Punk Rock Bike Club

I could wax lyrical and write lots of useless prose but instead I just give you this.

and

Fight Bad Driving.

Art imitating life?

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This is probably old news but I like this…warning there’s nothing to look at.

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Locks

Finally after a month off and moving house I got out on my bike for a short ride. All of last year I think I felt like I was ‘training’ for something be that the next sportive I’d entered or just to be able to keep up with Tom and Carl . But now having dropped out of the Ride Across Britain and with no ‘events’ planned it actually is nice just to go for a ‘ride’ with no plan or feeling I need to be doing something in particular to improve how I ride.

More locks

So I set out from home up the Worcester/Birmingham canal following national cycle route 45, what I didn’t realise was that the first couple of miles of my ride were currently being resurfaced and so I probably shouldn’t have been riding them. On the Tricross though I dealt with the bumps and the stony bits and it appeared that people had simply moved aside the barriers/fences that stopped access and progress on the towpath. Being a towpath it’s pretty flat with a slight incline at each lock to power up, these were a bit more interesting where they were paved and had pieces of wood across them as foot holds. A good test of how straight you can ride through the gaps or your bike handling skills if you bump over the inch high blocks, maybe I shouldn’t have pumped my tires up so much before I left!

Barges

Soon I got to the end of the towpath that was being resurfaced by the Worcester Warriors Rubgy stadium, and the ride was slightly smoother from here on in. I met a fair few walkers as I was cycling who I cheerfully said hello to but only one other cyclist. Shortly after the stadium I parted ways with the cycle route as it takes a more direct path to Droitwich via the back roads. Then I realised why although the towpath was still a permissible cycle route it wasn’t part of the national network, mud!

Slip sliding away!

I pressed onwards even though my tires were not suited to these conditions and was rewarded with some nice views but when I reached the village of Oddingley I decided that Specialized Borough CX tyres although great to commute on are pretty pants in muddy conditions and rejoined the road. It wasn’t until I was on the road that I actually realised it was pretty cold as I could see my breath, however I can’t tell you the temperature as at this point the battery ran out on my cycle computer. I guess that 3 months sat in a drawer hadn’t been kind to it. Considering I hadn’t really ridden it since the autumn however my bike was running very smoothly and the new Tektro CR720 brakes I had fitted were so much better than the v-brakes and shimano canti’s I’d had before.

Oddingley

By this point I was having lots of fun, I may have been riding on my own but I was dropping imaginary pelotons, chasing down imaginary breakaways and up out of the saddle sprinting up any slope that presented itself in as high a gear as possible. Maybe I should be training for something, although I know that even without my cycle computer to tell me I’m still very slow on a bike but without anyone around to reinforce that fact I can get tremendous enjoyment out of pretending I’m fast! I soon came back onto my old friend cycle route 45 but going in the opposite direction and was back at the Warriors ground.

Warriors!

From here rather than retrace my tracks down the canal I decided to follow the back roads into Worcester, the cold air was starting to hurt my chest a bit although my legs felt fine. The opposite of my normal feeling whilst riding ‘jelly legs’ but fit/energetic up top. After a short detour into Claines, where I came across national cycle route 46 which I followed into town for a bit I arrived back home. 14.25 miles in an hour and a half, a nice slow reunion with my bike but it’s given me a nice warm glow now I’m back inside.

Post ride nutrition?

I am really happy that cycling for me has now kicked off in 2010, with no commute to ride at the moment I was really starting to miss being on the bike. This year should be a good one though as I’ve got the ‘gate‘ below to build up when I can scrape together the cash for parts and that should mean a varied year of on and off road riding with probably very few ‘events’, no targets and hopefully lots of fun!

Singular Swift Frame

Testing it out for size with my Tricross wheels.

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For the Yorkshire readers (not me anymore)…SingleTraction are looking for people to get involved in digging at Stainburn.

Off the Singletrack World forum.

‘

“Hi peeps, its 2010 and the weathers been pretty crap. How about coming up to Stainburn and helping us finish the Descent Line Extension.

Last January we started with a bang and got a line brashed and partialy rocked, we had something like 25 diggers, as the year went on numbers dwindled and the project stalled..

Staiburn has lots of challenges to offer but before we can add anything new we need to finish this project, come along, give us an hour or two or stay all day, work your nuts off or stand round leaning on your shovel talking bikes, we don’t care as long as you turn up!!

There’s a link below, thanks for looking – Jason

http://singletraction.frankencrank.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3047“

Having met some of the SingleTraction folk the day we went to Stainburn last year, they are jolly nice chaps and if you can spare some time do it!

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39C Living Room BMX Jam from Rob Lando on Vimeo.

Pretty sweet and resourceful. Can anyone tell me what the song is?

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This is insane, although I kind of want the trailer element.

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Tomorrow is Jan 1st. That is the time when the festivities stop, the excessive pie intake ceases, and the booze stops flowing…well, maybe not the booze, but you get the idea. The commuter has been my only source of bike pleasure of the last eight weeks or so. Pleasure isn’t really the right word. Being wet, freezing, having snow clogged brakes and iced up cleats, is not pleasurable. especially when you have to do eight hours of work afterwards. But it’s done out of love (and a small portion of stupidity). But Jan 1st is a day where the turbo comes out, all saturated fat is banished, and a new, slim, trim rider emerges from his lardy Christmas cocoon.

Happy New Year.

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I bought a mountain bike this week (a Revolution Triad 3, for those of you interested). I love road biking, a lot – it’s one of the default places my mind goes to seek refuge at points of boredom (read: work), thinking about notching up the miles on a vast stretch of up and down country road on a sunny day. Since summer dwindled into autumn, however, then with winter setting in and the days getting short, and car drivers getting seemingly more clumsy and idiotic, my mind had begun to wander towards riding where there weren’t any cars, and where winter might make things more fun as opposed to a little bit less fun. For that, a mountain bike would be required. And so in a suspension of financial prudence, a mountain bike was acquired.

This weekend, a rare weekend of not being at work, was an opportunity to get out and give the new ride, and my body, a bloody good thrashing, so myself and my more experienced mountain rider buddy Adam set out to Edale, in the Peak District, to attempt one of several rides we had in mind.

We were staying the night before and after at the YHA hostel at Edale, a decent if somewhat institutional hostel that was near enough several rides that we could just set off from there in the morning. We got there relatively late on the Friday evening, cooked ourselves up a mountain of pasta and drank wine out of tea cups so as to not get caught flouting their don’t-drink-any-booze-apart-from-our-overpriced-rubbish policy. I was knackered after having been up since pre-dawn, so after a while we retired to our bunks.

I woke up in the morning feeling, to be honest, crap. I had a bit of a hangover, but mainly I think I was suffering from the fact that the heating in the hostel was turned up to a level that means it will probably be solely responsible for the demise of the species through resource wars in the coming century. The heating was turned up higher than in an old dears’ care home. So groggily, we had breakfast and then got ready for the day. I had a couple of new pieces of kit to put on, some leg warmers and proper winter gloves. Stepping outside, I instantly felt like kissing myself on the face for buying these, as I knew that my day would have been somewhat grim without them.

We set off along a footpath, pushing our bikes as we are conscientious ambassadors for cycling as opposed to hoodlums. We had decided to do the route that Adam’s mountain bike magazine suggested was the best one to do in the Peak District if you only did one, and its difficulty was rated as ‘medium’. After a mile or so, bridleway was in sight, as were a group of horses (and riders) coming up said bridleway. We hopped on our bikes for the last bit of footpath so as to get going up the first hill before we got stuck behind them.

This was my first proper rocky, from my point of view difficult, hill on a mountain bike and my technique was clearly lacking somewhat. I was struggling with not pulling a wheely every time I got going after stopping, and it immediately became clear it was going to use my body in a whole different way to the cycling I was used to. Some pushing was required. But it was fun. A little frustrating, but a lot of fun.

Eventually, we reached the top of this hill, and I got my first little bit of downhill. It all became clear at this point – the rewards of every downhill made every single slog up hill completely worth it. Flying down this hill, Adam putting distance between us and bunny hopping over steps in the hill, showing off his experience, I must have been grinning, and we forded a fairly wide stream at the bottom here before another uphill awaited. I had to push up a lot of this one, as with the previous one, and a welcome break halfway up was taken as a tractor came past slowly down the track. Once we reached the top of this hill, we were on the route proper. And it began with an enormous stretch of downhill, through puddles and mud, which was bloody brilliant. I could already feel my confidence rising, and I was beginning to develop some vague form of technique.

After a while, we got down to Ladybower reservoir, around which the route was taking us, and crossed the dam at the bottom of it. Shortly after this, we stopped for a cup of tea and a chip butty to get out energy reserves built up before slogging out way up Derwent moor. This was the toughest part of the ride, as it was incredibly boggy and, at my level of skill, nearly impossible to ride. Eventually, we reached the top of the hill and the view was stunning. It was really high up, and despite having been more on foot than I’d have liked, there was a clear sense of achievement. (However, we were only halfway round at this point, so time was not for wasting. Incidentally, at this point, my phone which had been GPS tracking our ride conked out. It was good to get the first half of the ride recorded, however, and if you’re interested, you can see that here: Ladybower Ride First Half).

We had a glorious period of downhill here, where I had my second fall (the previous having been a very slow one on the ascent), which was over the front into a load of mud. It was pretty funny, and falling was helping to increase my confidence too. We met some more serious looking riders, about fifteen of them in one big group, coming past us up the hill here, and let some people who were going somewhat faster than us (me) past us on the way down. One of them informed me that my pedal clips/baskets would be the death of me, and he is probably right. I wasn’t really using them, and will likely take them off my mountain ride.

We got to the bottom at the head of the reservoir at the bottom of this hill, probably about two thirds of the way round, and realised we probably only had about 45 minutes of daylight left. Hmm. Well, all we could do was press on. The next uphill was just not going to happen in the saddle, and we both pushed our bikes up almost all of it as dusk set in. ‘Medium’ difficulty involved some seriously rocky climbs that required a lot more technique than I had, but if you don’t push yourself then you don’t progress. We had another steep downhill at the end of this, which was fun but my eyesight isn’t the best and it was beginning to get tough to see, making concentration a must and regulating the speed at which I tackled descents. Thankfully, Adam has a ridiculously powerful headlight which began to be of use here. At this point, it was pretty much dark, and all that was left for us was the steepest climb of the lot. Oh. We pushed our bikes up here, and reached the top of the ascent out of breath and in the dark. This point was where we had joined the route, so we had done the entire circuit. I felt great about this, regardless of all the pushing, as it was 20 something miles more than I had ever really done off road before. Riding back towards the hostel, downhill with Adam behind me lighting the way, I was really tired, but really happy, enjoying the last little bit of bumping over rocks and nearly falling off.

We got back to the hostel after the slowest of rides up the driveway, having missed the turning off for the footpath in the dark, and high fived over a ride well done. After stretches, a warm (yet pretty shit as all they were all knackered) shower and a brief sit down, we drove off to find a pub to have some dinner and a couple of ales in. Eventually we found one that wasn’t full (bloody tourists etc), and there have been few occasions where an ale has tasted so good and richly deserved. This was a brilliant introduction to what I can do with my new bike, and I can’t wait to get back out there, getting muddy and trying to outrun my foggy breath down hills.

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So just to highlight that it’s not all bikes, bikes, bikes here at the PRBC…I went on a pre-breakfast run this morning. You see we’re ’serious’ about our training round here…sort of.

Short and sweet

Naturally I powered round to the sounds of ‘Potemkin City Limits’ by Propaghandi – and when I say powered I mean jogged slowly. You can’t beat some quality punk rock to get you through the boredom of running or a turbo/static bike session. I think I need to design some specific interval workouts for my favourite albums…watch this space!?

In other news Julian Emre Sayarer has issued an apology or maybe a rebuttal, or something. I am happy that he has a platform to speak his mind, get it out there and not just bow to the status quo.  This guy is in my eyes the Propaghandi of cycling, for a start I have difficulty spelling his name right but specifically he’s not afraid to say something controversial, he believes in his convictions and that debate and discussion matter more than towing the party line because you don’t want to offend anyone.

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A lot of cycle blogs seem to just be re-posts of stuff doing the rounds, to the point where I often wonder who actually created some of this stuff? Well following that theme Stevil consistently bangs out new stuff on AHTBM that either he’s discovered or has  been sent to him. So today his blog turned me onto these guys…

Now there’s a cycling team I could support!

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