Yep I've hurt myself. If the over stressed core muscles wasn't enough to deal with I've now got a massive bruise on my thigh making extending my leg very painful.
Classic toe clip fail. Got to the top of a hill and was taking in the view a low speed when the bike decided to stop and I lost balance. Crunch. No chance to get the foot out of the pedal so went down. The handle bar turned as I went south and I landed on top of it.
Nothing like an iron bar to the leg.
Managed to limp to the bike shop to buy some inner tubes just incase the the road bike needs a new one. Chocolate bars are good for bruises right? because I got a couple of them to make me feel better.
Well that's training mucked up for a day or two.
Saturday, 29 January 2011
Friday, 28 January 2011
And I thought I was going fast!
I've had a cycling computer now for two weeks but as the weather has been rubbish and the sun only just gets over the horizon before after I go to work its only seen one outing. I thought it was time to head into the blackness today as the sun is just starting to creep up as I'm getting the car out. This means I have to set off in full dark and get back in the same but I can play with the traffic in Huntingdon in full glorious daylight.
The cycling computer should let me monitor my times to and from work with a bit more accuracy as I keep forgetting to set the watch in all the fun and games. It also lets me see how my average and top speed are doing. With the run back and forth I need to record the time to work and then again for the return journey. As my memory has slowly been declining over the last decade, mostly due to alcohol intake, I've got a record at work and one here. Hopefully keeping an eye on this will let me set some targets for the summer and make me feel like I'm making progress which means motivation to keep cycling.
Today as expected I didn't post a record time. Having to carry everything (shoes, clothes, bike locks, towel...) really made me top heavy with the pack and the road was naff. Got a slow puncture and everything! Two more things to the "to buy list" Kevlar tyres and a better short pump. Replacing the inner tube while the sun was still up was a challenge and I only managed to get the tyre up to just under 60 psi. It made the bike feel very squishy and sluggish. How on earth did I manage with the mountain bike on that route at only 40?
Top speed going there was 27.5mph but going back was 29.5mph. Both downhill and the faster of the two being down the longer. Hardly up to my mate Ant's super fast 40+mph he was managing while on the lands end to John O'Groats trip he made. But then Ant is damned good!
Hopefully this will improve as I ditch kit at work, travel in daylight and have a fully inflated rear tyre. Average speed was around 17-18mph over the 16 mile ride. Although top speed sounds cool its the average speed I need to generate gains on as this is where the Tri events centre. Two or three extra mph can shave lots of time off of a race.
If you check out the Wadenhoe times the best guys are monsters on the bike. It doesn't matter if I can thump them by 2 minutes on foot if they can destroy me by 4 minutes in the saddle!
Tomorrow's plan is to do some hill training on the mountain bike and maybe drop into the bike shop to get a new spare inner tube. I just not confident a repaired one will stand up to 125psi for long.
The cycling computer should let me monitor my times to and from work with a bit more accuracy as I keep forgetting to set the watch in all the fun and games. It also lets me see how my average and top speed are doing. With the run back and forth I need to record the time to work and then again for the return journey. As my memory has slowly been declining over the last decade, mostly due to alcohol intake, I've got a record at work and one here. Hopefully keeping an eye on this will let me set some targets for the summer and make me feel like I'm making progress which means motivation to keep cycling.
Today as expected I didn't post a record time. Having to carry everything (shoes, clothes, bike locks, towel...) really made me top heavy with the pack and the road was naff. Got a slow puncture and everything! Two more things to the "to buy list" Kevlar tyres and a better short pump. Replacing the inner tube while the sun was still up was a challenge and I only managed to get the tyre up to just under 60 psi. It made the bike feel very squishy and sluggish. How on earth did I manage with the mountain bike on that route at only 40?
Top speed going there was 27.5mph but going back was 29.5mph. Both downhill and the faster of the two being down the longer. Hardly up to my mate Ant's super fast 40+mph he was managing while on the lands end to John O'Groats trip he made. But then Ant is damned good!
Hopefully this will improve as I ditch kit at work, travel in daylight and have a fully inflated rear tyre. Average speed was around 17-18mph over the 16 mile ride. Although top speed sounds cool its the average speed I need to generate gains on as this is where the Tri events centre. Two or three extra mph can shave lots of time off of a race.
If you check out the Wadenhoe times the best guys are monsters on the bike. It doesn't matter if I can thump them by 2 minutes on foot if they can destroy me by 4 minutes in the saddle!
Tomorrow's plan is to do some hill training on the mountain bike and maybe drop into the bike shop to get a new spare inner tube. I just not confident a repaired one will stand up to 125psi for long.
Tuesday, 25 January 2011
2nd is a fancy word for Losing
Finnally I managed to finish the Wadenhoe without my chain breaking!. Can you believe it? Official finishing time of 1:08:48 which brought me in 2nd over 2 minutes slower than the winner. Grr.
I was faster on the run but lost it on the bike leg. After a bit of post race analysis it was guessed that I'd lost out because of my gear choice. Not wanting to break yet another chain I was limiting my gear changes. This meant I was slower downhill and slower on the up too. Need to balence this with better technic. Changing while under load isn't good for the bike. I don't think I need to change to the bike cog and stay in the middle chainset gear and instead go for gears ranging top to bottom of that gear range.
I'l going to practise this on Saturday if I can.
Second thing I found after analysing the official times was that I was much slower (2mins) on the second run compared to the first. I'll grant you the run mud seemed to be a lot thicker and the tide seemed to have come in but I should have been rocking fairly close to my 1st run time. Some of it could be that I wasn't being chased and with the 1st place man being out of sight I had nothing to aim for. To help counter this I'm going to try "brick training" as often as possible. This is instead of run/bike I'll train bike/run to get used to the change.
I was faster on the run but lost it on the bike leg. After a bit of post race analysis it was guessed that I'd lost out because of my gear choice. Not wanting to break yet another chain I was limiting my gear changes. This meant I was slower downhill and slower on the up too. Need to balence this with better technic. Changing while under load isn't good for the bike. I don't think I need to change to the bike cog and stay in the middle chainset gear and instead go for gears ranging top to bottom of that gear range.
I'l going to practise this on Saturday if I can.
Second thing I found after analysing the official times was that I was much slower (2mins) on the second run compared to the first. I'll grant you the run mud seemed to be a lot thicker and the tide seemed to have come in but I should have been rocking fairly close to my 1st run time. Some of it could be that I wasn't being chased and with the 1st place man being out of sight I had nothing to aim for. To help counter this I'm going to try "brick training" as often as possible. This is instead of run/bike I'll train bike/run to get used to the change.
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