your daily bicycle log

nice. yeah that ride sounded great, but I had to be back early, just did paradise loop. not bored of it yet. see you next time ...

i just entered a gran fondue - http://www.amygillett.org.au/gran-fondo

course profile

hoping to light up some MAMIL asses with my grinding, 'no change of pace whatsoever' climbing technique

Took my first night ride in almost 2 years on Fri -- about 12 miles round-trip and very pleased with it, esp considering there were about 4 straight hours of dancing in between rides.

been hooning along the bristol to bath path and back a couple of times a week for the last month or so.

going the other direction: portishead, clevedon, yatton and then the new strawberry line to cheddar next week.

nick you are in exeter, right? do you know any good circular routes in the totnes/riviera area?

went out for my first lycra ride of the year, now that it's stopped snowing

12miles w/heavy dawdling in the walker sculpture garden, totally beautiful. didn't really break a sweat, and would've gone another hour if i didn't have stuff to do this afternoon

hanging out at one of mpls's many (well, several) coffee shops/bike studios. saw a dude stop by for an espresso, decked in full rapha and wheeling around a moots cyclocross bike. i hated him only because i wanted to ~be~ him.

btw is this a business model that's been replicated elsewhere? we have three cafe/bike shops in town, and two of them are exclusively high-end. like hanging out in this place (http://www.angrycatfishbicycle.com/) is like damn. so easy to procrastinate just by wandering around and looking at shit you can't afford.

Rapha opened a few pop up cafe/shops in Mallorca, New York and London last year. This year they opened in Tokyo and last week one in San Francisco featuring a modest collection of apparel paired with local coffee/pastries.

rapha just opened a store in sf that serves four barrel coffee

xpost. ha

it's down the block from bike nut RIP

there's a couple bike+coffee joints in melbs - true to our coffee snob heritage

i had friday at my disposal, so did this:

http://i56.tinypic.com/2s7sw78.jpg
http://i55.tinypic.com/10r633p.jpg

holy moly

solo?

xps

london has look mum no hands; bidey in and I idly daydream often about opening our own cafe/bike shop

was in bath recently: very pretty, like everything every tourist ever said edinburgh was like but actually

yep solo - some old bloke on an EMC2 (kiwi brand) could've been construed as giving me a tow for about 30sec on way into whittelsea i guess, heh. lots of quiet pedalling along near-deserted roads in national park area with huuuuuuuge trees.

It's small change for this board, but I did another 16 miles just getting around Brooklyn last night, going to stuff.

94 deg in moab, rode for 4 hours, but were semi-lost and out for like 5.5 hrs in the baking sun. ran out of water midway thru the ride, i got suuuuuuuuuuuper dehydrated by the end. we did the sovereign loop to the end, it was ok but man that trail has v. few places to get your flow on. its not "hard," but it's very tiring after your ability to do bursts of power wear off. one of our guys became fearful of his dehydration and bailed out to the highway, but the other and myself soldiered on. conquered!

http://i486.photobucket.com/albums/rr222/Chass3ur/0506111858_pshop4x6.jpg

castle valley, ut. this was friday night's road ride. hard to tell from there, but the bottom of the descent in the valley to the left is a 3200+ ft drop.

nothing to report here but a buddy of mine was MTBing in wi this weekend. apparently he was like a mile into a 12 mile loop at levis trow and broke his chain. no one could furnish a replacement and all the shops nearby were closed (according to iPhones). so the dude just shouldered it and coasted the downhills. god damn.

did the whole Ride to Work Day thing this morn. met up w/about 2-300 people (mostly people from google, only about 5 people from my company) at 6.30am. another guy i work w/and i kinda split from the big group (it was awful, obvs) and kept w/the pack in the front. i thought the ride was only 39 miles - by car on freeway it is - but all the twists and turns on the paths and the crazy ways we had to take it ended up being i think ~48 miles. took 3hrs flat. i can hardly think today though. work is kinda pointless. i would like a nap

I rode up Mt. Tamalpais and the a bit of the coast with Jeremy Powers, Robert Forster, Chris Jones, Joao Correia and some other pros in town for the Tour of California. Those dudes are fast. Crikey.

Mark and I did another Friday night ride last night/ this morning, really good fun. Hyde Park to Brighton via Turnes Hill and (gulp) Ditchling Beacon, I managed the former, the latter beat me like a spanish donkey. A couple of amazing bits though - a pitch black swoop down a country lane called Lonesome Lane (back road between Reigate and Horley) which twisted and turned beautifully in 140 bike lights (road surface like a billiard table too), then a rapid swoop through the wilds of West sussex with some of the more rapid regulars who act as sweepers on the rides - I ploughed on way faster than I manage on my own with them, a good 6 mph or so faster. Some great roads (admittedly some awful too), a bit too much waiting around at points, but in the main - awesome.

no cycling for me today, walked up a mountain instead

a view from the top of ditchling Beacon (Mark arrowed)
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2054/5719494813_94f8e41914_b.jpg

Is that taken early on Saturday morning?

It is indeed, a truly beautiful morning, and we did go on some great roads for riding a bike on, still gutted I couldn't make it up ditchling beacon but that bugger's steep and I'm a very fat mantis.

I've suffered up the Beacon at the end of a sportive for the last 3 years in a row:
2009
2010
and 2011
I agree it hurts

I'm not kidding I was trying to get up that fucker 20 or 30 revolutions at a time, then having a breather. About 2/3 of the way up, I'd had enough and the cramo was starting. The most demoralising climb though was the one on the dual carriageway into the top of Brighton, I though after DB it was downhill all the way and got a bit cross-eyed on that one too. Pleased to have made it up Turners Hill and Reigate Hill though, the former being a real bugger, but with awesome views back towards London.

Mind you, huge great Hat! to this dude who did the entire ride (and embarrassingly came past me about halfway up DB - turns out he is some sort of racing snake)
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_1iO--dRBnuU/Tc64xakGzPI/AAAAAAAADzk/vwzFKtIzjQU/s800/IMG_0063.JPG

The BMX dude did Ditchling 3 times, too...

Well, 9 weeks after breaking my collarbone I finally have the O.K. to ride for reals. Did a 20 mile recon ride on thursday but finally had a chance to go long(ish) today. 55 miles and 3k ft of climbing. Not as fast as I was used to, but I had some good sensations on a couple of punchy climbs. There is nothing in the world quite like the feeling of righteous exhaustion. Pretty mellow/stoked.

There is nothing in the world quite like the feeling of righteous exhaustion. Pretty mellow/stoked.

co-sign

hahaha.

good luck out there lukas. Hamilton is very easy compared to Sierra.

― it's a meme i made and i like (Steve Shasta), Friday, May 20, 2011 3:05 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

can't imagine doing it the other way! that almost broke me. started the 20-mile climb way too hot, died, revived, died again reaching the summit. i've usually been good about riding within myself but today i was all over the place, too fast or too slow. still, there was some amazing winding canyon action and i feel weirdly great now. what a day.

i hadn't ridden in a couple of weeks, since i went to moab. i got out yest and today, it was so great. today i did my favorite local loop of 47 miles, 4500 ft of climbing, a mix of everything- a long grind (10mi at 6% avg), short steep punchers along the top, 53mph descent. man was i depleted at the end.

tomorrow, i'm riding from home up to a state park in the mtns- 50 mi and another 4000 ft of climbing. i am to meet my fam at the top for a couple hours of hiking.

then it's gonna start raining all over again on monday. s'alright.

moms (yo) got a new bike so i went for a ride with here to the next town and back!

'her'

was due to to 50m today before packing bike away for shipping to deutschland, but it's blowing 25mph :(

my weekend. somehow it felt bigger than this, but it was plenty fun.

Distance: 117.92 mi
Time: 07:34:09 h:m:s
Elevation Gain: 11,621 ft
Avg Speed: 15.6 mph

I just rode with the guy who rides this bike:
http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/230431_661716248242_7105538_35601807_8261034_n.jpg

f that dude

he's my height but about 20 pounds less. So he's basically huge for a pro.

how much of that weight diff is due to the bike tho i wonder

interesting that apparently nibali feels that the evo leaves him fresher at the end of a ride but 'feels slow', so he's switched back to the regular supersix for the giro. how did yer man like his one shasta?

Seems like he loves it, but he was not talking bikes or racing at all, we had him talking italian food and Milanese model culture *ahem*.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNbhrbZcpNY

those are worthy other topix, certainly.

damn, your rides are way cooler than anything i can scrounge up! i need to step my game up. i'd have to move to boulder tho, and then only _maybe_.

Took the train from San Diego to Irvine and rode back, 100mi along the coast. Usually an easy ride, about 4k elevation for the whole ride (rollers) but net downhill. Today, however, there was a constant 12mph headwind the entire way. Most of the ride is along the ocean, so there is very little to shelter you from the wind. Fun but harder than expected.

this sounds idiotic, but i didn't know there were trains in california that ran north/south.

http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?c=AM_Route_C&pagename=am%2FLayout&cid=1241245649505

part of the route we took today went on the roads they used for the 1984 olympic road race in mission viejo, I think.

bit chilly this morning - used new long-finger gloves in retaliation. followed kinda hardcore powarclimb ride i'd heard about for first time, with mild change to route through park that added three short but steep bergs. back toward city on slippery-at-points unpaved path, shadowed MTB dude cos i didn't like the ostentatious clicking from his hub. on steep uphill bit of path that leads back to road, i went up two gears and got out of the saddle - bang! RIP chain. got taxi home.

u_u

Chris (porkpie) and I went for a great bike ride yesterday. The idea has been to go to the Dark Star brewery - not sure exactly where it is but it was 52 miles south-west of Chris's house in West Sussex. We almost abandoned the trip the day before when the forecast looked properly wet, but by the morning it wasn't too bad at all, apart from the persistent headbreeze.

Chris had chosen the "quiet" route when planning the journey, and it was fantastic - lots of empty country lanes, unpaved gravel roads (which led to puncture #1), 1930s concrete tracks and a diversion through lavender fields and horse paddocks.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v222/biondino/photo20.jpg

But it did mean our average speed was about 8 mph, and 52 miles started to look less and less possible. After almost four hours and 29 miles, we stopped for lunch at Gatwick. And I mean actually IN the airport - astonishingly it's apparently entirely acceptable to wheel bikes through the terminal and up the stairs to the cafe with nary a glance from security.

After a delicious bite to eat we decided it'd be foolhardy to try and ride 25 miles further, what with time running out and the weather looking more ominous, so we followed a decent country road route to Horsham, completing 43 or so miles in total, and not getting wet. Puncture #2 waited until I was 3 miles from home after getting the train back to London.

There were quite a lot of hills, from rolling to short and sharp with one or two real buggers thrown in - Chipstead, I'm looking at you. But the countryside was mostly gorgeous and it was a great way to spend a bank holiday.