Category Archives: Cycling

Tyrannosaur

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8°C, fog.
Thick fog: can’t see the road outside. There is fog dripping off tree’s branches, the washing line and the gutters. It taps irregularly on an upturned bucket.
I shall give it a chance to clear before riding later.
Tyrannosaur: I’ve had this bluray disc for over a month and now, finally, watched it. Stunning film, I highly recommend it to most people. It’s not an easy film to sit through, so be careful who you encourage to watch it. The reviews online are correspondingly varied.
image
As you can see I have been playing with a bitmap editor called Pixlr. It consists of 3 sets of adjustment layers on three themes- frames, lighting and texture. No doubt there will be more to come from me, especially since it’s an app that can be run on Google Chrome on the computer too.
It’s interesting because it affects the way you take photos. This offsets the accusation that I make of myself that I’m jumping on a bandwagon. And since it’s on your phone, you can get results fairly quickly. This picture is of an abandoned educational institution near my regular dog walk. The place has an interesting garden which is simultaneously entering both Autumn and a period of neglect. This shot shows a fennel plant at near full size.
I now have one for my garden too.

That’s why I’m so hungry

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12°C, no wind, sunny. CR˜61.4 miles.
I feel this way every week when I get back. Some slight aches, thirsty and refreshed. Above all- hungry.
The phone app says I used up 3,227 calories on this ride alone. Hence this insatiable hunger. No matter how much I eat, even with a full belly the hunger is still there.
The phone app is probably more trustworthy than the speedo that claims to record calories. It can’t because it doesn’t know my weight, nor does it record hill climbs. The app does both, so I’m inclined to believe it.
Anyway, good ride and dinner is in the oven.

Parbold hill

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12°C , brisk westerly, light cloud. CK55 miles.
Saturday ride on the fixed, a good few hours ride that started with some difficulty- perhaps I didn’t have enough for supper before.
Anyway, I got up Parbold hill on the 42×16 gear without stopping. While not a very blog-worthy point, I get a lot of satisfaction from this first. Last winter, I could only make the summit with the last part on foot. Then in the 17 tooth gear I gasped to the top.
It seems that my physical energy has been liberated by that drop in work-stress.
Ride profile

Momentary misjudgement

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12C clear.
It was only a tiny slice of time, it was enough for the axe to swing its  errant path. The hit only took a thin slice from my thumb. Lucky it wasn’t worse, or unlucky to happen in the first place. That makes me luck-neutral.
A cut from a sharp edge is usually less painful, and less prone to infection. My only grumble is the site of the injury- it’s on the side of my the joint just where I normally apply pressure when changing gear on the commuting bike.
Perhaps change gear like a good fixed-gear rider.

Profile of a commute

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this profile show works on the left and home on the right.

14°C westerly
Mapmyride has updated their app. Now a week has passed and no broken routes appear in the gps tracking.
For 10 years I have ridden this route to and from work. In all that time I have never been certain why it takes of consistently longer to ride in than back home. Now I know. There is both a general climb in altitude and prevailing SW winds to make the morning route harder. Home is closer to sea-level than work.

Tracked 47 miles

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17°C  westerly breeze, brisk
Used an app to track my Sunday bike ride. It ran alright to start with. I admit that it takes a while to learn the program, but it did raise other problems. It missed 11 miles off the route, also I can’t see how to pause it during a cafe stop. Still, there is some promise. The missing section was a loss of gps signal I’d say. Either that or some space warp/hyper-space effect occured.
11 missing miles

Bearing in

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New school – old school – crankset

New school/old school  crankset (credit: Wikipedia)

17°C, cloudy & light westerlies

It is in, the fix is in. This morning I put a new bottom bracket bearing in the race-bike. Will ride soon to test it out and try out the larger inner-chainring. It’s now 42-53, a smaller jump than before. That should put an end to the triple shifts that I often am forced to do when shifting chainring.

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Bearings

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18°C, clear but some showers. CR:44.5 miles

It’s no real dilemma, the choice between watching sport on TV (Olympics or Tour De France) and going out for a ride in the sunshine. This year’s Olympics is different; the events are on during the day unlike the last few where we woke in the morning to find ay results we’re interested in. Bradley Wiggins got his gold medal while I was pedalling alone in the lanes of Leicestershire. I can’t deny the thrill I got on arriving home and putting the radio on: he got it! He got gold.

The ride was good, I felt strong and would have a better average speed if the wind was less fierce. Incidentally, I’m still procrastinating putting in that new bottom bracket bearing. It’s still making horrible crunching sounds but running smoothly. Well, I say smoothly, it has started making odd noises when I push uphill in the saddle. That bike will be so nice when the bearing is replaced, and I should change the inner chain-ring to a larger one too. 39-53 is too much of a jump for me, it forces double shifts on the rear 8 most of the time. there is a 42 tooth ring in the shed. Maybe when I get back.

Another 30 miler

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25°C, sun & light wind. feels hot & close. CR:30.7 miles

Same route as last time, but slightly slower. The bike is running well if rather clunky. Should I get up and change the bottom bracket bearing or pack hiking gear?

Summer spirit

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23°C bright sun & winds. CR:33 miles.

What are these things I pass on my ride so often? The girders seem to be aligned north-south and are on a pivoting support. Will solar panels be fitted sometime soon? There are just the two structures pictured here, both connected to a trough dig into the grass. 

It’s Sunday, the first after we broke up for the summer holiday. I feel the spirit of the holiday already which normally I don’t count until we get to Monday. We don’t work Sundays any time of the year but today is different. There is none of the pre-work nerves that so often blight this day of rest. So, let’s count today.

The Tour De France– Haven’t watched this for years, but the prospect of a possible British win drew me in. Bradley Wiggins & Mark Cavedish took 1, 2 this afternoon in Paris. An unbelievable result. I raise an imaginary toast.Can’t say I give a damn about the Olympics yet though.