Went out on the LBS social saturday morning, really cold start so I slightly overdressed. As the morning wore on the cold wind picked up so I was quite glad I had! There was one group with quite a few of the fast/powerful guys out so it hurt! I picked up a stitch at one point and even taking it easy couldn't shake it, took a good 5-6 miles. Not really sure what caused it, might have been a slight lack of hydration? Was concentrating so much on judging my efforts, holding wheels and recovering wherever possible to stick with the group! So I did quite a bit of chasing back on and closing gaps. There were a couple of slower guys so we did stop a couple of times, only one of those was I was off the back (ie one of the riders being waited for) so really happy with my efforts!
Suffer score (178) and heartrate (81% of the ride threshold) tell the story. I was at threshold for nearly 2 hours solid! Some of that is down to the easy week I'd had recovering from last weekend. Suffice to say it was a bit of a trial by fire as a return ride!
As we turned back north the pace picked up,
I began to lose touch on a climb and even descending @38mph I wasn't closing the gap. 3 guys behind me so reigned it in a little and recovered on Simons wheel before the hills at Fownhope. I knew the faster guys would be
smashing it back to town from there and wouldn't be stopping! I
lead Simon over the climb and waved him through on the descent into the village, I was done at that point and couldn't even hold his wheel on the flat @19mph!
Took it easy then as with the headwinds I knew the next stretch of road was fairly open, 2 guys behind me both struggling so I let them catch while recovering through Mordiford before doing a
tempo effort on the front back towards town (dropping them, oops!
). Really happy with that part and effort considering the fatigue in my legs and brief active recovery before. The rough roads and lights back into town the 4 of us regathered before getting back to the shop. There was cake left over from last weekends charity ride so we filled up well on Mcvities sticky marmalade & sticky lemon. AMAZING cake, can recommend either!
Would be glad to ride with you. Just don't expect to break any speed records with me in tow
(I will do my fair share of wind blocking mind due to my natural bulk)!!
Sorry I didn't get out with you Richard, my legs were utterly toasted after saturdays antics! Glad you got out and enjoyed the majority of the charity ride route. Couple of brutal climbs in there! Well done!
Give me a holla next time you're back and I'll endeavour to get out
Have to go with the G-man on this. Overshoes are generally pretty rubbish in any kind of heavy rain (and especially so without mudguards).
I've not ridden in rain my
new Sealskinz yet, they feel like they're going to be superb with a tapered tight fit at the top, they even have rubber grippers to hold them in place! Although they don't come up as high as my other overshoes so the grippers are on my socks...
I think I am actually going to try the foil over toes trick soon. I've tried electrical tape all over the vents but it's a bit of a faff to apply and looks silly
Depends on your shoe colour, black tape on black shoes looks fine! I generally find when I've taped vents it's usually cool enough that I'm also riding with oversocks/toe covers/overshoes anyway...!
Annoyingly the hoses are in the form of those ones that you don't have to bleed so I have extra junction connectors messing up my bike.
Have them on my Diverge, they look to just unscrew. Are they 'safe' to just unscrew, reroute a cable and rescrew?
All the cyclists who passed asked if I was ok and one stopped to make sure I had what I needed, which was reassuring.
Should've asked them for a quicklink!
Well done for getting back safely & repairing at the roadside. SRAM PC1130 chains come with a QL and they're quite a cheap chain in comparison to just buying QL's alone...
