Road Cycling Essentials

Status
Not open for further replies.
[DOD]Asprilla;22218726 said:
Booked the coach back or are you hardcore?
Click to expand...
Nah, booked the coach. Lookign forward to a sleep on the beach though :D

uniQ said:
I'll be doing the DD this year too :)
Click to expand...
Coolz! I keep thinking about doing it on my old Bob Jackson singlespeed. Not sure if I'm brave enough yet :D
 
I'm going to have to get in on this Strava thing. It looks quite smart. There's a few segments round my way, so maybe I can find something to keep me occupied, though I can't imagine I'll be remotely competitive given my aforementioned rubbish bike.
 
jamief said:
Hi guys. Currently have a GT Aggressor (bought in 2008ish through a cycle to work scheme). Didn't see much use until this year, so got it serviced and have been using every couple of days for the past few months. Slowly building up my distances! However I think I'll be doing road cycling for the forseeable future - can I switch the tyres for something that isn't offroad? It often feels like the tyres are causing a lot of resistance!

Also is there anything else I can (fairly cheaply) change to help with road cycling?
Click to expand...

I use an older version of these http://www.wiggle.co.uk/continental-travel-contact-city-mtb-tyre/ for when I want to use my MTB on the road, there's a massive improvement compared to off road tyres.
 
Vonhelmet said:
I'm going to have to get in on this Strava thing. It looks quite smart. There's a few segments round my way, so maybe I can find something to keep me occupied, though I can't imagine I'll be remotely competitive given my aforementioned rubbish bike.
Click to expand...

You can track you own results over a segment so you can see that you are improving.

I don't really manage to take any KOMs but I have a few climbs where I just try to improve my best effort every time I go up them.
 
Once you've done a few local segments you'll soon find other people who are at a similar level to you.

Then you can follow them and try to beat their times :D
 
touch said:
Once you've done a few local segments you'll soon find other people who are at a similar level to you.

Then you can follow them and try to beat their times :D
Click to expand...

Yes true. There is a segment near me where there is a bit of a competition between myself and 4 others trying to get the KOM.
 
Haha, it gets pretty addictive.

There are quite a lot of segments near me now and i can plan rides about 30-40miles which cover 7 or 8 segments.
Pretty soon i'm going to need a cue sheet on my stem like the pros:
f892c_IMG_15831-631x421.jpg
 
Because i cant remember the start/finish points if there are more than 4-5 segments on a ride.


edit: i was out on monday and did 33 miles, covered 10 segments (+1 that didnt get matched :()
 
Last edited:
Not a bad idea.

Bit finicky, but it's really annoying getting back from a ride with a rubbish time on a segment that you didn't know was there.

There were several on http://app.strava.com/rides/9992964 which I didn't know were there and slowed to take a drink. (also my phone ran out of charge)
 
touch said:
Because i cant remember the start/finish points if there are more than 4-5 segments on a ride.


edit: i was out on monday and did 33 miles, covered 10 segments (+1 that didnt get matched :()
Click to expand...

You should try riding round Richmond Park in London.

My ride on Saturday: http://app.strava.com/rides/11522003

20 segments shown and 147 hidden segments.

I'd need a toilet roll to write them all on.
 
[DOD]Asprilla;22227030 said:
You should try riding round Richmond Park in London.
Click to expand...

Thats a bit different tho, 90% of those segments are all exactly the same.
It annoys me when people do this :( I dont know why people create new segments over ones that are already there, it evens shows you if you are copying an existing segment. I wonder if people think that by making a new one they will be top of the leaderboard for a while :rolleyes:
 
touch said:
Thats a bit different tho, 90% of those segments are all exactly the same.
It annoys me when people do this :( I dont know why people create new segments over ones that are already there, it evens shows you if you are copying an existing segment. I wonder if people think that by making a new one they will be top of the leaderboard for a while :rolleyes:
Click to expand...


I looked at Stava for my area. I really don't think I get Strava at all, the routes were less than a mile long which just seems completely pointless. I can understand someone posting a decent sized route and everyone racing against that, but that's not what seems to be happening.

Can anyone explain?
 
Anyone can create routes/segments, so yes, some are very short. For example Park Street in Bristol is a segment which is 0.2m long, but that kind of makes sense because they do a Red Bull hill race up there etc.

The great thing is you can create your own segment so if you want to do a route that includes a few hills or one longer one then you can. The best bit is anyone who's ever done that route (even in the past) will automatically be put on that segments leaderboard.
 
the idea of it was to compare times up climbs. I think it started in USA somewhere, probably somewhere with long climbs.

The problem is that over here, climbs are short. It's hard to find a climb even 1 mile long in this country, so the segments are usually very short.
That works to my advantage tho, because i can sprint up a short hill much better than i can grind up a long hill :cool:
 
Riding in Richmond Park is ok. It's convenient, it's safe and the number of cyclists there(along with Strava) make it mildly competitive. However, it's not massively challenging and doing the same laps over and over gets old quick.

I do two or three laps in a chain gang on Wednesday mornings with work and if I've only got a pass for a couple of hours on the weekend or if I can't be out 7-11 then I know I can just nip up there.

As for creating multiple segments, there can be plenty of reasons. I've created an almost dupe on Kew Bridge Road as the original one started very close to the junction I start from; that's ok for those approaching at speed along Brentford High Street but I've got to get up to speed. In order to compare my segment is 100m shorter at the beginning.

I also like over lapping segments as it can help compare different approaches to a segment; is it quicker to attack this hill at the bottom or to take it easy and save energy at the top?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom