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Saturday, March 20, 2010

20th March 2010

Woke up far to early this morning, showered and got changed straight into cycle gear....the seasonal dilemma hit straight away.......thermals or no thermals???

I opted for half n half...thermals under the cycling trousers but no thermals under the long sleeve top :-)

I watched the million pound cycle ride on BBC iplayer...I had very mixed emotions...It was nice to see the scenery that I had experienced myself less than a year ago, and I was impressed with the dedication and commitment of 'The Stars' and the sum they raised for charity...But it was a relay...

At 9:20 I set of for the Chippenham Cemetery on the Peugeot, it was very overcast and windy but thankfully warm and dry.
0900 Low-level Cloud 10.7 °C SSW 13 mph

10 km 1002 hPa, Falling
1000 Low-level Cloud 10.9 °C SSW 16 mph

20 km 1002 hPa, Falling
1100 Low-level Cloud 10.9 °C SSW 14 mph

15 km 1002 hPa, Falling
There wasn't that many people brave...or is it stupid? enough that turned up for the 9:30 start..

We started of with a fair old pace nothing scary but not a dawdle either, I was enjoying the smooth ride of the road bike after last weeks Hybrid chain gang.

It was an interesting chain gang for a number of reasons...

1) The guy in front of me at one point went over a rather bad pot hole that wasn't pointed out by the guy in front of him and his back tyre did an explosive decompression...It was a very load bang!

2) The first time since I have done the chain gang that we had to change route..the road was closed between Seagry and the A429, we were undecided whether to continue down the closed road or not..but a police car/ambulance could be seen further up the road so it looked like it was closed due to an accident rather than repair so we rerouted.

3) We had a long stop as Tim's front de-railer fell to pieces as he was chaining down a gear on a steepish hill on the re-route

At least the unusual stop gave me the chance to go and water the horses as I was busting for a pee....on the way back to rejoin the group I was almost knocked of my bike by an eejut that looked and didn't see me as he/she was pulling out of their drive way.....Amazing as I was dressed up looking like a bright yellow creature from a different planet!

Also on the way back to join the group I noticed that the free-wheel hub was starting to free-wheel when it shouldn't be, i.e. when I was pedalling :-( It then caused a bit of a problem for the rest of the ride...every time I stopped pedalling when I started it would slip then suddenly catch...

Eventually we all set off again and the pace was good, I was concious of the slipping free-wheel that appeared to be getting worse :-(

When we turned south and onto the fosse-way we were hit by the straight on head wind...interestingly the guys in the front didn't start doing a rapid change over on the lead, although I wasn't complaining, it was good to be towed up the hill into the wind :-)

The rest of the ride was reasonably uneventful, but I did find it very tiring today...interesting really as I felt far more tired than I did after doing the chain gang on the hybrid last week?

The Garmin had the ride as 42.72 miles in 2 hours 27 minutes with an average speed of 17.4 mph, route here...

When I got home I showered and changed then went out for the weekly shop with wifey, we had brunch at Morrissons first :-)

When we got back home I started cleaning the Peugeot...once it was clean I had a look at the free-wheel hub.

I never realised they came off quite so easily, once you remove the axle its a simple allen bolt and the hub comes of the wheel...

The Park Tool website is a fantastic resource for stripping the bits down that you wouldn't normally touch...

(I forgot to take a photo of the hub removed....so here's the one from Park Tools :-)

I washed it through with white spirit then covered it liberally with 3 in 1...then reassembled it all..

The free-wheel appears to be working again...if it starts playing up I shall just replace it...But I won't know until next week, tomorrows ride will be back on the Hybrid :-)

After an afternoon of tinkering I tidied up then cooked tea with wifey......then spent the rest of the evening listening to Epica and writing this blog.....

Finally.....listen to this.....it is from Epica's Classical Conspiracy album....I think it is better than the original rendition...

1 comments:

Red Bike said...

I thought they did very well on that million pound bike ride. You could tell it was really hard work for most of them.

You wouldn't have got me riding a slick tyred road bike over the top of a snowy Scotish pass when it's -15 at night in a hurry.

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