Beer & Cobbles, part two: the Beer (oh, & a little bike race...)

Saturday's ride duly celebrated with beer & pizza, we had a nice lazy start on Sunday - we'd picked out Oude Kwaremont as a good place to watch the race as it gave us the drama of steep cobbles, three passes of the men's race and one of the women's, and the carnival atmosphere of the village - but the race wasn't due to pass through there until lunchtime. We were treated to the inspiring sight of a junior race on the drive over from Kortrijk, dozens of tiny kids riding their hearts out on the Ronde route in their best club lycra. We ditched the car in a field somewhere near the the bottom of the ridge and by 11.30 we'd bagged ourselves a spot right on the steepest part of the climb.

The helicopters are always the first sign that something's happening at a big bike race, though with a vast VIP area just outside the village there were choppers coming and going all day. Then there are the whistles of the stewards, the sirens of the first police outriders, the Rodania car leading the publicity caravan and a handful of team vehicles, then... nothing, for what feels like an age. And all of a sudden, a rush of bright lycra, the clatter of bikes on cobbles, the riders' heavy breathing somehow audible over the cheering & applause of the thousands-strong crowd. The speed is incredible. I've seen enough road racing to expect fast - but having ridden these roads just the day before I simply cannot comprehend how they can be ridden at race pace. It's clear from the riders' faces that it hurts them just the way it hurt me, yet still they attack the climb at twice the speed I managed on the smoothest, flattest tarmac.

After the first lap of the men's race we investigated the village square at the top of the climb. What I'm sure would normally be a peaceful little retreat with just a couple of old guys enjoying the sunshine was party central - big screens showing Sporza's live coverage (the mass intake of breath as Fabian went down in the feedzone, ending his race), half a dozen stalls selling beer and burgers and hundreds and hundreds of people. A beer (well, a few), a hotdog, a new spot on the barriers and two more laps, seeing the race shift and take shape, the first signs of the winning break beginning to form - then the rush back to the square to find a spot with a view of the screen. Not easy when you're only 5ft1, unless there's an accommodating landlord who invites you to climb up on his bar, & a big strong friend to help you up there!

The atmosphere in that square was unforgettable. Three riders had escaped off the front of the dwindling bunch - Alessandro Ballan, Pippo Pozzato and local hero Tom Boonen, and were, somehow, extending their lead by the minute. People were cheering, chanting, even praying, yet as the three riders approached the line there was quiet. And then -

BOONEN!!!!!

and the crowd, as they always say, went wild.

Some random observations from the race:

• RODANIA!
• Those clouds of dust you see the riders charging through on tv? Actually just as likely to be barbecue smoke ;-)
• Race spectators are fuelled by copious quantities of beer, burgers & sausages. It may well have been possible to buy soft drinks and healthy food in Kwaremont on Sunday, but no-one was doing so.
• These people love bike racing. And they really love Tom Boonen.
• It's every man, woman & child for himself when it comes to finding a good spectating spot - but if it looks like you're about to spill beer people will instantly come to your aid.
• That evening Tommeke Boonen's win was the top story on all the local news channels (with Fabian's broken collarbone taking second spot) and pages and pages of Monday's paper were given over to the race - the kind of  coverage British cycling could only dream of.
• When you're only 5ft1 it's really useful to have a couple of stupidly tall guys with you!

Beer & Cobbles, part one: the Cobbles

(With thanks & apologies to beerandcobbles.blogspot.co.uk for the great weekend & the blatant title-theft!)

This last weekend saw both my first big cycling challenge of 2012, and my first live road-race of the season - the Ronde van Vlaanderen.

About this time last year, my best friend Rich was so excited on his return from his second RvV sportive that he managed to talk me into signing up for this year's. I may well have been drunk - I can think of no other reasonable explanation. So over the past twelve months I bought a better bike - and then another, even better one - upped my mileage, stopped going out of my way to avoid hills, tried lots of new & exciting energy products (some of which had exciting - of the wrong sort - effects on my digestive system, as I'm sure many seasoned cyclists will understand) & bought lots of frighteningly expensive but incredibly comfortable kit, until on Thursday afternoon Rich, his old friend Kev & I loaded our bikes into the car & set of for Belgium.

Having collected our registration packs on Friday afternoon, we just needed to get to the start  & get moving on Saturday. Random road closures notwithstanding, we made it to Oudenaarde & the three of us rolled over the start line together a little before 10am, before stopping for a group hug at the point where my 87km route peeled off from the boys' 138km one. The first 15km were very easy - beautifully smooth, wide bike paths and quiet roads running alongside the Schelde river, but then we turned onto the first set of cobbles, and the first climb, the (frankly, terrifying) Koppenberg. I stuck to the plan I'd made when I first saw the route (unfortunately some time after I'd committed to riding) - ride as far up it as I could, but not be ashamed to get off and walk; after all, I've watched many pros walk that hill over the years. The descent on the other side was much more fun, curvy without being too scarily twisty or steep.

It was as I rolled into the second set of cobbles, at the bottom of Steenbeekdries that I came to the conclusion that I really don't want to do this ride again - the distance doesn't bother me, I can get fitter and lighter to be able to manage the climbs, but riding on the cobbles made every part of my body hurt, and I just don't have the power or weight to maintain a decent speed over them. Rich had told me time & time again over the last year that they were rough, but they were worse than I had ever imagined - and if the climbing on them was hard (though I did get to the top of this one on the bike - go me!) the descent was frightening - I felt like I had so little control of the bike, and the vibration meant I couldn't see clearly either. For the first time in a lot of years, I was envious of the guys on mountain bikes.


The rest of the ride brought much of the same - cobbles (pain), climbs (more pain, much walking, though I did manage to ride a couple more of the bergs, Kapelleberg & Varent I think, though by the end of the day they all ran into one), glorious, sweeping descents (and a top speed of nearly 58kph - not bad for a nervous descender!) and beautiful views - yes, beautiful, not a word many people associate with Belgium. I wouldn't call it pretty or dramatic, but it's lovely in its own way, and reminds me a lot of the Howardian Hills where I grew up - all green fields, small mixed farms and little patches of woodland scattered over rolling hills. 

Somewhere around the 60km mark I had a chance encounter with a couple of my GS Gazzetta club-mates & twitter-friends, @TBag & @Wiggys - and what perfect timing. I was tired, the road had headed upwards yet again and my emotions were beginning to get the better of me, and a few encouraging words and a couple of wheels to follow (not that I managed to hang on for long) were just the thing I needed to keep me moving. That little pick-me-up didn't last long unfortunately, and on the other side of that climb the tears started. I managed a grin for Fast Phil Corner (and for the lovely sweeping descent it was at the bottom of) but otherwise was a snotty, tear-stained mess, who spent 10k or so telling myself to get it together & just. bloody. get. it. done. It wasn't until I'd hiked up the Oude Kwaremont & the Paterberg - and saw the magical "12k to go" sign - that I managed to get my emotions under control, muster some enthusiasm for the bike and press on for the finish. Seven hours after leaving Oudenaarde I rolled back over the line, followed about fifteen minutes later by Rich & Kev. It was done. I was done. 

Some random observations from the ride

• Belgian bike paths are not all perfect - they mostly are, yes, but there were still stretches that were full of potholes, debris & manhole covers. Still ten times better than the average British bike path though, and they get priority over other traffic!
• White shorts. Just NO. No-one wants or needs to see your sweaty crack, thank you very much.
• 15, 000 riders and yet the start, finish & feed-zone were well-stocked, organised & efficient - a big "proficiat" to the event organisers, staff & volunteers.
• Sportive photographers are always on the steepest part of the hardest climbs. Therefore, there are lots of photographs of me walking.
• There was a refreshing lack of macho bullshit, despite the fact that 99% of the participants were male. More a feeling of "we're all suffering together."
• I think this may be the first time I've been at such a huge event and not had to queue for the ladies'!
• The words may be different, but swearing sounds pretty much the same in any language.
• Flemish cobbles hurt. A lot. More than you would ever think possible if you've only ever ridden over nice, tame English cobbles before. And unless you're a big powerhouse, they also make it really hard to go fast.
• I suspect that this event is at least partly a money-making scam by Belgium's bike mechanics & inner-tube manufacturers! Though I was lucky/ well-advised enough not to have any punctures or mechanicals.
• Riding amongst that many people means you have to concentrate all of the time - in fact, I found the day more mentally exhausting than physically.
• Yes, Rich & Kev rode almost 50km further than me in only a few minutes longer. The following day the pros rode another 100km again in more or less the same time.

Some big, heartfelt thank yous to the people who helped me train, get kitted out and get through the day:

 Rich, Kev, Lucy, Carol, Chris, Marcelle, Nadya, Louise, Bee, John H, Paul G, both Paul H's, Kat, Jen, Jenny, Gordon & Bee, Dave & AJ, Colin, Mark, Renee, Gareth, Theresa, Paul S, Mr Lamb, Dave W, Graham, Jan, Craig, Woolley, Hannah &, in absentia, Dave, Rich L, Josh, Jenny W, Matt F, Matt & Bex, Amy & Katie, Neil, Garry, Hannah & Norna, Cheryl, Simon M, Danny, Dan, GS Gazzetta, the guys at Condor Cycles, York Cycleworks & Big Bear Bikes, my family, friends & colleagues and everybody who's had an encouraging word (or more usually a "you're nuts!") for me over the last year - love you guys! x

And finally, for those of you who want to see how painfully slowly I did it: my Garmin file

Heading for the hills...

 Could there be a nicer breakfast spot?

The sun is shining, there is good coffee and even better baked goods, and all you can hear is birdsong, lambs, bees buzzing among the herbs and the gentle snoring of an elderly cat.

I rode up here yesterday, 41 miles that steadily progressed from flat to rolling to hilly.  On the basis of a dreadful weather forecast I set out in 3/4 knicks and rainjacket, but it seems the gods were smiling on me for I had sunshine nearly all the way - and even more of a blessing, a tailwind on nearly every significant hill.

The view back towards York

I was less lucky on the way back to York - a torrential storm straight after breakfast delayed my departure, a second as I rolled into Kirkbymoorside necessitated a much longer cafe stop than I'd intended and a third as I approached York saw me soaked to the skin in minutes flat.

However, despite the hills and the weather, I had two days of great riding - and three things summed up all that is great about cycling for me:

1. The moment when you crest a hill and click back though the gears just far enough to turn the pedals as you swoop down the other side
2. The fact that I have all this glorious countryside waiting on my doorstep
3. Whizzing by a two-mile traffic jam on my way back into town (though why there was a jam coming into town at 4.20 on a weekday is beyond me...more people should be on bikes!)

Things I learned on my ride:

• That the highest point I reached before turning off Blakey moor is 319 feet higher than York.
• That while I don't suppose I'll ever love hills, and they still hurt and sometimes make me want to cry, I am getting better at them!  It was only a nasty little 10%-er at mile 40 (into a headwind too) that had me off the bike - and that only for a hundred yards or so - on the outward journey.
• That music is a great motivator.  Knowing that I was going to find parts of the ride tough I decided, unusually for me, to stick in my headphones (well, one anyway so I could still hear the traffic!) and hit shuffle... Weirdly, I have lots of music I didn't really recognise, and some I really don't like (can anyone tell me why Belle & bloody Sebastian are on my mp3 player??)
•  Daft Punk make particularly good cycling music - that steady metronomic beat kept me going for the last few rainy miles!
• Energy gels, while pretty rank, don't seem to have the catastrophic effect on my digestive system that a lot of people have mentioned to me.
• When a caffeinated gel and the Akira soundtrack kick in at exactly the same time, the result is some very aggressive riding!
• Nowhere feels like home like the North York Moors does.
• A weasel is weasily wecognised, but a stoat's stotally different (stoats are a bit bigger than weasels and have a black-tipped tail, if you were wondering.
• There's a whole lot more climbing on the way home...
• I will not be voluntarily riding through Bulmer again - the descent is terrifying, the climb back up the other side painful and soul-destroying
• Once you're wet, you're wet and there really isn't any point stopping to put on a jacket!

 The view from the top of my dad's drive... not the best way to start a ride!

The route: 

View Larger Map

The Countdown to The Tour

Bradley Wiggins, our new national champion!

Next weekend, the Tour de France begins... and traditionally the weekend before the Tour is National Championship weekend, all around the world.  This year's British National Championships was held in Northumbria, with the start & finish in the pretty village of Stamfordham, just outside Newcastle - a bit of a trek from York, especially by public transport, but well worth the early start.

I arrived just in time to see Lizzie Armitstead (Most Beautiful Woman in Cycling, TM, according to every male cycling fan I know) take the women's title, with Nicole Cooke, Sharon Laws and Emma Pooley close on her tail.  The afternoon was spent basking in the sunshine with a bunch of my dear Twitter friends, drinking coffee from the mobile Rapha Cycle Club and taking a gentle stroll to the roadside every so often to watch the race come through.  It was clear from the start that Team Sky wanted the win, especially when it seemed like all of their riders went in the first break.  By lap three the field was in bits and the leading break was down to three men - Bradley Wiggins, Geraint Thomas and Peter Kennaugh - with such a huge advantage that, barring disaster, the only question was what order they would appear on the podium.  There were some mutterings about the dominance of Sky over the domestic riders who race these roads day in, day out (Rob over at Reclaiming the Abandoned Bicycle sums it up pretty well) and while I would have loved to have seen Kristian House's super-strong ride result in a win, I also find it incredibly exciting that Britain now has riders who can compete at that next level - and to be able to see them in action on British roads is fantastic.  Velouk.net has a brief race report and lots of photos of the day.

Where there is cycling there also must be cake, of course, and as is my habit I did a big batch of baking to share with the lovely Rapha Condor Sharp boys... and at Jimmy McCallum's request here are the recipes:

Fudgy Chocolate Brownies (adapted from Martha Stewart Living)

3 eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup plain flour
1/4 cup cocoa
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 oz butter
8oz dark chocolate
1/4 cup creme fraiche

and (optional) 1/4 cup coffee-flavoured chocolate beans or 1/2 cup bottled cherries or 1/2 cup fresh raspberries

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

In a large ovenproof frying pan or hob-proof baking tin melt the butter and chocolate over a very low heat.  Meanwhile, whisk the eggs and sugar together, and in a separate bowl mix the flour, cocoa and salt.

Take the melted chocolate off the heat and stir the creme fraiche into it, then combine with the flour mixture and the egg mixture.  Stir in the chocolate or fruit, if using, pour the mixture back into the pan and bake for 35 to 40 minutes - it should still be ever so slightly damp & fudgy in the centre.

Cool, cut into squares & enjoy with a very good cup of coffee (or a bidon of REGO!)

Chocolate & Peanut-butter Flapjacks

8oz porridge oats
3oz chocolate chunks
3oz demerara sugar
4fl oz golden syrup
4oz crunchy peanut butter
1oz butter
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 180 degrees & line a 9inch square (or similar) baking tin.

Melt the butter, golden syrup & sugar together over a low heat.  Once bubbling, remove from the heat and stir in the peanut butter and vanilla.

In a separate large bowl combine the oats and chocolate chips, then thoroughly mix in the peanut butter mixture.  Press into the lined tin with the back of a spoon & bake for 20 - 25 minutes, until golden brown on top.

Cut into slices while still warm.


One last thing to keep you occupied until the Tour starts on Saturday... The fabulous Rich Mitchelson has just released this year's Yorkshireman at the Tour de France colouring sheet - pop over to richmitch.co.uk to print your own picture of Ben Swift to colour in as you see fit!  I managed to grab Swifty for a quick chat after yesterday's race, he seemed absolutely thrilled to be riding his first Tour - I shall be cheering loudly for him, I hope you will too!

You're Better Off By Bike!

You know traffic is becoming a problem when you sail past a huge queue of traffic, turn off to go to the shop in the next street, lock up the bike, spend a few leisurely minutes deciding what you want, have a chat with the assistant, unlock the bike, ride a couple of hundred yards up to the next junction & rejoin the original road - only to find the last car you passed before you turned off still sitting there!

Down by the River

Today's ride was long and slow, with much deep thinking and also much beautiful sunshine.  I took a few minutes to stand by the river and soak up the warmth. 

Tailwinds, Always... *

... Wouldn't that be nice? 

I didn't have a tailwind for all of today's ride, but it did help me out where it mattered - on the gentle, rolling hills which aren't a struggle as such but tire the legs; on the slow, draggy, coarse road through Great Ouseburn; on the boring stretch of "main" road through Shipton...

The route was the same as last Tuesday's, but done in fractionally less time - 2 hours 20, as opposed to 2 hours 35 (though that included about 10 minutes off the bike for various reasons.)  The title is my lovely local bike shop's motto, printed at the bottom of every receipt...

Arkendale

Looking over the Vale of York

 

 

Aldwark Toll Bridge

 

 

 

 

Always handy to know how far it is to Edinburgh...

Urban Jungle

Just a few hundred yards from my front door lies a little patch of countryside.  St Nick's Fields is a Local Nature Reserve, established only seven years ago on a site with a fairly unpleasant past - a leper hospital, brickworks and town tip.  These days, although you probably wouldn't want to roam after dark, it's a beautiful green space, teeming with wildlife and criss-crossed by paths.

Now, I'm no mountain biker, but my everyday bike is, in name at least, a mountain bike. Although it isn't really. It's a kids' Bike-Shaped Object.  It is styled to resemble a mountain bike but that's about as close as it gets.  This afternoon I found that it's still great fun off-road though - even if my town tyres aren't really grippy enough for loose gravel or bark chippings.

30 Days of Biking!

Sometime in March, my good friend Mark started tweeting about something called 30 Days of Biking - intrigued, I took a look at their website & pretty swiftly signed up to their challenge: Ride your bike every day in April - it doesn't matter how far or how fast, just ride, then share your stories!

I ride most days anyway - my bikes are my only transport, and I ride the three-mile round trip to and from work four days a week, plus longer rides for fun, but that pledge to ride every day will challenge me a little - it's all too easy to get caught up in doing things at home on days off and not get the bike out of the shed.

Days one to three were quick dashes to and from town - for work on Friday and Saturday and some shopping on Sunday, a mile and a half each way, very routine, very dull (though oh boy, what a great way to wake up for a 7am shift - rolling through the local nature reserve just after sun-up!  The birdsong is deafening at that time of day, and you have to dodge the rabbits on the path!)


Day four was a pootle down Sustrans Route 66 to visit my friend Rich's new house - a twenty mile round trip, with much cleaning, bike chat and eating of brownies in the middle.


Day five was more of a fun ride.  I had to go to Harrogate for a meeting, and what better way to travel than by bike?

Not wanting to arrive at my meeting horribly grubby and sweaty I took the train there - the local service is pretty reliable and always has space for bikes.  Meeting done, I stripped off my smart trousers & cardigan in the bike shed (hey, doesn't everyone go to meetings in Rapha jerseys? They're a damn sight smarter than most of my other clothes!), clipped in headed off home...  The first five miles or so away from work's base on the outskirts of Harrogate are not much fun - busy roads, with drivers who apparently aren't used to seeing bikes about, coupled with some short, sharp hills.  There was a certain amount of cursing at both of those things, but having the wind at my back made it all a bit more bearable - as did this sign, which always makes me smile:

There is one little beast of a hill, just north of Knaresborough, that took the full brunt of my swearing - it's not the steepness that really bothers me, I could (just about!) drop into my lowest gear and cuss my way up, but the traffic is just too heavy and too fast to feel safe, so off I got and walked up (even on the verge there were some cars uncomfortably close to my elbow.)

Not long after that hill my route left the main road and tacked cross-country through gently rolling farmland and a string of impossibly pretty villages, dropping down into the Vale of York. 

A few of my favourite things:

• Spotting a red kite soaring over the fields. I'd never seen these magnificent birds before - no surprise there, they're a threatened species after all.  I was absolutely stunned by how big it was.  It's obviously hard to judge the size of a bird flying high above you, but this was vast - at least three or four feet from one wing-tip to the other.
• Fields full of lambs and verges full of flowers - it really does feel like spring is well underway now, I even rode in knicks and short sleeves for the first time this year!
• Hearing lapwings.  Always, always magical.
• Going fast on a bike.  My bike may be old and tatty, and I may be chomping at the bit for my new one, but it's still immense fun to freewheel down a big hill, or tuck my head down and sprint past the commuters on the final run-in to home!
• Rumbling over Aldwark toll bridge - a wooden-decked bridge over the Ouse.  Best of all, bikes get priority over cars and don't have to pay!
• Riding through the deerpark (though sadly lacking in deer) at Beningborough Hall

• A quick farm-shop stop at Beningborough, and a chat with a friendly face:

•  My new summer gloves: the cheapest gloves I've ever bought, at £2.99 from Lidl, but also the most comfortable by far.  Riding an all-steel bike on rough road surfaces often leaves my fingertips numb within ten miles, but with all the gel-padding in the palms of these gloves the only time I had a problem with road-buzz was on the very harsh surface through Beningborough.

•  A hot bubble-bath and a good stretch when I got home, not to mention the amazing pork, black pudding & onion marmalade pie from the farm shop for supper!

Route map here: http://goo.gl/maps/14ry (though I actually used the bike path that runs parallel to the A19 from Shipton, as it's much safer and more pleasant!)

26 miles in 2 hours 35 mins, including walking up one hill, and stops to take pictures, shop and check that a broken-down mountain biker was OK!

The Great Up North Twitter Ride!

Rich. Best riding buddy a girl could ask for!

A couple of months ago I was chatting to Lou and Rich on Twitter, when an idea was born - a group ride, somewhere between York & Lancaster.  A date was set, our favourite tweeters were invited, a route suggested (thanks, Kat!) and at last, yesterday, the day came!  Ten of us converged on Skipton around ten o'clock on a chilly, grey Sunday morning, and after much coffee we rolled out of town.  There was a small problem, however - having all agreed that a flat route was needed so we could all stay together and keep it sociable, the first turn out of the car park led us onto what looked to me like a vertical wall!   

It turned out to be the first of many - in fact, the first of 17 miles of hills.  I'm no hill-climber - I live, and ride, in the flatlands of the Vale of York, where I will always have at least five miles in my legs before I get to anything bigger than a railway bridge.  The first couple of hills hurt quite a lot, but by the time I got to the third my chest was giving me more trouble than my legs - my lungs seemed to be shrinking, not expanding, with every breath.  Pretty soon I was coughing every time I had to up my efforts, and by the time we reached our café stop in Grassington (having got off the bike and walked up at least three climbs) I was wheezing almost constantly.

The café we chose was a good one - Café Maison towards the top of Main St.  They welcomed the ten of us - and our bikes - with open arms, set us up for the onward journey with tea, coffee and extremely generous slices of cake - my carrot cake was moist & delicious, with exactly the right proportion of cream-cheese icing to cake, and the coffee and walnut cake also got rave reviews.  When we set out again we decided to split into two groups, the faster riders taking a detour via Kettlewell while we slower types headed straight back to Skipton for a second cuppa.  The main road was a little busier than was ideal, but it was wide and mostly flat which made for a much easier roll home.

Despite the pain and difficulty, it turned out to be a perfect day for a ride - the sun came out as we left Skipton and we were blessed with clear blue sky for the whole day.  The Yorkshire Dales are always beautiful, but bathed in spring sunshine, with the first new lambs in the fields and the verges crowded with snowdrops we quickly ran out of superlatives.  Rich and I caught a particularly special moment - having stopped to catch my breath, he pulled up with me just in time to hear the burbling call of a lapwing in its courtship dance, one of our most threatened birds and an utterly magical thing to hear and see. 

While I was happy for the faster riders to go on ahead a little, I was even happier that I never has to ride alone - there was always someone to chat to, a wheel to sit on, an encouraging word just when I needed it, for the whole 22 miles.  I was the slowest by far, but never felt that was causing a huge problem for anyone - thanks guys, for your patience, friendship and support, I honestly couldn't have done it without you Rich, Jen, Carol, Dave, John, Dan, Andrew, Lou and Paul (in no particular order, by the way!)

Dave

Me, in one of the few moments my face didn't match my new red jersey! 

(photo by Dave)

Waiting - for me, again!  Thanks guys!

Hail! Hail! The gang's all here! Andrew, Dan, Carol, Paul, Dave, Rich (standing), me, John, Lou & Jen. Another of Dave's pictures.

One of the odder sights of the day - moles hung on a fence!

22 hilly miles,  Show on Google Maps

Bitten

At the end of the solar system

There's something in the cyclist's brain - some switch, that overrides the logical response to pain or effort, so instead of backing off or even quitting, they go harder.  Today I found my override switch.  I had set out with the express intention of taking it easy - a steady ride on a flat, traffic-free route just to get my legs turning over again after a couple of too-busy, too-arthritic, too-lazy weeks.  But once I got out there I found that every time my head said "slow down, enjoy the scenery, breathe in the fresh air" my legs would just go faster and faster and faster.  I knew it would wear me out before I was home, but I just couldn't help myself, I found myself chasing down and overtaking the most undeserving of competitors - kids, joggers, tourists on rented mountain bike.  I could take no pride in "beating" these people, yet again and again I found myself doing it.

Maybe my subconscious was punishing me for so much time off the bike, maybe it was the result of watching some of the fastest riders in the world at the Track World Cup at the weekend - but more likely, it's that I've been well and truly bitten by the cycling bug, and like all my similarly bitten friends I just need to go harder, faster, further...

(On the homeward leg, having worn myself out, I did manage to slow down enough to take in the first signs of spring - the goldfinches darting along the hedge, daffodils poking their heads up, hazel bushes covered in catkins, I even spotted a barn owl!)

Winter aconites coming into flower on Route 65

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let the sunshine in!

The prettiest day of the year, so far

Friday was possibly the first sunny day of the year, and shattered, stiff & sore as I was after a couple of long work days and an arthritis flare-up it felt almost immoral to not go out & enjoy it.  I drank more coffee (always the answer) and got lycra-ed up - without waterproofs for the first time this year - and headed out into the wide blue yonder with the sun on my face and a song - this song, in fact - in my heart -

(go on, turn it up, I challenge you to not smile at that refrain!)

The music, the sunshine and the newly dry, ice-free roads kept me smiling through potholes (even the potholes have potholes around here), the bad drivers and even the little climb up to the A166.  A wrong turn at Dunnington meant that the new route I had intended to check out was off the agenda, but as I was running short on time and daylight that seemed to be for the best - and so it proved.  As dusk fell I pulled over to switch my lights on - and as I got back on the bike the chain came off.  I put it back on, it promptly came off again.  And again.  By this point it was getting too dark to closely examine the bike and try to work out just what had gone wrong, though a passing cyclist and various twitter pals had suggestions and advice, so I was faced with a three-mile-plus walk home (via an appointment at the University) in cleats and padded shorts - a revelation in bike-comfort but absolutely not designed for walking any great distance!

One tiny little bolt, loosening its grip on one tiny little spring, equals a long walk home

I eventually got the bike home and handed her over to my pet mechanic, who reckons I have a screw loose - it appears that all of those potholes have shaken loose the bolt that attaches the tension-spring to the derailleur - and no spring equals no tension equals no chain.  She's booked in for surgery in Mr's man-cave in the morning, and hopefully on Monday I'll be able to investigate that longer route...

The route (clockwise.) The marker is the point where the mechanical occurred.

Ride: 9 miles 
Walk: 3 1/2 miles

Total time: about 2 1/2 hours
Painkillers on Saturday: 4 with breakfast, 4 with lunch
Effectiveness of painkillers: Virtually zero

Good Housekeeping

New, Improved National Cycle Network Route 65 - 

 

makes me wanna get my head down & pedal!

I devoted a little time yesterday to revamping my weekly schedule.  Last year I set up a Google Calendar for all my household chores (and bike rides, of course!), with each room or task given a specific day and time and SMS alerts set to remind me when to do them.  Much as I wanted this system to work, I quickly discovered that it wasn't for me as I found it all too easy to ignore the reminders, or they'd come when I was out of the house and be forgotten before I got home.  So, the new system is this:

• Monday is bike day - a long ride to push myself.  I also need to devote a little time to either cleaning the fridge or sorting the recycling in readiness for...
• Tuesday, which is either bin day or recycling day (our council now collects on alternate weeks.)  Tuesday is also housework day.  By the time I've gone over the kitchen & bathroom I have a reasonably comprehensive shopping list, too, so I can spend the afternoon doing a shop.
• Wednesday morning is when my veg box arrives, and as I don't usually start work until lunchtime there's a little time in the morning to plan my menu for the week.  In addition, as my commute takes me past the Household Waste Recycling Centre, once a month I'll load up my panniers with the bits that the recycling collection doesn't deal with. 
• Thursday is a work day so I've tried not to commit to anything extra, though as it's also pay day it's a good day to get any extra bits of shopping done, especially the odd boring supermarket bits.
• Friday I usually only work until lunchtime, making it a good day to get another ride in - lack of light will necessarily make it a shorter one for the next couple of months, and having to be on my feet all day Saturday means I need to take it a bit easier than on a Monday.  Also twice a month I need to pick up meat from the Community Supported Agriculture groups I'm part of, so my rides will have to come home via the collection point - and I'll have to remember to carry a rucksack!
• Saturday is a work day (and the busiest of the week) so the only item on the schedule is a hot bubble bath when I get home!
• Sunday always, always begins with a long lie-in, featuring breakfast in bed, the Archers omnibus and Saturday's papers.  Sunday being Sunday it's not a very structured day, the afternoon may involve a gentle social ride or just be spent watching old movies or pottering in the kitchen.  My aim is for it always to involve a proper Sunday dinner though.

The rest of yesterday was given over to a ride - a slightly windswept loop north of town, taking in the newly improved NCN Route 65, Skelton, Sutton-on-the-Forest, Flaxton and an ill-advised stop at the new "improved" Evans Cycles store at Monks Cross (the less said about that the better!)

Still a few icy spots.  This corner's tricky enough on a good day - 90 degree bend on a narrow path, at the bottom of a steep slope.  With the addition of ice & standing water I got off & walked.

The first half of the ride was great fun - Route 65 has had its gates widened, so you no longer need to come to a complete stop to manoeuvre your bike through, and at long last the final off-road half mile (leading to the Overton road) has been paved.  Having that set of beautiful swooping bends (see pic, top) finally covered in race-track perfect asphalt instead of sticky mud and gravel put a grin on my face that lasted for miles!

 

Song of the day.  For some reason this popped into my head somewhere around Clifton Ings & didn't go away.

 

Almost every pedal-stroke was helped along by a gentle breeze from the south, making for swift progress, until I turned the corner to leave Sutton-on-the-Forest where the gentle tailwind become a stiff headwind - the sort that forces you to change down a gear even downhill.  After barrelling along at a pretty fun pace (I haven't yet got round to fitting a cycle-computer to my bike so I don't know how fast I was going) the remaining two-thirds of the loop was a tedious slog.  The fact that it was apparently heating oil delivery day didn't help, with three or four cold, mucky showers from passing tankers doing little to improve my day (though fortunately going out in full waterproofs saved me from the worst.)  There were some lighter moments on the homeward part of the loop, like discovering a village I'd never even heard of before, despite having lived in this area for almost all of my life.  I didn't quite make it all the way to Farlington, but it looks pretty on StreetView and has a pub so maybe it'll be the target of another ride soon. 

Route map
31.1 miles
3 hours
average speed 10.4 mph

I want to ride my bicycle...

A week into the new year and I've managed three rides, but I'm going to have to put in a lot more miles to prepare for what's coming:

1. Last summer I had the pleasure of meeting a bunch of crazy guys who were riding from Sunderland to London in 36 hours... and when they announced that they were planning to ride to Amsterdam for the last weekend in May I signed up to go with them.  It's an easy enough ride, pretty much completely flat, and the distances are manageable: about 35 miles to the ferry port at Hull, then 40 from Rotterdam to Amsterdam, with a night on the ferry in between.
2. While organising my new year twitter ride with Rich, we got chatting to Louise, one of the north-western girls, & set to organising a "Ride of the Roses" somewhere between York & Lancaster.  Unfortunately, given my aversion to hills, most of the area between the two cities is taken up by the Pennines... We've more or less decided on the area around Settle - near enough to halfway, but mostly flat(ish!), on the first weekend of March, and at the last count had about half a dozen riders on the guest list.
3. After reading Jen's blog I decided that I needed a real challenge to work up to - time to sign up for my first sportive!  I chose the York 100 mainly because it's local and on roads that I know, and because it raises money for a great charity, Action Medical Research, who fund research and support for sick babies and children.  There are two routes to choose from, 100 km and 100 miles, and I've signed up for the shorter one.  You can sponsor me here!  Within hours of announcing on Twitter that I would be doing the ride I'd heard from eight or nine others interested in joining me, so it looks like being a pretty fun day, despite a couple of scary climbs!

So, having committed to all this, I reckon I need to get into the habit of riding regularly - at least twice weekly, regardless of weather, busyness and my riding buddies' availability.  Having been given an extra day off work today, I'd decided in advance that I'd use it to get out on the bike - then I woke up to a dusting of snow on the ground, temperatures hovering around zero and reports of blizzards coming in from various parts of the country.  Tempting as it was to just stay in bed I got layered up and rode off into the freezing rain.  We're very fortunate to live within 300 metres of a National Cycle Network route so the first mile or so of my ride was traffic-free, with much of the rest on quiet country lanes.  For reasons best known to the masochistic part of my subconscious, I found myself heading towards my nemesis - Northgate lane.  Now, it's not a big hill, the total elevation gain is only 20 metres or so, but it's steep and it catches me out every single time - just as you think you're about to crest it, it gets steeper. I'm clearly fitter than I was when I tackled it for the first time, last summer, as I got to the top on the bike and without crying, but it did make me swear a little bit (well, it would have done if I'd had breath to spare for swearing.)  Much as I hate this hill on the outbound part of my ride, it's a (relative) joy on the way home, a far easier climb followed by, in ideal conditions, a fast, straight descent*.  Today's conditions were far from ideal, sadly, with both this and my other favourite descent still icy in places, and a careful pottering descent isn't anything like as much fun as a flying one.

Today's route

17.5 miles
90 minutes
Average speed 11.7 mph
Items of clothing: 10, excluding helmet & shoes!

*In my head, descent is always pronounced, a la Magnus Backstedt, "dee-sent."  Much more Pro!

Ride, January 3rd 2011

A couple of years ago I discovered that Twitter was a good place to follow bike racing - it was during the Tour of California, and I had heard somewhere that Johan Bruyneel was live-tweeting the race from the team car.  I signed up, picked a few people to follow & sat down to "watch" the race.  Pretty soon, fellow cycling fans began to find me, and one of the first was a local guy, Rich, a.k.a. @hardboiled2006.  We chatted about the pros at first, who we were cheering for in California and then in the spring classics & the Giro; we moved on to discussing our own cycling (him: a regular rider putting in hundreds of miles a year on a flashy road bike; me: just taking it up again after 12 bikeless years, pottering about on a tatty old rescued-from-the-tip mountain bike.)  Often we just chatted, getting to know each other through an online presence of 140 characters or less.  Finally, a year or so later, we met, and when I got my first road bike we rode together.  We got in a couple of rides over the summer - easy, chatty social rides for him, which left me feeling pleasantly pushed (it's far too easy to relax & slow down when you're riding alone,) but when autumn came around life - and filthy weather - got in the way.

Weeks went by when we half-heartedly agreed to arranged something, then a new year's eve coffee and a twitter-chat and the ride was on at last: something between 20 and 35 miles, a nice relaxed pace, the all-important coffee stop.  We met at the Minster on Monday morning, joined by Tom and another twitterer, Matt, and headed out of town for a 21 mile loop through some of the prettiest villages to the south of town.  We set off along the river to Bishopthorpe, then on to Appleton Roebuck through the middle of a pheasant shoot - I'm used to checking the road for hazards, less used to looking up and dodging falling wildfowl!  The one "hill" of the day was the double railway bridge at Colton, from where we crossed the A64 (lordy, how I hate that junction!) to Askham Bryan and back in to town to my favourite café, Gray's Court to refuel and thaw our toes.

21 miles, plus to & from the city centre starting point
1 hour 58 minutes riding, another hour or so drinking coffee

Ride, January 1st 2011

Not *all* of the ice has melted yet...

At long, long last my road bike has mudguards, fitted just in time to allow me to enjoy a long-standing new year tradition: wherever I am & whatever the weather I like to begin the year with an hour or two outdoors, breathing in the cold air, getting my body moving after the excesses & idleness of Christmas, and if at all possible escaping the city crowds.

As well as Christmas, the great British weather & a lingering cough had conspired to keep me off the bike since mid-November, and the lack of exercise has begun to show on my mind as well as my body.  Despite the fact that today was one of those grim winter days when it never truly got light, nothing was going to keep me indoors!

We chose a nice, easy, mostly flat route - a little loop out through the villages to the east of York.  The road surfaces were terrible after a month of snow & ice, hundreds of potholes, huge patches of loose gravel & wet leaves, even still ice in places, but it felt so good to be back on the bike!  I only returned to cycling a couple of years ago, and only bought my first road bike last spring, but I really do feel like that little Raleigh is an extension of my body.  Cycling feels so comfortable, so natural to me, even more so than walking.  I may never go as fast as Emma Pooley, but by God riding my bike makes me feel great!

14.6 miles

1 hour 12 minutes

average speed 12.1 mph

highest speed 21 mph