The training is done. Last ride – which was more of a spin – was today with my cycling club (who most likely had forgotten my existence, as I’ve been off doing longer rides etc in training). 62.5 miles, to get it to the Rapha #womens100 ride as well.
Attempted DIY 400k = 360k
Almost, but not quite – I would have kept going out if it was an event, but it wasn’t and so I didn’t.
I thought it would be a useful testing ground for a few things, and so it proved – although some of the things tested were unexpected.
It’s all in the details
Details, and some more details, and things like that – I’ve been amusing myself by tweaking parts of the bike. Besides cycling, I also tend to take photographs (theatre productions, landscapes, architecture, random stuff) and I came across these headset spacers in the form of lens rings … which led to an ongoing quest to see how many bike parts I could find, in the form of camera parts.
Random kit update
Socks: not always the most interesting thing in the world, but some are better than others. I’ve basically settled on Kalf mid-length (ankle, in other words) reflective socks.
Ride high, ride long(ish)
Settling into a sigh of relief – Coast to Coast in a day has been done and done in a near-identical time to last time (which was three years ago and 10 kg less). So my fitness isn’t as under-trained as I’d thought it might be – the ride is 150 miles and 11,000ft climbing (not entirely evenly spread). That’s a lot more climbing than on any stage of LEL.
… still noodling & experimenting
As ever, work gets in the way – and I felt lousy through last weekend so decided that sanity dictated some rest. A pub ride this week dispelled some lingering paranoia that all fitness might have disappeared.
Skewers and the devil
Skewers have arrived. Wheels will be sorted … any day now. Just need some time.
Last weekend’s long ride was the London Ditchling Devil, at 204km with 8000ft of climbing (yes, yes, I should do that in metres … but the feet go by faster!). I finished about an hour earlier than I had anticipated, which I’m thrilled by – the overall elevation gain is approximately the same as the hardest stage of LEL, so that’s a reasonable test (and the hills are harder/steeper than on LEL).
Still amused by the number of other cyclists who find it amazing that I ride alone, and tend to say that they couldn’t … I find it difficult to ride with others, worrying that I slow them up! And I also don’t much like taking breaks (see the title of this blog …!), preferring to plod on.
Kit assembling
Dynamo wheelset has been completed (Son 28 hub, Archetype rims, DT Comp double-butted spokes) and brought home; now I need to install the cassette and tyres/tubes (the bits you always forget about in costings; I’m too lazy to shift them from one wheelset to the other. The wheels do have rim tape, though). The dynamo front light has also been acquired and the wiring sorted (spade connecters added on, heat shrink tubing shrunk).
I still need a bracket to turn up to fit the light to the underside of the Carradice bag (the alternative is clamping it onto the brake bolt and I refuse to mess with the brakes when they are working!), and I’ve ordered some new skewers for the wheels (yeah, I thought they’d come with, but apparently not …)
Also acquired a bell (a splurge, on the Spurcycles bell), and I’m waiting for some custom bar end plugs to finish the tape install (I’ve added Specialized Bar Phat gel pads and tape in the hopes of reducing some hand numbness; early indications are that it does in fact fulfil that hope).
Musings and so on
New saddle has been broken in (yes, yes, the Cambium isn’t supposed to need it. Well, either it or my sitbones needed so time and miles to sort themselves out – but they seem to have done so).
Saddles and so on
A short ride today, trying out a new saddle: enough has hurt over the last week or so that I clearly need some sort of alternative point of contact on the bike for long rides. The Brooks Cambium I’ve been using has been fine for 100+ miles; it was a bit uncomfortable towards the end of the 200k ride a few weeks back, but that could have been the shorts. Somewhere around 300k into LWL, though, it was pretty clear that Things Were Not Fine.
Experiment now is with a Brooks Cambium Carved (C17 version); partly on the “well, it almost worked, see if a tweak changes anything” principle. On the face of 17 miles today (when still sore …) it may well do the job. The principal test will be next weekend, with back to back imperial centuries (more or less; the second day isn’t quite so far).
I’ve also reworked my audax schedule a bit; I don’t think I need to do another 400k – having checked/rechecked the LEL route against my time start and so on, I don’t need to do more than 200 miles a day (on the basis of sleeping at controls). Training to do a harder ride has some basis in sense but I think I would be better served with doing 300k rides instead, as that’s closer to what I will be riding, and to try to do a couple of back to back (I have a 600k – which is effectively that) already booked.
There aren’t any 300k rides within reasonable distance near here, at least not in the time frame I need, so I’m planning to do a permanent from Cambridge out to Norfolk etc (yes, flat – but the all-ways-round headwind usually makes up for it).
Bonus: that’ll qualify me for the Super Randonneur audax award (200, 300, 400 and 600k rides in one audax season).