22°C, S breeze, full sun.
Fixed gear ride and some moderate hills via Dalton. Excellent coffee at Twin Lakes Velo., But it didn’t return all of the energy I wanted.
9 mile warmup.
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Category Archives: fixed gear
40 fixed miles.
22°C, grey cloud with occasional sun.
I could ride this bike all day, unless it’s windy. Though my legs are getting sore, that turgid feeling has gone. Rides like this remind me of a the way we can take several days to warm up to exercise.
The last three days adds up to 100 miles. Result.
Sunday fixed.
13-16°C, light wind and dry.
A decent ride with variety in hills and flatlands. Home commitments left me with too little time to ride 100km which wouldn’t be much extra effort. Shame.
A fixie and bagpipes.
8°C, brightening up with increasing SW wind.
1, The birds were lively today. I heard curlews, lapwings and another strange one. The latter’s sound carried a very long way but eventually I got there. A guy stopped his van and had just finished playing his bagpipes. I stopped for a chat; he played in a band in Liverpool and couldn’t practice at home.
2, Look, this is creepy;
On a lamp-post in Formby.
“WAKE UP WHITE PEOPLE
SAVE THE WHITE RACE.
Er what? Save them from what exactly? A quick search using those words returns white supremacists in the USA. What is going on in their poor little minds? I’m not offended by this crass slogan, I’m disgusted by it. Needless to say, I scraped it off.
3, Later, a puncture. The tyre is something that the rubber delaminated from the case. How did I let it get so bad? There followed a nervous ride home, it could so easily puncture again. It didn’t.
4, new pedals:
Swapped from the Arrow winter bike, semi-platform SPDs seem a more natural option on a fixed gear bike.
The black cage is actually plastic and weighs very little. Clipping in feels no different. Shimano do a very wide range of SPD pedals and I may slowly phase in this style as others wear out. It’s only the cross bike that needs the extra mud clearance offered by the minimalist design.
Occasionally, I may ride this machine in ordinary shoes so a wider footprint is necessary. They feel better too and I can see a smoother movement of my knees with less side to side motion. I had no twinges in my knees today. Problem solved!
It can only get better
8°C, light W, dull and dry.
https://www.mapmyride.com/workout/3317449414
January is possibly the most miserable month of the year, but things can only get better. January is in competition with December, mainly because December contains the detestable Christmas stress fest.
Anyway, today I dragged out the fixie, dragged it over to the coast by dragging round the cranks. That wasn’t an easy ride despite the distance.
For all these decades of cycling, I’ve had a rule of thumb for warm-ups. It usually takes me 8 miles or half an hour to warm-up, whichever comes first.
After that stage, everything loosens up and I can ride all day. In previous years, when I rode long rides more often, there seemed to be another threshold too. Two hours in is usually a good time to take a break, maybe have a snack or even a cafe stop. The next stage could be really long, taking up to 70 or even as much as 90 miles. It was this phase that average speed was highest. Today was not a day like that.
Today, that threshold didn’t really pass. I decided after 10 miles, to ride home.
Metric century.
5~7°C, grey, dank and a S breeze
https://www.mapmyride.com/workout/328970721
Slow but long. 4h 40′ and the headlight lasted (though the orange warning light came on). Better still, the phone’s battery (a Motorola g6) ran down to 87%. My old phone (a Samsung S3) could run flat in less than 3 hours and I had to carry a booster at all times.
A good outing. Good figures and a good feeling afterwards. There was a time when a metric century was the normal for a Sunday ride.
Fixed shod with winter wheels
7~9°C, clear with cold easterly. 0 cloud.
https://www.mapmyride.com/workout/3253994575
This ride felt like an uphill push the whole time. Partly caused by the easterly wind. Unlike the Midlands, I had no option to plan a route in some directions, the Irish sea prevents some route choices.
Note to self: fit new blocks on the front brakes.
Dodge the showers.
17°C, showers imminent.
I rode Paddy Wagon with MapMyRide+! Distance: 44.54km, time: 01:39:07, pace: 2:14min/km, speed: 26.96km/h.
http://mapmyride.com/workout/3100448860
In this field of cabbages stands one solitary, proud sunflower.
The machines and drizzle.
17°C, drizzle and onshore breeze.
I rode Paddy Wagon with MapMyRide+! Distance: 44.31km, time: 01:50:20, pace: 2:29min/km, speed: 24.10km/h.
http://mapmyride.com/workout/3078674872
Same route as last time but with claggy weather. The biggest difference was my energy, I was quite enfeebled. The machines felt heavier and I couldn’t do so many repetitions.
This next photo is puzzling, it looks like the grim reaper out on the mud flats.
I rode Jake with MapMyRide+! Distance: 6.29km, time: 25:40, pace: 4:05min/km, speed: 14.71km/h.
http://mapmyride.com/workout/3079817260
A quick evening ride to watch the sun go down. The sand flats go out miles into a big sky.
That was satisfying.
Today’s ride 2: Cafe Velo
21°C, 0 cloud but light W breeze.
I rode fixed with MapMyRide+! Distance: 51.55km, time: 01:58:38, pace: 2:18min/km, speed: 26.07km/h.
http://mapmyride.com/workout/3027257854
Back at home, the garden held some pleasant surprises for me, water lilys are in flower and some others that I don’t know names of.
This is the second ride of the day. Today is the first day of my 6 week summer holiday so some celebration is due. The first one was all about collecting my car but included a visit to the Beach Machines.
Back on two wheels I went over to Leisure Lakes, the bike shop there hires bikes so I had a query that has lurked in the back of my mind for a few years. Fat bikes are a kind of simplified mountain bike with enormous tractor tyres. Now, I live by the coast with long beaches that stretch out to a distant sea. There is a perfect land to ride out and explore on big balloon tyres. For £15 I can have one for a whole day. It’s booked for tuesday.
Micycle 