I rode it again this year - 4th time in a row and ridden all of them so far. It doesn't get any easier, and this year was tough given being knocked off and with limited "proper" riding - 50 miles on a turbo trainer was useful but insufficient
About 4hrs 20 minutes but I was pretty well all in at the end.
A couple of pictures from the start - I'm in the Belkin shorts, next to Martin Lewis, a former colleague:
More detailed report to follow but a couple of videos from the Edge Hill and Sunrising Hill Climbs: Edge Hill:
Slow and a lot of puffing and panting! Sunrising
Even slower than Edge Hill and even more puffing and panting!
In the Winter its not as easy to pick and choose when to ride ad the weather is more limiting Saturday 20 February's weather forecast looked better than the Sundays so I took advantage and rode out in a favourite loop down to Wilmcote. It's just over 40 miles which made it the longest ride this year and I felt pretty good - probably the best this year so far.
I was on the Scott for only the 3rd time since I fitted the Shimano 5800 11 speed groupset - it really is much better than the previous 5700 10 speed set. I'd also fitted the 11-32 rear cassette for test (swapped out the 11-28) in preparation for the Rawlinson Bracket on 28 Feb - at 70 miles this is the longest I'll have ridden for a long time and its hilly so I'll need all the help I can get I made another (2x speed) video with my Garmin Virb of most of the route:
In preparation for the Rawlinson Bracket I actually have ridden my turbo trainer twice in the previous week:
The first day I felt surprisingly good,the second day not so. However it might have made a difference on the Saturday
Starts at Earlswood Station and goes down to Alvechurch to do the each 3 climbs out of the village in a westerly direction. Then up to Barnt Green to climb Fiery Lane and up to the Lickeys/Rose Hill Left the Video running all the time and in West Heath, approaching Kings Norton, I caught a moped at some roadworks. It pulled away from the lights but I quickly caught it and stayed with it until the small climb. Just shows that a heavy person on a moped is no quicker than a fit(ish) person on a bike:
Don't believe the gradient - my Garmin Virb is more "inconsistent" than my Garmin 800 - we were pretty well on the flat here
I went out over the weekend of 23-24 Jan 2016 and made a few videos. There are a couple of reasons for flooding by YouTube account with videos - 1 - having got knocked off I am using the camera to hopefully provide some "evidence" should (and I hope not) get knocked off again and - 2 - I went to use my Virb over Christmas (having not used it for some months) and had zero battery life. I overcame the latter issues to an acceptable level (and I'll document this later perhaps) and so have been exercising the Virb as much as possible. Anyway - here are this weeks videos: Saturday
We took one of our sons back to Exeter on 2 Jan. He suggested we re-rode the route we had ridden at the end of December 2013, so we did:
I took some videos using my Garmin Virb. I had tried to use it over Christmas but had a lot of issues with battery life. I found some suggestion on the internet and the ride was partially an opportunity to test it out.
The weather was very wet but no too cold (better than the previous time when there was a lot of ice on the roads).
