your daily bicycle log

I'm really liking the global heatmap, with my impending move to melbourne it is helping me plot where to ride.

Heatmap is way too cool. Fun to find random little criterium courses in the middle of nowhere. Here is mine:

http://x.raceshape.com/heatmap/view.html?id=0b59e63a0eba094d3a08cab5916b54a24f74e20a

it's so cool to see how people navigate to ride. i've only ever been to sd once for 5 days (no riding), and downtown and sunset/ocean beach (esp ocean beach) seemed pretty bike...dangerous? like not bike hostile but challenging. anyway, what a great app.

Btw you cant leave for oz, Usa needs u ed.

Is anyone on this thread from Glasgow and has initials DH? Such a person has suddenly started following me on Strava. I don't have a problem with that, but I have no idea who it is.

From memory there are at least two Glaswegians on this board and the mysterious DH is also following Ed, so I've followed you back (whoever you are).

DH is cozen.

ja that's me JF

strava-based heavy bike chat starts now

surprisingly little heat map activity in my neck of the woods, given that I am in strava's birthplace

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2013/07/cutting-removing-functionality.html

read this a few days ago, pretty interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5b6-UAPvpg

another strava related, but this is really an ad, and also total bs imo.

http://youtu.be/QmILpd_eIM4

i went mtbing today. this is not me, but it could be, really.

ok, i'm done with the posts.

Just pedaled across the Williamsburg Bridge in red suede platforms.

I feel like someone needs to bring this thread down from its lofty heights occasionally.

need higher platforms to maintain loft then.

Yeah, get on that.

went for 50 mile ride w/group today and managed to somehow come off. was turning the corner at the bottom of a hill and hit a gravel patch and went down hard, head first. am alright, bit cut up and bruised w/scratched sunnies but no breaks so whew

was bloody windy blech

Ouch, sympathies. How fast were you going?

I am back in the saddle over the last month; having done only about 250 miles this year before July, I then easily doubled that. Have started using Strava, too, which is interesting. Convinced some people cheat on some of the hills around here. Also suspect that Devon riders do more hills than others do, judging by friends elsewhere...

not super fast; bit sore today but overall fine. milking it tho

Sympathies.

Surely people in devon ride more hills because of more hills?

Exactly my point. Just didn't quite realise how many more til now, somehow! Guess my other point of reference is Sheffield...

sorry to hear that, cozen

yeah, gws cozen

cozen was it like this

http://youtu.be/UqjOqgilwmQ

Set off at 8am with a vague intention to ride a road I've not done before, and did so. Then moved onto a road I have ridden before but which is beautiful and quick, and enjoyed that. 45 miles in, 2 from home but thinking I'd loop town to get up to 50, a wasp flew into my face and stung me on the top lip. Which swelled up like Lana Del Rey. So I went strait home and only got to 47. I still look like Lana 8 hours later. Beautiful ride until that damn wasp. Never been stung before in 34 years.

pics or it didn't happen

I get stung once or twice a year but it has always been the old yellow jacket down the jersey on the downhill. Terrible feeling ESP since they can get multiple stings in.

http://instagram.com/p/c3sHZSRDC9/

65ish miles today in about four and a half hours. (User error on both Strava and Endomondo so neither is accurate.) 5000+ feet of climbing over Dartmoor. Tired now.

tiiiiiiiiiired now
http://www.strava.com/activities/77109274

man I wanna do a big ride

Nice work, Cozen. I was meant to do 60 but bro in law screwed up the route...

I still need to get my road bike back on the road! Would love to have tagged along for something like that.

maybe the summer is over. my ride felt terrible. i mean, it shoulda been great, it was finally below 90 degrees- only 75!! just felt dead. and slow. then, on the first 1800 ft of the 2800 ft descent i got stuck behind a car that was fast enough for me not to be an ahole and pass, but slow enough to be on the brakes for a good part of it, which i hate.

42 miles, 2,800 feet of climbing, 20 PBs on Strava (17 in a row), and took two and a half minutes off my fastest ten mile time. Good day.

Good week this one. Settled in Melbourne, two thrashes down to Frankston this week. Today's ride featured a century half an hour faster than I've ever gone before. Pan flat and not too much wind, good group riding making it feel pretty easy. Blew another spoke on my wheel. I ave the new wheels, time to set them up.

Haitch, fancy a ride some time?

is melb the cycling paradise I've heard?

Pretty awesome so far. Good weather, bike lanes, bike priority lights and a hell of a lot of cyclists. I've never seen so many out as I did yesterday and it's not even properly spring yet (and melburnians do like to complain about a winter that doesn't trouble to come remotely near freezing).

Haitch, fancy a ride some time?

yes!

I can show you the fake ardennes bergs out near kinglake.

did you do olivers hill out the other side of frankston and loop back? the one sting in the beach road tail.

That sounds like a plan, Kinglake seems to be on the list of local monuments. Webmail link works. I'm pretty open right now, what with not having a job and all.

Olivers hill was done. Are you doing Around the Bay? How does the route deal with those lumps on the mornington peninsula?

Today I rode up the Merri and Yarra valleys. Out longer than I expected but it is so pretty out there. I saw Kangeroos/Wallabies on the ride, which, for me at least, was pretty astounding.

I did around the bay last year on someone else's entry (he got knocked off his bike a week before it, i got it as a freebie). did the melbourne-sorrento and back version rather than all the way around so I missed on the ride over the westgate bridge (boo) but also the pretty boring ride down the geelong highway. they send everybody on the nepean rather than taking the (awesome) coast road between mornington and dromana, which sucks the fun out of it a bit.

man the riding out here is so much better than MN it's stupid. did a nice ~17mi loop after work w/1400ft of climbing, which is rides v much not in character for this midwesterner. super fun. even felt like i had ~realizations~ about, like, pedaling form? i tried pedaling with my hips/torso (if that makes sense) instead of my legs and found it much easier to grind it all out w/blowing up. i only got out of the saddle once, which is sort of a big deal for me

http://youtu.be/IEaWz8WfWb4

smooth and easy with the pedals. i don't even know where u are man, nh, is that right? enjoy, anyways.

I passed my 2012 total distance logged this week.

On sunday I was repeatedly attacked my magpies, do the cable tie deely boppers I see people riding around with really work?

Other than that riding around here is really great, the smell of the gum trees is fantastic. I'm riding through vineyards on well made roads, life is good.

the cable ties absolutely do NOT work!

the lolzy strategy is: ride in a bunch, don't ride at the front (they always attack first in the line)

That's a relief because they look ridiculous.

I need to find more bunches to ride in.

the fred nation is very convinced of their effectiveness, i've seen attacks nontheless

got your email btw, will holla when back at home

magpie attacks?! what kind of lawless country is this