time to restart the cycling TSS climb

My silver bicycle has a somewhat chequered history, being made of parts from other bikes cunningly re-assembled.

The underlying frame is a modest aluminium Carrera and it has bits of SRAM road climber gearing on the back and mountain bike doubletap shifters on the front. The wheels are unidentifiable because the original labelling has been removed leaving them -er - black. The saddle is a leather Brookes B17 narrow. Altogether a bicycle built for comfort over speed.

It's been out and about in the winter months because it can easily take fatter tyres and mudguards and even the occasional rack.

Most useful of all, it easily hops on to the turbo, where the little number windows on the gear shifts are a handy way to keep track of the gearing. It is easily my best bike for the turbo, even if it rides differently from a normal road bike.

This Gryphon remix has been my friend as I restart some pedalling for 2015. The Garmin keeps track of my progress and my accumulated TSS (Training Stress Score) graph shows I'm at a very low level at the moment. It is nearly the lowest since I started recording back in 2011. A few of us have entered for the L2B again later in the year, which gives me a friendly target to aim towards.

serial box channel hop mystery

Icy roads this morning and a few snowflakes falling from the sky. For me, it's bike turbo weather and I've fired up the PC to watch some boxsets whilst pedalling.

In the olden days I'd use DVDs, but for years I've been Netflixed-up which is altogether more convenient.

Except for one thing.

VBS - Vanishing Boxset Syndrome.

It's happened to me a few of times now. The first was "Ashes-to-Ashes", the retro cop series involving time travelling/comas from the 21st Century back to the 1980s. There I was at the end of Season 2, with Season 3 cued-up to watch when the whole Netflix box-set turned to ash.

Back in the day, I watched Weeds across three delivery channels, the first parts on Netflix, then some on iTunes and I finally had to buy the American region code last two series on DVD. Its an excuse to play the Little Boxes opening again, the version below by Elvis Costello.

The latest boxset to disappear is Justified, which I'd been watching on Netflix. I'd just got to the disarming ending of Series 3 and had Series 4 wound past the start as my next viewing, when it suddenly disappeared during the opening parachute flashback sequence. I've looked around and it's now on Amazon Prime, so I can recover from this unexpected blip. I also have a sneaking suspicion that Justified is now on Sky, but whether it's all five series remains to be checked.

It makes me wonder what is going on in the smoke-filled back rooms of the various channel executives? I suppose if I read the small print somewhere it will tell me when these various series will expire, but they don't make much of this when they first advertise the availability of new materials.

Maybe they want me to watch them even faster. I'll need more icy weather and longer pedalling sessions for that to work.

pickin' me a bouquet of dogwood flowers

I took yesterday's bike picture with the camera set to 'automatic' and the flash-gun popped up. I couldn't help notice how it made the bike look quite shiny.

No such luck with these pictures of the bike's pedals. Most people seem to use either the original flat pedals that come with bikes, or get those road clipless pedals. For some reason I've always used the mountain bike type clips even with road bikes.

I'm sure there must be some down-side to using them on a road-bike, but I'm not sure that it makes all that much difference.

It also means that I can have the same pedal types everywhere and also that they have little flat pedal surfaces for cycling in other shoes.

The ones I use are called Candy and I notice I still have what would now be a collector's edition of an old type on one bike. The black ones are the long surviving originals, with special plastic inserts for different colour combinations - see my imaginative choice of grey.

The blue and the gold pedals supposedly signify different qualities, although I'd say the blue ones are by far the highest mileage.

And speaking of mileage, I see that I have now passed my 3,000 mile cycling target this year, which I think I decided would constitute a Silver Wagon Wheel award. My original target set back in January was 1,600 miles, so I think I'm doing quite well.

And I'll now see if I can achieve 4,000 miles by the end of the year to achieve a Gold Wagon Wheel. Construction and consumption of the wagon wheel (Silver at this stage) will follow in another post.

* title is a line from a banjo song... called Wagon Wheel.

steel frame and disk brakes being prepped for the upcoming season

This is going to sound sort of daft, what with it being sunny outside at the moment, but I thought I'd better check a different bike in preparation for the upcoming seasonal changes.

After my recent musing about the fixie, I've decided I'll go back to a retro steel frame and some wider tyres for the winter. I took it out for a preview spin to check that the various components were working. I know it's early, but I'd rather be adjusting things in the warm than later on when everything gets a bit more painful.

Truth be told, everything was in good nick, except that I discovered after the trip that the brakes were very slightly 'on' the whole time.

I'd initially put this down to just being on a heavier bike but after I'd finished I thought I'd just spin the wheels to see how they compared with my road bike.

Hmm. Quite a difference. The road bike's wheels will spin for quite a long time (many revolutions), whereas the steel bike was only 2-3 revolutions at most.

I initially wondered about oil and bearings and things like that, but then loosened the brakes just in case they were the culprits. Sure enough, there was a marked improvement. This winter steel bike has disk brakes, so I did that thing with the thin piece of card to get the clearances right and then retightened everything.

I think the next trip will be easier.

Next is to remember where I've put all the little lights and clip on mudguards.

cycling moments

Coincidentally, after my post yesterday, I read FAQ's concurrent blog entry about cycling.

It reminded me of a few of my own non-expert observations during cycling.

City Version

• Recognise that fixies are generally ridden by quick people. Some commuter lanes (like the Embankment around rush-hour) can be very competitive.
• Other cyclists will, in general, be faster than me.
• My own fixie is more or less a vanity project. I have even flipped the rear wheel so that it can freewheel. And yes, it has proper brakes.
• The weight of the security and safety devices needed for London are around 1/3 of the bike's weight.
• Stay away from the left hand side of big vehicles and expect car doors to spring open at a moment's notice.
• Don't tell anyone where your secure secret bike parking spot is located.
• For entertainment, it is worth stopping with the Brompton foldable bike around Westminster or Buckingham Palace and collapsing and reassembling it. There will be tourists genuinely interested in the process. The reassemble with a 'rear-wheel-flip' is particularly crowd pleasing.
• The Brompton's hub gear is surprisingly useful.

Country Version

• Overtaking in hilly countryside needs to be ego-less. The elderly couple or the tourers with laden panniers will inevitably re-appear. It is best to hop off and adjust something.
• The countryside route long hills often have alternative quieter routes which are just as difficult but with less people around to watch the struggle.
• There is a ping-whizz sound from fast cyclists as they overtake.
• It's courteous to make noises when otherwise stealthily overtaking joggers and pedestrians in quiet lanes
• It's good to say hello to people moving at similar speeds in the other direction

Everywhere

• There is a point where getting wet ceases to matter. It is better to just smile in such circumstances and watch motorists give a wide berth.
• Everyone has already heard all the smug quotes about the right clothing.
• Surprisingly small adjustments to the saddle and even the handlebar height can make quite a difference to the amount of aches and pain.
• A small camera is better than a mobile phone when needing an excuse to stop for a rest because it can look more obviously purposeful.
• Take the small bag with the spare bits, mini pump, emergency £10 note and all-in-one tool.
• Even a heavily squashed Nutri-grain bar at the bottom of a rucksack can be extremely welcome after a certain amount of pedalling.

I'm sure there's more and I may come back to add some at a later date.

cycling update

I've been keeping the cycling going, when possible, and just uploaded some more stats from the little Garmin gadget on the handlebars. Amazingly, despite the European vacation gap, I managed to keep up with my minimum of 160 miles per month in August (262 miles).

I've already passed my original target for 2012 (miles and calories) but back in January when I set it I said that I'd low-ball the target so that I could feel good about being ahead rather than always trying to catch up.

The interesting thing now is that I'm within sight of the 3,000 mile mark for 2012, which is a kind flattened version of London to Athens, zig-zagging via Paris, Frankfurt, Munich, Rome, Venice and Zagreb. I shall nonetheless consider it as my own Olympian journey when I click over the 3,000 mile mark some time in the next month or so.

No gold medals, but maybe a chocolate wagon wheel* when I get there.

* The XXL sized Olympic medals this year remind me of chocolate wagon wheels, although I suspect the currently sold wagon wheels are smaller nowadays. I will test them in due course.

Below: The truth about wagon wheels

squeezing TSS and IF metrics from the Garmin

Thursday evening I was out for an agreeable supper in a fancy restaurant. It's another one of the times when I've not got around to posting anything to the blog, but it does open a slot for me to back-post in a handy reference table.

The handy reference table is for the general opposite of what I was doing Thursday evening. Eating duck egg amuse bouche followed by courses that could have ended with a serious amount of chocolate (except I managed to side-step the pudding).

So my handy reference table comes courtesy of an article by two wheel blogs about cycling.

Some might know I've set up my bike with a gadget that stores various metrics that can be uploaded to spreadsheets and the internet. There's all the usual stuff about speed, pedalling rate and calories, but I thought it would be interesting to try out the extra measures (I'd call them proxy metrics) that show (a) how demanding a particular ride is and (b) what state it's left me in. I've been using trainingpeaks.com for this.

There's a measure called Intensity Factor (IF) as a way to show the difficulty of a particular session and the Training Stress Score (TSS) relates to the personal impact it will have and how long to recover.

There's loads of cleverness around all of this, but I'm more interested in figuring out whether one ride I do is measurably more demanding than another. One way I tell is by how clammy I feel by the end, but I thought it would be fun to play around with the numbers too.

Hence the simple ready reckoner, which gives me a sense of what is happening.

I thought I'd also post my current plots from when I started the current measures in January.

It shows that I could ride a fairly short distance and it would seem like a fairly 'intense' ride. Through January the perceived intensity of individual rides started to lessen (see the blue dots dropping), presumably as I got more used to what I was doing. The actual loading of the rides varied somewhat (the red dots for each ride), but were mainly within a middle band.

The most interesting line is the blue one which is gently rising. That's supposed to be my general bicycling fitness, which does seem to be going up. Empirically that also seem to be the case because as an example I did around 18 miles this morning with relative ease. I'd have been spluttering a bit more a few weeks ago when I did this.

The pink dip in the middle of the range is a week when I was away somewhere and didn't do any cycling at all. It shows my residual degree of fatigue dropping until I restarted (it soon gets back to the same level though).

I'm doing this for fun, and don't necessarily have the charting model very well calibrated at the moment, but it sort of feels as if its saying the right kind of things.

I've also separately noticed that except for weekends I seldom cycle for more than an hour in one go. I'm thinking I should tip over the hour in the week now the weather and hours of daylight are improving.

If I can get it working properly I'll probably post an update, because rather than just counting miles and calories, this has some interesting potential.

For fans of detail, the amuse bouche evening is the second red/blue dot pair from the right hand end of the x-axis. Oops, do I see a small dip afterwards?

cayo

Sunday evening and I'm watching television.

Last weekend was pretty hectic and as it concluded a few of us sat together in a pub wondering how we'd packed so much in.

By contrast, this weekend has blurred for different reasons; a combination of Saturday's late start after a mid evening Friday return from the airport. I didn't even unpack until Saturday afternoon.

Add some household tasks and a Sunday bike ride followed by hours of business work and the weekend soon evaporated.

Right now I can hear the distant squeak of a blueberry cheesecake coming from the refrigerator.

It needs liberation.

Cycling the Royal Wedding Route

We'll be away whilst the Royal Wedding is taking place.

We're joining some friends on a boat which will mean we are in a minority by not being glued to the television on Friday.

To get a sense of the occasion, I took the bicycle around the Royal Wedding route today, which is already in advanced stages of preparation. In some areas around the Palace there's already flags flying, but further out its still flagpoles and some rather impressive looking bright yellow rope.

The Mall is closed to traffic (my bicycle was still alright), the area outside Buckingham Palace has been rigged with a huge number of commentary boxes and many of the television cameras are already in place.

There were random film crews with big camera and cat on a stick microphones wandering around looking for people to interview. All of them dangling many badges and identity.

Slightly funnier was the big press boxes at Westminster Abbey.

They face the main entrance but behind them was a gas-man scene where the road was being dug up and a slight whiff of gas, like there was an urgent need to mend a gas main more or less underneath the main stand. A sort of James Bond/Jason Bourne moment.

Today's weather was idyllic.

Let's hope Friday is as Landau fine.

Sunday morning cycling

Cycling this morning and although I'd wrapped up, the wind was cutting a little too thoroughly through to my head. The aerodynamic cycling helmet's vents are sometimes too efficient. It's partly my own fault though because I did sip some wine yesterday evening and have found myself feeling slightly fragile today.

In truth I don't think its last night's modest drink but perhaps my body resetting after a week on 'the Malaysian project' which has been pretty full-on.

Actually I awoke at around 4am this morning and thought it was already Monday and therefore that I needed to be in Paris, only to realise that I could afford a few more hours sleep and a much more leisurely start.

And then mysteriously during my cycling travels I came across the building illustrated at the top of the post. Its called 'the Triangle' or something similar. What intrigues me is that I've genuinely never noticed it before yet I use a building quite close to it as an inspiration for a setting in the second book - The Square. I guess there's plenty of places called 'The Triangle' around, but weird that one is so close to an actual venue I've selected.

I'm back at home now and the next priority is packing.

A small bag only for this trip. Reminds me of an airport scene.

working it

Mid evening watching a Bleasdale television dramatisation of a German U-boot sinking the Laconia and then rescuing Allied passengers. Rather well done - with a gentler pace than some dramatisations and some very filmic looks - and a Beeb2 Thursday/Friday slot for the screening.

Less well done is that I only finished working in time to see it start at 9pm.

Tomorrow it'll be time for a bike ride as a way to rebalance (ignoring the obvious reference) before I get into some more work.

I've left the work computer abandoned alongside various papers and a big torn-off flip-chart page with meaningful red ink across it. That will get packaged during Saturday afternoon. Along with the late thing that came in at 3.30 that is needed for Tuesday in Amersfoort.

But peering outside, I can see a tall tree bending to around a 35 degree angle whilst leaves skitter in small circles around the garden. I'll find gloves for the cycling and I really do need to fit a rear mudguard to avoid that unintended racing stripe.

we are the space invaders

There was a definitive autumnal edge to the air this morning. Sharp, smokey and damp leaves aroma.

It was still early enough for me to be relatively alone, although I could see the tyre tracks from other cyclists that had been dodging the same puddles as me. Its a transitional time too, as I need to think about extra clothes and bicycle ironmongery related to the elements and the amount of light.

The cycle means its easier to look over hedgerows and so today's damp fields combined with sunshine created the kind of steam effects more associated with April than October.

Inevitably I paused and snapped a quick scene, which, upon reflection is that of a space bubble landing in the corner of a field. The people inside have disguised themselves as rabbits whilst they take earth samples before beaming back to the planet of Epsilon Eridani.

cyclemeter GPS track experiment

A little experiment today, using one of the iPhone GPS trackers whilst I took a short spin around part of tourist London.

I was really more interested in how the Cyclemeter iPhone software drew the route rather than exactly where I travelled. The phone was thrown into my backpack amongst car keys and various other electronic miscellanea, so GPS reception was far from ideal.

My start was by The Navigator in Belgrave Square and then out towards the eastern extension of King's Road before heading towards Westminster Abbey with views of Parliament, Big Ben the Eye and then around the back of Downing Street and past the Spitfire parked on the pavement.

The Mall is currently closed to traffic giving an easy run to Buckingham Palace which I did twice because it was quite fun zipping along such a deserted street, except for the roadblock quantities of tourists taking photos. Back past a busy Victoria station and then through a few twists around Eaton Square and back to where I started.

Only a few miles, mainly flat with thousands of tourist spots. A good example of how one of the London hire bikes could do simple sight-seeing in a matter of minutes.

Okay, so the map isn't perfect, but its not bad, and sufficiently good for anyone to be able to work out the route.

And, alright, I'll admit I was using my own bike today, but I did have to pump one of the tyres before I could start.

pack light

I recently impulse purchased a small waterproof jacket to keep in my bike-bag. It was after 'The Soaking' a few days ago, but also something of a serendipitous sale purchase.

I was in Wandsworth and walked past a bike shop with a big 'Sale' sign in the window and a display of ultra expensive bikes and ultra reasonably priced waterproof jackets. Magnetically I was drawn inside to look at the rainwear. I wanted something that folded down to a paperback book size or less, which I could put into my small back-pack. Sure enough they had something.

Just six days later it has made a debut, when I was out this afternoon as the sky turned dark grey and then black and another variation of white rods appeared from the sky. Two minutes later I was snug in the jacket and carried on, with just occasional rivulets of soothing rain water bathing my head through the air vents in my cycle helmet.

I know it's good value because I was able to spin past others sheltering under trees and in hedgerows. Come to think of it, that was my situation about a week ago.

how now brown saddle

I have a slight sense of disquiet as I notice that google adverts are targeting me with 15-25% discounts on bicycle chainrings as I browse haphazardly around sites. Not just one cog, but a whole series of “offers”.

I should probably clean out my browser cache or reset the cookies to get back to more mainstream offers. I can only think the sensitivity is based upon my recent postings about cycling, but it’s uncannily close to the mark.

Either that or its just the subjective thing, like the way that an iPod Shuffle will sometimes play ten or twenty songs that are just right for the mood. But come to think of it, I remember a recent car journey where we seemed to be surviving on bangin’ club tunes however many times we hit the ‘next’ button.

Today I’ve been throwing stuff away again. It's a chain reaction. I was handed some discarded stuff to check before disposal and it created a yearning for some further rationalisation around the place. I can best measure it in wheely bins and let’s just say we’re full plus an eclectic selection of items for a charity shop or two.

There’s too much to take away on the bike, though, so maybe mentioning ‘car’ a few times will change the advertising.

Update: as a footnote, after this and the above post, I'm getting adverts for Laboratory Waste Disposal.

candy fix

I'll need to break away from my obsessive series of posts about the fixed wheel bicycle restoration project, but not until I've had a chance to Juice Lube the orange pedals and apply them symmetrically.

I realise it's a whimsical cartoon look, what with the green rims, white chain and an inexpensive but essential retro purple bit in the back wheel. I'm hunting around for a brown saddle, which is somewhere in the recesses of the garage and will add further weirdness.

I know that this candy coloured thing won't blend inconspicuously into the scenery like my faux-scungy chameleonesque MTB parked secretly in a useful place, but it's a different sort of project.

London Cycle : Maps and Routes

I wondered whether there would be any iPhone applications to support the new London Cycle Hire scheme and it turns out there's already about half a dozen. I plumped for the first one I spotted, but actually it didn't work very well, so I then decided to read a couple of the reviews.

The one called London Cycle: Maps and Routes seems to work well and has quite a few features such as a live map of the docking stations and numbers of bikes available, a route planner and even estimated times for journeys. There's also a countdown timer to show how much time left in the 'free' period.


The application also looks useful for general surface route planning, whether using a hire cycle or not. I'm guessing that these applications will eventually overlap with the ones that provide information about pubs, coffee shops and train stations. Otherwise I'll need a whole page for all of the iPhone travel in London applications.

But I'm not complaining, and - guess what? - the application is free.

Riding around on the London Cycle Hire Scheme

I finally made it to try out the new London Cycle Scheme. Its already been running a week, but I just haven't had the opportunity.

Then, Sunday evening, a moment presented itself. I was at the Knightsbridge Pont Street rack and there were about five or six cycles available.

I found the little card and slotted it in, watching a little set of lights change from red to green. Yippee! I could get a bike. Except it wouldn't come out of the rack. I tried a couple more times but then noticed someone else struggling with the same problem.

I moved to another rack and tried again. Green light and this time the bike came free. Neither of us were sure what the problem had been, but I was ready to try the bike.

First impression, well built, but quite heavy. I realised I needed to adjust the seat and work out whether the big black elastic band was important (only for carrying things). I set off along the road and instantly noticed two things. One - the gearing was rather low and two, I was surprisingly wobbly.

I stopped and changed to gear 3, which was as high as it would go. This immediately felt better and I was able to start off in a more refined manner. I headed down the first side street to get used to the bike and by the time I'd traversed the square I was more comfortable.

The bike runs quietly and is surprisingly upright compared to my own bikes. The three speed hub gears are probably useful although I stayed in 3 for almost the whole time.

After a few minutes I realised how much I was grinning on this new addition to London's transport and simultaneously realising I didn't know where the other nearby docking stations were located.

I know the area I was cycling around quite well, but I was also interested in the sensation of having to remember the one way systems in this hybrid world between pedestrian and road user.

I was also struck by how many people were looking at me on the bike. Not my wobbling, which had stopped after the first couple of minutes, but I think they were showing the same novelty interest that I've also had as the scheme was introduced.

I re-docked the bike within the 30 minute 'free' period and although that was a few hours ago, I'm still grinning.

wired for pedals

The new little key thingy for the London Cycle Hire scheme arrived today. Its another radio frequency device that needs to be touched to the new bike stands to release the bikes.

We've all seen the stands being added around London, but its a few days before the bikes turn up. It should be an interesting experience to see how well this works and whether it adds to the bike-friendliness of London.

I've already checked the map for the nearest stands, but the map adds mysteriously that they may not all be shown. I've added the dongle to my keyring, and worked out that including car keys, I have six microprocessor based systems on my key ring now, plus an oyster card and my separate office access card.

Well wired or well weird?

in which my woolly thinking makes me listless

It's supposed to be a long weekend, but I had a rather late Saturday start. I suspect the efforts of the week had somehow piled up and forced me to take it easy.

That's good in some ways, but also means my 'down time' isn't being spent doing 'my' stuff.

In addition, there's an increasing pile of domestic paperwork to ripple through and sort out. Sometimes it's like there is a conspiracy around Bank Holiday weekends which become extended rainy domestic administration times instead of fun style decompression.

Well, I suppose I this afternoon managed to cycle over a few hills to look lambs frolicking in the fields in keeping with today's new report that says even five minutes of exercise in green spaces is beneficial. Part way along a mad rain soaked my underprepared clothing and I had to shelter under a tree until a big brown dog told me to move on.

It was the second tree that had a good view of the sheep, followed by the reappearance of the sun.

This could all have been a tick in the right box if I'd planned it; what's the old saying, "No lists make me listless"...?