Giant Pygmy

So, last week was officially a ‘Medium’ week with respect to training load but due to work commitments in London I only managed to get in 37 miles commuting.  I added 40 miles on Sunday in the wintery cold but not at a pace that I could call training; more a social ride.   It’s still early in the year so I’m not worrying yet. I have bought one of the Sufferfest videos to try and give me some interest in using the turbo trainer but I’ve yet to give it a try.  Hopefully I’ll get my tax return out of the way this week and that will give me some time to concentrate on kicking my own arse in the garage!

Weeks 2: 77 Miles, No Beer!

Ok,  so it’s all a bit dated around here and it’s not been touched for over a year, but hey! at least it’s still here and so am I.

After 2009 and my Etape adventure I’ve been hankering after a new challenge; last summer was ok but it didn’t set the world alight.  The biggest day out was the ToB Tour Ride of the longest stage of the tour; Me and Jonesy decided to really stretch it so we rode to the start in Bury StEdmunds from home (40 miles) before the 7:00am start.  Then we rode the 124 mile stage with a load of Iceni Velo folk until Diss when the arse fell out of Jonesy world and we he bonked in style!  We nursed each other to the finish and I logged 176 miles for the day; a BIG day out!

Other than that it was the ‘usual’ fare of Norwich 100, Dunwich Dynamo and a lot of small group rides (all good) and the new end of season special the Cambridge to Norwich which I rode on my own and,  after a false start and thanks in part to a tail wind, I rode 20.1Mph for the whole 77 miles!  I started a Facebook page to organise group rides with people around my village and after a slow start it’s started to take off; so much so that 5 (maybe 6) of us have signed up for the next big challenge…

The Marmotte!  Yep; 7th July this summer I’m submitting myself to the 104 miles and 5000 metres of climbing that is the hardest single day sportive in France!  My entry is in, the Accommodation and the transport are booked.  All I need is to drop 10kg and get my racing legs back!!

Week 1 of January was worth 117 miles and I’ve kicked the booze into touch for a bit.  There’s a good way to go but I’ve made the first step.  More updates as we get into training proper!

Just testing out this new version, I’ve been a bit dubious about blogging on iPhone since using the old version of the wordpress app and losing two lengthy posts!

Anyway, this is pretty much a test so here’s a photo of me at the top of the col de la Colombiere from my summer holiday!

Actually, those photos aren’t on this phone so this is me and Frank at the top of Dunkery Beacon during the Tour of Wessex this May. That’s a nasty old climb!

I have to say that a lot of people seem to be ‘dissing’ 2009 as an awful year and expectantly looking forward to 2010.  Not so for me, 2009 was a fantastic year! I started the year with a entry to L’etape and a whole load of training in prospect, slightly overweight and about to turn 40.  Sitting here now I’m happy to say that everything went according to, or better than, plan and I achieved all my goals and a few extras for good measure.   I recorded 6002 miles in training, commuting and competing – that’s 50% more than last year’s 4034 miles.

The year itself looked a bit like this:

Feb – Hell of the Ashdown

March – Comic Relief monkey bike craziness

May – Chiltern 100

June – Norwich 100

July – Dunwich Dynamo

July – L’Etape du tour

October – Dusk til Dawn (Post race report never blogged – I was proper broken though! 9 laps, 50th place in category)

So, there you have it.  A year told in a few short words.  It was fun all through and I’d do it all again.  In other areas of life things are just as good; I enjoyed my 40th birthday with my family and closest friends in a fabulous hideaway on the north Norfolk coast.  The kids continue to consume my entire being, my photography business continues to thrive and to top it off work hasn’t been all bad either, I even got a promotion recently – went back to people management for a bit of variety!

What about this year then, what are my plans?  Well, the current thinking is to attempt the Tour of Wessex in May, an all-comers 3 days stage race covering 325 miles over the later-of-the-two bank-holiday weekend.  Accommodation shouldn’t be a problem as the start village is about 10 miles from the in-laws house!  That will be followed by Norwich 100 and the Dunwich Dynamo in July.  My wife has almost committed to riding the 50 mile variant of the Norwich course which will be a huge achievement for her, I’m looking forward to helping her train.  After that, who knows?  The pain of the my D2D experience has faded enough for me to consider doing it again and I’d like to have a crack at the Summer Series races in Thetford – I feel like I should spend more time on my MTB this year.

Thanks for following the vagaries of my wittering on here through 2009; there’s more to come this year, I’m sure of it.  Happy trails.

That the crazy notion of riding D2D solo this year isn’t meant to be.  Not only am I struggling with motivation to train properly, I’m also having lots of niggly issues with the bike and general bad luck all round.  Maybe I should bin this one and have another beer?

So, I managed to get the Hope XC rear hub reassembled after buying the correct tool from CRC (in hindsight this was SO the right thing to do and would have saved several hours or cursing and a couple of skinned nuckles!) Then when I got it back onthe bike found that the back brake was binding; this I sorted out by stripping out the rear caliper and having a good old clean, reassembling and bleeding thoroughly – quite satisfying in its own way, apart from the subsequent discovery that the rear disc rotor is slightly warped and is part of the rubbing problem, causing a low speed squeal – not nice.

So, I bought a replacement rotor from Superstar components, cheap and cheerful.  I bought a 160mm in the belief that that was what I was running – note, check before ordering – cue Family Fortunes *honk*, nope: mine are 145’s.  Bugger.  Small rotors are not so easy to come by these days, i’m old school now it seems, so I still have an annoying dragging back brake.  At least it gave me an excuse to clean the gunk out of the rear lever and make that nice and shiny and non-stick again!

Oh yeah, Lights.  I’d been offered the potential loan of an USE Exopsure Maxx Daddy but that fell through – no matter, plan B was to run the Dinotte light on my helmet and run my Solidlights 1203D (recently ungraded to XB2) from the Nexus dynohub wheel that’s hanging in the garage.  May not be loads of light but it would certainly last all night without any hassle.  Tested the XB2/Nexus setup at the weekend; that’s right, it doesn’t work!  That leaves me with my Dinotte, one battery and about 5 hours runtime on medium.  Not enough and no backup.  Grr.

I rode the superlight to work on Friday and the wider Q-Factor really stood out.  I need to get some miles on it this week if I’m going to be half way ready for a 12 hour stint.  This morning I took the Planet X to work, probably not the wisest choice in retrospect but I needed to cover the ground quicker than fat tyres would allow.  I’m my own worst enemy most of the time.

What I need is a cunning plan…