Sandy's Blog

Okay a bit slack on the blogging front as usual, what have I been up to?

I am just back from a long weekend biking in Spain which, to be brief, was fantastic. It could have went horribly wrong as we went to go mountain biking without knowledge of a certain area, but were suitably prepared with guide books, maps and fancy gps machines. Basically I have binged out on tapas, coffee and beer, and not done enough actual riding (compared to what I’m used to!). We stayed at a friends villa which was pretty awesome, although I had to share a double bed with another bloke! (yeah ok totally going to get lots of stick for that). Photos here.

Talking of photos and all that, I have recently bought a flickr pro account because I am sick of website galleries eating themselves. The tools with the webspace (fantastico etc) are really handy, but its just really annoying not having full ssh access to the webserver. The link to all my galleries is on the top of the right hand side menu.

Today I went for a free weights induction at the olympic gym in the Pleasance, basically if you want to go into the room with all the crazy people and equipment you need a fancy access card which you can only obtain by going to an induction session. I have tried squatting before but to be honest I really didn’t know what I was doing. The induction was quick but very helpful, the exercises need lots of technique and coordination, something which will come over time. My muscles have not felt this sore in quite some time, it was a very good session! We covered deadlift, squat and bench press, and I think the squat will be the most useful.

I’m just back from a night ride round Innerleithen which took in some of the downhill tracks, it was pretty awesome even though pissing down with rain. Had to wash my bike afterwards

This post, coming to you from a sub 300Mhz laptop w/ 800×600 screen and firefox 0.93. Yes, i have destroyed my computer More about that later.

So, what have I been up to? I was racing at Innerleithen on the 20th which was really really good fun. The race was organised by Edinburgh Road Club (which I have recently become a member of), and was a cross country race with a twist. Basically they had two timing stations, one at the lowest point of the course and one at the highest, and one of the prizes was ‘King of the downhill’ - who can get from top to bottom fastest - which attracted a fair few downhillers, it was nice as they are always good craic. I ended up finishing 21st after a flukey and very unlucky pinch punchure (on pumped up 2.25″ cinders!) during the last downhill adding at least 10 minutes to my time, if I hadn’t punchured I think I would have finished roughly 10-12th which would have been good considering I hadn’t had a day off the bike for 7 days prior to the race. It was a real laugh though and I spoke to some people I hadn’t seen in ages, so wasn’t particularly bothered about doing bad as it had been such a great day.

Last weekend I went out for a monster ride with the Edinburgh University Cycling Club. We met up at the Commonwealth Pool car park in Edinburgh at 7am on Sunday morning (yes, I got up at 6:15am!), chucked all the bikes in the van and drove up to Pitlochry. After the obligitary road trip requirement of getting lost on the way, we arrived and set off around 10-10:30am. Make no mistake, most of these guys are pretty hardcore and are very very fast. Everyone (including me) beasted it at the start because it was so cold, but it was such a nice day too! The route was a figure of 8, with Pitlochry in the middle. The first loop was shorter, maybe 6 miles or so but had great singletrack - some of the best of the day actually.

There were so many weird and wonderful paths and tracks that we went on, im so glad that I brought along the GPS so I can retrace the route in the future. After 3-4 hours I realised I had made a slight schoolboy error, I had only packed enough food and water to go out for that amount of time so had to grit my teeth till the end, I really wanted to do more of the great singletrack, but my body started packing in after about 6 hours in the cold - I (along with about half the group) was suffering some form of cramp due to dehydration. By the end of the ride I was entirely soaked through, couldn’t feel my feet - or recognise my bike. I was absolutely exhausted and wanted to sleep, however there was a 2 hour car journey back down to Edinburgh to sweat through so we stopped at the Perthshire Vistor Centre, where we had dinner and a go at whiskey tasting! After another dinner when I got home, got an early night. The banter on this ride was immeasurable, we discussed most issues, from MrT to Wife-Beating which was such a laugh.

So, my computer. Well to be perfectly honest, when I decided to take the step to water cool my PC, I acknowleged it was a risk and that I had to be prepared to lose everything - similar to investing in equities. In short my CPU is fried, and my motherboard is as well, I think. To clear a few things up this mess was due to me being a bit special and fiddling with fittings, not due to any problem or defect with the actual watercooling system. Monday night, after work - while helping sister with maths, cooking dinner, making inane conversation with a neighbour and dealing with a phone call, I noticed the watercooling system was not flowing properly. Call me insane, call me special, but my brain said ‘investigating why your watercooling system is not working’ is not a priority right now.

The computer had been on all day, and I assumed that the flow had been off all day. wrong.
If something was really wrong, the temperature fail-safe auto power off thing would kick in. wrong again.

Basically, when I was doing the 4 other things I went into my bedroom and must have knocked the fittings (which i had been fiddling with for no reason the previous day, and probably didn’t reattach entirely correctly). This caused the circulation of water to stop, and therefore stopped the dissapation of heat. After I had successfully multi-tasked all the other (more important) real life stuff, I went through to my bedroom and all I could smell was burning silicon - Doh

This is a fantastic route that I rather luckily got to do at the beginning of summer. Basically its a 30 mile, one way route that climbs to an altitude just shy of 800m before sending you down a brutal, rocky descent. Because it is one way, you have to leave your car at the end (Laggan) and get a lift to the start (Fort Augustus). As a group of 10 we got Base Camp MTB to drive us round for £150 (£15 each).

I did say at the beginning, that I was lucky to do this route. One of the guys who was supposed to be getting a lift round was feeling a bit dodgy on the morning so decided against doing it … meaning there was a space available! ace!

Anyway, the route (naturally) starts at the bacon-roll-serving tea room in Fort Augustus. It shortly links up with one of General Wade’s military roads and climbs for ages (General Wade was the prominent character in a lot of interesting conversations on the way up). It should be noted that the climb is pretty exposed, and we did get caught out by the weather (hailed on in summertime!), it was very cold.

The descent is on a rocky landrover track. Im not quite sure it should be described as a landrover track as im pretty sure you couldn’t get a landrover up or down it. Its quite tricky, not for beginners anyway.

GPS Data - Entirely at your own risk

This ride was back at the beginning of August. Being a marathon event it is pretty tough with almost 2000m of climbing if you do the full route (just shy of 40 miles). Even though the route isn’t stupidly long, a lot of it is very demanding especially the woody singletrack near Yair. Some of this route runs on private ground so if you end up doing it please respect the landowners etc.

The route starts and ends at the Selkirk rugby club, if you are not sure of your abilities don’t start out on this ride. I have also included a shorter ‘Best of’ ride that I did with a local group, starting at Yair and doing a fair amount of the best natural singletrack.

GPS Data - Entirely at your own risk