Longer Christmas prep ride

As I mentioned previously, there's another location I usually visit come Christmas time on my bike which is almost 100km from door to door.

Emboldened by my previous 70k effort I thought I'd just go for it and set off a couple of weeks after (this last Saturday the 28th).


This one didn't end so well! The weather was lovely, almost 20 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. Unfortunately there was a 15km/h easterly wind, which did help to keep me cool but was in my face for the entire journey (it wasn't a round trip, so I didn't get the payback of riding with the wind in the second half). I was also slightly more heavily laden with overnight luggage and a larger amount of water. Thank goodness for the more aerodynamic recumbent profile.

I was slower than I expected but felt ok until I hit the last 30k, where pains in my hip and knee started to manifest. I plodded on to the destination after a brief stop to extend the boom another two centimetres. When I arrived I genuinely had trouble standing up. My thighs and glutes had basically melted.

I think it was a decent effort distance wise, but I really need to up my game to do the same route in winter with luggage. I'm also going to investigate the local Specialized store to see if they can do a bike fit, as I suspect that my asymmetric pains (left knee, right hip) may be due to different leg length or flexibility.

It's rather humiliating having to leave a bike and limp home on public transport. Thankfully my old mum didn't mind locking it in her garage until I man up and return to collect it.

Abus lock on a Brompton

I saw a great idea on a Brompton dealer website while I was looking for a front wheel, so I've basically stolen it. You get one of those Abus folding locks and attach it to the frame behind the swing arm, which has a conveniently sized gap for one. Even more conveniently, I already had that type of lock!

This does involve inverting the clip for the swing arm so that the lever points upwards, but this is pretty easy. Result with the swing arm down:

Christmas prep ride

For the last three years I've tried to cycle to my relatives in the neighbouring county of Lincolnshire for my Christmas visit (two successes, one hideous frozen near-death failure). Getting there usually involves one 72km ride (or a 100km ride, depending where I go first) followed by a bunch of eerily consistent 32km rides between places on different days. By the last day I'm usually totally ruined and somewhat frosty.

This will be the first year on the recumbent; so I thought I'd try an unladen test ride of the shorter first leg:

Derailleur cable switch

The derailleur cable on the Fuego was getting a bit frayed. I don't know how old it was when I bought it (three years, max, I think) but it was due for renewal:

Bleeding all over the shop

The rear brake on my Boardman was playing up, so I ordered a cheap bleed kit from a company I'd never heard of called Cyclonix. It was about a tenner, compared to £40 SRP for the official Avid kit or £20 a brake to have them bled/adjusted by Evans (having decided to try myself, I didn't check my other local shops).

Cannock Chase failure & bike stand

I paid a visit to Cannock Chase today with among others the evil blogger of Gecko Cycling. My arm is still recovering so I lent my MTB to a colleague for the day and went out myself on the blue trail with my Fuego.

En route to where I was going to be picked up I noticed (late, as usual) that my left cleat had become twisted on the shoe and had twisted the angle from a nice comfortable toe-out to slightly toe-in. I guess this was due to my exclusively putting my left foot down when I stop, on that long ride with Andy the previous week. I cannot believe I didn't notice this at the time, it explains the knee pain perfectly, as that completely vanished when I reseated the cleat.

Hills are pretty tough. Gravelly hills are magnitudes worse, especially as I wasn't properly set up for off-road. The front tyre is still the Schwalbe Kojak that David had fitted when he owned it. I think it would have gripped better if I had a Marathon Plus or a Marathon Supreme fitted (like I have the rear). I've read that Fuegos are pretty decent off the road, but I'll not try it again for a while myself.

I couldn't manage the entire loop and in fact gave up when I slipped on some gravel and landed again on my bad arm. I switched to the roads after that and played around a bit before I returned to the cafe. There are some nice hills around there.

I took the seat off of the Fuego to fit it back in Stan's car and when I got home tried to fit it in my Park Tools PCS-9 without the seat on. It just about works, which is good. The seat isn't hard to remove really and having the bike in a stand is brilliant for working with wheels and the drive train.

Bad year for trail riding

About a year ago I was riding The Kitchener Trail at Sherwood Pines and had an unlucky fall onto my elbow, which broke on impact. A couple of hours later I was having this swanky accessory fitted to hold the tip of my olecranon onto the rest of the bone:

This put me out of commission entirely for six weeks and prevented me from riding the trails again for months afterwards; though this was partly because I felt strong enough to go out around January time and the weather was hideous for months after! I have been to Sherwood since and suffered no accidents.

Strava test!

Testing testing... Can anyone see this?