one two step throw July 29, 2005  

As has now been well established, Heather made very good time in Sunday's London to Cambridge bike ride, and ended up raising northwards of £300 for charity. Nice the house. She was, in fact, sufficiently speedy that she completely threw my plans for the day, and my brilliant scheme to be standing at the finish line with Rebecca on my shoulders, with her waving a banner reading "Go Mum!", were snookered - due to the requirements of lunch and a sudden nappy emergency, we were slightly delayed leaving the house, and when Heather crossed the line I was trying to calm a frenetic toddler who didn't really see why we'd just walked right past the Arbury Court playground. Whoops! I got there only 15 minutes late, cursing Heather's improved cardiovascular fitness. Still, it was an excellent achievement, and she did well at the whole "riding hard into the teeth of the wind and rain" thing. Style. We ended up spending most of the rest of the day huddled inside against the appalling weather, intermittantly consuming poached eggs and watching the live coverage of the end of this year's Tour.

Rebecca's marauding potential grows apace. She's learning to climb up things, and can get up onto the table and chairs in the garden without too much trouble. Once she's up there, she normally does a jig of triumph, and then sets about climbing back down (harder than it looks). She's also very fond of a new game involving the couch in the nursery. She climbs onto the couch, runs to the end, and pulls the CDs of nursery rhymes from the shelf. She then drops them on the floor, then leaps down and picks them back up, climbs back up, and puts them back on the shelf. All the while, grinning hugely. This is why I spent a productive afternoon when we did up the nursery screwing those shelves to the walls. Her passive vocabulary is also growing quite nicely - obviously, it's quite hard to measure, but she's really definitely recognising a lot more words. Bath, dinner, juice, bike, duck, doggy - she know 'em all. Next week, we're trying to teach her dalek, marzipan, herring, and rotunda.

On the headphones: Based on a True Story, by Fat Freddy's Drop. Straight from Lyall Bay to the Fopp in Sidney St, Cambridge - nice the house. Just what the doctor ordered for summer. A bit more radio friendly than Live at the Matterhorn, if you can count an album with an average track length of 7 minutes as radio friendly. Certainly has a less improvised, more structured feel - as you'd expect. Well worth the ten quid.

Next question: how long will it be before we see Armstrong (or, potentially, Livestrong) branded bikes? It's a traditional move for great cyclists to lend their name to cycling marques on retirement (think Fausto Coppi, Eddie Merckx, Greg Lemond) - and since Trek both sponsor Lance and already own the 'Lemond' marque (named after the first American winner of the Tour), it's a pretty natural progression. I'd expect ink on paper to seal the deal pretty snappy, and then a gap of about two years before bikes with a gert big Armstrong on the downtube start shipping. That's just enough time for the so-called "Lance Effect" driving sales of high-end road bikes in the US to die down a bit - and a tie-in of that sort would be a good tactic to keep the sales up. Just what I think will happen. And c'mon, tell me that you can't see a Livestrong bike with a percentage of the proceeds being donated to charity.

And winning the "you mad bugger" award: a bloke who's planning to cycle the Canning Stock Route in Australia. Unsupported. Across 2000km of sod-all, including three deserts and very few oases. It's been done in 4wd cars before, with a petrol drop halfway through. It's never been done on a bike (including, pointedly, not even on a motorbike). I'm proud to say that this nutcase is a Kiwi. Do we put something in the water back home, or what?

grind out the k's July 23, 2005  

So what was my first 200k audax like?

The field was pretty small: 16 riders in total on the 200k. One of them was wearing a jersey marking him out as having finished the 2003 Paris-Brest-Paris (1200km of cycling within 90 hours), so I figured that some of the competition is going to be way out of my league. After a slightly delayed start (the bloke couldn't find a flag to wave, and ended up just saying "off you go then!"), we got moving, and I was promptly dropped after 3 miles. I continued to make sporadic contact with the slow or unable to navigate for about the first 50 miles or so and basically ended up riding by myself all day. That wasn't a big deal: the navigation instructions were mainly easy to follow, and I tended to run into people at the controls. The route itself was a nice ramble down from Hertford into the outskirts of Greater London (via South Mimms services on the M25 - it's right next to an extremely pretty flood plain wilderness area). Then across the M25 (via the Grand Union Canal), up to the Chalfonts, then north past Hemel Hempstead, near Luton airport, then across towards Ashwell, up to Shepreth (10 miles from our house), dip a toe into Essex near Saffron Walden, and back down to Hertford. Total distance on the day was 129 miles; the Six Counties in question were Hertfordshire, Greater London, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Essex. The route was obviously a bit of a labour of love and local knowledge - lots of little unmarked side-turnings that lead you into beautiful scenic byways. Rather an emphasis in the first half on very short sharp drops, followed by equally short sharp ascents.

The weather was a killer. It was a beautifully clear, fairly still, extremely sunny day. I had rather a lot of sunscreen on, but was swigging water like mad - and at that, I'm fairly sure I was quite dehydrated towards the end. The problem was that I started feeling nauseous and very headachy (possibly due to dehydration, possibly just due to the heat in general) about 5 hours in, and from then on it was much harder to summon the urge to eat or drink. I particularly remember a beautiful hill descent in the sunshine, at 12:50 - just as the sun was approaching its zenith. Freewheeling down a hillside, through gently waving fields of golden-ripe wheat ... and then realising that I'd have to go straight back up on the other side of the valley, up a large swathe of completely exposed, baking-hot hillside. Great fun. Physically, I mainly felt OK throughout the ride. I hit a very bad patch for nausea and exhaustion at about the 100 mile mark - covering the 15 miles to 115 miles took me about 90 minutes. This didn't do my mood any good either; however, after a pint of coke at the last control (a pub in Brent Pelham - Heather'll be riding past it on Sunday) I recovered a bit and put on more of a burn for the last 15 miles.

Physically, I didn't feel too tired - I stuck to my 'go all day' pace, which varies from 13-15mph depending on conditions. Towards the end my pace was clearly declining a bit, but I still felt OK in my legs. The main problems were the nausea, which made it very hard to eat enough to keep myself going, and sore hands. From about 40 miles in, the contact area on my hands started hurting from the rubbing between my gloves and the bars. I was wearing a pair of gloves that were just slightly too large: not normally a problem, but in this case the friction was causing serious pain. I acquired a few blisters from this, and ended up with an inch-wide line of pain across the palm of each hand.

I did see various other riders during the last 50 or so miles - mainly quick chats at the controls. There were about three other riders who were going at approximately my pace, but we were slightly out of synch and didn't end up riding together. In the end, I finished in a time of just under 11 1/2 hours, 9 1/2 of which was spent in the saddle, with an average speed of 13.6mph (22kph). I'm pretty happy with that, given that the maximum time limit was just under 14 hours. I ended up finishing 15th out of the 16 riders - and there was a bit of debate at the end about whether or not the 16th bloke had abandoned, as he was well behind and hadn't been seen for a bit. Still, I came in only about 5-10 minutes behind two other riders, so I reckon I didn't do too badly for a first event. All in all, an excellent day day.

The next day, my legs felt fine (bit stiff when trying to bend over, though), but it took me about 36 hours to get over the nausea and another day or two until the palms of my hands stopped hurting. Still, no tingling in the fingers or other evidence of nerve damage, so that's a good thing. Next time I clearly need to make more of a deliberate effort to stay hydrated.

The main themes of the day were brilliant sunshine, lovely rambling scenery, sore hands and nausea, and roadkill. Swathes of roadkill. I saw dead rabbits, pigeons, badgers, cats, and stoats. Driving to the start, I hit a pigeon. I reckon I saw at least one roadside corpse per 2 miles (no, really).

So there we go. Next big ride is of course Heather's go on the London to Cambridge - if you've not done so already, please consider sponsoring her for the ride. Many thanks to all who are kicking in money to ensure that Heather gets out of bed on what's looking likely to be a wet 6am start. Respect all!

a sense of achievement and a sore arse July 18, 2005  

Today, I achieved a long-standing ambition of mine: I rode a randonnée. Randonees are long bicycle rides - the standard length, set by the Audax Club Parisien, is 200k. I rode the Six Counties 200 organised by the Hertfordshire wheelers. 208k, 129 miles, in 11 1/2 hours through one of the hottest days this year. I am currently shattered.

More on this when I'm not so knackered. If any of my coworkers are reading this, it's why I'm off work tomorrow: I'm planning to spend the day a) looking after Rebecca and b) trying to regain the ability to bend down. How compatible these goals are, I'll find out tomorrow.

swerve hard brake July 14, 2005  

More news on Keith Alexander's death. It turns out that he died while riding on a cycle path; a child either ran or swerved (it's ambiguous as to whether the kid was a pedestrian or cyclist) in front of him, he swerved hard to avoid them, went down heavily and hit his head on the barrier separating the path from the vehicular traffic lanes. He wasn't wearing a helmet at the time. This illustrates two of my particular bugbears:

• The belief that cyclepaths are safer than the road. OK, you don't have cars whizzing past you - but cars don't side-step directly out into you. Any bicycle going more than about 12-15mph is safer on the road. Cars move in simple, largely predictable directions (though they do still cut you up!); pedestrians can do anything. Heck, all it takes is for one guy to make an expansive gesture without noticing that you're passing and you're picking bits of his sleeve out of your teeth as you pull yourself off the tarmac. Ditto kids: small children run all around the place, are hard to spot, and pop up where you least expect them - forcing sudden swerves and emergency stops. That goes extra for kids on bikes, who generally have absolutely no road sense, and can cause accidents. As happened in this case, with tragic consequences.
• People who don't wear helmets when they're riding somewhere "safe". They're called accidents for a reason; they don't happen when you expect. And as the saying goes, you're a long time dead.

The first point there isn't against people who use cyclepaths, by the way - whatever works for you, and they're great if you're having a pootle or have kids with you. But there's a sense among the general public that they're safer than the road, and that cyclists should stick to them whereever they're available. Which is a load of bullshit. For any moderately serious cycling, the road is both safer and faster, and it's perfectly legal to use it. Take your line and ride assertively, kids.

In a completely unrelated topic, I fell off my bike this morning. That's the third accident I've had in the last month caused by not being able to clip out of my pedals in time. Very embarassing - all low speed accidents (as in, I was basically stopped, and fell over), so no major harm done, but you look like a plonker. I'm on a new set of cleats, and they're a bit harder to release until they wear in.

Nearly 30 and still skinning my knees.

not a great week all up July 13, 2005  

Another good man done gone. It's odd how affected you can be by the death of someone you only know online. Good bloke, though; always helpful but gruff online, ready to help out people with genuine questions and savagely mocking of trolls. The fact that he died in a bike accident hits me pretty hard.

Not a good week for random deaths, then.

Interesting to note how much media coverage this set of bombings is getting in the US. Compare it to, say, the amount of coverage that IRA bombings tended to get. Just a thought.

once is sprinting, twice is a problem July 07, 2005  

There've been some absolutely great moments in this year's Tour so far - notably, both the time trial stages. I'm a big fan of the team time trial, and yesterday's stage was incredible to watch. We were on our feet with shock when Zabriskie hit the deck - a serious shame that he lost the yellow jersey, but an incredibly galvanising moment. Ditto in the first TT, when Lance overtook Jan Ullrich - great stuff. It'll be interesting to see how it all looks when the race goes vertical - I reckon that riders like Vinokourov, Kloden and Basso are just waiting for the Pyrenees. And although Euskaltel-Euskadi have been very quiet so far, I think that the combination of Beloki and Mayo might prove very interesting once it all gets vertical. Great fun to watch so far, anyway.

And that Robbie McEwen, eh? There's a lad who knows how to use his head. These Aussie larrikins, I don't know...

Two quick Tour links: dear god, no! - and the best bit about the front picture on the Quick Step web site at the moment is where Robbie McEwen (on L) is looking... and the expression on his face. Tom Boonen there, showing why light green shorts often aren't the best idea in the world - but when they're the sponsor's colours, what can you do?

Speaking of sport... I was in a shop just before 1pm today. There were a couple of customers, and only one bloke behind the counter, and the phone was ringing off the hook. No sooner could he get one person off the phone than it rang again. Finally he hung up the phone and it stayed quiet. "Right," he said to the shop as a whole, "I'm going to kill the next person who bloody rings up to tell me about the Olympics."

the benedictine cobra July 02, 2005  

You ever have that thing where you're dozing, you have a really brief lucid dream, then you wake up and realise that it would make a great children's book? And then, as you scramble for paper and pen, it evaporates from your mind, and you're only left with a faint impression of being a subsidiary brain inside a dinosaur's right forefoot.

Alternatively, odd business models. "I'll move back to NZ and make some money on the side selling bicycle tyres cheap by mail order!" Though that one could potentially make a couple of bucks.

Under 24 hours to go until the Tour. Go Lance!

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