little bit sexy *grin*.
Less obviously, the bottom bracket has been done, the handlebars are new, and if you look closely you can see my Bike Pure spacer. Not only that, it’s pretty clean too!
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever….” and I’m really looking forward to getting it out on the road. When the wind stops blowing and they stop top-dressing all my local roads of course! 😉
PS: while I’m here – please don’t forget to keep voting for me at http://lovingthebike.com/crank-directory/ 🙂
The nice thing, in so far as there was one, to getting up at 5:00am this morning was that, unlike the last time I did this, it was daylight. Which makes the whole process of loading up the car and heading off up the motorway that much more pleasant.
Unsurprisingly the motorways were virtually empty, as was the service station on the M5 where I stopped to eat my muesli and use the facilities. I arrived at Stratford upon Avon racecourse on schedule, signed in, sorted me and my bike out, and managed to meet the BW, all with the minimum of fuss. His parents handed him over to my tender care (yeah, right…) and we were underway at around 8:00am. Good start.
The main thing to be said about today’s ride is that it was horrendously windy. The rest of the weather varied from cloudy to sunny, wet to dry, but the wind never stopped. Lots of gusty, loud, increasing, annoying, wind!
Due to the fact that there were 3 equidistant foodstops, the ride broke up nicely into four quarters. The first 25 miles were pretty flat and I don’t recall a hill before the hour mark. A good way to warm up. BW stuck with me for the most part, though he had a tendency to be slightly ahead, and more than slightly ahead going up the hills. Nothing new there then. There were various groups for a while which was quite nice – got to hide from the wind somehow. There was also a really annoying mile or so section where the road had recently been top-dressed. Gravel everywhere, and no fun at all. At least I didn’t get a puncture – several people did. Which takes us to the first food stop where the BW precariously leant his bike against something…and the wind blew it over. Result? Slightly knackered derailleur which left him without his very bottom gear, made changing gear tricky, and meant that his chain fell off on a regular basis. Not great…
The second quarter included the big climb of the day – Stanway Hill – the route split, and a couple of other similar lumps. Nothing that I found too troubling. In fact I made a point of going up Stanway a gear above bottom just to see if I could. I could. Right until the last corner where I hit the wall of wind again. I even overtook folk. So that was fun, kinda. About 40 miles in I noticed BW developing a tendency to be behind me rather than in front, other than up hill, which was novel. The route split, leaving the 100 milers in the minority again, and we didn’t really see much by way of other cyclists until the lunchtime foodstop.
So, half way done. The third quarter was rolling, and, yes, still windy. My knee started to go not long after the stop and rather than let it get worse, I took the pills asap, and luckily this time around they worked. I could tell the BW was suffering by now, whether he’d admit it or not, even though I’d made sure he ate and drank at regular intervals. He sat behind me and I tried not to leave him behind, though I was feeling really good, and fair flying from time to time. At the final food stop we took a slightly longer break, and crammed food down him, but we still had 25 miles to do. Which, since I’d gotten my average up to 16mph, could have been a mere hour and a half…
However those miles were where the worst of the wind was. Which was unfair considering we’d thought it was pretty horrendous as it was! But this was worse. I mean just silly worse. A constant fight. Tree debris all over the roads. I wanted to just push and get back as quickly as possible, but I decided that this ride was going to be a Lilo and Stitch thing – nobody gets left behind. I did my very best to distract a hangdog BW, to be in front of him, to drop back and pick him up when necessary, and to make him hit the gels/jellybeans. It felt like a very long 25 miles… Just before the end he perked up a bit, and inevitably made sure to cross the line before me…*rolls eyes*. He was welcomed back into the bosom of his family, leaving me feeling a tad lonesome with no-one to play post-match analysis with.
However I’m a big girl. I coped. I consoled myself with a double espresso – there’s a new trend, having very good coffee makers at sportives, and long may it continue. I sat in the back of my car, put hubby on speaker phone to keep me company while I got changed, and there you go, another sportive done.
Cycling time: 6:36:37 hrs
Distance: 102.85 miles
Avs: 15.5 mph
It really wasn’t very hilly, only 1009 metres of climbing. But, as a fellow rider put it, the wind took what should have been a straightforward fast ride and turned it into a total slog. If G didn’t stand for Group I’d probably have been 20 minutes or so faster, but hey, that’s not really what it’s about is it? It was the BW’s first 100 mile sportive and all things considered he did really well :).
The route was pretty and scenic, if we’d been paying attention which we weren’t really, being too busy concentrating on surviving the wind. The roads were nice and quiet too, and mostly in pretty good nick. Special mentions go to the expensive property, the Bentleys (yes, that’s plural), a hill with a windmill, and a massive fluffy road crossing caterpillar. The food stops were great – village halls with toilets, and both well stocked and friendly. Especially the little’un at the first stop happily announcing the availability of jelly babies if anyone wanted them :D. The whole event seemed efficiently run, and I have yet another medal and goody bag bottle to add to the collection. The chocolate covered cupcake was a bonus *grin*.
Right, I think that covers it. Wheel Heroes 100 miler – done! 🙂
UPDATE: official time is 7:06:59. Results don’t yet allow me to figure out where that puts me with the other 100 milers. Probably just as well…
And it spent a great deal of today’s ride shouting it in my face! I really don’t like wind. It’s so sapping. Unlike hills, which are generally quiet, and which, with some decent music and scenery, you can sort of distract yourself away from, wind is noisily there, literally in your face, and impossible to ignore. Maybe that’s why it’s so draining? Whatever the reason, there’s definitely been more than enough of it around lately, and as I believe I’ve mentioned before, I’ve had enough already! 🙁
Anyway, being as I have an event on Sunday, the plan was to take it fairly easy today. No big hills, just a couple of hours around the usual kind of route, basically a more attractive alternative to being in the gym. GW invited me to pop in for coffee whilst I was out, which turned it into a sociable affair too. I won’t bore you with the precise route – as you’ve heard it all before – suffice to say it was circuitous and fairly Level :).
As it turns out the weather was very similar to that which is forecast for Sunday – occasional light rain with nasty wind. Lovely. Ah well, good practice right? Though Sunday may be warmer, according to the BBC. I hope so because today it was also a tad chilly, especially when setting off again after coffee. Like GB‘s principles, if I don’t like one forecast I can always find another one I like better *grin*.
For some reason I was going pretty fast today. And not just when the wind was finally behind me! Maybe just to keep warm? One of those days when you feel like you’re going fast and find that the computer actually agrees with you. I felt like I was flying along, and I was :).
Cycling time: 2:06:10 hrs
Distance: 34.89 miles
Avs: 16.5 mph
ODO: 8463 miles
See? Told you – pretty fast :). Not as fast as the BW will be on Sunday no doubt, but fast enough to put me in a pretty good frame of mind as I get myself ready for it.
Next week the final work will be done on the bike. New bottom bracket, new narrower handlebars, and a set of Pro-lite Bracciano wheels (finally back in stock) with Schwalbe Ultremo Evolution blue-striped tyres. It’ll be practically like having a new bike, and I’m really looking forward to it. I’ll have 10 days or so to run it in before the Dragon, which I hope is enough…and let’s face it, it’ll have to be. I’ll also be picking up eldest’s new road bike, so soon he’ll be out on the road with me. Be afraid, be very afraid… I think we’ll call him MiniMe *grin*. That should take the sting out of it when, in a few months’ time, he starts leaving us in the dust…
PS: don’t forget to vote for me! http://lovingthebike.com/crank-directory
Thanks to those of you that have voted….and please to be remembering you can vote every day! Not that it appears to be making a blind bit of difference but still…*grin*. So head on over here http://lovingthebike.com/crank-directory/ bung The Cycling Mayor into “Other” in the Women’s Category, and job done :).
Incidentally, road rash on the knee really hurts… 🙁
UPDATE: I’ve made it to the short list! Now you just have to click on The Cycling Mayor and Vote, and voila! 🙂
Our cat is, as nature intended, a hunter. By rights she should be a killing machine. What she actually is is a “catch things and play with them a lot” machine. Before you go getting all RSPB on my ass, she has a bell, and she’s well fed. We’ve done the best we can… As a result of her ineptitude I spend more time than I wish to disposing of small corpses, or attempting to rescue the not yet dead. Recently there has a been a small black parade of rodents that have not made the cut…
This morning I went to open the door to the conservatory and discovered one jellicle cat with a recognisable guilty look on her face and, out of the corner of one eye, something moving by a plant pot. What joys awaited me this time? A small bird trying very hard to get underneath anything and away. So I rescued it, as you do. It turned out to be a fledgling of some sort, unharmed as far as I could tell, though maybe minus the odd feather. Quite cute as these things go, and happy to sit in the palm of my hand and doze. What to do now? Well I tried putting it outside in a sheltered spot and hoping its parents would reclaim it. All this did was attract other cats into the garden…which would seem to defeat the object of rescuing it. I scared them away. It remained parentless yet resolutely alive.
What to do now? (And here comes the relevance…I know you’ve been wondering). I was supposed to be going for a ride, but if I left it out there for 2 hours, with the hordes gathering, then it was never going to make it. I know nature is red in tooth and claw, but my conscience (inconvenient thing) just wouldn’t let me do it. *Sigh*. So I retrieved the bird and put it in a small cardboard box. A couple of phone calls later, and a quick trip down the A38, and the baby blue tit was installed at Secret World. My karma was topped up, and the cat versus the animal world balance was redressed a little.
An hour later than planned and I got to hit the road. Sort of literally. I was barely out of the Square when I had to stop and tinker with the mp3 player, and failed dismally to pull over neatly, instead getting too close to the curb, failing to unclip properly, and heading up in an ungainly heap on the pavement. Nice. Karma clearly hadn’t been impressed…as the graze on my left knee demonstrates.
A little shaken but still determined to get my ride in I headed for the hills. Shipham Hill to be precise. I was feeling like a record attempt so I made sure not to dilly dally getting to the bottom and to push myself a bit more than usual on the way up. Did it work? Sho’ did! My door to the top of the hill in 14:30 – beating my previous best by a minute. Man I’m good! *grin*.
Now, this would have been a celebratory moment, but again with the karma. As I neared the top I was happily going up and the drizzle started coming down. Just lovely. Ho hum. I may be getting better at corners and downhills in the dry, but give me wet roads and all bets are off. Not to mention the fact that cycling in the rain, into the wind, is not a whole heap of fun. Oh yes, there was wind too. Plenty of it. Nothing new there then.
So where do you go on a day like that? Well, the seaside of course! Across the usual flat nowhere to hide wiggly bits to Sand Bay, which was truly miserable. Getting wetter and wetter, fighting the wind, and wondering why I was putting myself through it. The upside is that I was so keen to get it over and done with that I was at least going pretty fast on the flat. Not so much so up the kicker past the Commodore Hotel though, but even that was ok. From there it was off into Weston which was at least relatively grockle free, and the rain did lift a bit. I went out through Uphill and straight over up the big Bleadon Hill. Yes – another hill.
I pootled my way up happily, until some lad in a white van (I should so know better) asked me to stop for a mo. Which I did because hey, maybe he wanted directions or something. Nope. Just to tell ask me if I knew it was going to be much harder to get going now since I was going uphill. A real comedian. Him and his mate thought he was very funny. And maybe he is, down in the shallow end of the gene pool. I just sighed, said yes but I was used to it, and carried on my merry way.
The rest of the hill was fine, as was the second bit. I’m sure it used to be worse. In fact I was so happy with my hill prowess that rather than come home back past the Webbington, I turned left beforehand, just to go up Winscombe Hill again. Still no frogs though…even though the weather was more suitable for them than usual 😉
Cycling time: 2:05:48 hrs
Distance: 33.18 miles
Avs: 15.8 mph
ODO: 8428 miles
It’s like I have to keep doing hills to prove that I can still do them. Which is probably daft in a tapering week. However they went well, my knee didn’t hurt, and my average speed was pretty darn good too. That should set me up nicely for Sunday 🙂
And I’m about to be very shallow…
This blog is listed here:
http://lovingthebike.com/crank-directory/womens
and they’re running their annual awards here:
It would be great if my readers (you are out there right?) could nominate The Cycling Mayor under the Women’s cycling blog category “Other” bit and then vote for me if I make it to the shortlist… Just for fun you understand. Or maybe to at least make the list of nominated websites, that’d be kinda cool :).
These days, for the most part, I tend to prefer cycling in company. Oh how times have changed. Or maybe there’s just more company to be had?
When it comes to today’s ride, I’m very tempted to go with what he said since let’s face it – it pretty much sums it up.
Of course it forgets to mention a few things. Like the fact that we bumped into the Mendip Classic Car Tour who were clearly running a route that went counter directionally to ours so I got to see lots of lovely classic cars. Now, if I had a car like, lets say, the old classic TVR that went past, and was doing a rally with lots of my friends, I’d have a bl**dy great grin on my face as I showed off my pride and joy to the world. So why so miserable folks? There was but one exception the the rule – the pair in a convertible whatever it was with big silly hats on who were happy to smile and wave back at us – chapeaux to you 🙂 I’ll let the little group of three cars that had pulled over, with all their drivers all huddled around the mechanically challenged one, off though. Mind you they were friendly enough as we offered to help. Not that we’d probably have been of much use anyway but hey, it’s what you do.
Something else he won’t have mentioned, since for once I chose not to moan about it….is that my knee was playing up on the way out, enough for me to be considered taking painkillers not long before we got to the Ten Commandments Café. Thou shalt not……………* *(insert anything that you might actually have wanted to do here) posters abounded. I forgot though, being busy laughing at the place, and the knee was fine all the way home. Even over Brent Knoll. Go figure!
Cycling time: 2:20 hrs
Distance: 38.11 miles
Avs: 16.3 mph
ODO: 8395 miles
It was a time critical ride as I had to be back in time to take eldest to the airport – hence an unappealing 8:30am start. Needs must etc.. We were in fact back half an hour early, but it would only have taken one puncture to put a spanner in the works – that’s why good plans have contingency built into them. And by the looks of things, even wind-hindered, we weren’t hanging around. See I cycle faster in company too. GB’s route was a bit different, without being difficult, which suited me down to the ground, and he did a good job with the black armbands too. I may have had to wear it black on black but I was at least wearing one. Another nice ride – done 🙂