Cyco-logical.. those hills, it’s all in the mind!

Well, today dear readers, I decided it was time for me to up the time I am spending in the saddle and the miles I am putting on the clock to get my head down and do a ‘real’  40 mile cycle ride.

I decided on Richmond Park again, and worked out that if I pedalled 4 times around the park, with the miles to and from home there, I should clock up the 40 miles I should have achieved last week, if I change a habit of a lifetime and follow a training plan (and the wet weather ride to Watford was more like 32 miles for me – whatever would we do without cycle computers)... 

So, off I set.  The morning weather was lovely – not too hot but not too cold and I ‘cyched’ myself up to the fact I could get over those lovely undulations in the Park (again, ‘undulations’ have a more positive impact on ones ‘cyche’ than that dreaded word ‘hills’).  The fact I had only cycled round the Park twice before was a little unnerving ..

However, the Park looked lovely.  Very quiet in the early mornings, apart from the mostly male cycling lycra brigade who all look over 7ft high and ultra-trim and fit as they speed past me at a rate of knots (but I keep telling myself that I will be like that soon .. OK, maybe not the 7ft bit, or the male bit or indeed the ultra-trim bit, or the speeding bit .. but I digress..).

The cycling down the hills was, as ever, ex-hill-arating..

wind at my face and the ability to click to the far extreme of my gears to keep the speed up.

But, as we all know, what goes up, must come down – or in this case – vice versa – and those hills kicked in, and again, am I pleased to have 20 gears to choose from and maybe one day I will hit the right one in time for the right hill..

But anyway readers, that is the short blog for today.  After the ride I have sore elbows and my little fingers are numb (if anyone has any constructive ideas how to resolve this for subsequent rides, please let me know!) and, although I am somewhat anxious that the Paris ride is around the corner, and, of that, Day 1 will be over double what I did today (yet alone that being followed by a further 3 days of more miles than I did today) the fact I have just peddled 40 miles have not yet got me running to the hills, more like singing from the hills ..  

(And Dame Julie says ' please sponsor us if you have not already done so ..'!  Thanks Julie, Pomme Ed.) ..

Is this an Eiffel Tower I see before me … or..?

Hello readers!  Firstly I have not been stewing in my own ‘pomme’ juices and forgetting about our wonderful blog, I started a new job this week so have been a little preoccupied. 

However, I have a little story I wanted to share with you all.  So, I hope you are sitting comfortably…?  Good, so I will begin..

I have spent this week being ‘induced’ .. well, going through the induction process with the new work.  I was with a group of disparate new hires and part of the course was the usual ‘tell us something interesting about yourself’ …

As the bike ride is so close to my heart I talked about this – the training programme, the new bike, the charity, my two Kiwi fruits that will be following me miles behind en route etc. etc. …

Over coffee we all ended up chatting about these new found interesting things about our colleagues and one of the guys – I shall call him ‘Pete’ to keep anonymity – shared with me that he too did the London to Paris charity ride a few years ago. 

I was so excited to meet someone that had done it and promptly started to ask him questions (how was it for him, did he stick to the training plan, what sort of bike did he have, did he use cleats or not, how was his bum (en route, not at the moment of course) … all of those ‘sad’ questions that have suddenly become so very important).  However Pete stopped me mid questioning and shared with me how it was for him.

Pete had cycled with his chums all the way to Dover, staying in some youth hostel where he told me there was a fight going on outside as they got there (but they were so tried it did not matter).  They crossed on the ferry in the morning and cycled (uphill) out of Calais.  He said the journey throughout France was great – pretty flat and interesting.  They entered into Paris on the final day and he and his friends cycled towards their final destination – the Eiffel Tower – with great great excitement.

He then said that the next memory he had was waking up in a French hospital.  Somehow along the final metres toward the Tour Eiffel he managed to fall off his bike and knock himself out.

He is now really envious about me doing the ride and wished me lots of luck. 

I guess the moral of the story is to keep pedalling – carefully – right to the end of the road.. I could not imagine doing 298.5 miles and falling on the last 0.5 mile, but talking to Pete, I now know this ‘could’ happen (especially if I do not get used to my cleats)!

    

Un Deux Trois… (Cat Sank…meow!)

OK OK .. it may be close to full moon but I can assure you Ms Pomme Anglaise has not gone totally looney tunes. 

Today I had a wee epiphany (if epiphanies can be small).  As my lovely Condor Italia RC (in beautiful Pearl E White) continued to give me a little grief in changing from (what I technically call) ‘little cog to big cog where the pedal thingies are at the front’ , I took her back to the shop to see if they could help.  The issue from my perspective was the movement I had to make with my left hand to shift the beautifully Italian crafted Campagnolo Veloce gear leaver to move from one cog to the other. .. in short, my little fingers did not seem to want to stretch the virtual 90 degree angle I needed to sweep the lever across to get to that big cog (and hence have the ability to speed off at those all-important traffic lights etc.).

So, off went ‘Pearl E’ to the mechanic and, very soon afterwards, Julian (my new best friend at Condor!) came back with an update for me.  As it transpires, the left hand lever did not have to be pushed the whole 90 degrees in one fell swoop, I could move to the big cog by clicking the lever not once, not twice, but three times in much smaller movements!  This was great news .. so I rode home this afternoon, with ‘un deux trois’ going through my head, the gears shifting easily, my little hands being happy that they are not being stretched to breaking point.  And hopefully the cat will not sink …   that’s all folks (well, for today anyway!)…

Farcical … is that really a long bicycle ride ..?

Today, after a whole days rain with zero let up, I decided to get my lovingly loaned Munoura ‘Hypermag’ set-up in the lounge (thank you Uncle John for the loan!).  For those of you not acquainted with the joys of cycle training devices, the Hypermag ‘has been developed as the most silent indoor bicycle trainer in the world with adopting Minoura’s special technical knowledge for over 12 years such as thicker plastic material, alloy die-casting outer case and high-level machined unique full-circle magnet’ (yes, this is lifted straight from the poorly translated instruction manual from Japan). 

Choosing a day when my partner was away (as the only place to install said machine was in the lounge by the dining table – hence making the dining experience in the house with more than 2 of us a little intimate (unless you have a ‘thing’ about bicycle trainers)), I decided to install my old Trek mountain bike on the trainer so I had something to train on on days like today when the weather was really too bad to go ‘proper’ road cycling (ie. 10% possibility of rain upwards ..) and leaving my beautiful ‘Pearly E White’ Condor Italia for those fair weathered rides…

What looked like a simple installation turned out to be very challenging, to put it mildly.    Despite my Master’s Degree (OK OK in computing .. which proved to be useless when it came to cycle trainers) and a detailed diagram of how to assemble the trainer, the combination of the M6 bolt, Knob bolt, flat washer, hub clamping handle, load level adjusting dial, drive roller, flywheel, U-leg etc etc ..got me very perplexed.  I got to a stage where I was questioning if I had the thing turned around the right way to start with, whether it should actually be attached to the front wheel and not the back and whether it should actually be hung from the ceiling.  After a few hours of deliberation I did manage to work 80% of it out (without phoning my Uncle which was going to be the last resort as I can hear him chuckle now!) and installed the bike on the training machine.  By this time my partner had arrived home and I assured her that this was ‘the most silent indoor bicycle trainer in the world’ (blah blah from the manual) and she would not even notice it was there.  To reassure her I sat on the bike and proceeded to peddle and the noise .. well, it made my very old washing machine sound like the hum of butterflies wings.   I think the neighbours started banging on the wall ..  I then realised that the machine was not adjusted properly. 

Now I have sorted it out, although we cannot invite anyone around to eat at the table, all is well.. and the hot dinner plates, now on our laps at night in lieu of the table, have – as I said to my partner – actually helped save us on our heating bills.  Every cloud and all that ….. 

What do you for punctures then ...???

... well in the words of Tina, "the famous hedge cyclist" ... "Men - they live for punctures". So we took her advice and decided to find some to show us how to deal with punctures and basic maintenance stuff.  I must say however, that my workmate Brian actually volunteered before I could ask.  I think it was the look of anguish on my face when he said "so do you know how to change a tyre then" that made him take pity on me. We did that thing you do when you are having a maintenance tryst at work .. and went to the car park  ...and got Brian's bike out of his car, plus a spare wheel, and took them into the foyer so the lesson could commence.

Needless to say I learnt a huge amount of the key stuff you need to know from Brian, which was absolutely invaluable.  The most important first step is apparently to stare intensely at the tyre so it knows it needs to change!!! Other helpful hints included Brian trying to blow up my brain by explaining to me gear sets and ratios, and how everything is a calculation based on the size of the Penny Farthing front wheel.

The next night Suzanne and I went to an Evan Cycles maintenance course which we had pre-booked a long time ago. Ryan took us through the basic paces really well with some good tips and all for free!!. The ubiquitous "multi tool" seems to be the perfect advertising vehicle cos every cyclist needs one. We also got to look at and fondle some very nice bikes and see a chain de-greasing device in operation.  I thought it was fabulous!! Then I looked at the bright pink de-greaser stuff you put into it and was reminded of the time Mal's sister Gaylene was working in a restaurant and got the pink floor cleaner mixed up with the raspberry cordial flavouring and 13 people finished up in hospital ... hey why were they all in the same cupboard I ask!!  But I digress .. yes punctures ... DON'T bring em on!!!
Oh and a tip from Brian (so basic when you know it, but really embarrassing when you don't) ... when taking off your pedals, the left pedal has a left hand thread!