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.

Decided to do something a bit different on Saturday and joined in a group bike ride organised by YACF. The route was a circular one starting and finishing at Cromford (handy for the remaining railway, and not too far a bike ride from Nottingham or Derby). As is my wont I decided to cycle over, and made good time thanks to joining up with a couple of fast roadies in Ripley and having a group effort along the A6.

The route sets off along the A6 before a little bridlewaying onto the trackbed. Then the Monsal Trail is followed through a serious of impressive tunnels and over some high viaducts to Chee Dale. Here there’s a climb up to the High Peak trail which leads back to the start. The tunnels are quite long, and while they have basic electric lighting a good front light will make things more pleasant.

As it follows an old railway line, and then an old cartway the route is pretty flat. Though there is a pretty hilly bit that joins the two together. To get back to Cromford I decided to shoot down Wirksworth hill from Middleton Top which is good fun (43mph until I got stuck behing a slow car), though there is also an off road route down which bring you back to Cromford Canal for an off road route back to the start. Though this descent is quite steep and has some nasty drainage ditches which may catch the unwary.

The surfaces of the trails are pretty firm. I did this on a road bike with almost slick 25mm tyres without any problems. Though if it’s wet it may be a little slippy in places. The trails are shared with walkers and equestrians, so please be careful and considerate.

Our ride around took about 6.5 hours for ~40 miles, but that included a long lunch at the Royal Oak, cake stops, loitering for photos and stops to regroup.

The route below may jump about a bit as I’d set the Garmin to Smart logging rather than my normal 1 second rate, and it looks like it’s cut some corners in places. (It also means I’ve worked out how to get a gpx plotted onto an Ordnance Survey map :)).

Well, that was a great day out. Set off on the first 50k leg of my ECE to Alfreton at 6:30, 5 minutes later I stopped to put on full finger gloves for the first time at this end of the year. It did was me up nicely though after a late night back from Birmingham after attending a Tony Harrison poetry reading. It was a bit nippy, but the sunlight was creeping through as I left Nottingham and the descent down Spring lane to Lambley had a lovely pink hue and mist hanging around in the fields. An uninspiring blast along the A612 to Thurgarton and back got the first control point. And then coming up through Calverton, Ravenshead and Kirkby-in-Ashfield saw me getting to Alfreton about for about 8:30. Just about right to get a bit of a rest and some tea in before the official off at 9. Should have gone to find a decent breakfast, but hey ho it was only 40km to Eyam.

About 70 riders set off on this one. Didn’t see any recumbent or fixed wheel riders, so the serious audaxers must have been off playing somewhere else :). Had to fight the urge to turn right at the bottom of the hill as most of the Alfreton routes do, but was nice not to be dicing with idiot overtakers in cars. A semi pace line seemed to form up, but wasn’t quite at the right pace for me so I moved up a bit. Leapfrogged with a couple of groups till I fell in with 2 other riders who’s pace suited me.

This was the only section where my gpx departed from the routesheet (no real shortcut, though I did add a nice gratuitous short scroggy climb). It would appear that when I cleaned it up a bit I removed a couple of waypoints and MapSource went for what it thought was a better route.

Luckily one of the riders I fell in with had done the ride before (as the Biggin Hilly and Roy Carradine Memorial) so I followed a wheel for a bit. Was suprised to get to Eyam pretty near the head of the field (looks like the fast club boys were at the same event as the audaxers), which was actually quite useful. The Tea Rooms were being refurbished and under new management who’d arranged to open especially for us. Once the main body of riders turned it started getting a bit hectic. I’d really been feeling the effects of 100km without food, and the wheels had almost come off big style on the climb up New Road off of the B6521, so I had a decent portion of Beans on Toast with the traditional Fried egg. My previous riding companions had left by then, and the bulge had arrived so I decided to get out of the way.

Suitably refreshed I head up out of Eyam. Good long descent down past Monsal Head, though with a suspicous head on I did wonder if I’d missed a routesheet instruction as it felt a little too long. This was soon corrected after Ashford in the Water as we started the long climb up to Monyash, tempted to stop for a breather at the Smithy but kept on going. Got worried at where I thought the first info control should be, but it just turned out that the building by a TL@X was actually a fair distance from the X. Another good long swoop down a valley and a short climb up the other side and the control at Biggin appeared. Luckily the first couple of riders had warmed up the service (they’d waited 50 minutes, I waited 10), normally wouldn’t stop for another full meal but was still feeling a bit rough so had a large sandwich with chips.

Started winding up for the climb out of Parwich up to Via Gellia. The sun came out about now, so I rolled down the arm warmers and got into a good rythym. This was a great climb to enjoy, steep enough to be an effort, but not so steep that there wasn’t a good rhythym to be found, and pleasant scenery to enjoy as well. Then came the fun of shooting down Via Gellia. Don’t know if there was a headwind but I didn’t seem to get the usual speed going down, needed quite a bit of pedal pushing to keep >20mph. Straight through Cromford and the final climb of the day up through Lea and Holloway up to the Tram museum and Monument. Then some slight undulations back to Alfreton and it was all done. 5:09 in the end, with about an hour lounging around eating.

Rode home by reversing the morning’s route. Ended up with 212km with 2600m climb in 10:41, pretty happy with that. Especially as I seem to have enter 9AAA points worth of rides for 2012 already (and that’s just The Dean and Yr Elenydd (Elenith)). Think I’ll be putting this gpx away as a little DIY training loop.

The ECE part of the ride was nice and painless as well. The ECE org was nice and helpful, and I’ve already had the ECE parts certified. This is going to come in handy if I want to keep up the distances, but not end up traipsing across the country in the car or via public transport (unfortunately it’s work rather than willingness that stops me thinking about cycling to distant events).

Bit of a treat this month as I actually get to ride a calendar event, Company on a ride, not had that since the 600 back in July!!

The route looks like a nice ‘scenic’-ish tour of the Peak District (uTrack gives me ~1800m climbing), though none of it looks too horrible).  And the current weather forecast is looking like it’ll mostly be dry and maybe a little bit of sun will poke through the clouds as well.

As I need a 200km ride in October for RRTY I’ll be ECEing the ride with 50km before and after. Nothing exciting, just a main road bash to a small Nottinghamshire village sign, turn around and then main road it to alfreton, hopefully in time for some tea and cake before setting off (the tea’s the important thing). If it turns out to be a good fast route then I’ll use it for other alfreton starts, saves on petrol and train fares.

This will also be a bit of a celebration of having my Super Randonneur award validated. (Super Randonneur is an award for completing a 200km, 300km, 400km and 600km audax in one season). Had been looking a bit touch and go after the GPS failure on the DIY 400 in September, but it looks like there was enough to accept it on. So that’s the main aim of the season done.

Well that was a fun day. Not feeling at my most prepared on the maths front, my fiancee off to hospital for a minor surgical procedure, and then to top it off work phones up with a Priority 1 failure of a business critical system and can I fix it. So I wasn’t in the greatest frame of mind when I sat down for the exam.

Turned the paper over and some of it looked good.

Most of section 1 looked like the past papers I’d been working on.There was only one that I didn’t attempt as I couldn’t spot anything in there and decided the time would be better spent on other questions. Though the inequality drove me crazy as I could see the answer, but the method to get there properly had disappeared.

Section 2 had an Eigenvalues/Eigenvector question, so that was great. But the rest of them looked unusual. Looks like the counting theorem question from the specimen paper is the new large cayley table question, shame I had no idea how to attempt that bit, but at least i got to draw some pretty squares for a bit. I don’t remember seeing counting theorem question in a TMA, but I’ve not been back to check conclusively. Another point for making sure to attend the Day schools.

So if you’re reading this in preparation for the 2012 M208 exam, then rely more on the specimen paper and the 2011 past paper if you can get hold of it as it looks like they’ve changed the format, which is annoying. And make sure you attend any day schools that you can, as hopefully the tutors will have been told roughly what to expect in the exam paper.

As with MS221, get really familiar with the handbook as it’s great for checking you’ve got the definitions or rules right. I added some example questions/solutions from past papers as well which made some of the explanations a bit easier to follow. I also added a few extra standard integrals/derivatives as I always panic that I’ve got them wrong, and they usually use the same standards, ie:

So having them stuffed away at the end is handy.

I’m confident I passed (>40%), but I don’t think I’ll be expecting any joyous news when the results dribble out in December. But it does mean that I’ve probably passed the module even with some not too bright TMA results.  Looking forward to a bit of a break from maths now for a couple of months.

I’m always up for a nice walk around some National Trust grounds (member for quite a few years now), so when they announced a ‘Fungal Foray’ at Calke Abbey we signed up for a couple of tickets.

This wasn’t a walk intended to show us which mushrooms were edible, it was to show the variety of fungi that exist in the Nature Reserve. I have done one of those at Calke before, but that wasn’t organised by the NT. The walk was guided by one of the rangers who was a pretty keen amateur mycologist but she was keen to correctly point out that she couldn’t 100% identify everything and to trust nothing. I decided to take the DSLR along as it’s been a while since it’s been used.

The walk was very informative. Specimens were a bit sparse due to the glorious weather we’d been having, so there were some points where the leader had to produce one she’d found earlier, or in a couple of occasions had moved from another site.

So here’s some photos from the day:

TMA07 came winging back nice and quickly. Slightly better mark than the last 2, just >70% which is good. Am reading up on the feedback while I work through past papers. Have mainly been concentrating on the Part 1 questions, I’d like to be pretty confident on those so I’ve more time for Part 2 papers.It’s shown up a few gaps in things, but I’m picking them up. Am also experimenting with different techniques, for instance with permutations I’ve found doing them long hand is quicker for me as I don’t waste time checking them. Am also getting good at finding relevant sections in the handbook.

I stupidly appear to have missed all the day schools for M208 as well, which is a very stupid thing as the MS221 ones were very handy. So far I’m getting slightly more confident that I’ll pass the exam (which will give me a pass for M208) but still not confident that I’ll pass with any great honours. So just see how it goes on the 11th.

Looking to the next course, it’s definitely going to be MST209 as M303 won’t be available for another year. Though I won’t be doing the residential school alongside it as it’s too much to pay out in one year, and it’s badly timed with regards to other real life bits (wedding, honeymoon and Mille Alba). The OU seems to have changed it’s eligibility for keeping the current fees a bit as well, so I need to check if I still qualify if I put off starting MST209 until September 2012. This would work better for the above events, and also I’m more likely to sit at home and work on it when the weather’s nasty and not conducive to an evening out on the bike.

Came up with this when I needed a quickish route for a DIY 200km Audax for September 2011 after a GPS failure on a 400km attempt meant that I had a break in my RRTY attempt. Nothing amazingly fancy, but because of the aforementioned GPS failure I wanted a route with some decent places to get ‘proof of passage’. Nottingham city centre is crawling with early opening places and cash machines, Bourne has a cash machine and a couple of early opening shops even on a Sunday morning, Woodhill Spa has plenty of cafes that do receipts, Lincoln has all the usual cash machines and then it’s back to Nottingham.

It’s all pretty good roads with very little that isn’t paved decently. There are a couple of mainish roads but nothing too horrible, and if you don’t mind a few extra kms most of the them can be avoided). I ended up time trialing it down the side of the A46 to Newark as I got caught in a big thunderstorm and wasn’t happy riding through the woods by thurlby with lightning about.

Most of the climbing, such as there is at 896m total, is in the first section to Bourne, though Carlton hill back into nottingham is a bit of a shock.

GPX of the route: here

nottingham - bourne - woodhall spa - lincoln - 200km profile

Not that I know much about this, but I seem to be getting a reasonable amount of hits from search engines from people looking it up. All I can really relate is what I’ve done this year to get round an SR (subject to validation atm) and what I’m planning to do over winter for next season’s targert (at least one SR, complete a RRTY, get some AAA points and also the 1000km Mille Alba in June)

I started riding in January 2011 after about 12 years off of riding bikes anything like regularly. I’d run a couple of half marathons in 2010, and a couple of years of Kendo before that. But mixed in with beer and smoking (don’t smoke now, but still enjoy the beer). So not a complete couch potato, but not the fittest by a long way.

This year I started by building up a reasonable base by cycling twice a week after work (<2 hours) and a longer ride (4-5 hours) at the weekend so by March I could happily go out at the weekend and do 80 miles without too much effort. This was enough to get me around a 300km event, though I wasn’t feeling too hot on that towards the end.

Then I started adding in some extra riding by commuting to and from work a couple of times a week (walking through the office in Lycra was one of the biggest hurdles), this meant I was getting in over a 100 miles a week. But not putting in too much effort unless I really felt like hurting myself on a hill. This was enough for me to get around a 600km

Over the summer I added more regular long rides (going for the RRTY award was a good motivator to keep up with 200km rides) and started thinking more about a HR training regime. So I turned on the feature on my Garmin 800 and started thinking a bit more about my base, and making more effort to control effort to about 70-75% HR. With once a week going a bit faster on a hilly stretch. This seems to have gotten me to a point where I can decided to do a 200km DIY on 24 hours notice, or not feel too worried about setting off on a solo 400km ride with expectations of completing in 20 hours.

So no real heavy cycle training yet. The main things I have learnt which make the difference are:

• What I can and need to eat/drink on a long ride. I’ve not got a pretty good idea of what I can cram in for calories without upsetting my stomach, and what to carry in water bottles that I don’t get bored of
• Night Riding. This was a new thing for me this year, and it’s been one of the best bits. Some of my favourite audax moments have been skimming along country roads with only my little pool of light with nature running under my front wheel (luckily I’ve managed to miss them all so far)
• Clothing – My first attempt at a 400 I overdressed and carried too much stuff. My second go (much later in the year) I wore less, and carried less.
• Comfort on the bike – Just putting the miles in means I fit better on my bike, and have learnt the warning signs for the onset of normal aches so I can adjust position or do some in place stretches
• Navigation – Much better now at having a quick glance at a map and spotting a main road or other better route if I need to make up time or route around a closed patch
• Weather – Been reasonably lucky this year with weather, but when it’s been bad it’s been really bad. So I’ve learnt to cope with 300k of head wind, getting soaked to the skin in <30 seconds and being in the middle of a major storm. So I know that I can cope with most things, or at least cope for long enough to find some shelter

So the plans for the winter and next year are looking like:

• Put in some more speed and strength work over the winter. A turbo may be procured, and I’ve joined work’s gym for some weight and their pilates/yoga classes for some flexibility
• More bad weather acclimatisation by carrying on the RRTY attempt
• Starting with the longer distances earlier in next year (Looking at the 300km Dean in March)
• Back to back long rides. So if I do the Skegness ride again next year, I’ll head out for another 300 on the sunday
• Reduce faff and time at controls, it’s always amazing to look at the GPS tracklog and see how much time was spent stationary and not moving. Am also going to try a bar bag or top tube bag so it’s easier to eat on the move.
• New positioning, am tempted to get some clip on aero bars so I’ve got a couple of extra positions and also to help out a bit with headwinds.

So nothing revolutionary there, but then again it’s all achievable, should make life easier on ‘standard’ distance audaxes and give me the best shot of getting round the longer ones without doing too much damage to myself.

There must be a word for that feeling the day after a great 400km DIY audax when you start uploading the log sections and find that one of the fit files won’t load off your garmin edge device. For the time being I’ll assume you understand the phrase knarked right off about covers it.

Once I’d tried all the available software options (Garmin Connect, Basecamp, Sporttracks, Golden Cheetah, etc) and still has no joy I decided it was time to take some drastic action. So I grabbed a copy of the FIT SDK from Ant+. This contains a tool (FitCSVTool.jar) that can break a FIT file down into a series of CSV files containg most of the information. It can also be used to recombine them into a FIT file once you’ve corrected any errors.

Once I’d got over the first problem with running the basic package (my Mac had it’s Java version in the wrong order) I started playing with the example files. The trick appears to be to carefully read the error messages when trying to recombine the file. Usually this tells you that X of Type Y is unknown at line Z. Correcting this is a case of find X of Y at Z and removing the Unknown field and then retrying the combine. This all seemed easy enough.

Except my file was so far gone it wouldn’t split down in CSV files properly so I got an error at that stage. Luckily it had created some intermediate CSV files that contained some information. Now all I had to do was convert and combine it into a workable format.

I’d told the splitter to create test.csv, and I found most of the useful information in test.csv.tmp. After about 17 rows of header information I had a row with the following fields (names in <> indicate a recorded value, those without are actual entries which appear to be identifiers:

Data,7,record,timestamp,<timestamp>,s,position_lat,<position_lat>,semicircles,position_long,<position_long>,semicircles,
distance,<distance>,m,altitude,<altitude>,m,speed,<speed>,m/s,heart_rate,<hear_rate>,bpm,cadence,<cadence>,rpm,
,temperature,<temperature>,c

So that all seems pretty straightforward as a list of type, value and units. So everything was looking good.

A quick bit of googling indicated that the semicircle units for latitude and longitude in the file could be converted into a decimal degree value by multiplying them by 180/(2^31).

The time was interesting. The number looked right to be an epoch value. But plugging a couple of test values into Unix’s date command returned a value 10 years out of date. So it appears that Garmin are using a different start to their epoch than everyone else (01/01/1960 00:00:00 as opposed to 01/01/1970 00:00:00). An epoch time is the number of seconds since a particular date, so to convert those values you need an app or function that can add seconds to a given date and return you another date. Unfortunately Excel on the Mac is missing VBA so doing the conversions was a bit tricky so I ended up having to do some playing around with shell scripts and the join command to build up a CSV of lat,lon,ele,date,time.

Once I’d got that I used the excellent site GPSVisualizer to convert it to a GPX and I was done.

Less impressed to find that I was still missing about 50km of route, and even worse it was just short of a control!! My local Organiser said it was worth submitting anyway, and it’s now been referred up the chain. So once again I’ve finished a cracking long ride and have no idea if I’ve completed it to AUK standards so I’ve no idea if it qualifies. On the plus side I had a great 20 hours out on the bike and managed to cope. Suprised i crawled all the way up Staxton Hill as well, 17% for a decent distance is good for me. Coming across the Humber bridge in the dark was great, and some very rural lanes across the top of Lincolnshire were great for spotting wildlife and feeling completely cut off from normality.

Enjoyed it so much that if it doesn’t validate I’ll do it again in a couple of weeks.

Noticed quite a few searches ending up here looking for these, so here’s where I’ve got them from if that’s of any use.

For  MS221 I used the past papers and solutions from http://open.wibble.to/ .They don’t have any past exam papers for M208, so I purchased and downloaded the pdfs from https://rsm2.rsmsecure.com/ousacart/webstore/store.php?itemsearch=M208 (they also have more up to date exam papers for MS221) .  The solutions for these past M208 papers were posted by the tutors in the M208 forums. I’ve also read good reports on the solution booklets for MS221 and M208 from Black Badge Press but haven’t personally used any of their materials.

Please note that all the solutions referenced above are not ‘official’ solutions, and don’t contain the full marking scheme as the Open University holds the copyrights on those.

There looks to be plenty more stuff dotted around the intertubes, but I can’t vouch for how accurate or usefull it all is.

Last week I got the Brevet card for the DIY LEL 600k (ride report part 1 + part 2) back in the post all stamped up, and the results on the AUK website as well. So I need a 400km ride to complete a Super Randonneur for this season.

Now having had an attempt at a 400km that failed after a saddle failure (details) and not really liking the thought that I’d left something uncompleted I decided to do a DIY based on the route. There is a permanent version of the ride I wanted the ability to not have to faff around getting to/from Alfreton at unsocial hours as I wanted to get most of the ride into 1 day (I’d rather not use up too much good will). So I’ve come up with rough copy for a DIY GPS with some of the control moved slightly. Routes up to distance on AutoRoute so I’ve submitted it to my Regional Organiser (who may be away on tour atm), but as it’s in AR I can be sure it’ll be accepted (definitely worth splashing the cash on a copy if you’re going to be doing any DIYs, I only paid £9 on ebay including P+P).

While I’ve done longer (once!) it’s going to be strange doing it on my own. I’ve a couple of rides up to 10 hours on my own, only interacting with shop staff or remonstrating with idiots, but this could be up to 28 hours. Hopefully I won’t go too loopy. While I’ve never had to resort to it yet, I may well have to deploy earphones and have some music to keep me motivated and alert.

Plus there’s going to be a fair chunk of night riding to get through whatever happens. I’m trying to work out when exactly to start so I can get the nightriding on decent roads, and miss traffic on some major road that feature on the route. And it’d be nice to be somewhere ‘sleepable’ if I do need a doze in the wee hours. Current thinking is mid morning start so I miss the traffic on the first section, and then a longish rest/dinner break in Helmsley or Pickering (depending on progress) to avoid too much traffic on the A170. Should have me crossing the Humber Bridge just after midnight, hopefully getting back to nottingham just in time to go to bed as S gets up.