My stint at today’s Farmers’ Market has left me freezing cold, and with achey knees but…
…raised a total of £289.38 in both donations and pledges.
That’s totally awesome, and brings me to within sight of my target.
Thank you everyone! 🙂
Monthly Archives: June 2009
Keep rollin’ rollin’ rollin’
Another day, another ride, this time with G. Which meant running errands, zipping around the levels, and chatting. I’ve just used bikely to figure what our route was, and I used my phone as a stopwatch whilst out to guesstimate the trip time, so here goes:
Cycling time: 2:27:02
Distance: 37.7 miles
Avs: around 15.4mph?
ODO: 454.7 miles
It was actually further and faster than it felt, which is cool. G had to zoom off up the A38 for the last bit – deadline at childcare – leaving me to come back in a slightly more leisurely fashion. The weather was much nicer than predicted and not as hot as it has been, so rather nice really. The bike went well, and I did some more down on the drops, which I’m quite liking. More miles under the belt…
The Cycling Mayor will be taking a stand (or rather a stall) at the Axbridge Farmers’ Market on Saturday morning, complete with bike, kit, posters, the works…and hoping to get lots of new sponsors and raise lots of lovely charity money. Pop by and say hello if you’re passing! 🙂
Out of time
I went out for a normal training ride yesterday, to test out all the tweaks made by A to the bike. It being sunny, I did a seaside loop. Mind you, when the tide is out that far ’round here, it’s not so much sandy beaches, as mud glorious mud!
Not much to report really – especially being devoid of computer again – but with a combination of the route map on bikely and the stop watch on my mobile phone, the best I can come up with is as follows:
Cycling time: 2:10ish
Distance: 34.4 miles
Avs: relatively fast mph!
ODO: 417 miles
The bike was much smoother again – gears changing properly, tyres without bulges, and the “old” saddle is definitely more comfortable. It was a pretty pleasant ride, which I managed to get in before the weather had heated up to too much. There being very little wind, I was generating quite a lot of headwind which is irritating but inevitable. Having read some things about when to use them in Cycling Plus this month, I practised spending some time down on the drops which was oddly relaxing. You can’t see as much of your surroundings and end up focusing more on your rhythm and speed, which is quite meditative in a funny way. Plus I seemed to go a bit faster that way – always a bonus!
The one nice thing about the lack of computer is that you don’t know that you’re 30 minutes into a 2 hour ride, or that you have 25 miles to go, or whatever…you just have to be where you are, when you are, on your way to where you’re going. How zen is that? *grin*
High maintenance
I took my bike over to A today to get it tweaked as I’ve now done nearly 400 miles on it. As I mentioned yesterday, it had developed a bulge in the rear tyre. Well, it looks like there was a defect in the tyre – so he put two new tyres on to tide me over. I rang the company I got the bike from and they’re going to send me out a replacement, no quibbles, which is nice. Though it won’t have the white stripe the front one has. Mind you, because the stripey ones came with the bike, I don’t think they can get those anyway, and I don’t see ’em sending me two new tyres just because I’d like them to match *grin*.
A also put the saddle from my “old” bike on instead as the new one had a few comfort issues…which you can live with for one ride, but on consecutive days, I think not…. He also adjusted the gears, disassembled and re-greased the bottom bracket, checked my position…and it’s basically just like new again now. Oh, and he’s going to get me a replacement for the duff computer too. ‘Rah! It’s not what you know, it’s who you know 🙂
I feel a little like I have my very own little support team – mechanic, domestique (sorry, team leader 😉 ), fan club (that’ll be hubby and the mob)… It kinda makes me feel just that little bit more capable 🙂