Sandy's Blog

So the last few days I have been messing around with Inkscape, which is a seriously nice open source vector art program. I went trailbuilding on Saturday and the guy in charge (who works for the Forestry Commission) said that we could (and should) get a run of t-shirts printed to promote things a bit. So I went away and thought up some ideas, my first idea was ok but I was quite new with the application so it ended up looking pretty poor, however this is an attempt of my latest idea:

Back in June I broke my mobile phone at a bike race, which you probably know about by now if you have tried to phone me. Last week I splashed out on a second hand Sony Ericsson K750i, so I have now officially turned into a ponsey git!

I also have the most awesome ringtone - montage from the Asspen South Park episode! Oh dear oh dear what have I become? I better face it, London here I come…!

Behold! My new (used) kinesis racelight bike! I was after a commuter bike for winter, something that can take mudguards, is relatively lightweight and not too bling or expensive to make the potential pain of bike theft more bearable. In fact I have been locking this puppy up in the street this week, which I am still a bit nervous about but I’m sure that will pass. I bought it from an ebay auction and paid £155 plus £16 postage, so not bad at all (this is about a fifth of the cost of my ‘good’ road bike).

It’s a bit too small for me so I stuck on an old mountain bike stem with a 10 degree rise, but due to this the cables at the front are very stretched and I can’t turn the handlebars much or use the front brake. I rode to and from work today with it like this - very sketchy!

Going to have a go with redoing the cables and fitting some bar tape in a minute, never done this on a road bike before so I am sure it’s going to end disastrously!

In the end I went down to Dumfries. I phoned my grandparents on Friday night to say I would be staying over, and to be honest if I hadn’t done this I would not have gone. Basically I have been fighting the cold for a week or two and was feeling pretty rough on Saturday morning.

Out I went anyway, and 4 hours of riding later I arrived in Dumfries. Woke up 5am next morning and came home, which was really nice as there were no cars on the road. Just beautiful scenery everywhere, and there is a stretch of about 30 miles with virtually nothing.

So in short it was a bit of a challenge for me, being just under 70 miles each way, but to be honest I found it psychologically more difficult than it was physically, especially at the start. You know that you have so far to go, so you must be patient, but because you have so far to go you want to rip it up and get there quicker! Argh!

In a completely unconnected picture shocker, I was taking a photo of some duff chain connector links and happened to take a very cute photo of my dog!

Hi, I am getting a bit slack at this blogging thing - have been doing too much interesting stuff and would rather not waste time on the computer (honest!). Most weekends I have been away either north or south to various mountain bike events usually involving a fair amount of endurance, pain and banter!

A fortnight ago I went down to a place called Ellsmere (near Wales) to take part in 24/12, a 24 hour or 12 hour bike race (naturally we had to do the longer one!). In total there were about 14 of us from Edinburgh (3 teams of 4 and a pair), so almost a platoon!
At an event like this, you need to eat lots of energy food (bananas, pasta, bread etc) and remain hydrated, possibly with energy drink. Now eating these sorts of foods at fixed intervals over a 24 hour period will inevitably bring digestive system meltdown. We had one guy chundering, another guy with the shits and I couldn’t stop passing gas regularly until at least a day after the event! In terms of mechanicals one guy snapped his frame - totally gutting really but its a good excuse to get a new one.
Towards the end of the race we were all sat next to the course making up typical 1940’s names for people we didn’t know, and cheering them on using those names - “COMEON HENRIETTA, GIVE US A WAVE!!”, “COMEON HAROLD, PULL A WHEELIE!!!”. You kinda had to be there but take it from me it was very very funny, like wetting yourself funny. Some photos.

Last weekend I took part in a marathon ride from Selkirk, which is one of the Merida 100 organised events. Third year I have taken part and I went round with a group of friends from Edinburgh Uni. Basically they are all pretty fit, especially one guy who was setting a phenomonal pace at the start. About half way round a few of us realised we just couldn’t keep up and had to take it easy. Was verging on getting cramp for about the last hour, but it stayed away. The first year I did the event I finished in 6h 40m, last year 6h 20m, this year 6h 5m with a puncture and an extra 5km (~150m climbing) so not bad at all. I wasn’t riding to race anyone but I did really want to improve on my time from last year!

So anyway, the coming weekend I am looking forward to just chilling out. Got a vague crazy idea to go and visit my grandparents in Dumfries using the road bike to get there - but I’ll see how I feel.