Cycling to work to avoid stress

I read this lovely article from the Daily Mail site yesterday and at first I thought it was complete rubbish (this is the Daily Mail after all….) but then after looking at the suggestions from the research I’m not so sure it all ties up.

Yes I suppose by riding to work I’m putting myself into a “dangerous” situation, exposing myself to the various pollutants in the air etc. but I’m sure this isn’t just a blanket effect for everyone who cycles, after all I’m getting a decent work out each day so surely this must offset some of the risk?

Also the perception of danger varies from person to person. I don’t have any issues dealing with the busy London roads, it’s almost become second nature now! If anything I feel more stressed when I’m using PT as there are timetables to follow, interchanges to make between trains and the undergroud and if any one of those is missed then it usually entails a fair bit of waiting around and wasting time. I quite like using my time productively so a 15 minute wait for the next train to me is viewed as roughly 3 miles cycling to my destination 🙂

There are also other nice side effects of exercise such as actually acting as a de-stresser and I honestly couldn’t believe how much better I felt yesterday after my ride, my first day back on the bike since rather stupidly shutting my fingers in the door of the family car on Valentines Day. Since then I’ve been fairly unbearable and in a foul mood, the brunt of which my wife and children have had to deal with. If I don’t get a chance to blow off that excess energy it just build up to the point where I become rather short tempered. This was compounded by the fact that I had to use public transport to get around for work and the fact that the injury that meant I was off the bike was entirely my own stupid fault!

I can’t imagine the strain of all that stress was good for me and even I could tell I was much calmer having got in from the ride home last night! Incidentally last night was the first time since last summer/early autumn that I’ve been able to ride in a short sleeved top and it felt great, nothing beats the sensation of wind on bare skin and I was absolutely belting around in London before hitting the hills in Crystal Palace which I positively glided up with none of my usual asthmatic warthog impressions 🙂

Not just a cyclist

I’m not just a cyclist.

I’m the computer guy. The one everyone comes to with their tales of woe about this not working and the weird error messages they get. It’s running slow. It’s not running at all. No problem, I’ll come round and have a look, I enjoy helping people and the occasional chance to learn something new each time always has me hunting out the more mundane problems.

I’m a brother. To just a single person, but I can blame my parents for that 🙂 We may have had our differences growing up but I think we are past that all now. We’ve both grown up and are doing are own things now. He does some super-complicated physics stuff which makes my brain hurt just trying to understand the title on his papers……

I’m a son. I had it fairly good growing up. I was very lucky in this respect and it’s a point I don’t think I’ll fully appreciate for a good while yet.

I’m a husband. I started fairly early on that one by most peoples standards. I’ll have been a husband for 10 years come end of May this year. That’s almost just over 1/3 of my life! I may not be a brilliant husband but I like to think of it as a learning experience. I apparently have a lot to learn but do have a lifetime to do so 🙂

I’m a father. To 6 wonderful children, I’m so proud of them! Despite the constant struggle with them to tidy their room, put things away, going to bed in the evening and waking up in the morning I wouldn’t swap them for anything and can’t imagine my life without them. It only takes one smile from them and suddenly everything in the world seems right.

I’m a helmet cam user. This is a fairly recent development as I only got the camera last Christmas. I’ve found it rather beneficial as not only can I record both the good and bad behaviour of other road users I can also capture my own. I don’t sit down and review the whole of every ride but I can easily go back to certain key situations to see if there was anything I think I could have done better. They say you have perfect vision in hindsight and it’s even better when that vision in presented in 720p on a 40″ screen 🙂 I’ve contributed clips to a friends video series entitled Silly Cyclists. I’ve even had a comment left on my Youtube channel thanking me for my contributions which was remarkably satisfying to read 🙂

I’m a commuter. Unfortunately I can’t send the kids out to work yet so I have to go. As I don’t (often) work from home I need to get from my house to place of work. I sometimes use the a bus and sometimes use a train. But most of the time I’ll get there under my own steam (well actually sweat….) which brings me to my next point.

I’m a cyclist. This is probably fairly obvious to those who have read this my previously (yes both of you ;-)) and to be fair the URL is a bit of a giveaway. Combine this with the previous point above and this is where I get to do most of my riding. This however seems to annoy some people as they routinely place me in danger for apparently no reason. Since getting my camera I’ve been highlighting these people on Youtube and there is one common theme, quite a few of the incidents I’ve recorded could have been avoided had the driver been a little more patient.

I’m sure my friends, family and employer would be hugely overwhelmed that I won’t be around to sort out their computer issues all because you couldn’t wait a couple of seconds to overtake me safely instead of speeding past mere inches from my handlebars.

My brother is very intelligent, I’m sure he’ll understand that you had something really important to do. So important that you feel it necessary to race into a disappearing gap between me and a traffic island, after all the cyclist will bounce off your car.

Despite what she says sometimes I’m fairly sure my wife would prefer if I came home every night. I appreciate following a cyclist at 20mph when you could be doing 30mph may waste a few precious seconds, but is 5 seconds worth more then my life?

I know we all have a job to do and we like to do that to the best of our ability. I like to teach my kids to work hard so I hope they’ll understand when daddy comes home injured because some taxi driver is so intent on getting his fare around quickly he completely overlooks me riding next to him and cuts me up. I should consider myself lucky though, at least he was one of the ones that knows what his indicators are for…

Thankfully so far the only accident I have caught on camera is due to my own stupidity and I got away with it relatively un-scathed. I’m just hoping these are the only type I capture.

All I’m asking is for drivers to see me as more then just another cyclist. I could be your IT technician. I could be your brother. I could be your father. I could be your husband. Just because I choose a different way to get around please respect my decision. After all if I’m on my bike it’s one more seat on the train or one car less on the road.

New gadgets

Well I’ve now taken the plunge and become a fully fledged helmet cam cyclist! The helmet mount for the Contour arrived last Wednesday and I’ve started videoing my rides 🙂

It’s rather interesting having a camera that records your every action. Some people seem to be under the impression that helmet cam riders get into more conflicts or seek out chances to put themselves in danger. I actually think it’s quite the opposite. Since getting my camera I’m thinking more about my actions, it’s all well and good saying or even thinking I’m a good cyclist but I now can back that up or disprove it with the video.

My wife has so far refused to watch any of my recordings. I think we sat down and watched some parts of the very first recordings I did with the Contour but this was mainly out of her interest in wanting to see the quality of the captured footage. She has heard and read the tales of my exploits in The Game and knows I can be a little bit of a daredevil! This isn’t helped by the wide angle of the camera making some of the gaps I filter into appear a lot narrower then they actually are in real life, again this is great for reflecting on your riding as I have thought a few times “Bloody hell that was tight!”.

As has now become common with helmet cam wearing cyclists I want to share both the good and the bad things that I capture whilst out riding. So far I’ve posted one instance of bad driving and contributed some footage towards another bloggers video as we both captured the same incident after bumping into each other whilst commuting to London last Friday. I’m sure as I complete more rides with the camera I’ll build up a good collection of (hopefully) both the good and bad. Also since appearing on Gaz’s video I’ve had a flood of views and news subscribers (hello if your reading this!) so I now feel even more obliged to upload some quality content 🙂

I can’t say that since starting to use the camera I’ve noticed an increase in the amount of good and bad driving I’ve noticed, yes I may be more aware of when it happens as I can now make a mental note to find and review it later in the day. In any case feel free to checkout my Youtube channel, there isn’t much on there yet but I still have potentially another couple of small incidents I can add once I pull out the video from last week, nothing too serious though just a red light jumping motorbike and some ninja cyclsts 😉

The attentive among you may also be wondering what the second gadget was? Well spotted! This one is yet another camera, a Muvi-clone that I’m hoping to get properly mounted to the rear of the bike. I’m currently on the 2nd iteration of the mount but it’s not too stable and the captured video is useless unless I’m sat at lights! I have plans to make a sturdier mount but other little projects around the house keep getting in the way so for the time being it’s only forward facing footage!

New Year

So here we are, almost a year after I setup this blog to track my efforts to complete a century ride all I have to show is less then a dozen posts!

I don’t think however I can quite measure 2010 in blog posts though as not only did I successfully complete the original goal of completing the Magnificat I had some fairly significant non-cycling related things happen. For starters we had our 6th child this year!! In what I can only really describe as one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever witnessed my wonderful wife birthed her in a birth pool in the living room without any help!

It was recorded as a delivery before arrival as she arrived before any medical help, it all happened so quickly that I don’t honestly think we could have gotten anyone in quick enough to help but that’s a whole other post!

On another family related note my eldest turned 10, I now feel rather old knowing that I have a child who is a decade old! It’s been a very exciting decade so I can’t really complain 🙂

So where does this leave me for 2011? Well one thing that doing the Magnificat showed me last year, asides from the fact that I can ride my bike effectively from London to Bristol in a single day, is that I rather enjoyed the “working towards a goal” part. As the previous posts will testify I felt a great sense of achievement as I started pushing my previous personal bests on the fortnightly Sunday rides I was completing. It didn’t matter if it was lapping Richmond Park or the 80 mile jaunt that I went on and somehow managed to a) miss Box Hill and b) not get lost in doing so!

So for this year I’ve set myself a rather different target, instead of riding more miles I want to ride on fewer wheels! Now I don’t mean something “simple” like learning how to pop a wheelie I mean a proper single wheeled ride – a unicycle! This was partly prompted by a local LBS having a sale on and finding I could purchase one for 40 notes!

That was the only colour they had left!

As the caption says that was the literally the last one they had left and I wasn’t really ready to pay half that again just to get it in chrome. Besides I have 5 girls and at least 4 of them seem rather interested in learning how to ride, hence returning to the shop the following day to get a 16″ model! Unfortunately I’ve had to put my practising on hold for the minute as I’ve discovered it has a leaky valve. Just waiting for the local Halfords to open so I can pop down for a new inner tube! Some quick googling has provided me with some helpful hints and those who follow me on Twitter will be painfully aware I found a “few” unicycle videos on Youtube 🙂

I was also rather fortunate that for Christmas Santa brought me some more bike tech! I’ll probably do a blog post for this itself put in summary I’m now the increasing collection of cyclist who record their journeys as I’m now the proud owner of a ContourHD and a MiniDV Muvi-clone camera. I’m still waiting on the helmet mount for the Countour but do have some footage from the MiniDV but will save that for it’s own post.

So it looks like 2011 is going to be a fun one for me, must be at least 20-25 years since I first learnt to ride a bike and I decide to go and try and learn again!

 

Relight my fire

Been a while since I’ve posted on here so I thought I’d try and start again.

I got a phone call from one of my friends last night asking if I had anything planned and could they pop over? Of course I said! Never one to turn down an evening of company he then also asked would I like a bonfire 🙂 Burning things has always been a proper “man thing” so off I went to help him finish taking apart his dad’s old garden bench and load it into my car (some rather large pieces of wood).

The first nice surprise of the night was pulling up outside my friends parents house and finding a (the possibly THE) Team Sky Jaguar parked up! It looked like the team car with the left hand drive, antennas and mini satellite dish and screens throughout but it was also loaded up with 4 bikes, which from some estimates of the price of a complete team bike I reckon it had about £50K worth of bike on board 😀

Once I peeled myself away from that, helped my mate finish removing the last few screws and took it back to mine we got cracking on the bonfire. We’re rather proud of this one as it was probably one of the best controlled ones we’ve had. So much so I had to get a picture of the “before” and took some during.You’ll have to excuse the quality on that one, took it with my phone as didn’t have the proper camera out yet.

Once it got going it went off really well. The fire stayed pretty much where we wanted it until it collapsed after the central support had burnt enough. I was snapping pics of the flames as I just love the organic nature of the flames and capturing them still is great. Here’s my personal favourite:

The reason I liked this one was the contrast between the piece of burnt wood in the foreground and the fire in the back with another piece just visible in the middle. After this it carried on burning in a very nice and manageable way and eventually ended up with a small(ish) pile of burning embers. On inspection this morning I now have a bit less grass in the garden but it’s always worth it 🙂

The Waiting Game

As the old saying goes “a watched pot never boils” I’m thinking it may also have some relevance to expectant mothers!

Those who already know me will probably also be aware that I’m a rather good poster-child for the fact that cycling DOESN’T effect your fertility. Like many of the cycling greats such as Lance Armstrong and Chris Boardman I have also spawned enough off-spring to partially fill a pro-cycling team 🙂 At present I have 5 wonderful children (I write that after having spent a great day with them, I would have used different words last weekend :-)) and am currently eagerly awaiting for no. 6 to arrive.

The due date was sometime last week. I say “sometime” as we can never really rely on the traditional methods of ageing the little person growing inside my wife as we bred them rather large, our smallest so far being 9lb 7oz, so using the fetal size it is generally off by a week or so and don’t even ask me to try and guess a due date from conception date 😉 As the last 5 children have all arrived at 41 weeks we are certainly on the “home-straight” now and I’m poised on red-alert at work to make a mad dash home should it all kick off during the working day.

It turns out we also couldn’t have picked a better year to have our only summer baby, the recent heatwave that hit the south of England has coincided perfectly with the later weeks of the pregnancy meaning that my poor wife has been rather un-comfortable as she doesn’t do well in the heat at best of times, let alone having to lug around a small person inside her! It has however cooled off a little so she is a bit more comfortable now so we can only hope that the little active devil inside her makes an appearance sooner rather then later. We are hoping for another home-birth like we had with no.4 as it truly was one of the most wonderful experiences in my life – she arrived in the early hours of the morning and within 2 hours or so I was tucked up in bed with the 2 of them! It also made for a nice surprise in the morning when the 3 big sisters woke up and found we had a new member of the family 😀

Undoubtedly my next posting on here will be a birth announcement 🙂 Either that or I’ll be sitting around waiting for the new baby to arrive contemplating what sportive to enter next year !

Magnificat – The (late) ride report

Having reminded myself where I finished last time I’m ready to recount the rest of the ride!

As we set off in our largish group of 50 or so riders it was amazing. We had a presence large enough to command control of the road and had officials waving us across the roundabout on the main road! It was probably the closest I’ll get to how the riders on Le Tour feel without doing the Etape Calendonia or the actual Etape (one day!)

The pace was certainly higher then I anticipated but riding in a large group meant it was a bit easier then going at it solo, however after a few miles we decided the pace was probably a little to hot for little group of 3 and let the fast group go, along with our 2 other friends who where in training for much tougher rides 🙂 We soon formed out own mini pelaton and made good progress to the first first feed station at around 38 miles. Before that however we had the “Scorpion Tail” triple whammy combo of hills! I believe this was a 20% climb, followed by a 14% then a 10% which resulted in us getting up and over the highest point in south England. As usual the reward for a few minutes climbing was stunning views across a beautiful landscape – something you’d easily miss when on 4 wheels in a metal box but is quite easy to take in at a leisurely 8-10mph whilst trying your best to control your breathing 🙂 And of course what goes up must come down, much faster! Descents are probably an even nicer reward then the views but one I was wary of to start with as I wasn’t to confident of my descending skills. As I got more comfortable I was using the brakes less and the speeds starting picking up, such huge fun!

We made it to the feed station in good shape, despite me managing to drop my chain on the roller coaster-esque approach as we went up and down a rather fun stretch of rolling “bumps”, I managed to knock it off on a down section so coasted in my most aero position in an effort to get as high up the next hill as possible before hopping off to put the chain back on. I said to my mates to carry on as I was still feeling fresh I thought that making up a 45 second gap could be fun. I just missed a extremely fast moving Torq train of riders but got on the back of another group of riders and was soon tooling along at a good rate of knots again and once we hit a downhill I opened the taps and tried to chase down the Torq train. At that point I spotted my mates waiting so eased off a bit and we re-grouped and actually caught up with our original group – no guessing which riders did all the work for them eh?

After re-filling water bottles and stuffing some banana and lovely sugary sponge cake down my throat we set off again however we had to stop after a few miles as Rob was cramping up. He’d fallen off the back after some of the rolling sections so we pulled over to wait for him. Plenty of fluids, an energy gel, pain killers and stretching meant Rob was ready to go after about 10 minutes. I took the chance to get rid of my arm and knee warmers which certainly weren’t needed now as the ever improving weather had got to a pretty much perfect cycling temperature!

After setting off I took the lead, as I was probably the freshest of our trio and we pressed on towards a “drag climb”. What this actually turned out to be was a climb with a nice gentle gradient that went on for a couple of miles. As I was going up I kept checking behind me and seeing a person in blue gear and thought nothing off it. I thought Rob had gone off the back again and Stephen was behind me but it wasn’t until I got to the flat section that I realized the person in blue behind me didn’t have a familiar face! I couldn’t see Stephen back down the road so carried on riding.

That was around 55-60 miles and from then I pretty much spent the rest of the ride counting down miles to rest stops on my computer and hopping between little groups of riders. I’d go from riding solo and seeing a rider on the road ahead and catching them. If it was a couple of people or the terrain starting heading up or down we might have ridden together for a while but eventually I’d get off the front and lose them again and the process would repeat again. I had a few riders who where a bit more persistant and took a good few miles to shake off! One who springs to mind was an older chap aboard also aboard a Giant bike, although I think his was a TCR (the carbon version of mine!) Rather skinny looking legs but he certainly could climb and had a decent turn of speed on the flat! I managed to eventually shake him on a long straight followed by a downhill section!

My next “goal” was the final control at 81 miles, which would not only be my final chance to get food on-board (or so I thought) but signify a point which every mile beyond it was pushing me into a new personal best. I set off from that control thinking “well lets see how you cope with this!” and again starting clock watching on the computer as I counted down towards my next goal – 19 miles down the route when I crack the century! As the old saying goes a watched pot never boils and I found glancing at the computer every 5 minutes didn’t make the miles disappear any faster, if anything they seemed to drag more 😀

After a few more fun downhills the computer started getting closer to the magical triple digit distance……it was an incredible feeling to see it tick over from 99.9 to 100.0 and I let out a rather loud “yes!” as I celebrated my little victory of covering 100 miles using nothing but my bike – an immensely satisfying feeling, now I just had to finish and with about 80% of the ride behind me I was feeling pretty good now.

After that it was just a case of grinding out the miles, with that niggling voice in the back of my head reminding me of the warning in the route description. Warning of The Wall that is Ashford Hill and appears at the 110 mile mark. A 10% hill thrown in by the sadistic route planners to really test our mettle! As we approached on the main road a sign on the right announced the arrival of “Ashford Hill”. It started off with a couple of gentler, short and sharp climbs which saw me searching for the granny gear for the first time that day. That however wasn’t the 10% “wall” that didn’t arrive until we took a left and saw the signs warning us as the road rose up in front of us and wound through the trees. It was a nice little climb. Not overly long and thanks to the low gearing and my knowing not to race up it I made it up in fairly good shape.

One more water and basic feed station before the dash for the finish allowed me to refill my bottle and get a few pieces of banana down me. The road around the edge of the town (can’t remember the name now) that they chose for the final stretch was very nice, not as exposed to the wind as one previous section of the route which practically saw us riding along the edge of a ridge, with winds gusting across us and over the fields to our right. It was a great feeling to see the 12% signs for the final glide descent to the finish line. Soon I was on roads that I recognized which could only mean that the racecourse was nearby!

I rode back into the finish with an immense feeling of satisfaction, I’d done it! My first proper sportive and after jumping in at the very deep end I’d popped up and pulled myself out of the water at the shallow end. I done it – 127 miles under my own steam on my bike!!

Of course having completed this I now need a bigger challenge! Without heading out to Europe and taking on a few Cols I think this leaves me with a few options: The Dragon Ride – certainly do-able as it’s only in Wales, maybe one for next year. After that I think I’ll need to head up North and tackle some “proper” hills as I have developed a rather (un)healthy fascination with seeing what I can get up on my bike, the Lake and Peak District look to have some rather interesting roads…….

Magnificat – Pre ride

So ride day finally arrived last Sunday – 13th June. The culmination of 6 months of preparation, a few thousand solitary miles on the bike – mainly commuting but a few hundred clocked up on my fortnightly “training” rides and about 100 miles with friends had brought be to this day. Logs had been kept of mileage and food intake (although the latter tapered off around 2 months ago) in a vain effort to focus my efforts and establish patterns for feeding. Various different energy drinks/bars/gels where tested to see which ones actually had the desired effect. All this was done so on Sunday 13th June I could see if I was capable of riding my bike further then I have ever done before and quite possibly the furthest I ever will do in a single day (at least for the next 5-10 years!)

The weekend actually started on the Friday as I made my initial preparations for the trip. Making sure I had all “my” bits that I needed such as cycling kit, food etc. I left all the other bits, rather un-fairly, to my lovely wife. We dropped the kids off at my parents house around midday on Saturday and then made our way off for the 2 1/2 hour trip to the Travelodge in Newbury, about 4 miles from the start of the ride.

We arrived and had a meal at the Little Chef next door, having got there at “just” the wrong time we couldn’t quite check into our room! Still we where both starving as it was approaching 3pm and neither of us had eaten! By the time we’d finished we where all clear to check in so that we did and found out which room we’d been assigned. The hotel felt rather claustrophobic compared to the Ibis I’m used to up in Chesterfield (the only other hotel I use as it’s the one I get booked into whenever I’m on a work’s training course!) but the room was rather nice. We overlooked a lovely forest with a massive Christmas tree in it! Unfortunately it did appear to be a bit of a mobile (or at least Virgin) signal blackhole so my plans of using my new fangled Android phone to access the tinternets was somewhat laboured as I had to keep moving phone & laptop around room to find a decent signal! Still it was a bit nostalgic as it took me back to the early 90’s when I only had 56K dial-up!

Once we’d both had a cup of tea I started looking for somewhere to eat. From past experience I knew that chicken and pasta seem to work for me so a quick Google of Harvester gave us a rough idea where to head. As it was a a) a bit early for us to eat and b) only an hour or 2 after our late lunch we weren’t in a hurry so drove off in the rough direction of Newbury Racecourse and the Harvester to have a look around. I registered and collected my jersey and race number. We then went back out and spend some time and money at the Torq tent. Very friendly couple on there and plenty of samples. I came away with some more energy gels and a 1.5KG tub of the Natural energy powder. A flavourless energy supplement that I could use to make up drinks (with my own flavour added) or add to food to increase the calorie content – 3 scoops was apparently worth a whole bowl of pasta!!

We then managed to kill some more time and spend some extra money at the amusingly named countryside store called Scats where we found a rather short D-Lock (about 4-6″) which was just perfect for locking my pride and joy down in the car to the luggage hook anchor points!

We ended up dining at The Swan as the supposed Harvester turned out to be a Toby Carvery. The Swan looked very nice on our initial drive past and it was by a little canal/river which looked lovely. I managed to balls up the order after agreeing what we’d have with the wife not-less then 5 minutes previous. Thankfully it wasn’t a grand balls up and she could actually eat a few things from the sharing platter!

I got my fix of pasta and plenty of chicken and even had a few bits to take away for post-ride food. A quick stop at a new Tesco store on the way back to the hotel meant we could get important provisions (mainly Tetley t-bags and some porridge oats!) Once we got in I had a bath (just!) and then had an early night, ready for my early start the next day!!

Up at 6am ready for my “breakfast” I was thankful we’d got the porridge in. In all honesty I think my kids may have been left wanting after the breakfast I got from Travelodge! Still I managed to mix up a warm wallpaper paste porridge (with some of the Torq powder in!) before heading down at around 7am to retrieve the bike from the car, check tyres and affix saddle bag and ride number. It was raining which is hardly ideal sportive weather and the one thing I’d been dreading as I didn’t fancy a few wet descents!

By a small stroke of luck I’d managed to book into a hotel that was actually mostly uphill from Newbury racecourse! This meant the 4 mile ride to the start could be nice and causal. I arrived feeling nicely refreshed and found my friends without many issues.

As we joined the now rather large queue to get started we spotted another couple of familiar faces who beckoned us forward. I think the initial group of 3 suspected we wouldn’t keep up with these 2 but it would be worth a crack and besides we did get a bit of a jump in the queue for a legitimate reason! As we edged closer to the start line I could feel my nerves kicking in……..I’ve never done anything like this before and what sane person willingly signs themselves up to ride 127 miles around the English countryside and a few dozen towns taking in some of southern England’s finest hills in the process? Well I guess it’s now or never as the horn sounds and we roll out……..

(At this point I’ll end this blog post as I’m aware I have a tendency to ramble! This should hopefully mean it’s not to long!! I’ll  do the actual ride report in a second post)

A Good Week

Sometimes everything just seems to click and I think I’m having one of those weeks!

It all really started last Friday when I got a surprise phone call from the mobile operator (Virgin Media) to see how I was doing with my current phone/price plan. As it happens I was having a few issues – mainly that the phone I got from them had started playing around at about 13 month old 😦 I consequently was using an older handset to tide me over until I was due my upgrade.

Turns out they could do me a “special” deal but as it transpired the phone I wanted to out of stock – silly me wanting the current popular phone! No fear tho stocks are expected back Monday and a callback was agreed.

Come Sunday and I’d decided that as a final “big ride” before the Main Event the following Sunday I’d try and complete one of my personal goals – a ride to a office I work at in Woking, the only office that I haven’t ridden to on during my normal commutes! I had a fairly straightforward route planned that basically got me to my current furthest out cycle-commute worksite in Thames Ditton and then carried on down that main road until it finished at which point I turned right onto another road that I was familiar with from my previous job-role as a field engineer! This again was a nice straight along route that meet up with my usual drive-in route for the office.

My estimations where 26ish miles which I reckoned I’d knock out in about 1 1/2 hours. I counted off the “landmarks” as I headed out. First my usual ones then I got onto the new roads. The new roads actually turned out to be great fun and I wish I had roads like that on my commute more regularly! Not to potholed, but as it was an A-road not that many stop/starts and enough undulations to keep it interesting! I passed over the A3 and M25 during the route (I get a perverse sense of satisfaction by crossing major roads!) and even got treated to a bevy of classic cars due to a show that was taking place down in Woking which pleased the petrol head side of me 🙂

I finally did it

Well there’s the obligatory pic I took to prove my feat! I checked the time when I arrived and me estimation was pretty much spot on for the door-to-door 🙂

The ride back was even more fun as I set a new PB for an average speed for a single journey – 20mph over 26.5 miles and also the whole day with 19mph for the 52 mile round trip!

Once home I gave the bike a proper good clean in preparation for the Magnificat on Sunday! The rear Crud Roadracer was removed and I swear my bike will be about 500g lighter with all the shite I washed off it! The chain is now sparkling silver again and has a nice coat of oil on 🙂

This brings me onto the week! I got the call from Virgin as expected on Monday morning and after a few brief exchanges of words I’d agreed to a new 2 year contract and was told my HTC Desire would be sent out via UPS and due to arrive Tuesday 🙂

As a bit of a surprise Tuesday went fairly quickly at the office and the traffic was kind to me meaning I got home nice and quickly to start tinkering with my new toy and I love it! Had a small scare initially as after I did a phone software update upon rebooting the HTC Sense app kept crashing 😦 This being the main GUI for the phone it meant it was looking like a fancy paperweight, however thanks to a bit of Google-Fu I found a solution which was to basically do a reset – something I was anticipating but had to find the correct procedure!

So it’s now Thursday and my last day working this week before my long weekend where I’ll hopefully crack a few more cycling goals……..

New bikes

Got to try out a few new bikes yesterday! Technically it was only 1 new bike as I’d ridden the other 3 models before but it was still huge fun!

It was all thanks to the lovely London Recumbants at Dulwich Park, who hire out various bikes/trikes by the hour for to ride around on 🙂

I hired myself one of the adult banana bikes, got a Nihola child carrying bike out for my dad and a combination of banana trikes and some other neat trikes for the smaller kids.

The adult banana trike was great fun. Even tho the gearing was a little low for really high speeds it was still huge fun to get the speed up then slalom up the path! I did learn an important lesson tho – NO HARSH CORNERING AT HIGH SPEEDS!! Doing so can result in firstly you ending up on 2 wheels and POSSIBLY tipping yourself out…….I didn’t *quite* go that far but being up on 2 wheels is good fun! Also the back-pedal braking takes a while to get used to, especially when heading towards a bush!!

We completed 1 full lap of the park before meeting up with the rest of the family and then proceeded to swap bikes. I had a go on the Nihola again which was as much fun as I remember from last time (even more so actually, the wet surfaces meant sliding the rear was even easier!) and my dad got the hang of the banana bike quite well and was actually lapping the small traffic island with good speed! I even had a go on the smaller kids trike which was a proper fixed gear which meant I go pedal backwards to go backwards!

We managed to capture some pictures of the “action”

Banana Trike - huge fun albeit a bit undergeared for speeding 🙂

The biggest kid there 🙂

The Nihola child carrier bike - one that I'd seriously consider buying as it's so damn functional and fun 🙂