Cycling back on the right road !!

Well if you had any doubts last night confirmed it. Cycling is well and truly back on the right road. At the Sports Personality of the Year Awards cycling was represented in three of the major categories. Team of the Year Award went to the British Olympic cycling team. The cycling team won 14 medals in Beijing this year-8 of those were GOLD! Cycling also claimed the Coach of the Year Award-David Brailsford who is British Cycling Director of Performance collected this award. The BIG ONE - The Sports Personality of the Year was won by Chris Hoy. The last (and only) time that this award was won by a cyclist was way back in 1965. In that year it was Tommy Simpson who was presented with the trophy. This year the British Cycling Team dominated the Olympic Games and the awards collected last night were justly won. The spin off of all this? Well cycling is now seen as cool! Helped by the so called credit crunch the sales of bikes has increased dramatically and that's not just mountain bikes. The sales of road bikes has increased as well and this must be as a direct result of the success of the British Cycling Team. Hopefully more youngsters will join their local cycling club and go on to follow in the slipstream of the great cyclists that collected the trophies last night.

A Ferry- A Hill and A Puncture.

On Wednesday 10th December I woke up full of anticipation as I had arranged to go on a training ride. The previous day John Donoghue had told me that he was planning on going on a bike ride on the wednesday morning. As I had not been out on a bike for a couple of weeks thanks to a bad cold I told him that I would meet him for the ride as well. Jason Boynton-Lee said that he would come also. The arrangement was that we would meet at the Sandbanks Ferry at 1030.
As I said I awoke full of anticipation. This would be the first time that the three of us would have cycled together since the decision had been made to do the ACR next year and the weather forecast was good. I sat down for a carbo loaded breakfast. At 0830 I heard the 'Tour de France' theme from my mobile phone informing me that I had a text. It was from Jason confirming our plans and letting me know that he would soon be on his way. About 40 minutes later my phone rings again. This time it was John. 'I have the baby' he said. 'I had forgotten that I have to look after the baby today I won't be able to make it'. Oh well that leaves just two of us at least it will make a faster ride. I thought that I would ride the Revolution which although heavier than my Felt does at least have mudguards which at this time of year is almost a must. 10.30 and I was at the ferry and a minute or two later Jason turns up on his Felt F55. The Sandbanks ferry had been out of service over the past two months for refurbishment and this was my first trip on it since it had come back into service. This was also the first time that Jason had ridden this particular circuit and he was keen to give Creech Hill a try out. We boarded the ferry and as we did so a lady alighting from the boat wished us a good ride-a good omen perhaps. The ferry refurbishment looked good - nice gleaming white and green paintwork as can be seen fron the photo.(Lets hope it stays that way) We rolled the bikes off the ferry on the Studland side and set off. There was a slight breeze but not enough to slow our progress as we powered along. Just after going through Studland we slowed as we made our way up the steep hill but the effort proved worthwhile as the views from the top were as clear as a bell. On we went not stopping till we reached Corfe. A quick swig of carbo drink and we set off again. The next highlight would be Creech Hill. The roads were muddy in places and there was still some ice around in areas that the sun had not reached yet, because of this we had to concentrate on our bike handling. We arrived at the bottom of Creech. A five minute break-a quick drink and we started to spin the pedals again. Jason set off first and I followed about a minute behind. I have not been beaten by this hill yet but as I still have a cold on my chest I could not be sure that I would make it this time. On this hill you have to be able to breath deep and my breathing was not right yet. I saw Jason disappear around the bend about a third of the way up. The gradient kicks up steeply at the bend and I knew that Jason would be feeling the burn in every muscle at this point. I was aware that I was gaining on Jason but would I continue to catch him after the bend? I continued to spin the pedals and dropped down another gear as I hit the bend. The garmin computer told me that I was doing seven miles an hour- hardly racing but it was the fastest that I could achieve. I was closing on Jason and then about two thirds up the hill Jason had to stop- beaten by the hill. I managed to continue all the way to the top but I found it very hard- I just could not sort my breathing out. Now although Jason was beaten by the hill he was trying to push a very large racing chainring whilst I was pushing a touring triple ring, so to be fair he did really well to make it as far as he did. I waited at the top for Jason to catch me up and after another short break we carried on. We were both very cautious as we went down the 20% gradient on the other side of the hill. Where the road levels and straightens out I started to put the power on managing to hit 30 mph on the flat until just as I reached the left turn that would take us to Wool my phone started ringing. As I stopped and answered the phone I was aware that Jason was not with me. It was Jason on the phone. 'I have just got my first puncture on this bike' he said. I turned my bike around and pedalled back along the road about a mile. There was Jason at the side of the road with his front wheel and a set of tyre levers. It took us about twenty minutes to put in a new inner tube. We could not find the cause of the puncture and it was a very small hole in the old inner tube. Tools away- we set off again. Next stop was the bakery at Wool. Coffee and Dorset apple cake was our order and very good it was too. Our return to the ferry was by way of Corfe and Swanage. It was a great day of cycling. The weather was cold but very sunny and the views were superb. Even the puncture helped to make the day giving us the chance to stop and take in our surroundings. We covered 51 miles at an average speed of 13.8 mph. We burned 3305 calories and achieved a total ascent of 4325 ft ( just a little short of the height of Ben Nevis). There are not many bright sunny and clear days during the winter months so we were lucky to have a day free to take advantage of it. It was certainly better than being stuck at home holding the baby!!....

58 Nights!

I have spent the last few days stuck at home with a bad cold. As each day passed I found myself getting more and more bored. It is funny the things that you find yourself doing when boredom sets in. I decided to look back over my diary and see how many nights I had spent in a tent this year. 58 nights. Now this might seem a reasonable number but further checking showed that last year I managed to spend 81 nights in a tent. I had really got into this now so I started to check back even further: 2006 was 82 nights and 2005 was 84 no less. This year with the death of my father I had to cancel a couple of my planned trips hence the drop in number. Not content with this I thought that I would check back over the last ten years and was surprised to find that during the ten year period 1998 through 2008 I have spent a grand total of 738 nights in a tent. This includes all types of camping trip- backpacking - car camping - cycle touring and campsites -farmers fields and wild. It then dawned on me that this was 2 years in 10 years spent in a tent or, every 5 years I am spending 1 of them tucked up in my sleeping bag inside one of my tents. Funny thing boredom. If you find yourself off work with a cold this winter check back through your diaries, you might surprise yourself. Now where are my diaries dating back to the early seventies!!!......

RevPro Cycling Team WILL ride again!!

Yes it is true! The RevPro Cycling Team will ride again during 2009.
The plan is to catch the ferry to Cherbourg and then cycle down through France to the Pyrenees. We will then ride over one of the mountain passes crossing the Pyrenees into Spain. We then carry on along the coast to Bilbao or Santander where we will take another ferry to return to the UK at Plymouth. We will then return to Bournemouth along the south coast. In other words one great big circuit involving three countries.
There will be one major change to the team next year. Gareth Morns is getting married next year and with all the planning that entails will not be riding with us on this trip. His place will be taken by Jason Boynton-Lee. All other team members will be the same as during this years LEJOG. The proposed date for this challenge will be during June. It is also possible that the teams name will change for 2009 but I will keep you posted on any developments about this. This trip known as the Atlantic Challenge Ride (ACR for short) will not be done for charity but just for our own enjoyment and amusement.
The team have just six months to train for the ACR and you will be kept up to date on the progess being made.
After we completed the LEJOG a lot of people said to me how much they would love to do a trip like that. Well now could be your chance! We have a space for one more person to join the team for the ACR. Basic requirements are an ability to cycle 100 miles a day over multiple days and a determination not to get off the bike when faced with huge hills. If you feel that you could train to achieve this, then leave a message and I will get back to you and you can come out with us on one of our training rides and see how you do.

Ray Mears or just Peter Calcutt?

Ray- I mean Peter- looks as if he has been really busy here having built this shelter from wood found scattered around. This shot was taken just before he added a tarpaulin to keep out the weather. A superb demonstration of bushcraft Peter !!!!..........

Even more from the pre Christmas meet

The Saturday night of our pre Christmas static meet was cold. The temperature at one point dropped to zero. In the early hours we had sleet which covered the tents and as dawn approached the temperature started to rise causing the frozen sleet to slide from the tent walls and leave a neat little wall of ice all round the bottom of the tents. The sleet turned to rain and eventualy the rain washed the neat little ice walls away. It continued to rain until about 1030hrs when a blue sky started to appear allowing us to start to break camp. The weekend was enjoyed by all and the walk that John led was a good one which included farm tracks-trails through the woods and a superb ridge section that offered great wide vistas across North Dorset. It is a pity that more members do not bother to attend the late Autumn and Winter meets as they are such a contrast with our last static that was held at Tom's Field. It is obvious that a camp site on a really bright warm and sunny weekend at the end of summer is going to be busy with more people and more tents and more camp traffic all of these things creating more noise and less space. Out of season it is a completly different story and in many cases such as this weekend we are the only campers in the farm field.

I have posted a selection of photos from this weekend. these include shots of some of the happy group in their tents-lunch in the woods-Graham demonstrating how he packs his Jam 2 sac and a shot of Peter doing his Ray Mears impression in his temporary shelter !!

I managed to cycle back without any rain and with bright sunshine although the gusts of wind were a bit scary on the bike.

More from the pre Christmas meet.