End of May Summary and Mega EXO Moans

Update 1 June 2012

After the Wheel Heroes ride last Sunday I continued to take advantage of the good weather and rode to work on both Tuesday and Thursday.

I was initially tired starting out on Tuesday morning and made it in just over an hour. On the way home managed some reasonably good times and got a PR on the Hampton in Arden Hill Climb. Each ride I seem to be able to edge a second or so.

On the Thursday ride I had a target of a new segment that I'd spotted on one of Mike Harrison's rides - Hampton Hill which runs up past Solihull Grammar School. It is just a short segment - KOM was held by Scott Wharton at 0:56 and my previous best was 1:06. The segment is about 3 miles from home and I was warmed up by the start and really went for it. The outcome was the KOM at 0:53 so a good result. I also got 2nd best time on cornets end/back lane. There are now 9 segments on the commute in.

This KOM got me back up to 5 segments - better than nothing!

For May got almost 600 miles and an above target which is good, but the weather for the long Bank Holiday weekend looks uninspiring though.

An activity over the next week is to assess the state of the BB on my Focus. I've returned the unit to Wiggle as its less than a year old (and only about 3000 miles). Hopefully I'll get a replacement although as this is the 2nd failed unit it appears that this is about how long they last. It's a FSA BB-6000 Gossamer Mega EXO Bottom Bracket - and gets mixed reviews regarding durability from the Wiggle customers that have bought one on the past.

I think when the rest of the chain set needs replacement I'd be unwilling to replace it with another FAS (or even renew the chain rings if the BB itself lasts about a year and costs £40 a time to replace

Update 7 May 2012

The weather was actually acceptable on and off over the last week. I went out on the Wednesday 2 May after work for a short spin on the Focus (16 miles) to take in a number of segments. Got KOM for "St Alphege Hill" (by ~2 secs), "Widney Lane Blast" which was a dead heat with Scott Wharton, second on "Widney Manor Uphill" and second on "Watery Eyes Warm Up" which I had to go back for after Dave Brown stole the segment off me. For the latter I made another improvement of 5 seconds but was still 2 seconds behind Dave (who'd gone out specifically to get that segment!). I was very pleased with the ride which is here:

 

The weather was Ok for both the Saturday and Sunday. On the Saturday I did a 46 mile loop taking in some more segments and made a number of reasonable times - got a big improvement on the "Forde Hall Lane South" segment (now that I know it's there!) of over  seconds and moved into 2nd place out of 35 or so,  so that was a good improvement. Average speed for the ride was 17.6 which was none to shabby.

Went out again on Sunday and very quickly realised how tired my legs were so tried to be sensible. I  rode down to Stratford which is always fast as its generally downhill and I think a following wind and then worked back. On the way back my legs were very tired but was pleased with an average speed of 17.7, plus some unexpected improvements on some segments.