Cycling...It's both simple and complex

The Sunday Best...with  training tyres fitted.

It's wasn't until I had to step back from the bike for a bit, that I realized how much time I had spent putting in the miles over the past year....
I seem to have so much spare time at the moment that I have found myself doing all sorts of chores that I normally manage to avoid....

One job I never avoid is making sure that my bikes are clean and polished and are in both cosmetic and mechanical tip top condition..
This past week all three bikes have been subjected to a thorough check and full clean....I even put a set of  Conti Gatorskins on the Felt in anticipation of some decent spring weather over the next couple of months....

As I only use the Felt if the weather is dry and sunny I might end up waiting a while before I use it.....
I hope to use it for the Jurassic Beast Sportive on the 12th May if the weather looks good, but for that I will put the Vittoria Open Corsa CX  tyres back on.... 
I run Conti Gatorskins on the Tifosi all the time and over the past couple of years have completed what must be getting on for 18,000 miles on gatorskins and have found them great for everyday/training rides....but prefer the Corsa's on the Felt during a sportive. 

Being off the bikes has had me considering the different aspects of cycling that I like so much... It's very much a dichotomy....
On the one hand there is the simplicity of cycling....the enjoyment of the simple pleasure of spinning along the road propelled only by my own efforts....the simplicity of a bicycle in it's purest and most basic form...the simple fact that in a general way the bicycle has changed very little since it's invention.... 

Then...on the other hand....there is the complexity of cycling.....such as the different types of bike....the various materials they can be fashioned from. 
Then we have single speed...fixie....various gears....downtube shifters...bar end shifters...hub gears..STI's etc.. 
Looking at  handlebars you can get...classic drop bars...compact drop bars... ergonomic bars....shallow drop..short reach...flat top aero etc etc.. 

Yes once you start looking into it there is a greater complexity to it all than the simplicity there at first appears.... 
But I love it all..the simple...the complex it's all part of the cycling scene...

One of the things that I like, is how items such as the various makes of cycle clothing for instance, can help to create 'tribes' and 'sub cultures' within the cycling fraternity....riders will buy a make of clothing such as Castelli, Shutt, Rapha or Pearl Izumi and wear them almost as a badge of pride...a ticket to an inner sanctum of cycling ... 
It's the same with the manufacturer of the gears...Are you Shimano...Campagnolo..Sram...?  Pedals too.. Look...Time..Shimano...Speedplay.... which tribe do you belong to.....?  
...And when it comes to all the various bike brands..well that is just more tribal affinity.... 
Cycling really can be as simple or complex as you wish it to be....  

Cyclists themselves can be pretty complex and varied too.....some see a ride to work on their bike as a battle...a war against other forms of transport...
Some see every ride as a race... for others the bike is purely an urban means of transport...
Then we have those who see the bike as a good means of escape from their normal routine life, a way to go touring and camping and see places that might not normally be visited... for others it is a means by which they can challenge both themselves and their machine....
Bike brands...cycle styles...cycle clubs..even the helmet you wear..they can all be an opportunity to join a particular cycling tribe.....
Yes cyclists can really be as complex and varied as everything else that comes under the 'cycling' heading... 

I love it all...the simplicity, the complexity, the people and it's history...it really is far more than an interest........it can be so many different things to so many people..................

Regarding cycling as a means of challenging the cyclist and the machine.......
Have you got around to checking out my Ten Countries in Ten Days fundraising page yet?  
Just give it a click and take a look at my own 2013 cycling challenge.....Thanks....

Twitter Riders....

Arriving for coffee

 Not being able to ride my beloved bikes for a while has not stopped me wanting to get out and enjoy a bit of 'cycling culture'. 
Yesterday I managed to meet up with both Simon Chapman and Jon Joynes for a coffee in Wimborne.....They were in the middle of a Sunday 50 mile spin from Sixpenny Handley where Simon lives, stopping off at Wimborne for a coffee before completing the ride via Fordingbridge and Cranborne. 

Jon Joynes... 10in10 Team Member

All three of us have met up originally via the wonders of Twitter...In fact it was due to a comment that Jon made on my twitter page in the Autumn last year, that the idea of the Ten Countries in Ten Days ride came about....Jon and I met up...discussed the idea... and the rest is history as they say. 
Simon made a comment last week that his regular ride buddy didn't want to do more than about twenty miles but he really wanted to do a fifty plus...Jon made contact with him and the lads arranged to do Sunday's ride.... 

The Lads setting off on the return leg...

 Jon rides a Giant Defy 3 and Simon rides a Felt F95.... 
It was the first time that Jon had managed to get out on his bike for about two weeks....bad weather and a really bad cold managing to keep him off the bike for the past 14 days... 

Although he is a big guy..Simon is obviously a pretty fit and powerful rider and I gather that Jon really enjoyed his 50 miler even though he did slow a little during the final 10 to 15 miles.. On the return approach to Sixpenny Handley though, Jon did manage to rally his energies and attack the climb back up to the village....

Starting to wind up the tempo...

Both Simon and Jon have signed up for the Jurassic Beast Sportive has have I, in fact we could have a good little crowd meeting up at the start of the Beast...... 
I am really looking forward to getting out and riding with both these guy's throughout the coming months. 
Jon as a 10in10 team member will be riding with me on numerous group training rides as well as riding through the ten countries on route to Lake Como in June.....

The more observant of you can't fail to have noticed that I now have a Justgiving button installed on the right hand side of the blog.....
Please give it a click and take a look at our fundraising page for the TEAM 10in10... Ten Countries in Ten Days ride.....
All the information about our ride is there and also details about CYCLISTS FIGHTING CANCER which is the charity we are raising funds for.... 

I know times are hard  for most of us these days....however any amount no matter how small will help us to help children affected by cancer... The Guy's and I in the Team are paying all our own costs for this ride which includes ferry costs...accommodation and camping costs as well as fuel for the support vehicle and this amounts to quite a hefty amount as you can imagine.....

This is not a big professionally organized charity ride with the route planned by the organizers and minimum sponsorship required to help underwrite the costs...This is entirely our own ride and our own plans....... Every donation that is made goes direct to the charity....
Give that button a click  and please help us to help children whose lives have been affected by cancer.....

I'm just giving the others a chance to catch up !

Bikes and Boats-Bournemouth Seafront

Although I have had to step back from the bike for a few weeks, it hasn't stopped me getting out and about.....I have had plenty of time to walk along the seafront here in Bournemouth as well as further along the coast....
Trying to maintain the fitness levels that I have acquired so far this year is of paramount importance so keeping active is vital....it would be so easy to fall into a sedentary lifestyle and wake up one morning and realize that I had become overweight and over the hill !! 

On the subject of hills....
One of the best ways to improve your cycling hill climbing ability is to lose weight and improve your power to weight ratio, so putting on weight is the thing I always try to avoid like the plague.... The problem is, that if you have to cut back for a while on a calorie burning exercise like cycling, you need to keep a close watch on the balance between the activity levels that you are managing to achieve and your calorie intake...(as well as the right quality of food)
I don't normally count calories as such...but I must admit that I am doing so currently.....

If nothing else, my time off the bike will give the other guy's in Team 10in10 a bit of a chance to catch me up on the power to weight front.....
JD is trying to lose weight...
Since we completed our ride back from Edinburgh last year, he seems to have put on a lot of weight...probably caused by all the official dinners he finds himself attending....

Hills always cause JD a problem...don't get me wrong, 99% of the time he gets to the top but loses a lot of time in doing so... He tells me that he would like to reduce his weight by about 42lbs before we get to the Alp's on our ten countries ride... so he really does have a big mountain to climb in more ways than one between now and then.

As for the other riders Jon and Lorenzo,  well they are working hard at improving their fitness levels with plenty of good solid base mileage.....
It will be interesting to see where each of the guy's are in respect of their individual fitness levels when we get out for our first proper ride together which I am hoping (fingers crossed) will be in early March.... 
At that time I also hope to get a proper team photo taken and I will also be doing an introduction to each team member on this blog with a brief resume' of each riders cycling history.....

Talking about the Team Photo..I have now set up our Team Fundraising Page and I have installed a button from this blog that will take you direct to our page....as soon as I have the team photo taken I will obviously add it to the team site..... 

Please click on the button and check out the page and read our 'Team Story'.
...clicking on the button does not commit you to a donation today, although I would hope that at some point between now and the ride, you would support our efforts with a 'splash of the cash'.... 

Cyclists Fighting Cancer is a fantastic charity doing really good work and one of the reasons for our 10in10 ride is to draw attention to the good work that they do.... 
I would just like to finish this post with my comment that is featured in our Team Story on the site....

"As a cancer survivor myself I am only too aware of the difficulties faced by a diagnosis of cancer....for a child affected by cancer it can be devastating" Trevor Woodford (Team Member)

My Most Popular Post....Apparently!

Due to a bit of a medical blip I have been forced to ease right back on my training and general bike riding for the time being....
Just when things are buzzing along quite nicely something always seems to come along and try to knock you off course...It's almost as if it is actually trying to test your resolve and commitment to the task in hand.....

Unfortunately it has chosen the wrong person with me, because I look at it from the perspective of it just adding to the challenge.... 
I won't bore you with all the gloomy details here, but have no doubt that I do intend to be back on the bike again as soon as possible.... 

Because of not being on the bike I have been checking various things on the internet...
Everything from various routes for our Ten Countries in Ten Days Ride planned for June...
Some new routes that I would also like to ride in the future....
In one desperate moment looking for something to occupy my mind I decided to checkout the stats for the blog....not something that I can admit to doing all that often...but needs must when you have all the extra time in hand that not riding the bike seems to give you.... 

Anyway one thing that I found really interesting was concerning the post with the most page views.... 
Up to about ten days ago that particular award would have been given to a post that I wrote on the blog about fourteen months ago...
It was an item reviewing some of the new bike accessories and components etc that I had fitted to the bikes over the previous year and how well or otherwise those items had been doing...

You can see it HERE if you haven't read it before. 
Just as a matter of interest, my opinions regarding all the items in that review have not changed in anyway since I wrote that. 
For some reason that particular post had received more views than any other since I first started the blog...

But...we have a new kid on the block..
In the past ten days a piece that I wrote way back in 2009 has been receiving huge numbers of page views every day...so many in fact that it has shot straight past the previous leading post by a vast margin. 
It was an item about the trouble I was experiencing trying to replace a tent for cycle touring....

Take a look at it HERE . 
Now why this post has suddenly become a popular 'view' I have absolutely no idea...
Indeed since I wrote that piece Robert Saunders has sadly died... 
However what I will say is that the Hilleberg Nallo 3GT has been a really superb buy...
It has become my favourite tent of all time and although it is now even more expensive (RRP 900€) than it was back then I would still recommend this as a first class tent for Cycle Touring. 

Yes it's expensive....
Yes it is probably slightly too heavy for a solo rider (although hardly noticed on the bike)...
BUT it has a huge amount of room inside and you can even get your bike in the porch with no difficulties at all...
It is an all seasons tent and can easily accommodate two riders with no problem at all. 
I have noticed that a number of other Cycle Touring Bloggers have also put it at the top of their tent recommendation lists so this is obviously not just my opinion.... 

I can honestly say that if I was looking to buy a tent for cycle touring right now this is most definitely the tent that I would be buying. 
Interested? 
Then take a look at the HILLEBERG NALLO 3GT  

Oh! if someone could let me know about the wonders of google and why a fairly obscure blog post would suddenly receive all the interest that it has, then I will be pleased for you to explain it all to me, computer and internet illiterate as I am.

Busy..busy....

CFC Team Kit

 Well things have been pretty busy here at Purple Towers with preparations for our Ten in Ten ride...I got back from a training ride this morning and a parcel had been left by our local postman...
Yes...It was the Team Kit provided for us by Cyclists Fighting Cancer which is the charity that we will be riding for as we make our way through ten countries on our big ride in June... 

With our matching team kit we will all look as if we mean business as we throw our legs over our bikes when we head off on our group training rides over the next few months....
It does make a big difference when you are all in matching kit and hopefully it will help us to feel and look more like a cycling team and not the group of ageing men dressed in lycra that we really are!! 

As well as the Team Kit arriving, Dave (the broom) who amongst everything else is our Team Manager and does almost every other job that doesn't actually involve cycling, has been busy too. He's been beavering away in the background checking out ferry routes for our exit from and entry to the UK. 
Those ferries have now been booked and it is official and confirmed that we will be leaving from the Port of Harwich on a ferry bound for the Netherlands on the second weekend in June. 

Our first day on Saturday the 8th June will include a drive from down here on the South Coast up to Colchester. 
From there we will ride a convoluted route on the bikes between Colchester to Harwich. 
I say convoluted, because it's not that many miles between those two points and we want to stretch out the distance a bit in order to make that first days ride a reasonable distance. 

As I understand it the ferry will be leaving at about 2300hrs and we will be able (hopefully) to get a reasonable nights sleep on board in our cabins before disembarking in the Netherlands for our second day at about 08.00hrs.  
Before that of course we have a lot of hard work in training to complete and I hope to post some images of those sessions over the next few months...

Nothing like good bike maintenance.....and  this is nothing like it..!!

A nifty change of subject now.....
There is nothing that pleases me more than a nicely maintained bike, with nice well lubed drive train and all the nuts and bolts all nice and shiny and clean....so you can imagine what I thought when this bike was shown to me the other day....

There I was cleaning my bike at the end of a ride...re-lubing my drive train....checking nuts and bolts for tension etc and polishing up my bikes frame to make it ready for the next ride when a guy walks up my drive with the above bike and says that he hoped that I didn't mind him asking me, but he had been having problems with his bike as everything seemed really stiff and it didn't seem to ride properly....

He went on trying to butter me up by telling me that he was asking me, because he realized that I was a keen cyclist as he had seen me head out most days on one of my bikes....
He thought that it would be better to ask me than take it along to the local bike shop because he was a bit worried about being charged a lot for something that might be simple and straightforward to put right.....!!!

I won't go in to exactly what I said.....I will just leave that to your imaginations!! 

Luckier than most...

A CASUAL RIDE ALONG THE PROMENADE 

I think that we were luckier than most over recent days as far as the weather is concerned.... 
Our location here at Bournemouth on the South Coast of England is such that for the most part the worst of the winter weather tends to pass us by. 
Yes we have had some snow and ice but not it seems as badly as some other parts of the UK... 

Although I am only doing about half the cycling distance that I was covering last year, my training for the 'Mission IsPossible 10in10' ride planned for June is well on target....
Take this past week..I managed to complete the equivalent of 120 miles on the static indoor training bike and a further 104 miles outdoors on some real roads. 
The indoor bike is a vital part of my winter training plans and without it this past week would have been nowhere as productive as it proved to be.... 

To be absolutely honest I think that I preferred my indoor miles compared to my actual road miles last week... 
The road miles were dirty and cold and then after getting back home after the rides, more time had to be spent on cleaning up the bike...My kit was pretty filthy too. 

The bad weather seems to have taken it's toll on the roads as well....
Potholes seem to almost appear overnight and with the amount of muck and detritus on the roads it was a miracle that I didn't end up forty miles from home with a puncture and lets face it if you are going to get a blowout, it is more likely to happen when you are cold and wet with a good few miles left to ride.... 

On top of my training miles there was still some time for a casual ride along the promenade for a few miles and on my return along the seafront it appeared that a lot of other cyclists had the same thought judging by the number of bikes I saw..... 

The latest news regarding our Ten Countries ride is that we have another member on the team....
Not satisfied with a team comprising of  three 'old men' and a 'boy' of forty two to tackle the ride, we have another Cyclist member who has joined us...Lorenzo is Italian and is the same age as me at sixty five.... a great bonus of him joining the team is that when we arrive in Italy, any language difficulties that we might have had have now been solved......all the better when we order our pasta..!!

It is hoped that we will be starting our group rides together in March..hopefully by then the worst of the weather will have finished and we can look forward to some good weather...good company...and some good rides...

Retro - Why?

Not a great deal has been going on over the past week on the cycling front here at Purple Towers...or on any other front come to that. 
Due to the bad weather that we have been having, most things in the UK seemed to grind to a halt...airports..rail services...buses.... 
Even quite a large number of schools have been closed much to the enjoyment of the youngsters who have been able to play with sledges in the snow instead of having their daily dose of education.... 

There has also been the usual hand wringing and moaning  regarding the problems that the bad weather seems to cause us all here in the UK compared to other countries, where we are told, everything functions to a perfect clockwork precision in spite of the snow.... 
I tend to think that a lot of it tends to be something to do with the costs involved in investing in extra equipment to keep everything moving in bad weather when it happens relatively infrequently, unlike the countries and places that we tend to be compared with.... 

It's not unlike me really....When we get a coating of snow I often think that I would love to have a 'fat tyre' bike so that I could get out and ride....however...knowing that I would only use it on the rare occasions that we did get some snow I am not prepared to spend the money required to buy one....I would rather spend the money on road bikes and kit and pedal away indoors on the static bike when the weather turns bad....
And that is exactly what I've been doing over the past week....  Pedaling away indoors I have still been managing to get a good two hours a day of  specific zone training completed and currently I am feeling pretty good about my progress.

As I have mentioned in previous posts...spinning those pedals indoors gives me lot's of time for 'thinking'...often a dangerous thing for me to do....
One thing that passed through my mind this morning was... 
'Why is it that Retro is so popular in an age when things are superseded and upgraded almost as soon as they become available?' 

Take photography...Touchscreen controls are all the rage and yet a number of manufacturers are selling very large numbers of cameras described as retro with buttons and dials to control aperture, speed etc rather than having these controls buried within the depths of a digital menu. 

It's similar with bikes, although in the bike world it tends to be more about a retro look mixed with all the benefits of the latest technological advances...
Why is the retro look so popular? 
My Tifosi has a nod to the retro in appearance with it's paint job and colour mixed with modern gears etc... 
For me it is a reminder of what bikes tended to broadly look like when I was a kid and started riding..so it's a bit of nostalgia... 

 Similarly with the cameras...I was brought up with cameras with dials and buttons with which to control the settings...it feels comfortable and things feel in the right place, unlike all the magic of the touchscreen...so again in my case it's all about nostalgia and what feels and looks right based upon when I first started using cameras.  

But why would someone forty years younger than me buy either the camera with the buttons and dials, or the bike with retro paint job and traditional saddle and bar tape etc? 
It can't be nostalgia in their case...after all they haven't got that personal connection with the style or look. 

Help me out here guys...Do you like the retro look?  If so, what is your excuse?