Horsham to Brighton

This good Friday Sophie and Rachel had agreed to join David and myself for a ride to Brighton. Unlike the usual and slightly epic route over the south downs, culminating in another failed attempt to tackle the ditchling beacon, we opted for a route we hadn’t tried before.

After much to-ing and fro-ing we opted for Horsham to Shoreham. A simple 26 mile route with  a few extra miles tagged on for the last leg to Brighton.

Many of the reviews of the route suggested it was unmanageable on anything other than a mountain bike. I opted for the brompton as it would be easy to take on the train and has Marathon tyres on which are much better suited to this kind of journey. Most of the other bikes we saw were indeed full suspension mountain bikes, but you don’t need to go that far unless you want to do the journey really fast, in which case I reckon an old fashioned touring or audax bike, or one of the new cyclocross hybrid would be quicker.

As you can see from the pictures we had a motley assortment (or Crue if you like) of  bikes covering multiple “disciplines.” In truth it is manageable on any bike you want to go on, although I’d avoid anything too roady.

Inevitably we got to Horsham later than planned and decided to forgoe the first tea shop to get a few miles in before lunch. Had this been Holland we would have been passing cafes all day but refreshments were not all together easy to come by. Indeed with a group of 6, including 3 vegetarians, found it a little tricky to get lunch at all. I had cauliflower cheese and cheesy chips which meant I didn’t need to eat again for the rest of the day.

The route itself is lovely  if a little uneven and potholey in places and the ride into Hove from Shoreham is bleak and industrial but I loved it and will be doing the whole thing again shortly.

Upon arrival in brighton Sophie and I stopped for ice-cream and a suitable amount of bum rest before retiring to a local hostelry. Unfortunately the first bar was riddled with wankers downstairs and needed the upstairs for a function in the evening, so we moved on to a much nicer bar a little closer to the lanes.

We really should have checked the trains a little more thoroughly because the journey time was an half an hour longer than usual so Sophie and I popped our folders into a black cab at St Pancras. Unfortunately that meant we followed Robert all the way through Islington. He did indicate his pleasure at this with a salute using just a couple of fingers.

All in all a lovely day out.

The Lee Valley Duathlon

"I'll be coming to the gig, but I'll need to take it easy though as I'm racing a few days later"

I am not sure how it all happened, but I found myself saying the above phrase out loud on Saturday over a few beers. A few years ago the quickest that I moved was to catch a train if I was running late, or last orders if the pub was closing.

Late last year after some cycle touring and a couple of really quite long rides, I started running again with the express intention of entering the London Triathlon in 2014.Whilst my fitness has been growing, I have started to find myself a little daunted by the whole finish-get-changed-try-another-sport-straight-after part.This is usually referred to as transition.

I'm one of those people with little, or no,sense of direction. When under pressure I often take the wrong turn. Worse than that however is the inability to locate items such as keys and a bicycle helmet when they are in the flat. After seeing the transition area at the Hyde Park Triathlon last year I am genuinely concerned that I'll:

a) never find my bike
b) never find my way out

With that in mind I started looking for small/short multisport events that are close enough for me to get to without having use the term 'logistics' to describe getting there

To this end I now find myself entered in the Lee valley Duathlon. It is a relatively straightforward 2km run/5km bike/2km run mostly contained in a park 6km from my house. At present there are only 15 entrants, so I should be able to spot my bike with ease. Even if that is because afterthe 2km run it'll be the only bike left in the transition area.

I've started looking at some quicker pacing and maybe doing a trial run using the bike rack outside the flats as a transition area. I don't normally put on cycling gear for a journey this short - I'd take the brompton.

As the conversation in the pub turned to the perceived lunacy of any absolutely non essential exercise, David piped up.

"You're not  doing it naked are you? Or is that something else?"

You could have heard a pin drop

Bryton Cardio 60 Review - Part two: Running

I have worn the Bryton Cardio 60 on 2 runs so far. Run 1 was a 6 km loop in the morning without the HRM chest strap and the unit set up straight out of the box. Run 2 was a 10km slow run focusing focusing on  heart rate and stride rate.

Run 1

I strapped the watch on fully charged, but with only my user profile set up on the unit. By the time I’d walked across the communal garden and out into the street the unit had acquired a satellite fix and corrected the time settings. The unit has three fields configured as standard (which I changed for run 2. It was easy to read and understand in use. I had distance/time/pace to look at on this initial run, which was informative but didn’t massively change my approach to training in any way.

Run 2

Before setting off I configured the screen to show Time running/Current heart rate/Pace/Cadence and made sure that the HRM strap was paired and working. I set off on a loop that I thought would offer me around 10km of running with some quite big inclines on busy roads, finishing on a few quite roads then a lap of the park. The aim of the run was to stay under 160bpm for the whole run but to try and keep my heart rate at around 150bpm for most of it. Throughout the run I wanted to keep my cadence/stride rate above 80.

Monitoring this was easy (I will configure alerts and workouts next) but all in all it was good to have a device confirm my perceived effort on this run. My distance calculations were also about 0.5km off so I was able to add that on as I went rather than discover it on  the iPhone app after I’ve stopped running.

I can see that there is a lot more potential for getting my training right by using this device, however I did find myself checking it quite often and not just as my perceived effort changed. A word of warning. The chest strap works beautifully but I may have worn it both too tight and too high. I have been left with 2 puncture/rub points where the skin in broken under my right armpit. I'm going to check for advice online to correct any error on my part though. 

Merrel Bare Access - A short review after 2 months

Over Christmas I tried on a pair of Merrel barefoot Road Glove shoes and whilst I liked the tread and the fit, I already had a pair or zero drop shoes with zero cushioning. After Christmas whilst perusing the sales I came across the Bare Access shoe reduced by 50%. This is the same upper, built on the same last but with 8mm of cushioning.

During the wet winter months my usual trail section of my park run had become un-navigable and so my runs became exclusively on tarmac. The longer weekend runs were less painful on my legs as they got stronger (and perhaps in no small part to the wearing of compression socks to recover), but the balls of my feet felt it. I took the plunge and purchased the Bare Access Merrells in lemon  and blue.

The first couple of runs left my left ankle sore and so I started to grow concerned that I would forever more be consigned to running in slippers. The first run had been at lunchtime whilst I was working from home and I did wonder whether the time of day had anything to do with it. I reverted to the Saucony Hattoris for a couple of runs.

I noticed in the Hattoris that I was heavier on my feet after just a couple of runs in the slightly more padded trainers. I tried the Bare Access again. They were narrower and slightly stiffer under the arch than  the Hattoris and I had reverted to a flat footed strike that bordered on heel-strike at times.

With careful attention to my running gait and lowering the angle of my forefoot strike I was able to compensate for the additional stiffness and be as light on my feet as in the Hattoris. I vary what I wear now and use the Bare Access for the more roady runs. In fact as they grip better in the wet and on downhill runs I am wearing them more and more. I just need to not  lose sight of how I was able to run again. Light. Easy. Fast will come.

Dunwich Dynamo 2014

Yesterday at a slow late lunch, I was perusing my emails, when  I can across an unassuming email. from a chap called Bill Owen.

"Hi!

Please forgive this intrusion, however, you at one stage last year booked tickets for our Coach Service after the Dunwich Dynamo last year.

So we thought we would let you know that tickets are now available for 2014."

A quick email around my cycling buddies and I am booked to do it again. At the moment only David is coming too but I'm sure that'll change.

It's a fortnight before the triathlon, so it'll also act as my last big ride before I start to lessen off on the training and get ready to flog myself in and out of the water for a few hours. I know this may seem daft, but an endurance event like the dynamo makes an event like a triathlon seem much more manageable... Albeit a little quicker.

Should be an interesting test for the brytonas the battery life is supposed to be 16 hours on it's powersaving mode

Bryton Cardio 60 Review - Part one: Unboxing

Finally after a couple of false starts trying to purchase a Garmin 310xt that left me £150 down for a fortnight (Gee thanks Amazon) and one returned order I have settled on the Bryton Cardio 60 GPS Multisport watch. There were several reasons for the choice. In an ideal world I fancied the Suunto Ambit 2 or the Garmin Ambit2. I also wanted a bike GPS, wetsuit, new wheels... etc... you get the picture.

Deciding factors were:

1. Rutland cycles had the unit with the HRM on sale for £119 (about half the RRP)
2. DC Rainmaker had an OK and fairly in depth review
3. It looks ok
4. Vibrating alerts for laps/targets/time etc
5. Multisport

So I picked it up from the post office on Green Lanes which was an experience in itself as I was the only person in their not conducting a week's worth of business at 9 in the morning. Hard though it was I made myself wait until I got home to take it out and have a play.

The box itself isn't as classy as the TomTom and a little less pro looking than the Garmin boxes.

In the box is the unit, a USB charger, HRM and strap, 2 instruction booklets (One with 12 pages of English instructions) and three copies of the warranty.

The Bryton Cardio 60 (With printed screen protector still on)

HRM and strap

USB Charging clip

Wrist shot (I have relatively large wrists)

The unit is surprisingly light and a little flimsy feeling. I am not massively concerned although the waterproof rating is only 30m. It is comfy on the wrist, does not feel particularly big, and the strap locks quite nicely to the strap loop.

I had already signed up for a Brytonsport.com account so I just needed to download the agent and update the software on the watch.

The site is pretty basic, but it appears to be ideal for an amateur like me. I'm going to customise the screens after using it a few times and see how it goes.

***Update***

I tested it this morning on a gentle run and uploaded the info to the bryton site. The info is easier to read and analyse than it had been using the Runmeter app. It also appears to be more accurate (I'll need to test consistency) compared to googlemaps. When I mapped out a route on googlemaps then ran it on runmeter I'd frequently come up a lot shorter than the plan would suggest. I came in at 5.95km on a suggested 6km route but I started recording after I'd crossed the road, so I probably lost 20m. Not too shabby so far.

A main motivator for getting something like this for a race as complex (technically) as a triathlon is that I need to be training to complete each section as fresh as possible, which requires me to monitor my heart rate and pace. Difficult without kit.I entered my current times into a calculator online (at running free) and it reckoned I'd be all done in 03:09:55. Well we'll see.

Distance	Swim	T1	Bike	T2	Run	Total Time
SuperSprint 400/10/2.5	7:30	3:00	20:17	5:00	15:06	50:53
Sprint 750/20/5	14:20	3:00	42:00	5:00	31:30	1:35:50
Olympic 1500/40/10	29:17	3:00	1:26:57	5:00	1:05:40	3:09:55
O2 2000/80/20	59:48	3:00	3:00:03	5:00	2:16:55	6:24:47
Half IM 1900/90/HM	37:21	3:00	3:23:45	5:00	2:24:55	6:34:02
O3 4000/120/30	1:20:25	3:00	4:35:37	5:00	3:30:27	9:34:29
IM - Expert 3800/180/FM	1:16:17	3:00	7:01:53	5:00	5:02:07	13:28:18
IM - Beginner 3800/180/FM	1:16:17	3:00	7:22:59	5:00	6:02:32	14:49:49

Come on kids, you've got to learn to share

There is much talk in the cycling press of how segregated cycle paths are the way forward and up to a point I largely agree with the idea. I would however like to point out, as an example, a couple of things we might need to get right in the first place before we are to be trusted to “segregate” traffic.

No private vehicle is more important than another. If bicycles get their own lane, does that mean the road becomes cars only? Buses have a lane to prioritise them over car users. Bicycles get a lane to protect them from cars. Emergency vehicles have sirens to inform cars of their presence. Cars are the common centre of all these policies, but that is just habit and current policy. Cars rule at the moment.

Is it too much to ask that we all learn to share?

This isn’t car bashing.

Part of my morning commute involves shared bike/car roads both with and without bike/bus lanes. Other parts involve shared pedestrian/cycle paths. In both instances there is a problem sharing.

1. ·         Cars park in the bus and cycle lanes,
2. ·         Priority cycle boxes are ignored,
3. ·         Cyclists overtake on the inside
4. ·         Pedestrians and cyclists walk, or ride, on the wrong bit of the dual use tarmac.

Before we start to segregate to protect, shouldn’t we learn to share?

A few years ago I shared a flat with a Swedish man called Johan. We had watched a programme together about Dutch recycling and I had indicated my approval of the idea of multi compartmented bins for organising recycling. Johan laughed.

“The English need to learn to use one bin before they can use lots of bins” He said indicating the litter outside our front door.

He was right. If we couldn’t use a simple bin for all rubbish, how could we be expected to learn which can/bottle/wrapper went in which bin? How can we build a second infrastructure when we can’t use the one we’ve got.

When car usage took, off the government built more roads (I know they were for cyclists originally), then motorways, then widened the roads and motorways. Yet the motorway is full of drivers in the middlelane.

Maybe we need to learn to use what we've got and only adapt it where necessary.

New year, new me?

Unfortunately not. Same old me...

So this will be the year I run a triathlon and as a result finally get into the shape I should have been in years ago. Don't misunderstand me. Whilst I have wanted to sort out my body shape for years, it is an irony that a non-vanity based motivation finally seems to be working. My body is to be an engine capable of powering itself in many different modes for sustained periods. To do this it must be more streamlined and better fuelled, stronger and able to push hard for longer. This is what has finally tricked it into shedding the kgs added over the years through cheese, bread, beer and sugar.

Dramatic though that all sounds it is the little things that have really started to make a difference.

• Less eating and drinking out in the week. 
• Taking my own lunches to work (Today I have wholegrain barley and vegetable stew - fortified with pea protein). 
• Riding the Brompton most days to get just a bit of exercise in even when I'm doing nothing else

Eventually it is treating it better and not denying myself that is turning out to be the key.

I've also bought a little more new kit

• Merrell Bare Access 2 running shoes
• Asics Windstopper tights and winter shirt
• Garmin Forerunner 310XT and bike mounting kit
• Masters and beyond - book about training in middle age

All of which I'll cover the why and wherefores shortly but all in all I'm quite excited about the future. 

National cycle centre and the manchester velodrome.

I completely forgot to post the pictures of me on the manchester velodrome... To sum up what I would have written in a blog post about it...

Scary. Fun. Yes I'd do it again.

Cambridge to London

“I’m still not sure which wheels to put on tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry, but your bike has no wheels?”

“Not yet, but should I go with touring or racing wheels?”

“Which ever you like but you’ll be at the station at 08:58? It’s nearly midnight.”

And so started a conversation that I had cause to recall as a sound like a single pistol shot went off in the train carriage at 09:10 the following morning.

“I think that’s your tyre David? Should the other one be bulging out off of the rim like that?”

“Probably not. I’ll let it down.”

The morning had started with a leisurely ride to Finsbury park station to meet Vera. We carried our bikes to the platform before I popped back for coffees. I didn’t hold out much hope that 2 coffees coming to £2.80 would be up to much… and I was right.

2 minutes before the train was due to leave David’s head popped in to view. With three of us and our bikes blocking the back of the train and Tanya at the other end we progressed to Cambridge.

At Cambridge station we found a quiet corner and whilst David and I dismantled his bike, Tanya went for coffee. I realised at this point that my budget bib tights were in fact a giant leotard, and that I was going to have to get naked to use the toilet.

Highlights of the day included:

A lovely ride through the countryside
Drizzle (Not rain)
Lunch in a cricket pavillion
French onion  soup in a garden centre
Heated toilet in said garden centre
Lee valley river path in the dark
Fallen trees on said river path
IKEA at Enfield
A mixed use path from Enfield to Tottenham
A bath
Sausage and mash