January 30, 2008
After a state of punctures in November on my commuter/winter bike … I decided to bin the summer tyres I had on there in favour of something a bit tougher.
Looking around, most places wanted 20 notes a tyre for anything decent … however wiggle had some tyres made by Vittoria for £20 a set, with tubes, so I thought I would give them a shot.
They are pretty decent … and also are apparently puncture resistant … I have had 2 flats in a month and a half, which I guess is quite good going. They are already getting sliced by glass etc though, although not all the way through (I don’t think). At 320g for a racing tyre, they are not the lightest but I thought that they would probably have extra material (which ain’t a bad thing in my book).
May 16, 2007
As some of you may know, I have entered a 6 day mountain biking event that crosses the border of Poland and the Czech Republic numerous times, goes through some caves and will generally be pretty damn hard. To be honest I have never trained for anything before really, maybe par getting in some riding 2 weeks before I have to do some sort of event.
Compared to the other 5 guys going from Edinburgh, I’m very unfit … Ken was the Scottish Road Race champion one year, Lawrence is of similar fitness, Dougal has raced the SXC for years, Tom has been doing 24 hour races solo (continuous riding!), and my partner Oli is just plain strong and races at junior level.
So for the first time in my life I have been forced to train for something, otherwise I won’t finish - pain now will mean less pain later. To be honest I have no idea what I’m doing either so I just go for different rides of varying lengths and intensities, but generally with a large emphasis on keeping going and continuous effort.
I have modded my mountain bike … its codename is now Jey-1 (Just winding Timbo up here!) … check out the fearsome bar ends!
Also went for a bike ride into the Scottish Borders yesterday afternoon, passed the spot where I saw a dead motorcyclist a month ago in Yarrow valley … there was only a bouquet of flowers by the side of the road to indicate the prior carnage.
March 10, 2007
Yeah, basically the limited spare time I have available isn’t enough, and I’m trying to do everything and not doing anything particularly well!
Decided to take the day off decorating, and went for a easy mountain bike ride round one of my favorite local loops, however the weather had really taken its toll on the trail and I had to stop on at least 10-15 occasions to push around natural obstacles. Anyway it was quite nice to get out on the mountain bike as I have only been on the road for the last fortnight. Also sped round a corner into a fallen tree which was interesting!
February 10, 2007
Year on year, the same thing is true - January and February are the most difficult months to get through. This year was looking good, I was 90% of the way through January and was still feeling excellent - was getting out on the bike loads, meeting up with friends a fair bit, had started going to the indoor climbing wall, and generally speaking it was all good - I was dealing with winter.
Then I contracted manflu!
This variant of manflu caused me to be physically quite weak, not be able to concentrate on anything at all complicated at work or deal with any decent conversation, and just generally made me feel pretty rough.
I have managed to fight off the plague now, and have been trying to restart everything again which is difficult when your routine is halted at the worst possible time of the year! The max weight I can lift in the gym has dropped by 10-15Kg and I am sure I have lost some fitness (not overly bothered about all this because I am still recovering but it does suck).
To compound to this, the following stuff of mine has been broken recently which in general I cannot afford to replace:
- Bike Saddle
- Large Chainring
- Waterproof
- Camelbak
- ECG strap for Heart Rate Monitor
I have had to buy a new saddle because I can’t really ride with a bust one, so I decided to get a Selle Italia SLR XC saddle (£55) … mmmm!
Anyway, with all the negativeness above, winter is quite good occasionally - Had a great snowy mountain bike ride yesterday, pics here, and also a great picture from last winter here … awesome.
