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.

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:

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.

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”

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!!!

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

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.

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!!

• 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.

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.