Ride Entry – 30th November 2009

Bike:Vela
DIstance: 30 miles

Very cold today, but still sunny and very windy (obviously) Nice ride though. Wore my winter boots for the first time this winter. Northwave celcius. They absolutely ROCK! My toes were not just ‘not cold’ but were actually warm the entire ride. 10/10 recommendation.

I possibly passed Trio out for a run as well but only realised after I’d got a bit up the hill…..

Maintenance day tomorrow.

Vela needs it’s gears sorting out, possibally a new front mech. I’ve been reluctant to check why it won’t change to the middle ring and why if I change to second gear the chain dumps onto the middle ring (but I can;t change the front mech to match it), so I’ve not been lower than big ring and third for a long time which makes climbing steep hills…interesting. It needs a bloody good cleanup too, oh and the bars are rocking slightly, I think I need another spacer in there.

Pimpino needs it’s brakes looking at, could just be some adjustment.

VanTuyl needs some new bar tape and ends and the front wheel is wobbling about a bit.

Humu needs a full service of everything. Saying that it’s left out in the rain permanently and still runs great everytime I get on it. Just feels a bit sandy sometimes.

Ride Entry – 28th November 2009

Bike: Pimpino
Distance: 26 miles

Well that was freaking ACE! Bloody cold and wet but offroad blast on a fixed, rigid cross bike? Great! Really enjoyed todays ride. I should offroad a lot more than I do now. Might get by chameleon back down from the attic and start riding that next year, but which bike to put back up. If I could get my trackbike stored at the velodrome that would give me room for it but it’s a long waiting list I think.

On the pimpino I went down the ice cream run. Slowly, I’m a bit rusty. I passed to young lads sat on their DH bikes at the top and they rolled past me about halfway down like I was stood still. Mind you, we all passed a landrover going down the hill.

Anyway, very poor week for mileage, 51 miles only.  There’s a number of reasons for this, rain, work and a family bereavement.

Hopefully next week (I’m on holiday), will be better. I’m trying for a ride every day but we’ll see. The plan is to get my deficit down to zero by the end of the week but we know how these plans always turn out.

Fleece Jon day

What a shity, fleecing day I’ve had. Woke up, started working fromhome, router has died, no  power, so I go into work. Proper crap day at work, just loads on. Shouldn’t be bothered to be honest but I still feel responsibility to some things. Buy  new broadband router, get home, plug it in, can’t connect. I’ve forgotten the username for adsl. In desperation I plug the old one back in, it works fine. SHIT! 70 quid down the drain.

My wife then shouts me, the phone bill is 200 hundred quid, a bit of investigation reveals she’s been calling mobile phones on it a lot. NO! SHIT!!

Then the builder comes round, the final bill is *at least* 500 quid more than he originally quoted because the plumber and the electrician needed to do more. SHIT!!!

Then he tells us there’s more for his work. He’s really nervous (I suspect I worry him a bit for some reason) but it’s clear he;’s going to add some more on to the bill. SHIT!!!!

Time to have a good fecking drink. BAH! And I’m working all weekend, I’m supposed to be on cool down! Anyway, next week is off so I’m hoping after I’ve done husband things, I can get out on my bike, maybe get a few hundred miles in through the week. Maybe even get some Madison or Derny rides in at the drome.

Resignation

No-one (high up) at work has approached me to try to convince me to stay. Which in a way is quite nice. It avoids embarrassment on their part and also suggests they know once I’ve made my mind up, I’ll stick to it. I expected no less though, they’re pissed off now, should have listened to what I was telling you about workload and resource issues for the last four years shouldn’t you lads?  Lots of amazing emails from co-workers though. I’m bowled over by the positive comments I’ve been getting about my performance over the years.

I’ve now had two companies that I’ve done work for in the past approach me and let me know that if I’m available, they’re hiring. I might enter back into the world of contracting if this keeps up. Looks like working like a crazy loon has paid off after all.

Ride Entry – 25th November 2009

Bike:Van Tuyl
Distance: 25 miles

Proper hard work out. It seems the pace is increasing each week at these sessions with some seriously quick guys setting the pace very fast indeed. I am developing an intense dislike for one of the blokes who goes though. He’s a fucking bellend to put things bluntly. This night he nearly caused one of the biggest pileups I’ve ever seen by completely ignoring the coach’s orders, racing round like a child so he could catch the other group (the coach said if that happens make sure you stay 4 or 5 bike lengths behind them), the guy on the blue line saw his group go under, dropped down to tag on the back and nearly ran smack into this guys group who were way too close. With the pack up above and the two groups of four on the black line the chap had nowhere to go and only just avoided going under everyone’s wheels by lurching back up and accelerating up in front of the main pack.

He complained to the coach at the end quite rightly about this knob head and when the coach told him, he just laughed and thought it was a joke. If I was the coach I’d have made sure he knew it wasn’t a joke that if he pulled a stunt like that again I’d have his accreditation off him. But he’s one of the blue eyed sprinters so everyone smiled about it and it was all forgotten. Cock.

I resign

Now *that* feels like a huge weight has lifted from my shoulders.

Ride Entry – 22nd November 2009

Bike:Vela
Distance: 92 miles

Lawks!! Proper ride. Almost 2000m of climbing, seriously strong winds, plenty of rain and all on a small packet of Roundtree Randoms!! The human body is amazing!

(Click for biggerer)

The hills would have been fine and certainly most of the way to Keithley I was proper caning it, 19mph average up to that point and anyone who knows the climb out of Hebden over to Keithley will be nodding in awe right now. After that, well the reason for my earlier high speeds became apparent as I found the wind blowing into my face, properly hard. Most downhills I’d find myself pedalling hard just to keep moving and one memorable, quite steep hill saw me doing 9mph despite me pounding on the pedals dramatically.

And it rained. Not *all* the time it has to be said but quite a lot and many different varieties. I know I should have taken it to a century but by the time I got home I was so wet, cold and knackered I just called it a day.

117 miles for the week, lucky I pulled this one out of the bag.

Oh and that takes me just past last years total, nice.

Ride Entry – 17th November 2009

Bike: Van Tuyl
Distance:25 miles

At first I didn’t want to go. Very tired from little sleep, felt a bit sick, just wanted to go home and get into bed for a couple of hours. But I did in the end. I’m glad I did. It was a good session. Fast at times, recovery pace with the A session tends to be a bit faster than normal and when we do sprints and the like, these boys really move. That said, the amount of tactical manouvering that goes on is ridiculous, it’s a training session! Yes, there’s some races but they’re not *proper* races.

You wouldn’t know it though. The instant the coach tells us what we’re doing you can see them positioning themselves so they have to do the minimum amount of work before the actual race begins. And then they’ll not work hard in interval training to save themslves for the sprint. The sprinters will beat people but *only* just beat them, and then drop out of the exercise.

(I refer to ‘they’ and ‘them’. It’s a select group of guys who turn up and treat the SQT as an excuse to show everyone how good they are.)

They’re not so quick though. I’m a 40 odd year old ex smoker with only a few months proper track experience and when they go for a sprint, they’re not getting too far ahead of me. I never was a sprinter though, never will be. Always been an endurance guy and today’s end game was great for me. The coach told us to just ride and change every half lap so immediately the pace shot through the roof and we were thundering round dropping people left right and centre. The sprinters all fell off pretty quick leaving a hardcore group of about ten. As the pace rose, and the lap count rapidly increased, more and more dropped out until just five of us were caning it round like a train. Fantastic! More stuff like that please. Really enjoyed that last event.

Cutting the velodrome visits down to one a week though. The cost in petrol and track charges (not to mention time)  are a little too expensive I’m afraid. In the new year I’ll hopefully be joining the track league and trying my hand at some races.

Foil hat time? I’m not sure it’s going to work.

You’ll remember that I’ve not ridden a bike for about a month, without getting soaked to the skin. I automatically assumed this was simple bad luck, and a cumulation of circumstances. It is after all, the rainy season. I now believe different.

Yesterday was the only day this week that I could commute. I’ve got the velodrome tonight, working on a different site Wednesday and Thursday and I’m working from home Friday. So the plan was to commute yesterday, velodrome tonight, ride maybe Wednesday or Thursday night and have an ‘offsite visit’ on Friday.

So I get up, bright and early Monday morning, (after working till 1am I might add), to the sound of heavy rain. Now normally I;d just get on my bike an go but you know what? I really could not be arsed. I really could not be arsed, getting onto a wet bike, riding to work in near zero visibility with lorries and cars spraying gallons of water over me, of getting a 15 mile long enema and of stripping off my sopping wet clothes and hanging them on the radiator at work knowing that it would either not have enough warmth to dry them for the return trip or some cunt would throw them on the floor. So I went back to bed.

This morning, bearing in mind riding in is not possible today, imagine my surprise when I looked out the window to see a PERFECT commuting morning looking back at me. Not just ok, but absolutely fecking perfect. Lovely clear sky, dry winter glow, dry ground, crisp (but not too cold) air, bang on, grade A….perfect.

I’m willing to bet, that we see exactly the same Wednesday and Thursday too (although the weather will turn nasty in the evening). I’m also willing to bet, that by Friday, we’re back to rainy city again.

The *only* explanation for this, is that someone is reading my thoughts and adjusting the weather accordingly. Now obviously anyone with a thought reading machine can do this, but adjusting the weather correspondingly is a trickier task. I looked on Amazon but they don’t sell rain makers. So it’s got to be god. The only question is, why, is god targetting me so? I’m not a bad person, there’s certainly a lot worse out there, so what is it that makes him hate me so……

Got it.

He’s jealous of my idylic existance. It bothers him that an earth bound mortal should have such a perfect life. Yes, that’s it.

Jealous? No. Not me, no sir.

I take my son and his friend to indoor skate parks a lot. At least one day of most weekends I’ll find myself sat in a carpark for two/three hours or in a ‘parents room’ in a big warehouse with some old newspapers and a telly from 1971.  Both of them are very into skateboarding and I’m pleased to say they get out as much as they can to do it and are getting better. And in today’s age, anything that gets them out doing exercise is good, right? Not that there’s anything needs doing with his physique, he’s only 14 and has a six pack.

Anyway, an ipod touch saved my sanity on these long, long waits. It’s all very well being interested in what your kids do but watching them do the same cheesy stunt 17 times in a row gets a bit tiresome after a while.

Today we went to skate uk in Stockport and after a couple of hours playing on my ipod and reading books, I thought I’d go in and have a look and see what they were up to.

Holy cow! They have both progressed from ‘ok I guess’, to ‘actually pretty fucking good’. Both of them can jump off a 2 foot high ramp, they can both do 180 turns on a ramp. My son can do long manuals on his back wheels and they can both do kickflips (jump up off the board and make it spin round so you land on it after it’s done a 180 degrees). I was gobsmacked. My son finished off by putting a load of tricks together and then rode into the peanut bowl and pumped out of the other side.

I was into skareboarding when I was a kid but had nothing like these skills. Little git.

Ride Entry – 15th November 2009

Bike:Van Tuyl
Distance: 40 miles

4 hour session.

First two hours was an A+B SQT session with the big boys. Nice hard workout. One chap managed to snap his crank retaining bolt and off his cranks came. He did well to keep it up, amazing how fast it all happened, me and the lad in front of me were right behind him and we were all going full tilt doing the coaches new invention which shall now be known as ‘the cranksnapper’. QUality entertainment. We had a scratch race where the pace got totally awesome. I got dropped in the last couple of laps but we were really going absolutely balls flat out. I reckon I was the oldest in the last 5 sprinters over the line.

Second session was helping out at an induction but we still rode quite quickly at times. Another scratch race, at least I came second in this one, and then only behind by a wheel of a clearly experienced bloke. I quite fancy some proper racing. I know I’m well quicker than one of the guys who races and he was telling me he has won a few in his class, and I doubt he’s a vet. Best bit of this session was we did the derny. After we’d all had a go behind the derny the coach opened it right up. WOOOOO!!! How fast were we going??? Blimey, the compression in the corners was immmense.