Having had a through check of the tyre it seems it was a flint that did the damage. I've just plucked it out. At least I now have the excuse I need for some new tyres on the bike.

I think I'll go with the Continental GP4000s which are essentially the top of the line version of the Grand Prixs that I've gone on the bike at the moment. There are so many tyres on the market these days that it's hard to tell which one is the best or what advantage, other than personal preference, is offered by the range available at any given price point.

I'm sure every rider has in their memory a particularly shoddy brand or model of tyre which they have sworn never to ride again. I think mine must be a horrific Continental tyre on my old Raleigh hybrid. It came with one of those ridiculous names that are meant to impress ouy into buying them - Doublefighter. It certainly didn't impress me in use as it picked up punctures with alarming regularity.

Then again my Continental Grand Prix tyres certainly seem to be a little less edgy than the Bontrager Race Lite Hardcase which are fine in a straight line and round gentle corners in the dry but rather like ice skates at all other times.

Next week I'll be looking for excuses for the following - Rapha Stowaway jacket in charcoal, new bar tape in white, new sunglasses that don't slide down my nose so much, new Zefal pump. I'll probably find excuses for a couple of those - new bar tape obviously, perhaps new sunglasses.

Posted by Alex on 29 May 2006, 23:05 Digg this | Add to del.icio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Facebook | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks ()

All this riding faster than usual is still hurting far too much for my liking. I say this as I hobble about the flat in between cleaning the bike and avoiding smoking.

I've finally committed to stopping smoking after all these months. It's proving tougher than giving up drinking was, maybe because I gave up drinking: What the hell am I meant to do now when I go out with friends other than sit there and sip soft drinks like some sort of sick puritan?

I made the decision as I tried to push my pace up Box Hill and kept on slumping back into the saddle unable to raise my tempo. I really want to do this damned thing in a time I can be proud of and I don't want to spend the entire day weeping in pain and half-conscious as I crawl up the climbs. Yes, I did have a couple of cigs when i got in but I've not had one since yesterday evening.

As with everything I set myself to, this involves sheer bloody minded determination, much like yesterday's ride. I wasn't feeling entirely on the pace to start with and kept on sliding down the group on the hills. I tried to pace myself as best I could up them but the extra pace on the flat left me with not much for the gradients and a horrible stinging sensation nagged my legs all the way round.

Despite all these frustrations I was going fine, until I punctured halfway up Ranmore Hill. Normally you are meant to let people know if you've got a mechanical problem. Unfortunately I'd just come off the wheel of the rider ahead of me and was wheezing copiously, so this proved impractical.

As I tried to change my inner in a slightly confused state I cursed a bit and hoped someone would realise I'm not that slow and come back down to investigate. Which Justin did, luckily enough, as I battled with mini-pump hell and general mental fatigue. I would get a big Zefal pump if I could figure out where to store it on the bike. Actually I might sort that issue when I take the bike in for its service mid-June.

On the way back I put in a lap and a half of Richmond Park with a drink stop and a stretch for my sore legs. I felt I could have kept on at the easier pace I was rolling along at for a good deal further but as I had to go into town when I got in I thought it best not to kill myself out.

I'm doing at least 200km each week in total at the moment and making best use of the commute for a bit of intensity training but by Friday last week I felt absolutely dead so I'm going to try and allow a bit more recovery time this week and not ride so hard every inch of the way.

With six weeks to go I should be looking to be near my peak soon. I've done a 150km ride but not the full distance yet. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I can put in at least a imperial century/160km ride before I start to taper down a bit before the event. I think the weekend before I go out I'll look to do either a park ride or a more gentle Surrey Hills one. But that's all a long way off yet and there's still four weeks to really get myself much fitter.

Posted by Alex on 29 May 2006, 17:05 Digg this | Add to del.icio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Facebook | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks ()

Having tried the trick of flipping over my 110mm one to give a more upright position I finally came to the conclusion that I was going to have to go short rather than up. So I've purchased the shortest I could get - an 80mm version of my existing one.

I thought about going for a 90mm but then I applied my brain for once. My everyday bike has an 80mm stem but a few more spacers on the steerer tube. So I belmed myself as I measured up both bikes and came to the blindingly-obvious-to-sensible-people conclusion that the discomfort I had been experiencing was down to being overstetched on the bars rather than too low.

The difference between the two is minimal, in terms of set up. Take a look at the images below for comparison of how they are now:

So on Sunday I'll find out if I've gone the right way with my educated guesses or whether I would have been better going to cyclefit in the first place.

Which brings me on to my next consideration - what to wear on the day. Originally I had planned on wearing my Rapha Tour of Britain top and going for a "classic" look. Now I'm tending more towards wearing my full London Dynamo kit as it is the club I ride with and I really should represent them on the day. There's a few other Dynamos going so it might help pick them out in the pen and get our own grupetto going to work our way through the peleton.

Then again it all depends on the weather as well. which reminds me I need to buy a decent one that will pack down small for the summer. The Montane ones are currently top of the list. Any suggestions are welcome but please don't encourage me any more to get one of the Rapha Stowaway ones. They look ever so sexy but they are ever so expensive and I so want one.

Time for bed as my eyes are fading and my typing is becoming as erratic as my pedal stroke when I am knackered.

Posted by Alex on 26 May 2006, 22:05 Digg this | Add to del.icio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Facebook | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks ()

I'm a bit behind with these posts, largely due to another busy week, so apologies in advance. I'd love to be able to claim it's because I'm spending more time on the bike to and from work and riding harder and faster than ever. The reality is that I've been putting off my writing up the blog through laziness.

Last Sunday's ride was a hill-avoider - a dash out to Windsor and back at a fairly nippy pace along relatively flat roads. It still added up to a 110km round trip so it wasn't really a short ride. It was wet though. Very wet. And I forgot to pack any waterproof clothing in my pockets.

Working against the time worn principle that what you don't pack you will need, I foolishly went out in gilet and armwarmers under a very heavy grey sky. I wasn't entirely awake when I left the house a bit late and had to TT it down to Hampton Court to make sure I wasn't too late. That bloody well hurt.

Once again the quick boys were out in force and we were soon belting along a route very similar to the London to Windsor ride I did last summer with my mate Stef - him on his Dahon folder comfortably staying with my on my Trek apart from on the more severe up and down bits. I say belting but for most of the club members rolling along at 35km/h was probably a reasonably steady pace. For me it's probably medium to fast.

Looking at my computer it says my average speed is now up to 26km/h from 23.9km/h three weeks ago. that surely counts as progress of some sort in the right direction - a quick start is going to be key to a good time. Maybe I'll find I'm blowing bit hard an hour or so in but by them I should have put some distance between me and the wagon balai.

But I took my turn on the front and pushed it along as best I could without dying. Unfortunately, my turn on the front coincided with the only bit that could be described as a hill. I went belting up the first rise and over it just as I was starting to tie up. Then I realised there was another longer rise to come and cursed my stupidity as everyone else came flying by me and I was forced to wrestle the bike up the rest of it.

Having finally got back on at the next stop point we launched onwards to towards Windsor Great Park and the next challange - gravel. Now there's riding in the wet - it was starting to tip down by this point - and then there's riding in the wet on an uncertain surface. The pace went down to gentle until we found the hard-topped stuff again but there was enough loose stuff for me to end up with a chip out of my front fork, probably from a loose stone being squeezed off the road.

By Windsor town centre it was bucketing it down and a coffee stop was scrapped in favour of making the return journey. We had been promised a following wind on the way back but it never materialised to my slight annoyance.

More annoying was that I had only cleaned the bike down on Saturday night and it needed another turn in the shower to rinse out the drive train and all the grime. My socks were black t the top with filth so got an approximation of a handwash in the bath with me wearing them like mitts.

Posted by Alex on 26 May 2006, 12:05 Digg this | Add to del.icio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Facebook | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks ()

I've still not fully recovered from Sunday's ride which was a bit quicker than usual as some of faster boys came out to play. But I just about managed to hang in there and it seems to have done wonders for pushing my fitness level along a bit.

The first half hour was fine, rolling out toward Esher and Chobham, then we turned off into the country lanes and it all got a bit hectic. I came off the back and spent half an hour chasing to get back on, sweating like a sieve in a shower and hurting like hell but determinedly keeping the group just about in sight.

Eventually I caught up as they waited at one of the rally points along the way. Rusty who was leading the ride stuck me up the front to keep the pace down for a while and I happily sat in and recovered at a pace above my average one. In fact, my average speed has now gone up to 25.5km/h over the last three weekends, from 23.9km/h after the first ride.

I got brutalised up the hills again and went beyond the point where I couldn't do anything other than just find my own rhythm uphill and hope I could stay with the group as we flew along at speeds which for me are fast but for most of the others would be a gentle tootle. Luckily riders kept on dropping back to make sure I didn't get lost along the way.

I'm starting to rein in my urge to go at the hills hard from the outset and have almost got to the point where I can stop myself trying to follow wheels that are too fast for me. I haven't entirely stopped, I just drop off them before I start to hit to my thresholds.

I'm being positive about it because riding with quicker riders in a group means I am extending my ability level. I still feel I need to get in a session in the middle of the week but I have been feeling a bit worn out and had a few too many other commitments this week. So I have been making the most of riding at intensity on my commutes, in part out of necessity as I keep on leaving the house too late.

As I was making my way home today I had the strange sensation of feeling like I was operating at a higher level than usual, turning over a bigger gear without straining and really flying along. Or maybe everyone else was just going a bit slower today.

Among my list of things to do still is flipping my stem over to raise my position up a bit as I'm still finding getting on the drops on descents a little uncomfortable. My reach feels about fine but I get a twinge at the base of my neck when I try to look ahead, unless I sit right back off the saddle.

I just wandered off and did it while I remembered. In terms of aesthetics, it's not great but I shall give it a go on Sunday and see how it feels. I'm not sure how much of a difference it will make, although my bars and saddle are pretty much level which is supposed to be a good thing. Actually I can't stand how it looks and I'm worried that changing my position this late in the day is going to cause trouble.

Other things to do: buy a big box of gels when i get paid, buy a rain jacket that'll fit in my pocket (probably get the Respro one I saw which is clear and seems to do the job), keep training.

I can't make flapjacks of my own at the moment as our oven is knackered so it looks like I'll be sticking with jaffa cakes, which I have been trying the last couple of weeks. Not as filling but supposedly energy-filled, they seem to be working and are certainly easier to stuff down my throat as I go along than flapjack. I wonder if I can get them in France or whether I'll have to pack my own supply.

Posted by Alex on 18 May 2006, 21:05 Digg this | Add to del.icio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Facebook | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks ()

Sunday's ride turned out to be a little quicker than usual as, in the absence of the usual moderating influences, the pace shot up from our the usual "steady" to something closer to "moderate".

The only evidence I have for this is that my average speed on my computer went up a from 23.9km/h, after last week's 126km, to 25.0km/h after 270.9km. That and the anecdotal evidence that every time I looked down the current speed was between 30 and 33km/h rather than the more stately 27-30km/h range I have grown accustomed to on the club ride.

Not that I'm complaining you understand, I managed to stick with it pretty well, even managing to chase back a couple of times when I found myself out the back. OK, I was last as usual up every hill and sweating like a garden sprinkler at the end of it but I felt I had the right legs on.

My "right legs" do however seem to be the ones that encourage me to attack a hill from the bottom and then find that everyone else starts to go past me from about halfway and I have to apologise for holding things up when I get to the top and everyone is waiting for me. I've tried to curb this instinct as best I can and nearly found the right balance on Ranmore Hill but was still last up there.

There was a curious incident on Box Hill as both London Dynamo and Sigma Sport arrived at the bottom around the same time and it got a bit competitive. I found myself pushing really hard all the way up and fair clipping along by my standards. When I rode up there earlier this year I was struggling to go above 15km/h, now I can hammer up the steepest bits at about 16km/h and feel much stronger.

I'm still struggling to find the time to get in the mid-week intensity sessions that I really need to be doing to cope with the long climbs of anything up to two hours. I've been trying to ride hard to and from work to make up for this but it's no real substitute for an hour in Richmond Park trying to do three or four fast laps in succession.

On the way back on Sunday I ended up waiting with Hugh, on of the other riders, who had got into an argument with a driver after he had squeezed him to the kerb and Hugh had banged on his door to let him know. As far as I could see Hugh was ahead of him on the road and the guy gave him no room, having tooted him, as he tried to squeeze through the a gap that wasn't there.

His strange defence included "You were riding too wide/aggressively on the road" and some strange invocation that there was some variation in the Highway Code for Surrey which meant he was right. He was adamant that we should go to the police and discuss the matter but rather unwilling to discuss my point that he was behind the cyclist and should have given him room.

Eventually I got home at about 3pm with 145km in my legs and a little saddle sore in the usual spot that i get one from a bit of chaffing. It's gone down now but by god did it hurt on Monday morning. I'm assuming it's just a blocked follicle that sorts itself out with a bit of rest. And on that medically undignified note I shall leave you until my next post.

But not before a final appeal - Please give generously in sponsorship, I have been lousy at fundraising so far and I'm getting more and more concerned about it as the day approaches, It's very simple and just involves hitting the SPONSOR ME link on the right, or indeed that link just there that you've just read.

Posted by Alex on 9 May 2006, 21:05 Digg this | Add to del.icio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Facebook | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks ()

A strange sense of trepidation over one line in the information pack I received today from Velo magazine - "The maximum time limit will be calculated according to an average speed of 19km/h." - I have no idea why one measly kilometre an hour worries me so much, maybe because I've mentally worked on the basis of 18km/h so far.

It's full of the little bits of information that will be useful. It confirms that the ravitaillements stations for water, food and so on will be at Guillestre, Col D'Izoard, Briancon and at the foot of Alpe D'Huez. On my club rides we usually stop for coffee and flapjacks on Box Hill which I think is about 80-90km into the ride. That would correspond roughly with Col D'Izoard, which I was thinking of skipping in favour of waiting until Briancon and the first elimination point, on the grounds it could be a bit of a bun fight.

Would an alternative strategy be to go relatively flat out to the first one at Guillestre, at about 54km, and put some time between me and the broom wagon then refuel, recover and stretch there before the Izoard? That way I would break the ride into 4 sections rather than 3, but would the time lost be worth it?

I've also spotted an amusing typo in the program of events whereby, in the English translation only, the first competitors will finish before they have officially started. If only such super-human feats were possible!

I'm also a bit torn on the fashion front. Originally, I had planned to wear my Rapha Tour of Britain jersey but part of me says that I should dispense with style in favour of loyalty and wear my London Dynamo jersey instead. In favour of the former is that it has a zip pocket for putting a bit of loose change, in case I fancy buying a sandwich or something other than what's available at the ravitaillement points, as well as my mobile phone which I might use to take some snaps on the road for posterity of the event.

I do hope it brightens up tomorrow for the ride as a third week of rain would really annoy me.

Posted by Alex on 6 May 2006, 17:05 Digg this | Add to del.icio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Facebook | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks ()

As I'm now day-to-day commuter I've taken to using the 30 minute ride each way as an opportunity to do some of those short intervals everyone talks about. Well, it's one way to liven up the grind of going from red light to red light and I suppose it gets me there quicker.

Actually, depending on the route, I'm actually riding much of the prologue course for Le tour's arrival in London in 2007 - The Mall onto Constitution Hill and up under the Wellington Arch and along South Carriage Drive are the bit I take in on my way home and I bag South Carriage Drive on the way in as well.

It's a lovely straight strip of road to really power down, marred only by the appalling road surface which makes it a little more like hard work. I find that I can get up to a nice clip and feel like I'm hitting one of those nice sweet "zones" that HRM fans talk about.

I'm not a fan and don't use one. I understand and can appreciate that they do have definite benefits when used within strict testing criteria and with parameters clearly established. But for the type of riding I'm doing, in terms of times and variable conditions, I just think that the parameters become so fluid that trying to apply precise science to it is a bit of a false exercise.

For example, my resting heart rate is not going to be constant because some mornings I'm in a hurry and a bit stressed, others I'll be practically horizontal I'm so relaxed. Equally I'm not following an obsessive dietary regime so that can vary wildly on the input side of things.

Instead I prefer to let my body decide when I'm overdoing it and to trust my ability to know when I need a rest. So far it seems to have worked.

Posted by Alex on 3 May 2006, 21:05 Digg this | Add to del.icio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Facebook | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks ()

So once again I look out the window on a Sunday morning and I'm confronted by grey skies and patchy rain. I could have gone back to bed and pretended, to myself, that I overslept or wasn't feeling right. Instead I pulled on my kit and prepared for another wet day in the saddle.

When I got out to Hampton Court there was only one other rider there and I was still wondering if leaving the house was such a good idea. By the time we set of there were five of us, three of whom are regulars on the Sunday ride and who were determined to keep it very steady. So not really enough to even constitute a group given that when it's dry there's about 15 riders out.

Riding in the wet is an odd experience for me because I don't notice how much I sweat when I'm drenched so all wicking of moisture becomes redundant.There's also the constant fizz of water being sucked up and spat out by the tyres instead of the gentle hiss of rubber on tarmac . Coupled with that is the constant vigilance that it requires and the heavy braking which really tires out the shoulders and hands.

Last night's heavy rain left the roads greasy and littered with gravel and debris that had washed down. Unfortunately that made falling a greater possibility and it befell Robin to be the one who took a spill, hitting gravel and losing the front wheel. It was a heavy looking fall and it took a couple of chunks out of him and a fair few minutes to recover his composure.

From that point on I think we were all a bit edgy about descending at anything above a gentle pace until it dried out towards the end of the ride. Certainly I was busily trashing my way through my brake pads in the name of safety. I can't figure out why my back ones seem to wear through quicker than my front in the wet. Maybe the front wheel is so slicked with water they can't get any purchase or there's more grit and gunk hitting the back wheel.

After about an hour or so my hands started to lose feeling as the temperature started less to resemble the last day of April and more the middle of December. It was about this time that the hills started meaning that my gear choices became a bit limited and braking a bit challenging.

My left hand was far worse, meaning I was stuck in the middle chainring with a lowest gear of 42/27 which I can manage with most of the time. Which would have been fine if I could have got down to it. My right hand wasn't exactly co-operating either and I couldn't find the strength in it to change down. By the time we got to Ranmore Common I was having to resort to using my forearm as leverage to pull the shifters across.

As experiments go, attacking the hills in too big a gear and trying to tough it out is not one I plan to repeat. After belting 500 metres in a silly pro-sized gear up one hill I could barely breathe and couldn't see much either. And my knee was starting to hurt which is never a good sign. I've iced it since getting in and it seems to be OK now.

By the time we got to Box Hill the feeling was coming back and I was able to really attack the hill, pulling hard all the way up it as the rain eased off and the sun came out. Never have I enjoyed a coffee and chocolate cake so much. Actually I was really gasping for a cigarette which was an odd sensation and a craving that I am still indulging in small doses after rides and when I'm out with friends.

All in it was a 125km ride today but allowing for the battling with the elements it certainly felt like a longer one. I'm hoping that there's some drier weather in the coming weeks because I'm getting tired of beign exhausted by rainfall rather than pedal strokes.

Posted by Alex on 1 May 2006, 00:05 Digg this | Add to del.icio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Facebook | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks ()