My blog has moved!

You should be automatically redirected in 6 seconds. If not, visit
http://johns-cycling-diary.co.uk
and update your bookmarks.

Thursday, December 31, 2009

31st December 2009

After a week of practising I eventually learnt to get up at a civilised time :-)

I finished of 2009 with my 'Normal 20' ride, that takes me just over 9500 miles for the year :-) I will not record every ride I do, but I thought it would be good to record my 'Normal 20' so that you can see the type of road I ride on....I have sped up and compressed an hours ride into just 4 minutes :-)



Three quarters of the way round I broke a spoke :-( The rear wheel started dragging on the brake blocks, but that wasn't to much of a problem as I had a stonking tailwind.

The Garmin had the ride as 21.45 miles in 1 hour 18 minutes with an average speed of 16.3 mph, route here...

When I got back home I put the bike on the stand, took the back wheel out, took the cassette off and replaced the spoke.

I put the wheel back on the bike and managed to true it, using a piece of cardboard to help find the 'high spot'.

I was really pleased with the end result, the wheel is really nice and true:-)

I also replaced the rear brake blocks, and gave the bike a good clean.

Now I suppose I should reflect on what has happened over the last twelve months.

January...Continued my JOGLE training, but moved from the Dawes to the Merida as the primary steed. Any evening I couldn't go out I spent inside on the Turbo Trainer.

February...Lots of snow and ice, but I still battled on cycling, realised that mountain biking in the snow is not much fun!

March...Weather warmed up started pushing the mileage, did a nice cycle ride to Longleat.

April...Was really worried about my ability to cycle up hills for JOGLE so I cycled around Snowdonia, and spent as many rides as I could cycling up steep hills.

May...Really started pushing the mileage in preparation for JOGLE. Travelled to John'O Groates on the 30th of May and Started cycling back south on the 31st

June...Finished JOGLE (950 miles in 11 days)

Took 1 day off then spent the rest of the month cycling.

July...Did my longest single cycle ride 151 miles to the top of the Black Mountains and back, over 2000 ft to the top! Joined the Chippenham Wheelers cycle club, started time trialling.

August...Started regularly doing my Normal 20 (21 miles) in an hour.

September...Started getting colder and darker in the evenings, Noticed my performance was degrading with the weather :-( No longer abled to do my 20 at 20.

October...Took a week off and managed to crack up some decent miles, did the best Audax of the year so far "The Dartmoor Devil".

November...Was looking forwards to 'The Exmoor Beast" unfortunately the weather was incredibly poor. Really started to struggle with the cold and dark.

December...Here we are :-)

2 comments:

Matt said...

An amazing amount of miles for the year! sounds like an awfu lot of varied rides to, from longlet to snowdonia. I dare say I will be pestering you about JOGLE in the future, but that is still years off for me!
Happy new year to you and looking forward to having a cream tea with you and Rafe in the summer!

Anonymous said...

Are we going to mention Cream Tea in every comment between now and the summer?

You are indeed Mad John - that's a mad number of miles in a year. Especially for a (ex) fat bloke.

Cool that you fixed your own wheel. I've done a bit of it especially after my accidents on the London to Bruges ride. It's not hard but does require patience which is something I'm still learning ;)

Your normal 20 looks like it has too many cars in it!

Post a Comment