It’s been a while since there’s been a post about an Open university course around here. I’ve been having a break for the start of this year as due an upcoming wedding I’ve more important things to be concentrating on (and Sod’s Law guarantees that I’d have a TMA due during or just after the honeymoon!)

But I’ve just registered for MST209  – “Mathematical methods and models” starting in September 2012, so they’ll be starting again soon. On a bit of a treadmill now as I can’t really keep on with OU study unless I stay on the transitional fee arrangement (transitional cost = £735, new fee = £2500), so it’s a module a year tll 2017 or I don’t get a degree.

Will see how the calendar shapes up for next year before looking at the Residential school (MSXR209 – Mathematical Modelling). Though it’d be nice to have finished all the ‘core’ modules for the degree, and then move onto level 3 in 2013

In the meantime I’m going to try and kickstart the old brain a bit by going through some of the revision material.

Another trip to Wales on the bike, seems to be becoming a bit of a habit. This time it was for the 400km Brevet Cymru from Chepstow. It says 2.25AAA, but there’s actually about 5000m of climb on this ride, just not all of it’s steep enough to qualify for AAA points (see the AAA Pages for the maths).

It started off with another night in a Travelodge Family room with a couple of bikes thrown in. Then an early morning drive over the Severn bridge to get to the Bulwark community hall in time for tea before the 6am depart.  We had a quick brief from the org about various bits of road debris from the heavy rain over the preceeding week.

Everyone was off in a large group that gradually spaced out a bit on a few gentlish climbs as we followed the England/Wales border. All was going well till on an uphill I heard that depressing ‘pshhhhh’ sound that indicates the p&£$(£e fairy had paid me a visit. Hopped off the bike to find a sizable chunk of rear tyre missing and a casing showing through. As this tyre was new on the Rutland 100 I was bit suprised to have seen if go through so quickly. But then I worked out a loose mudguard (missing stay nuts) had probably bounced onto the tyre and a loose reflector rivet had ripped through the tyre, so I forgave Giant’s QA process and got on with swapping. Thankfully since the Rutland ride I’ve been carrying a spare tyre just in case. 20 minutes later I’d removed the remains of the mudguard and strapped it to the carradice (thankfully it was a nm event :)) and fitted the new tyre and was on my way. Only to stop 800 metres later when my tired brain twigged as the tyre deflated again that if I’d ripped through the casing and the tube had deflated, then I really should change the tube as well. So I did it all over again, and gave myself a blister on my hand for my troubles with my mini pump.

Benign till Hay-on-Wye, but then the hills arrived in earnest. Nothing too steep, but long long steady climbs. Finding a good pace was essential, and just plugging away at it. And mastering the skill of undoing your top on the way up, no handing it over the top of the climb while doing it up ready for the zoom downhill. The downhill stretch of the A483 on the way to Llandovery gets a special mention for a superb surface, great corners and magnificent secenery.

De-ja-vu on the way out of Bulith Wells as we followed some of the same roads as Yr Elenydd a couple of weeks earlier, though we went straight on at Beulah as we were to reach Tregaron via a different route this time. The first stop as Llandovery seemed to be marred by some slow service at the cafe, but they did seem swamped with Audaxers and bikers at the time.

Opted to skip the pub at Tregaron and made do with sandwiches on the bench in the square. The section from Tregaron to New Quay held the steepest sections of the day at 16% which were a strain after 250km. Remembered the warning about the climb out of New Quay so restricted myself to Apple pie at the Mariners.

And boy was that climb a biggy, from the harbour to 312 meters, then a lumpy mostly downhill return to Llandovery for a 2nd stop at the West End cafe for a decent refuel.

Night kit went on as we left Llandovery for a nice easily navigated stint along the A40, with a seemingly never ending climb up through the woods. Eventually the penultimate control at Bwlch hove into view. Inside we were treated to soup, apple pie and custard (in seperate portions), and also the sight of lots of people staring vacantly at the walls.

Shortly after leaving this oasis my bloody Edge 800 decided it had had enough of doing it’s job and died with a glowing white screen. The only way to revive it being to do a full system restore. Which has the side effect of wiping *ALL* user data from the unit. Nice f*cking idea Garmin. Luckily my companion had a working GPS so I didn’t have to dig out a routesheet. Glided past the end of night clubbers in Abergavenny. And then faced the last final 200m climb up before dropping into Chepstow. Sat around dazed at Arrivee for a bit before grabbing a couple of hours sleep and then heading back to Nottingham.

Certainly my hardest day out on the bike so far for 2012. Even with the weather Yr Elenydd didn’t seem like so much work. This could have been down to not getting much decent sleep in the week leading up to it though.

Am very annoyed about the GPS crash as I’ve no stats to see how I did on faffing versus riding. But 21:30ish seems like a pretty good time to me, as the last 400 I did took 19:30 and had nowhere near as much climbing as Brevet Cymru

Here’s an elevation chart from the Org’s GPX, there’s some big spikes in there:

And here’s an overview of the route:

In keeping with this season’s idea of trying a few hillier audaxes I’d dropped an entry in for Yr Elenydd. This is the new version of the long running Elenith event under the stewardship of a new org (John “U.N.Dulates” Hamilton). I never rode the original, so this was all going to be new to me. Just from the outline it was obvious this was going to be a bit of a challenge, 305 km with 5000m of climbing out and back across the middle of Wales, including the Tregaron Mountain Road with it’s reputation for some seriously steep sections.

Weather forecast was for a cold start, brightening up through the day with some very light showers before getting colder in the evening. On that basis I decided on spring weight 3/4 bibs, SS top with arm warmers and winter gloves to start with. As it would turn out, this wasn’t a great idea.

Set off was 6AM from Upton Magna village hall. We were let off in 3 bunches to avoid too much of a bunch on the initial lanes. The ride started off nice an benignly so I could get some heat into my legs. There’d be a quick briefing about a ford at the off, unfortunately I’d misheard and ploughed through the first one expecting it to be shallow, cue 2 soaking feet (I’d decided to leave overshoes off till I needed them). Oh well, they’d keep till the first control I thought. Soon things started heading upwards and downwards, but nothing too horrendous. Then the rain arrived, in slightly larger quantity than I’d been expecting. Again I thought I’d leave off putting the waterproof on till the control…..

First control was at Shobdon airfield, which meant we got to eat beans on toast looking over this lot:

View from Shobham control on Yr Elenydd

Tried to do the best I could for my feet with napkins, hand towels and the hand drier in the gents. Finally put on the overboots and my rain jacket and headed back off out. The big shock on this section was seeing the amount of snow on the hill tops, this was worrying as I’d not been expecting that and was a bit scared about the affect on temperature as I was dressed a bit skimpily. The rain kept coming but with some of the bigger climbs appearing that was soon ignored. Crossing over into wales with a little more fanfair than on The Dean (they even had flags!). First big climb was up past the Fforest inn, not too bad though I was shown up by the gentleman on Fixed who pulled away up the hill nicely, then followed by a nice fast drop into Bulith Wells for a free control, catching up with another rider towards the bottom. Almost went for a CoOp cash machine receipt till I remembered that they don’t put the location on them any more, so went for a Snickers instead. All of which was a bit pointless as the Org happened to be in there on his way to the next check.

5 minutes warmth in the CoOp we headed off. Rolling route out along the A483 (A road bashing is completely different in Wales to what I’m used to in the East Midlands). In Beulah we turned right and started up a smaller lane. This started to rise steadily through the woods with some good twists and turns, until it opened up to reveal this:

Tregaron Mountain Road approach

Which is just the sort of road you dream about riding on an Audax, but I knew what was coming at the end. After a few ups and downs we arrived at the next checkpoint at the foot of the Devils Staircase, which announces it’s presence with a nice little road sign:

Foot of the Devils Staircase

This ramps up nicely to 25%, then 2 hairpins before easing off to an easier 10% or so. Unfortunately I was caught out on the main ramp when my front wheel lifted and I decided I’d rather bail than topple. Then the road keeps going. This it the Tregaron Mountain road. There’s 3 major climbs each of which is a major struggle in itself. But the reward is a hugely fast swooping descent down into Tregaron when the ladies of the Tregaron Bowls club were waiting to feed us.

I was glad I’d stuck with just a soup as the climb started almost immediately we’d left the control. What goes up comes down, and this was a good swooper on decent surfaces to Pont-Rhyd-Groes (bridge of the ford of the cross), and then we started climbing. This all went fine till we turned off onto the B4574 and the gradient ramped up a little too quickly for me. A quick break with a hot cross bun and back on it. Over the top and we dropped into another perfect valley:

Home of the Cybermen

This wasn’t as tough as the Tregaron road, but it felt like it just kept going. And then round a corner I suddenly realised there was a big climb to get out of the valley, but once done meant we’d crossed the highest point on the ride. Another great swoop down good roads. I’d seen the video of the gent who’d had a high speed interaction with a sheep, and with the little fluffy buggers scampering across the road I can see that you could quite easily come a cropper. This section also not helped by a reasonably strong headwind either.

Cake and coffee in rhayader and back on the road. On this section I came very close to throwing my Edge 800 into the nearest hedge (though it’s more OSM’s fault). The road on the map isn’t in the right place, so the unit kept trying to route me down every unpaved road it could find to get me onto the track, and I couldn’t find any way to override this behaviour. Some dragging of roads on OSM is on my list of things to do this week. No nasty climbs on this section, but a lot of graded A road climbs.

Next control was an oasis of warmth at Wheelwright Inn. Good stew and Apple Crumble revived the soul. Walking out into a heavy cold downpour soon removed that feeling. All that was left now was a climb over Long Mynd, just what we needed after 250km. But try to the Org’s description we then had 20km of descent/flat back to the hall to ease the legs. This section would have bee slightly more pleasant if my Ixon IQ hadn’t kept deciding to switch modes randomly. 30mph on a dark descent is not the moment for your light to go into less than full beam mode.

Got back to the Village Hall dead on 10, so 16 hours overall. Pretty happy with than as it’s about the same time I took for The Dean, so being efficient at the controls does pay off. The finish also came equipped with cake, Pasta and soup which was marvellous. And finally getting my feet dry and warm again was wonderful.

Definitely hardest single day in the saddle so far, but it’s one I’ll certainly do again.

A cyclist is tragically killed while enjoying a perfectly legal Time Trial event by a carelessly driving HGV operator (BBC Report). What happens next?

Well Quentin Rayner and BBC East Midlands Today decide that it must be the cyclist’s fault for using a road when he doesn’t even pay “Road Tax”. So that’ll be the Road Tax that was abolished in 1937 then? And replaced by a specific tax on Vehicles, which is not earmarked for the roads? And then using that stupidity to indicate that Cyclists shouldn’t be allowed to the use the road as they legally can.

Quentin also tries to intimate that there’s something inherently wrong with the concept of Time Trialing on the open road (there isn’t, and if there was, after this length of time I think the Police might have mentioned it to the CTT) by insinuating you wouldn’t be allowed to ‘race’ on the public highway in any other form of transport. To which I can only say that he’s obviously never heard of Road Rallys (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_rally). The main difference is that the “Road Rally”ers have to have a maximum speed to stay legal, most TTers won’t get anywhere near the maximum speed indicated for a road so they don’t need one.

It’s one thing to hear this sort of stupidity from idiots, but to then hear it given prominence on a Regional News show from the UK’s major broadcaster is appalling. Could the BBC not spend a little time making sure their “Chief News reporters” actually know the bare minimum about a subject before they allow them to open their mouths?

[Update]

Better commentary and analysis on this issue over at “I Pay Road Tax”

So it was time for the year’s rides to start getting a bit longer, and I had a strange hankering to actually get some points for climbing hills (a couple of rides have had enough “up”, but the orgs didn’t want to scare people off with AAA‘s). The Dean has always had good write ups, so I decided a trip down to Oxford was in order.

Shared the obligatory cheap Travelodge family room the night before. Even braved the Holiday Inn bar for a couple of pints, though at £8.50 for 2 Guinness’s it was a little steep for my liking.

Even restricting the beer didn’t stop the next morning being a very foggy start. Loaded the bikes up and cycled the 150m to the start, where the Brevet cards were being handed out in a very efficient manner. The usual high octane start of an audax occured when the org announced “It’s 6, you might as well go” and we gradually decided to head off.

The first stage was nicely rolling to Stow-on-The-Wolds, though a lot of the nice scenery was obscured by some pretty thick fog. And it was a bit nippy out.  I had to stop to dig the full finger gloves out from the barley and then wrestle them on with frozen fingers. We climbed out of the fog a couple of miles before the control and a glance over the left shoulder showed us climbing out of a valley filled with fog. One of those moments when I really wished I had a small camera to carry on audaxes.

First control was forecourt stop at Stow. Fortified myself with a milky bar and a larg cappucino. Decided to load up the next section of the route, and managed to calm the rising panic as I realised that somehow I’d managed to only load sections 1,3 and 5 on to the Edge. So I was missing half the ride, and didn’t even have the fallback gpx track that I’d thought I’d put on for emergencies!! It was also at this point that I rememebered that the 3 copies of the routesheet I’d printed out were still sat on my desk at work, double d’oh.

Thankfully audaxers are nice people and I found people to follow on almost all of the remaining sections where I needed. The next section had the occaisonal patches of fog, but it was disappearing. Things started to get more rolling on this section. Though nothing too horrendous. Some of the descents on offer were a bit nervewracking for a nervous descender like me.

The next control was Newent. A plate of beans on toast to refuel the engines. By now it was a proper sunny day so moving took a bit longer that expected as I warmed up. The next section had a few more hills, but wound through the Forest of Dean, so there was plenty of shade and fairly quiet roads. My only problems here were that using OSM maps my edge kept trying to route me down the trails. The final drop down into Chepstow was a good fun, and then it was joining in an audax picnic at the side of  Tesco’s petrol station to enjoy a feast of their finest sandwhiches.

Bit of a steep climb out of Chepstow, but then onto the cycle path over the Severn bridge and back into England. Rolling for a bit, but then the section reared up to the Somerset Monument. This was a bit of a challenge after a 100 miles of so. Managed to grind my way up to the top and then it was a reasonable roll into Malmesbury where the square was full of cyclists. The traditional visit to a CoOp gave another sandwhich and recipt, and we retreated to the Market Cross to eat.

The next section had a couple of steepish struggles up past the Marlborough Horse and the Hackpen White Horse, an info control that we’d all been waiting for (and I was told not to use that joke again on the day). Started to get cold again, there’d be a very cold patch in an unexpected dip in the road, and was a bit of a shock to come across those descending from Hackpen hill. Started to get dark along this stretch, but managed to make it to the next control at Membury services without having to get the full night kit out.

Seemed strange to be controlling on a cycling event at a Motorway services, but they had coffee and inside chairs so I wasn’t complaining. Rumours abound that Hugh Grant was spotted filling his car up, but I didn’t see anything.Wrapped up warmer here and put the new batteries in the lights for the last section. Got on some fast wheels here who knew exactly where they were going, and a good pace was kept up. Glancing down at the GPS I noticed we were whizzing along sections at 28-30kph on the flat, probably why my legs were hurting a bit. A nice flight through Oxford and we were back at the Peartree services, completing the ride by  buying red bull and crisps to eat on the forecourt.

Overall time was just a smidge under 16 hours (12:05 hours moving). So a little slower than I’d wanted, but I felt great at the end. Remembering how I felt after the ride to skeggy last year (and how badly I’d felt a month earlier trying a 200) I was impressed how I felt at the end. Looks like getting the miles in is starting to help. Didn’t feel too bad the next day either which is good. Hoping this is a sign of a bit of form, hoping it holds on for the next ride which is Yr Elenydd in April, 300km and 5AAA!!!

I was contacted by a rider looking to plan a long distance charity ride in memory of the 96 victims of the  Hillsborough disaster. With his permission I’m posting up parts of his email, along with my answers. Hopefully they’ll be useful to others as well. And if you’re thinking of planning something similar then please get in touch. Work and cycling mean I may not be able to give you a perfect route, but hopefully I can help you through the technicalities or offer some suggestions on roads

So on to the email:

Sounds like a good ride for a good cause. I’d offer to meet you for the section across lincolnshire and nottinghamshire but I’m booked in for a 300km Audax in wales that weekend.

It’s a bit of an aquired taste, it’s taken me a while to get used to.

You should be able to. I tend to us OSM for almost all of my routes. The problem is that they’re only as good as someone else has made them. When I’ve encountered patchy areas I’ve had to decide whether I can get by with a little note, or would be better off with the Garmin maps I got in the bundle.

I use the pregenerated OSM img files from http://talkytoaster.info/ukmaps.htm which also has instructions to install them. It makes some of the later steps faster if you install them on your local machine as well as onto the micro SD card, that way when you’re playing with the route you don’t need the edge plugged in, and you’re not slowed down by the USB connection either.

Going to do both of these together as they fit together:

For a long route I find that Google Maps set to walking mode is the easiest way to get a basic route. For instance your basic route looks like this: http://g.co/maps/y66f2
I’d then look at the route at a large scale an pull it off of obviously main roads (this depends on how happy you are on big main roads, I’ve cycled bits of the A1, but don’t really like doing it for long stretches. The street view is good for this as it gives you an idea of whether the roads a Dual Carrigeway and if it’s got a cycle lane or wide shoulders. So with yours I’d be avoiding the A17 across lincolnshire as it’s not pleasant in car let alone on a bike - http://g.co/maps/mwrjg

Also I’d check how much city/town cycling there is. Going through a big centre can be stressful and slow, so I’d rather skirt round.
Then I go through at a higher magnification checking what the smaller roads are like. Google has started routing down some fairly marginal trails recently and a bit of street viewing can prevent a trip up a mud track in the dark.(http://Bikehike.co.uk can also be good for this as it shows the OS map of the section of google map you’re looking at, so it’s easy to spot footpaths and bridleways.
I’d then use one of the online tools to convert a google map route to a GPX track. I prefer Google Maps Cuesheet - http://winthefight.org/cuegle/
While that tool gives you the option to send a route straight to your Garmin, with OSM that might not be the best option as any slight differences in the map will confuse the routing on the device. The way I prefer is to take the GPX file and import it into Garmin Basecamp.

In Basecamp make sure you’ve selected the right map, and then right click your track and select Create Route. If it asks you how many points to use, try about 100. Then comes the fun of finding the oddities, this is a post explaining how I do it - http://napalmgram.co.uk/wordpress/index.php/2011/04/12/converting-gps-tracks-gpx-to-routes-for-garmin-edge/.

Eventually you end up with a nice route which you can then send to your Garmin

Its sounds a lot of work, but it’s a couple of hours and it saves a lot of time when you’re actually on the road

Make sure the bike fits you well.
Practice with the GPS and routing a lot before you rely on it. There are a lot quirks, so get it wrong when you’re not relying on it.
Keep eating and drinking well throughout the days.
Take it steady. If you’ve got the HR strap for the Edge it comes in handy as you can make sure you’re not pushing yourself too much. I find that about 65-70% of max HR is a level of effort I can keep up for a long time.
Get a rechargable battery pack to keep the Edge running for long days (the battery normally only lasts ~10 hours, I’ve got one of these – Tecknet 5000mAh USB rechargeable pack
Enjoy it

Cheers
Stuart

Having fixed my drivetrain problems I decided it would be a good idea to get some hilly riding in before the Dean. With some decent weather forecast for the weekend I decided that heading for the Peak District was good idea. Not been out that way for a couple of months as I’ve either not had enough time or have been worried about getting caught out by the weather.

I worked out a cut down route based on last years ill fated first attempt at a DIY by GPS that should fit into the 5 hours I had spare. But in a fit of very un-audax thinking I couldn’t be bothered to get a virtual brevet for it, so this hasn’t been officially proven, but autoroute OKs it.

The control points I ‘used’ were:

• Nottingham
• Belper
• Birchover
• Jaggers Lane, Darley Moor
• Nottingham

Autoroute gives this as 100.6km on shortest distance around that lot. The route I took round them looked like this:

It’s a reasonably quiet route. Even the main roads out of Nottingham are reasonably quiet. Rolling roads to Belper and then the proper Peak District hills kick in. Birchover Lane is a very steep little number, I ended up have to walk about 2 meters of it as there was just no traction to be had. The descent from Bichover through Stanton Lees is very fast, but some of the corners are very sharp so be careful. The climb out of Darley Dale is a bit of a struggle, the signs reckon 20%, but that’s if you don’t get the line wrong on the hairpins. Once that’s over it’s a nice rolling ride back to Nottingham.

I made the route 1650m of climbing from my Edge 800, which should qualify for AAA points. But until someone submits it to the AAA man there’s no guarantee. The profile looks like this:

My ride of it went pretty well considering I’m still trying to find my legs this year. The only bit I had to walk was as mentioned above due to lack of traction. That’s pretty good compared to last years attempts. I’m still slow on the climbs, but that can hopefully be improved. Looking forward to getting over to the Peak District a bit more this year, now I’ve got some reasonable pace on the flat I can get over there without wasting too much time. And I’ll give that DIY from last year another go, just to make sure it gets ticked off.

Been experiencing increasing amounts of chain slippage and shipping over the last month or so. But I’ve been putting it down to muck and grime rather than anything else. It eventually got to the point where the bike was pretty much unusable and I had to cut a ride short. Had a better look and various drivetrain components had obviously seen better days. A quick order was placed with Spa Cycles who kindly overnighted me the required bits, and this morning’s ride to work was a wonder of slick shifting, quiet pedalling and solid engagement.

Chainring after 7500 miles

Think the image above shows the fact I should have done it well before now quite clearly. The silver ring is the new one from Spa and the black one is the worn FSA one that’s done ~7.5k miles. That’s some fairly major wear to my eyes.

At least I can now stand on the pedals with confidence again. Was starting to worry about having to the whole of The Dean sat in the saddle!!

So after the debacle that was the 2012 attempt at Rutland and Beyond I was in need of a final 200km audax to round off my RRTY attempt. So some quick playing around with Google Maps and I came up with a 200km using the following controls:

• Nottingham
• Ashbourne
• Tutbury
• Oakham
• Wymondham
• Nottingham

RRTY badge

Which nicely rounds off my first 12 months of Audaxing :). I’ve got rides entered for the next 6 months, so now to see if I can build up enough of a head of steam to keep going through next winter as well.

Luckily There’s an audax saying I keep seeing bandied around

You’re only as good as the ride you’re on

And by that standard I was pretty crap yesterday.  First mistake was not having ridden at all for 3 weeks. Second mistake was not checking the event details properly. The ride down to the start had been planned for a 9am start, we both realised on the Saturday that it was in fact 08:30. Too late to change anything, so we charged down to Leicester and arrived just in time to see the tail of the pack heading off. Decided that as we were at the back we’d hang around for a bit with a cup of tea and some biscuits.

Suitably refreshed (or so I thought) we headed off. About 10km in I was chewing tape. This wasn’t a good sign. Stopped for a couple of slices of Malt loaf and pushed on to the first control. Flapjack and a cup of tea and a push on. Feeling a bit better along the next stretch. Stopped to check the route next to RAF Luffenham when we heard a sharp crack, Mark commented “Hope that’s not your tyre”, given we were next to a RAF base I replied “Probably a firing range”. 2 metres down the road it was fairly obvious it was my rear wheel. Stripped the tube out and spotted the rather obvious huge hole. Not a problem, swap in the spare brand new tube. Some vigorous hand pumping and we were approaching a usable pressure when with a bang the new tube goes, and this time so does the sidewall of the tyre. Arse, muppet here had thought ‘it’s only a 100, why bother with the spare tyre”. Luckily we were just past the Giant store on the shore of rutland water, so Mark shot back to pick up another tyre and a couple of tubes. Just to show how friendly Audaxers are, I’d already had an inner tube and tyre donated by a passing bunch before he got back. So the 3rd mistake was to assume that moving tyres with 6k miles on them onto a new wheel was a good idea, shouldn’t be so cheap.

Got to the next control in time to hand back the tyre and tube to the donaters. Slightly more substantial feed here and then back onto it. Pretty much given up with the ECE by now as we were well behind our expected schedule and were really starting to feel the cold, 4th mistake underestimating the effect of the weather. Pootled our way back to arrivee, but didn’t stop long as we spotted the next train home was leaving in 15 minutes. So we managed to TT the 3 miles to the station, grab tickets and sprint along the platform to catch it.

Despite the fact it didn’t go to plan I actually had a really good day out on the bike. The organisation from Leicester forest CC was great, all the riders seemed to be enjoying themselves, the route was challenging but not stupidly so, and the countryside looked wonderful with the snow still on the ground, but luckily no real icy patches on the road. The new rear wheel was brilliant, though a Hope hub is certainly an encouragement to keep pedalling!!My new Sealskinz winter gloves were plenty warm, though there appears to be a knack to learn for taking them on and off easily.

So all in all not a complete failure. But it does mean I need to get another 200km ride in before the end of February. And I really need to get some mileage in before the Dean at the end of March, it’s a 300km and it’s got Hills.

Still been a slow start to the year. Thank to the weather and some broken spokes I’ve not been on a bike for about 3 weeks now. Wheelcraft delivered this lovely piece of bling earlier:

So that’s the main problem sorted. And if the snow holds off for a bit longer I’ll get a chance for a 200 on Sunday with the Leicester Forest CC’s Rutland and Beyond 100km, coupled with a 100km ECE. Forecast isn’t brilliant, but noone’s threatening snow before then which is a bonus. The forecast temps of -6C over night is less helpful, but I’ve gained enough excess blubber by not riding that I should be safe enough until I warm up. Have bought some better batteries for the lights, and a more useful length of USB cable for keeping the Garmin going.

Hopefully this will kick start the year. Realising it’s only 6 weeks till The Dean and 4AAA points, need to get cracking on some miles.

Further to my post last year about retrieving GPS data from corrupted Garmin fit files, when it happened to me again last week due to a failed battery I came across this tool: http://fitfilerepairtool.info/

It does what it says on the label and makes repairing a corrupted fit file a fairly simple and painless operation. Though you do need Microsoft Access or the Access runtime (which means a windows install) so it’s not quite right for everyone (luckily I have a Windows image with Office Pro running in VMware on my MacBook).

Bit of a rocky start to the start of the year for cycling so far. With weather and work I’ve not really been getting the miles in I wanted to. Hopefully that’ll start to turn around now. Debating whether to use this spare saturday for a hilly foray into the peaks, or to try tagging on the back of a club run.

I managed a very cold 200km DIY around Nottingham-Hinckley-Medbourne-Stamford-Nottingham (See “Planning an Audax DIY by GPS route” post). Very cold day out, don’t think I’ve seen energy drink freeze before. Thankfully the kind owners of medbourne post office let me sit inside while I supped soup. Had a few problems with batteries dying quickly in the cold. So I’ve stocked up on an extra long USB cable to keep the GPS running and a better set of rechargables to keep the lights on. Overall speed wasn’t help with a binding rear brake either, but it was too cold to think about whipping out the allen keys to fix it, had visions of loosening everything off and then not being able to get it done back up. Rear hub also still playing up, so have bitten the bullet and Wheelcraft are building me up a blingier replacement

Next audax ride is the Rutland and Beyond 100km from Leicester which I did last year as my first audax event (notes here). This year I’m ECE-ing it up to 200km. So hopefully that’ll conclude 12 months of Audaxing, and as a bonus finish off my RRTY as well. Route sheet’s arrived and looks the same as last years. As I didn’t have a routable GPS last year I didn’t bother making a gpx, so that’s a task for the next week.

January’s another month where I can’t make a proper AUK event, so I’m relying on another 200km DIY by GPS to keep the RRTY going (almost enough acronyms in that sentence to make it look like project brief from work). So I kept a track of how I went about working out a new route for it.

I tend to like to put my controls in places rather than at specific junctions or Grid References. Places tend to be easier for the Org to find on a map, and make life easier on the ride if you need to re-route because of conditions or a road closure. Another plus is that if the GPS plays up I’ve a good chance of still being able to pick up proof of passage. It’s also better to have a low number of controls as it gives you more choice on the route you take on the day (for instance with this one I worked out a rural roads version, but if it’s icy on the day I can also do it on A roads without too much trouble), and it makes the Org’s life easier.

I start with Google maps zoomed out a fair bit to work out roughly where I want to go. As this is going to be an early january ride I’ve decided that I’m going to head south from Nottingham to avoid the Peak District and also to keep out of the fens as I’ve not done much on the bike and don’t fancy a day of headwinds.

From looking at that  I reckon a ride around Leicester and Rutland Water would give me about the right distance. I start by picking 2 corners. Looks like Hinckley will give me a route to the west of Leicster avoiding major towns, and then I should be able to head East to Stamford to take me under Leicester and then give me a rural ride back to Nottingham

Basic DIY GPS route, but set to driving

Looks OK, and it’s over distance which is good. But it’s set to driving mode. So switch it to walking and we get.

Basic route set to walking

Rats, distance is now under 200km. Though it’s showing the shortest route is through the middle of Leicester, which I don’t fancy. So to bring it back up to distance I think I’ll hunt for another control about half way along that leg somewhere south of Leicester. The village of Medbourne appears to fit the bill.

Basic route set to walking with extra control

Hmmm, still a bit short Now come the tweaking to get those extra 5 km in. I’ve used the generic centre of Nottingham for the planning, but I’ll actually be starting from the North of the city. So let’s use a more accurate location.

Final google maps for DIY GPS

back over 200km on google’s shortest distance, so all’s good. Route doesn’t look particularly brilliant at the moment (don’t really fancy that section of the A1 myself), but can sort that out later.

To double check I now put the points in AutoRoute (I got a cheap copy from eBay). There are some route where this is the only way to check the distance, when planing the LEL DIY we couldn’t get google to let us ‘walk’ over the Humber Bridge so had to use autoroute for checking that section. Also AutoRoute is seen as the “gold standard” for checking the route, so if I’m submitting a route at short notice I know that if I include the AutoRoute file it’ll pass muster so I don’t need to wait for the Org to check it and let me know.

So enter the controls in AutoRoute, and ensure it’s set to shortest distance (this is under ‘More Options’):

Autoroute settings for DIY GPS checking

Autoroute confirming DIY GPS Distance

Excellent, still passes muster, so I can now submit it to the Organiser.

Now I can go back to googlemaps/bikehike/bikeroutetoaster/etc and work out a route I’d actually like to cycle between these points. With this route I just pulled the route off the main roads slightly as it was mostly on quiet A-roads anyways.

So here’s hoping there’s no ice about when I ride it next week.

A couple of days late, but finally got the stats for 2011 all done (nothing if not geeky here).

Total mileage for 2011 – 5555.44 miles

Average Weekly miles – 106.82

Weeks with No mileage – 4

Hours cycling – 363 (15.125 days).

Average hours cycling per week – ~7

And now for a pretty graph:

Series 2 is the weekly total, and Series 3 is the average. So you can see how quickly the average drops off after a couple of weeks off or weeks with low mileage.

Fastest ride was a 29 minute blast round a local 10 mile club TT course in the middle of a longer ride. Hopefully I’ll get a bit faster than that for 2012

So not a bad start to my first year back in cycling. Definitely a promising start to some serious long distance cycling. I certainly feel like I’ve built up a solid base to build on this year.

I’ve had 2 weeks completely off the bike thanks to a house move, so of course the sensible course of action was to do a 200km DIY by GPS for my 2nd ride, with the first being the 15 mile commute to work.

So off I went on my Nottingham – Bourne – Woohall Spa – Lincoln – Nottingham course. Didn’t make any changes to the route as it had gone well last time.

It turns out there’s a good reason why a RRTY is hard to get. The cold makes a huge difference. Not sure if it was all the cold, or also a loss of fitness but I had a pretty hard time on this one. Despite not hanging around at stops I was still slower than last time I went round when I spent about 2 hours on a friend’s sofa eating and drinking tea.

One thing I need to do to improve this route is to find a decent cafe in Bourne. Costa is OK for a coffee, but some fried food would have so gratefully recieved yesterday. Luckily Little Dorrits cafe in Woodhall Spa always comes up trumps (and has decent bike parking round the back, there’s a gas cage to chain the bikes to), and they’re use to cyclists as the Skeggy 300 uses it as a control.

The flyboys were out in force with plenty of USAF out from conninsgby and the RAF from Waddington.

First time I’d been out on a bike for so long in the cold. It’s completely different from walking in it. I’d gone with some Roubaix material tights for the bottom half, with neoprene overshoes. For the top half a long sleeve base, with a short sleeve over the top and then a ‘winter’ longsleeve jersey overthat, and a Hi-Vis vest over all that (though I don’t know if that made any difference, but it probably acted like a combination gilet/wind-brake)). For my hands I wore a pair of thin karrimor running gloves, with my usual ** long fingers on top. I had a fleece buff to seal the top of my jacket, and wore a thin buff as a skull cap under my helmet

This seemed to work. I did get cold arms on longer descents, so I don’t think my top is as windproof as it could be. Feet seemed to be OK most of the time, occasional periods of being cold. Hands seemed OK, most of the ‘cold’ pain seemed to be more related to cramming the tips of my fingers at the end of the gloves, so a little bit of pulling around sorted that out until the next time they creeped up. My thighs gradually got colder and colder, and I’d have really appreciated a pair of shorts to pull over the top of the longs. I’d though about taking an extra pair but I’ve only got padded ones and was worried that double padding would feel wrong and uncomfortable.

The temperature stayed about 1-3C all the way round and I stopped for a warm up about every 3 hours. I think any colder or longer between stops and I’d have needed a couple of extra layers, and probably a proper jacket over the jersey.

The other interesting thing was watching the performance hit from the cold on batterys. Normally I don’t have to think about my garmin or iPhone’s battery on a 200km, but yesterday both were showing low amounts about half way round. I’d have thought the iphone would have been fine in the carradice but it wasn’t, and there isn’t much shelter for the garmin stuck on the stem. The last 50km I was getting worried about my front lights as I wasn’t sure how long they’d hold out and there isn’t really any where on that leg to pick up some more AAs. So that’s something else to think about on cold rides.

So not a proper hard man’s winter audax as there wasn’t snow, black ice or pissing on freewheels to get them working again but it was certainly hard work. And it was probably my last long ride of 2011, hopefully I’ll keep some mileage ticking over so I’m not so out of shape come 2012, and hopefully the weather will stay kind so I can get out in January.

First off something nice:

And that’s about the end of the good news. I knew I’d had a couple of less than brilliant TMA results, and one of them that didn’t get submitted do to other priorities. And the exam went less than brilliantly for me. So I’ve ended up with a Grade 3 pass, which while a pass isn’t a great pass.

I suppose I could blame it on all the long distance cycling but that’d be too easy, and wrong. The material is quite a step up from the previous 2 module as you move a lot further away from ‘applied arithmetic’ to some very new and nebulous concepts (Groups, I’m looking at you), but again that’s no real excuse as the material is pretty well presented. The only real excuse is that I just didn’t put the effort in. I’d coasted a bit through the first 2 modules and thought I could do the same with M208. So when I start MS209 in September 2012 I’ll be making a better effort to study studiously and hopefully do better on that one.

It’s definitely getting colder at 06:30 these days. Making the most of the ECE (extended Calendar Event) option to turn this into a 20o with a 50km leg tacked onto the start and end, means leaving home early to make sure I make it to Alfreton in time for a couple of cups of tea. Ride over was uneventful an mostly done on autopilot. Got to the start with about half an hour to spare, so plenty of time for tea and bicuits.

Set a good pace to the first control on Tutbury after I latched onto a fast group,reasonably flat decent roads for this section. Though a bit of muck around meant I kept glasses on if I was following someone. Reminds me that I need to add some flaps to my mud guards to be nice to anyone following me. Glad I’d got guards on, as quite a lot of riders sported impressive skunk stripes. Quick stop at the control in a car park in Tutbury and then back onto some country roads to Ashbourne. GPS  unit took a different view of the route to everyone else, and it was at this point that I discovered I’d forgotten to bring a route sheet with me, so no chance to check. Luckily I could wing it into Ashbourne as the next Info control was pretty central. Seemed to loose an hour here to a cafe stop that didn’t seem that long at the time.

Short section left to get back to Alfreton, but this contained most of the climbing. Nothing too huge as we just skirted the edge of the Peak District, though as usual anything passing near to Crich is going to involve some hills. Rolled back in Arrivee for about 14:00, giving about 5 hours for the ride.

A cup of tea and then the ECE leg back home. Bonked reasonably hard in Lambley for some reason, but was out of sugary stuff with no shop to help out. So was a long struggle back up Spring Lane for me. But it’s all done now and the GPXs are off to the org for validation.

A nice potter around some newish to me road, so a great way to spend a Saturday. Probably my last calendar event until Febuary as there doesn’t appear to be anything that doesn’t involve a reasonable amount of driving, or having to rearrange proper things. So i’ll be out on my own DIY GPSing, hopefully with better weather than last year

Bike was caked in crud so had a good cleanign session the next day. Suprised to find the rear tyre flat though. So that’s the first puncture in 5000 miles, so I was about due one. Slight less impressed that one repaired spare tube had perished, and the other one allowed itself to be installed and inflated, but to wait 2 hours before going with a disturbing bang.

Well not quite as I only had 9 months of the Audax year this year, but as the official season runs 1st November-31st October it’s now a new year. So to fill in some time before my first audax of the new Season (100km “To the Races” from Alfreton + 100km ECE) here’s a quick recap.

It all started from a cold side street in Leicester in Febuary 2011 with my first 100km, Rutland and Beyond. All a bit of a shock to the system after a couple of months of just trundling around. Just about managed to cope with a route sheet and a couple of photocopied pages from a Road atlas with the route drawn on in highlighter pen.

Things got better with the next 2 events as things got a bit longer (100km Three Fields + 200km Roses to Wrags). Got a bit more used to riding in company, not faffing so much at controls and moved onto GPS so I didn’t have to keep reaching for the map. Starting to get used to the idea of audax eating consisting of lard and sugar in heavy quantities.

First experience of riding in the proper dark (well 9pm) and first audax trip to the seaside as well with the Skegness 300km from Alfreton. Definitely starting to feel the distance now, but a lot better at making sure for a proper rest and refeed at controls. Discovered that hills make a huge difference on my first go at a GPS DIY. Discovering the joys of a horrendous headwind for 80km on the Lincolnshire cross, which was a taster of what was to come later on on my 600km ride. Then my first DNF for a calendar event with a broken saddle on the Moors and Wolds 400km (I now have a ‘fix’ if this happens again).

Another go at the hills with the Tramway 100km, much better this time. That wasn’t quite long enough for that month so I had another go at GPS DIY which worked out fine apart from a bit of rain. And then a 600km DIY along the London Edinburgh route (here and here) which introduced me to the benfits of not relying on a GPS alone for ride validation (which I forgot to remember later on in the year as well).And featured 300km of headwind, which I didn’t think was possible.

Next big ride was a solo 400km DIY cobbled together from bits of Moors and Wolds, another GPS cock up left the validation of this one in some doubt for a while as well. I really will make sure I get receipts in future. But it did mean that I also did another 200km GPS DIY so I could keep a nascent RRTY going. Quite a bit of elation when the validation did come through.

And then finished the season off with another hilly ride from Alfreton (Beware of The Plauge) which I ECE-ed into a 200km to keep the RRTY going.

So all in all a pretty good first season. 13 events in total with officiali 1,765 miles, a Super Randonneur award, and 75% of an RRTY. Not bad considering it’s less than 12 months ago since I actually bought my bike. I’ve learnt plenty about how I handle tiredness, the best way to pace myself around events and importantly, what service station and CoOp food stuffs I can eat in large quantities. I think my favourite ride of the year as the 400km DIY, on the ride everything seemed to just fall into place, and the great feeling of riding across Lincolshire and Nottinghamshire in the dead of the night on the homeward leg was amazing.

Plans are afoot already for 2012:

• Entries are in for:
• The Dean 300km (4 AAA)
• Yr Ellenydd 300km (5AAA)
• Mille Alba 10ookm
• With plans to enter:
• Brevet Cymru 400km (2.25 AAA)
• Bryan Chapman Memorial 600km (8.25 AAA)

Which should give me an SR, and if the plans go through at the AGM one of the new fangles SR25′s as well. Will also leave me only 0.5 AAA short of an AAA badge, so it seems rude not to go for that as well. I want to keep the RRTY going as well, so here’s hoping for a mildish winter.

9 out of 10 cats prefer carradice

One of the problems of doing longer rides or trying to use my bike for more taks is carrying stuff. There’s always something to carry, from just a spare innertube and basic tools to enough for a 600km ride across the country to getting everything to work of a morning.

First off, an admission to why I rejected one of the most common solutions. I can’t stand cycling with a rucsac on, it just drives me nuts. And I think the rubbing and the extra weight over a long distance would make it even more unpleasant.

I started off at the beginning of the year with a few small bits stuffed into jersey pockets. Nice and simple, but there was a pretty small limit to what I could carry comfortably so it was never going to work for long distances or commuting

Next I got a normal under seat saddle bag. This was just big enough for tools, tubes, a jacket and a couple of mars bars. If I tried really hard I could get my phone in there as well. So it would work for up to 300km probably, but not on longer audaxes or for commuting.

When looking for something a bit larger I found a number of options, but they didn’t look quite what I wanted. Anything that required a rack to sit on was out as I didn’t have the requisite mounts on my steed (and I didn’t fancy faffing with P-Clips), or couldn’t be removed quickly (I’m not always in the most salubrious parts of Nottingham, so fancied something that was reasonably quick to remove so I could take it with me).

I ended up with a Carradice Barley saddlebag with a Quick Release BagMan support.

The Barley is a simple design that’s been around for years. It’s made of hard wearing Cotton Duck (thick cotton material which is treated with wax for waterproofing). There’s one large compartment which seems to swallow most things:

Here it’s packed up with a normal set of kit for a day at work:

which is this little lot:

That’s a reasonable size lunchbox, jeans, T-shirt, boxers and socks. Which is enough for work, and theres still some room for other bits and pieces. Though I do leave a pair of shoes at work as they wouldn’t quite fit in (though when I rode down to Luton I managed to fit in a pair of converse hi tops, but they probably wouldn’t do for work)

There’s a bit of sag where the bag sits on the bagman, but that can be avoided with some careful packing or putting something at the bottom. On audaxes I tend to use my spare maps and routesheets for that. And other owners have used thin bits of plastic or cardboard

And on the sides there’s 2 pockets of a reasonable size:

This one’s been filled with 2x 700×25 innertubes, a pack of tissues and a tub of Nunn tablets. The other side holds a couple of multi tools, spare chain links, lock ties and a space blanket. With the side pockets packed like this I never need to empty them, so there’s no worrying about making sure I’ve got everything when I head out on a ride.

On the lid there’s a couple of strong metal loops. I think these were meant to be somewhere to attached your rain cape, but I’ve had good success using them to attach a dry bag on top for extra storage. I normally only use this for something light (thicker jersey and a pair of shorts normally, as shown in the bottom photo). There’s also a handy loop for adding a light, I’ve lock tied mine on for a bit of extra security. Only slight problem with the loop is that if the bag’s not full it bounces quite a bit, which can cause some strange noise as it hits the bagman

In the great tradition of quality british manufacturing, the name of the bag’s creator is written on the label, mine’s a Priscilla

As I don’t have a Brooks saddle (or one of the other with bag loops) I needed something to attach the barley to my saddle with. The Bagman QR does the job nicely. There just one large clamp bolt to do up to fix it onto the saddle rails, and that’s it. The Barley’s hanging loops just clip into the bagmans clips and there’s a stap to secure it to the frame a bit more securely, though I’ve started using a bungee cord for that as it’s easier and quicker with cold hands. The only other change I’ve made is to replace the tiny grub screws with some proper M5 bolts so I can get them properly tight without stripping threads. It’s also a handy attachment point for other items. On longer audaxes I’ve attached my waterproof to it, and also bungeed a spare folding tyre onto it which frees up more room for malt loaf.

After a year of use my Barley is showing signs of character with some shiny patches and some fading. But it’s still very waterproof (tested regularly in the UK), I’ve never seen moisture inside even in the worst of rain. It’s been regularly leant against rough surfaces and doesn’t show any wear. The only slight problem is some stitching fraying on one of the straps, and I’m debating whether to send it back to Carradice for repair or just take it to a Cobblers so I’m not without it for too long.

Size wise it’s been great for most things. Though for some future plans I’ll want something that can take a full change of clothes for a couple of nights away. For just a few nights or long winter rides I think I’d just go for a larger Carradice (Nelson Longflap maybe).

Over the year the only items I’ve regularly wished I could carry on the bike but couldn’t have been my OU books and a laptop. But I don’t think there’s really anything non pannier that would cope with those.