Whilst I am fairly pragmatic about the number of readers of this blog being relatively small I know that infrequent updates do not help build an avid reader base and its been quite a long time since I last posted an update. There are 3 reasons for this - 1: busy riding quite a bit; 2: been doing boring things like decorating and 3: its been busy at work and needed many early starts and by the time I get home I am far too tired to think about adding to this blog.
However all this has not been without progress in the Midland Cyclist household since the last post back in early April when I went Mountain Biking at MudTrek in Wales. The weather has improved and has been fairly consistently good (and in fact we also had a fantastic weekend at the start of May) and this has opened the opportunity to start to cycle to work more regularly. I have also been out some evenings for a short (~1 hour) ride now that the lighting up time is nearly 9pm, meaning I can be out and back safely without lights. Last year I'd have done many more commuting miles than I have done so far this year but being knocked off has still damaged my confidence to an extent. Some changes to my working week schedule has seen me needing to drive to Wolverhampton on a Thursday which was a previous standard commute day. I have also ridden a lot of miles on my Giant Propel (in fact I have not ridden my Scott for the past 5 weeks or so). I am still really pleased with the Giant- fast, comfortable and eats the miles up:
However I managed a good mileage in both April and so far in May as well and finally seem to have rediscovered the level of fitness that I was consistently at all the way up to the accident. This was on the 80 mile ride up did "North of Meriden":
80.2 miles, 3200ft of ascent and 4:45 hours riding - I felt fairly tired with about 20 miles to go but a gel and cereal bar sorted that. What's more I rode the whole ride on the big ring, and whilst there were no real climbs its an undulating route so I took that as a positive as well. In terms of the Giant - its surprisingly comfortable to ride. I have not got a particularly racy position in terms of saddle/handlebar drop, but its supple over all but the worst road surfaces. The Ui2 is excellent and has never missed a beat (apart from when I went out without checking the battery level and got left on the small ring). The brakes are superb - huge power from very minimal finger pressure only - its difficult to avoid locking the wheels at times. In terms of aero etc I have not really noticed huge benefits until you get over 25mph or so and this is difficult for me without going down hill! The deep section wheels (they are actually aluminium rims with a non-structural aero section) feel quicker (as an engineer I hate the words "feel" as its subjective). I have ridden in a reasonably windy day and they are best described as "interesting" and if you are not ready or prepared for it you can be pushed all over the road.
I popped out for a quick ride on Saturday 14 May 2016 and managed 26 miles at 17.8mph average, 142bpm average and this now reflects a much better level of performance and effort than even a month ago. Here's a (boring?) video I took of most of the route:
Today (15 May 2016) I rode with Noel and took it easy with a more social ride at Noel's pace:
The average Heart Rate of 131bpm was indicative of the lower level of effort needed.
Here's a few photos on the way and up the St Kenelms climb:
Here's a video of the approach to and ascent of St Kenelms Pass:
As I am going to France for 2 weeks cycling in June/July it looks like I am getting into good shape in time
Went for a ride on the Propel this weekend - only the second ride (the first being back from the shop):
Fitted with an 11-28 and "Pro Compact" 36-52 its a bit over geared for me at the moment, especially as I am struggling to find fitness since being knocked off back on November 2015. I have a 11-32 for it that I'll need to fit
Didn't really do it justice today - grovelled all the way to the top of St Kenelm's Pass but did manage to up the average slightly on the way back home. Its a great bike and the Ultegra Ui2 is excellent.
Here's a video of a not particularly fast climb up St Kenelms Pass. Its a really scenic climb in a really nice part of the countryside - and hard to believe its only 15-20 minutes from the suburbs of south west Birmingham:
This Sunday I rode over to the Clent Hills and Clent. In particular I wanted to go to St Kenelms Pass - given the mythical name (and it being a Strava Cat 4 Climb) I felt it might be worth the effort. I have known that the Clent Hills are relatively close but was never sure exactly where they were - by this I mean what roads are worth using to climb and what are just boring roads and what are downright dangerous. To help in this however one of my followers (and I follow as well), Neal Lamont, had posted just such a ride on Strava in September this year that I could use as a template - the link is here: Saturday Ride and here is a screenshot:
This was actually a much longer ride than I wanted to do (a maximum of about 40 was what I was looking for) so I could keep it to around 2.5-3 hours in duration, but Neal had done a load of riding in Alvehcurch that added quite a lot of distance, so I felt if I cut all that out and rode direct to Catshill I could make it more suited to what I wanted to do.
I used Garmin Connect to create a route:
This route meant I rode over to Rose Hill and onto Catshill. This is part of a route I have done quite a few times in the past. What was new was continuing on to Belbroughton and then on to St Kenelms Pass and Clent where I added some loops. As you can see from the image above the climbs started at about 18 miles. In fact St Kenelms Pass was a long but steady climb which suited me well, apart from a very short steep bit right at the end. It was quite scenic even in the cold grey winter morning and would be great in the summer. I followed the Garmin over the route above, which I created with quite a few loops back on itself to try to get all the climbs in the area in. All was well until the Garmin said turn left on to what was at best a farm track - clearly it did not go where I expected so I turned around to the last junction. The Garmin seemed happy enough but I was on a stretch of road I'd been along not long before, so at that point I decided to abort the route, ride up to the top of St Kenelms Pass from Chapel Lane again and then ride down and exactly retrace the route I'd used to come over.
The other reason for deciding on this approach was that it was actually a lot hillier than I'd expected, and with the cold weather, and my Giant in full Winter mode I was felling pretty tired. Finally given that I had another ascent of Rose Hill to do on the way back I decided discretion was the better part of valour and needed to head back.
It was the right decision because the ride home was a real drag and I was pretty shot before I even got to Rose Hill. I ground up Rose Hill at a steady but slow pace. The direct (as the crow flies) route from Rose Hill to Solihull (through West Heath, Kings Norton etc) is also extremely rolling, and I was finally glad to drag myself home. After a shower and some calorie intake I uploaded the ride to Strava. It came out at 45.9 miles which I was OK with but what surprised me was over 4300ft of climbing and explained why I felt so tired. That seemed a really big number so I used Veloviewer which allows you to sort all your rides by a huge variety of criteria:
This shows that the ride came out as the ride with the 6th most ascent of all I have done (496 to date), the most ascent on the Giant and not far short of the same climbing as some of the 100 mile rides I have ridden, so I was decidedly happy with the achievement. I was also surprised at how much climbing I could geton a "local" route and without driving to start a ride somewhere more naturally assumed to be hilly. I'll definitely do the ride, or a variant, again - it was scenic and challenging and somewhere I have not been before. I went for a walk a few months ago with my wife to the Clent Hills and we parked by the National Trust visitor centre. When we left we went down a very long climb and I think its worth adding this to the route - however that climb will have to be a "down and up" as there was only dual carriageway at the bottom - decidedly unpleasant on a bike. Again I am not sure why the Garmin got confused. Whether in this case its associated with planning to use the same bit of road several times I am not sure, but its something I need to get to grips with as I am keen to continue venturing further afield and need to rely on the Garmin to do this. I'll probably have to plot out local rides to follow that I know I can just experiment on without getting lost. On the way over to Rose Hill within the first few miles it threw a wobbly in Kings Norton, insisting I was off route and seemingly wanting to navigate back to the start. It appears if you go off route near the start it will give and navigate you back to the start as I found in Suffolk. Its a great device but not without its foibles.
