Norwich Paris Duathlon

At the Recruiting Sargeant, Coltishall (ready for the off)

 I had the immense privilege of sharing the road with 2 intrepid (mad) cyclorunners on Wednesday 3rd April.

My Nephew, Josh Brighty and his mate Andy Mulligan are cycling Norwich to Paris, running the Paris Marathon and then cycling back to Norwich, all in the space of 10 days! Raising money for the East Anglian Air Ambulance.

I, plus 4 other of their friends, met them at the Recruiting Sargeant pub in Coltishall, just North of Norwich for Le Grand Depart with each of us riding a portion of the route with them to see them on their way.

2 riders had left the "peleton" by the time we were just south of Norwich to get to work, and the other 2 left us at New Buckenham. That left three of us, making the most of the lovely tailwind all the way through to Lavenham, just south of Bury St Edmunds for lunch.

Last minute bike tweaking

Brief pitstop in Tombland

Post lunch, it was time for me to say goodbye (au revoir) and begin the long lonely slog back home, predominantly wind against for 4.5hrs, meant that the average speed dropped off the edge of the proverbial cliff, and I questioned my sanity on a number of occasions but eventually arrived home, with 133 miles in the legs!

The boys are on their 3rd day now, and should be within 50 miles of Paris when they stop tonight - perfect preparation for running a further 26 miles on Sunday before turning teh bikes around for the homeward journey!

If you would like to keep up with their endeavours then you can follow them on Facebook here but more importantly, if you could sponsor them, then please click here and follow the instructions!

I love MapMyTracks!

So there I was minding my own business, innocently signing up to (another!) online tracker of mileage/kilometreage expended on one's bike - the particular website in question being Mapmytracks.


The reason I added to my expanding repertoire of online distance recorders apart from feeding my insatiable need for dissecting rides in every numerical form known to man was in order to "compete" in the Peoples Grand Tour (see previous post).

Anyhow, as part of nosing around the site, I spotted another challenge "March Miles Challenge" (Ride as many miles as you can in March) [Hint - keywords being 'Ride' & 'as many as you can'] so having uploaded 2013's rides to date, I duly signed up...

The challenge having now finished, I only went and won it and with it a Nexus 4 Mobile Phone!

Excited / chuffed - much!

Not bad just for riding a bike (well two actually) [Not simultaneously :-)]

Roll on April...

Peoples Grand Tour is a coming...

You know how you set yourself goals and then either succeed or fail at them.
Well how about someone else setting the challenge, and all you have to do is respond? - That's where the Peoples Grand Tour comes in!

Just ride your bike every day for each of the 3 Grand Tours: Giro d'Italia, Tour de France & La Vuelta d'Espana, record your results and compare yourself with others - easy huh?

Oh and there's a test event starting on Saturday 30th March, just for a week.

Who's in? I AM!!!

February already!

Where did January go?!

A mixed month weather wise - verging from mild through cold to freezing temps, wind, rain, snow, ice - you name it...

Still 650 miles for one of the UK "winter" months can't be too bad - can it?

Roster for 2013 is starting to come together:

May 12th - Suffolk Sunrise - 100ish miles in Suffolk (did you guess?)
June 21st - Tour de Norfolk - again does what it says on the tin - around Nelson's county in a day
July 20th/21st - Dunwich Dynamo - London to the Suffolk Coast before Sunrise (and then home!)

I am sure the above will be added to as 2013 progresses - got to have a focus though!

More soon...

Strava + VeloViewer + Race Shape = Statistics Obsession Satisfied!

Have been recording rides on Strava for around a year now - just the fact that every ride becomes (continues) to be a race appeals to my self competitive nature!

VeloViewer and RaceShape to name but two are other websites that take the Strava data and add additional stats / functionality to the raw info - Love it!

Below is the word cloud for my ridden segments on VeloViewer!

Finishing one year, starting another

Tale of the tape for 2012:

Total distance: 10713.27miles / 17241.33km
Average Speed: 17.17mph
Total Calories: 594020 calories
Total Duration: 624hours
Total No.of Rides: 425
Total no of Strava KOM's: 3

Best cycling experience: Breaking 5hrs for the Norwich 100 or doing the Fred Whitton Route in August.

Bucket List item's getting ticked off in 2013:

Tour de Norfolk (cycling around Norfolk in a day)
Dunwich Dynamo (Subject to holiday Dates...)

Having done over 30,000 miles in 3 years, would love to break 10,000 again but want to see some lift in the performance alongside the distance under the wheels.

Winter bike should be up and running by the middle of January too so at least I can mothball the posh bike, now as for that fixed wheel project...

In for a penny, in for £230!

Cycling... a leisure pastime, gets you out and about, able to appreciate nature and the great outdoors - I could go on.

Performing a quick Cost/Benefit analysis, the resultant savings are immense - NO fuel costs, a fitter, more healthier rider, a chance to unwind however when a specific bill arrives it is still a shock!

So the posh bike, 2 years old, excluding tyres, tubes, cleaning and lubricants has probably cost me less than £150 for the best part of 10-12,000 miles (i have more than one bike) and evaluating what I have just written would logically suggest that a bigger bill was coming and last week it arrived.

Issues presented - iffy gear changing, tendency for gears to slip (getting worse) and some play with front chain rings.

Diagnosis from LBS - New Cassette, chain, chainrings and BB = £230 - OUCH! Had reckoned on half that amount but having said that it is now a dream to ride again, and considering there are not many other moving parts as such, I almost have a new bike?!

Sadly only been out on it properly twice since, as am on training this week (the head knowledge kind not the fitness kind) roll on the weekend!

10,000 Reasons...

DONE!

10,000 miles completed, a tad earlier than last year - not as early as one would have liked but considering other mitigating circumstances this year, as expected really!

The 12k is now an unreachable pipe dream, but 11K (and a bit more) is now the focus - we'll see...?

Fitted new brake blocks last night - amazing how my bike now stops when i want / need it to rather than eventually coming to a halt in amongst a symphony of screeching on my rims!

The Wiggle Rut - A participant's tale

The end of British Summertime, and what better way to celebrate than with a 72 mile lap of Rutland?

Got picked up by Scott at 5am feeling distinctly wintry temperature wise, feeling glad that all manner of winter clothing options were stowed in the kitbag.

We made good time to Rutland (Oakham) and proceeded to unload bikes and get all extremities sufficiently covered, aiming to commence as close to 8am as possible.

Foolishly I thought that all the hills in the UK were a bit further north so the constant up and down of the first 20 miles or so was a bit of a shock to the system - however at least I was warm now!

The feed stop loomed at 31 miles and a quick pause for ablutions plus cramming some food in and a gel before getting going again. As we reached the halfway point, 18mph average was still being sustained, but as the headwind started to blow and the hills became longer and more drawn out than the earlier shorter sharper affairs, I knew that any hopes of a sub-4hr were going if not gone.

Scott had way more pace than me, particularly going uphill and so disgression being the better part of valour, I let him go and decided that me and the wind would fight our own personal battle for the remaining 30miles. Got passed by 4-5 riders, but as per the Hare and Tortoise, I kept plugging away and had overhauled them all again before the end. A welcome turn to the left at around 60 miles gone meant that the wind would be generally behind again,and so ticking off the miles, the return into Oakham was pretty uneventful except for a stop at a level crossing.

Finish time was 4hrs 22, just 8 minutes outside Gold standard so more than happy with Silver considering the conditions, all in all a well organised, enjoyable ride in beautiful surroundings, who knows I may be back...?

Upon arrival home being a statto, I checked the finish times and looks like I managed the 18th best time out of 324 - chuffed to say the least!

My Bucket List

Otherwise known as the XX (insert number here) things to do before you die.

So today's (cycling) bucket list consists of [In no particular order]

• LEJOG
• Etape du Tour
• Col du Tourmalet
• l'Alpe d'Huez
• Mont Ventoux
• Fred Whitton (again)
• An organised sportive every year
• A self organised trip every year
• Coast to Coast GB (The Fat one!) 
• Tour de Norfolk

The great thing about a list like this that you get to tick things off. but as preferences and aims / targets change items can be dropped and/or added.

Being still very much alive, having a challenge / target is very important to me even if as at now some of them seem remote.

Realsitically probably need at least 10 years to achieve the above - bring it on!