your daily bicycle log

going a big bike tour next week lads - 1300kms + 18km vertical. 9 days of riding - all on B-roads, canal paths and wind farm/logging access tracks. wish me luck : |

Nice one, have a good time! I’m heading off on a trip with my son tomorrow, we’re riding from Brighton to North Yorks via some sustrans routes plus the Pennine Bridleway over the Peak District / Yorkshire Dales. Slightly apprehensive, I’ve had the most banging of headaches for the last two weeks solid, hope I can shake that soon. Hope the weather perks up a bit and all, we’re going to be sleeping out under the stars, so could really do without getting pissed upon all day long

Those both sound fun! Man, what region is that first one? it's 2000m of vert a day.

I'm nearing the end of a bike-obsessive "big day" period. The season for high country exploits is closing, so I sorta have to just go, or shut up.

Friday I at least got over 4000m elev once. I wanted to do 2 separate crossings over 4k, but I ran out of time and energy. I may retry it solo. More people is funner and safer, but slower, even if I was the slowest in my small group.

bottom of scotland (mull of galloway) to the top (dunnet head). route here:
http://www.albannach.cc/thefaultlinetrail/

says 14km up there. still chunky

crivvens!

sounds cracking/daunting

this link says 18.5k up so who knows. will hurt regardless no doubt
https://www.komoot.com/collection/888199/-thefaultlinetrail?ref=wcl-m

aye - deffo daunting. been enough of a mission already just mapping out evenly spaced cafes/restaurants/spars/londis’s

I’ve done multi-day 80+ mile rides before - though typically on silky smooth mallorcan tarmac so I’m not underestimating the challenge. nutrition and the mental game will be key - that and not pushing it like an idiot and instead trying to enjoy it at a decent (but not slow) touring pace

day 1 was HOT HOT HOT. scotland currently basking in a heatwave (25C+). 80 miles in the heat led to a long day - riding partner had never ridden proper gravel either so when we hit that at 70 miles in - ... not good. 5/6 miles that should have taken about 30 mins took about 1h15. got through it though - big effort from her, v proud

I hear you. Did 95 miles today down to Hastings via many hills in baking heat and feel dead now.

my eldest got interviewed by cycling weekly (long-running uk mag) at the weekend (!) - a couple of weeks back he did the south downs way double in a crazy fast time (second fastest official time for the route and he's only 15) so they wanted to talk to him about that. the south downs way is ~96 miles offroad trail with about 11,000 feet of climbing, so twice that. i tried to do a road version at the same time, but totally blew up trying to get ahead to meet him at the road crossings (had to get rescued by my wife). super proud of him, not sure i'm ever going to get my bike back though

stats:
https://www.strava.com/activities/2708866153

amazing !!

holy amazing. *bows low*

it's completely bonkers, it just boggles me how fast he is now

how does one roll out an offroad double metric+ concept to parents? does he have a crew that rolls like that because, man.

“dad, I am both a weapon and a hitter, so...”

he did it all unsupported too - carried all his own food, spares, lights and clothes. no drafting and insisted on opening every single gate himself (and there are millions of those to go through). planned out where he was going to start from and at what time, all of it was on him. i was just there trying to keep an eye on him as a concerned parent, and you can guess how well that went down

he did a little write-up of it for the south downs double website:
https://www.southdownsdouble.co.uk/2019/09/14/unbelievable-ride-by-bill-and-he-is-just-15-years-old/

tell him he needs to do a one day/fkt of kokopelli, i’ll drive and wrench, youre on h2o drops, and we’ll try to abduct gbx as medical backup (which won’t be needed but he needs to be there).

tell him he needs to do a one day/fkt of kokopelli, i’ll drive and wrench, youre on h2o drops, and we’ll try to abduct gbx as medical backup (which won’t be needed but he needs to be there).

:)

Saw this a couple days ago- white rim is a cool one day exploit, this guy’s time is pretty insane. Aside from getting lost or left without water, it is not dangerous as is described imo. For 3 olds screwing around with a lot of headwind and photos and hangovers it was like 11hrs riding, 13 all in. No support, we had one water stash like 2 hrs in.

https://youtu.be/La8-Qqio0rU

Very impressive, Nick

Thanks! And thanks for the link hunt3r, I hadn’t seen that yet. How much elevation on that loop?

Says here like 7500. It's not even that much by "mtn" standards- there's really two stiff climbs in it, going CW-- Murphys and Hardscrabble. Come touring man. I told my sluggard 15 y/o about yr kid's exploit and he was v impressed (he is musical, not endurance-sportive).

https://www.strava.com/activities/1261622712

https://www.relive.cc/view/vPv4PXZBRv8

actually three climbs- i "forgot" the last one out of the ditch-- mineral canyon. it was dark when we got to it, i think i just repressed that memory, though i did hammer it with what i had left.

https://vimeo.com/365575458

i played with my iphone on a ride and on imovie

Cool. A lot of that doesn't look remotely rideable to me.

Ha a lot of that is not rideable to me. A lot is, in fact, not rideable, as it exists. I did a lot of that style of riding/hiking this year.

The more fakey-built shit I see, the more I am inclined by nature to dismiss the trail as space-mountain-feature-flow-track bullshit. (Reminder to me- almost all trails are built, my rules are my arbitrary rules). But I'm obviously not gravity-oriented anyway (I try to avoid hurting shit, though even on that ride, I fell on the 8 stitches that were 10-days-onward on my elbow. I got a little loose at that bizzaro 4x4 piece of random wood in the video. So I tore right through 2 of the stitches, and the rest were not so bueno either. I was almost back to civilization, but still remote enough to make quite a mess on the way). I'm not...so good at riding and since my TBI have about 97% of my previous balance and proprioception imo.

All, I'm planning on taking a year off from riding if I can. A YEAR. I don't know who I need to be, but I guess it's more than this. Just between ILTRMB and me lol, my partner melted down so much at seeing the condition of my limb, which is obviously the latest in a perpetual string of pretty-very bad abrasions, lacerations, fractures, and lesions, that I'm not so sure we'll survive together anyway. True irony, I was planning to try for a year off anyway, before going in on the trip.

Bottom line is that I'm way out of balance in a few ways. I don't know ~what it means~ though.

I'm gonna need everyone's therapy.

Good luck. You've been through a lot.

Aw Hunt3r, hope you get back on an even keel soon but a whole year sounds pretty extreme. I mean that’s a brave call and obviously you’ve gotta do whatever it takes but I dunno, maybe there’s a different way of channelling your cycling that hits on a good compromise? But good luck with sorting things out anyway. Get on with your running, Kipchoge’s thrown down the gauntlet for you there

Thx guys. I am gonna keep running and turn that up a little. i’m neither good at it nor well built for it, but it’s not from zero, i run occasionally now. Plus winter has skiing, and if i have some days, i may resume xc skiing more often, which i’m pretty terrible at but enjoy a lot. I’ll allow any commutation locally that saves time, also.

These look niiice

http://shop.larryvsharry.com/

That’s some big ££££s. Way outside my area of experience as some fietsy shit. I tried to determine whether the Nexus referred to a hub i know, but cannot.

Speakin of nexus, the IRO bike with nexus rear upon which i was struck in 2015 is in my garage. I keep thinking of salvaging/rebuilding the wheel and selling it, but i dont want to touch it. It ruint me enuf, nothing good can come of it.

Has anyone here ridden or owned such a cargo?

I am about to head out as support crew on this.

https://teamabana.com/

that looks great. good luck and stay well in support.

fwiw i made it to yesterday, 160 days, 205 days short of target. throughout abstention, i felt no better, only depressed. the ride was nice.

i dunno, i’m very bikey? fractures don't stop it, tbi didnt stop it, even my inflicted emotional distress of loved ones doesn’t stop it. i guess i can only hope to contain it.

still wanna be better and different, but i also need to feel happy and myself.

Maybe a pandemic will stop it? I'm hoping they don't ban solo cycling here in London. The weather was so bad here that I had scarcely ridden this year even before the coronavirus really kicked off in the UK. Now I'm wondering if I'll ever get out this year or possibly even longer. In the big scheme of things, I've got bigger worries, but it would do me some good if I could escape to the countryside every now and then.

idk man can you bike but like ... in a less risky way? i have a friend who kept skiing in terrain parks even after the first shattered everything, the results were not great.

NBS feel the same way you do - a bit guilty to be focusing on cycling *now* but yes I selfishly hope that it continues to be an option. It feels kinda scandalous idk.

maybe everyone working from home can do their commute to work on zwift every day

*our internet is mostly shit so that's out of the question for me

lukas i am sure you're right on that. part of me is afraid of getting back in. it's a bit of "one drink is too many, but 4 (or 8) are not enough." i'm sure many obsessive nerds know this tendency and handle it fine.

i hope everyone stays safe and well, and needn't self-isolate indoors. that seems cruel and mostly-to-completely pointless to me, but what do i know?

fwiw, one basis- needlessly crowding hospitals:

The Spanish Sports Council confirmed the lockdown also includes a ban on riding bikes, with some cyclists stopped and fined on Sunday. Fines can range from €500-€3000 for unnecessarily being outdoors.

Carlos Mascias, a medical director from Madrid and keen cyclist, posted a message on the Twitter account of the Vuelta a España explaining the risks of cycling during the coronavirus crisis after he saw a number of cyclists out on the roads.

"Stay at home and put the bike aside,” Mascias said pleaded. "If any cyclist suffers an incident and needs an ambulance or a bed in intensive care, we are taking it away from people who truly need it, who are now arriving en masse to hospitals.

"If something happens to you now, maybe you have a chance [to get treatment], but you will be taking it away from someone else — but in 48 hours, if something happens to you, the one who is left without [intensive care] might be you, those who are now riding your bikes. Please, park the bike and stay at home."

i've seen this concern raised on mtb boards regarding moab and other small med center destinations.

yeah that absolutely makes sense. i feel pretty okay about road rides, have been riding for years without accidents and the worst case (if i'm not hit by a car) is pretty okay.

it is definitely increasing risk vs sitting on my ass or going for a run, i just have to be okay with the fact that if i go for a road ride in a couple weeks and get in an accident, i might not get care.

dirt feels like a different thing.

i still like mtb, i still dislike putting a bike on a car, it's still 7 miles min to trailheads, i still love riding a fast dirtdrop hardtail on the road to go get durty and then ride roads/paths home again. this is the way.

today was day 2, i road the same local road/trails as two days ago. it felt so nice and normal.

sounds delightful

i don't have a bike that can really do dirt, but I have 28s, I can hit some trails in GGP, probably even the eucalyptus forest on Mt Sutro - gotta do this soon

with grav grav being all that cycling talks about—gravel feels oppressive, but way better than not-grav, because most cyclists have always ridden it? it’s why you have a cx bike even if you don’t cx anymore.

but 28s work. 28s were the widest tires i could find, fund, and fit on my 94 converted road>cx bike (wolber grifo sewups lol). just ride wherever you like, as you like.

i def decided that i need 2” tires to do all my things well, tho some friends who can actually ride can go down to like sub 50mm. but usually on bigger wheels.

i basically beg my pal who has a primo old 26” ti townie setup to let me really fix it up for long-range omni-terrain, in vain. but he knows what he wants, and it’s not what i want.

best thing about yesterday’s low elev, near home loops- tons of kiddos and doggos hiking and maintaining distancing space from others. it was therapeutic.

i saw 3 offroad atvs (the kind that seat two and have full cages) on this ride, but no other bikers. based on strava, no one rides it, really. all old mining roads in varying states of decomposition. the 3000' descent off saxon mtn, which i've done before, is just _rough_, even with 100mm up front. i had a dropper down, and and it still hurt my ass. no flow at all, just as i like it.

https://www.relive.cc/view/vevW79MDAyv

yer a loonie

lots of really aggy cars today for some reason. happy to sign an executive order bringing in summary executions for all car drivers, if that is something people would appreciate

it's like, god, it's such a nice day, calm down, slow down, enjoy life a little, why so angry bro

Drove up to Yorkshire where the temperature was about 15C lower than what I'd left behind in London. Rode up several major evil climbs (each with sections of 20-26%) with thick fog every time I got high up. Encountered some kind of rally with old cars steaming towards me through the fog. And an elderly Yorkshire cowboy in full costume cheering me on near the top of Buttertubs.
https://youtu.be/Y_Y9GrzLAy4