The last of the Desert Roadie . . . . for now

Well, it is with a sad heart that it is time to bid farewell to my little corner of Baghdad but all good things must come to an end. Tomorrow evening myself and the remnants of the team working on this project will depart Camp Victory for the last time. We are not alone. The bulk of the US effort is departing and with the scale of the drawdown it is unsurprising that the maintenance of the gym equipment and the quality of the food has also gone down somewhat. For example, the choice of “Brown food” has gone through the roof whilst healthy options are harder and harder to come by. Similarly, the majority of the spin bikes have faulty components; primarily the saddles and handlebars continue to slip and the ones that are rideable seem so have their resistance pads worn out leading to rather uncertain resistance. But for all the faults, it is still time in the saddle.
One piece of technology that I will have to replace as I return to the UK will be my HRM. For whatever reason, the strength of the sun in this part of the world seems to have burned out the LCD display which seems to have faded to an unreadable state. Since I have a Garmin 500 on my bikes it would make sense to replace my POLAR CS300 with a Garmin but there was some excellent deals on Suunto watches because of the US Forces status that we hold here. That said, the key convenience will probably mean that I upgrade to a GARMIN as it will allow me to use the online dashboard. I shall endeavour to keep you posted after I get back.

Finishing on a somewhat funny note, this video seems to be doing the rounds at the moment:

I know that it is the down season and time to rest muscles but this postman should seriously consider signing for a pro-team next year given the plethora of events that are coming up not least the Olympics and the Tour. Of the latter, it will be no secret that the route is now out and, as a flat course, it looks like it will suit Cavendish going for a 2nd Maillot Vert; that said, since when has Thor Hushovd been a 2x winner of the tour:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/cycling/15371662.stm

Shame on the editorial staff of the BBC!!!

And on that note, it is time to switch off the internet and cease broadcasting from the deserts of Iraq . . . until the next time.

An update from the Desert Roadie

This may be the last update from the desert as the company that I work for over here is pulling out. For some, who have been here, for a very long time, it is quite emotional but all good things must come to an end. I could tell that the end was coming by the ceassation of maintainance on the spin bikes. On the gym where I train there are 3 bikes but only where the saddle does not collapse under the weight of anyone above “The Chicken” Rasmussen!

Looking to brighter things, I came across this little piece of trivia which shows car companies and how they have built bikes and how those bikes reflect the culture and the style of their designers, enjoy: http://autos.yahoo.com/photos/bikes-from-car-companies-1318019762-slideshow/#crsl=%252Fphotos%252Fbikes-from-car-companies-1318019762-slideshow%252Fbikes-from-car-companies-photo-1318018535.htm

I also thought that it might be useful to put some ideas down for the winter session – yes, folks, the season is almost over and it is time to start thinking about what you want to do. Whatever that is, you will want to have a good baseline of fitness to achieve it so it is worth spending time now getting your steed up and running so that when the hard training time comes, you are not repairing your bike. To that end, then, here are 4 top tips to help kick-start the winter season:

1. Bike Fit. If you can, now is the time to get your fit squared away by a fit specialist. This is the time of year where you are spending little time on the bike, and even less doing intensity. So, now is when you want to make any changes to your position to give your body a chance to get used to the adjustments rather than being faced with using different muscle groups and potential injury by doing a fitting while you are in the thick of high volume base training.
2. Gearing. I’m a big believer of using very light gearing on my bike during winter and early spring. If you run a lighter gear, you can have much more control over your power and cadence while you ride. You can even get over pretty steep hills at an effort that will only slightly exceed zone 2, which is crucial to efficient endurance rides. Your training rides can be more specific, and you can exert yourself at a seasonally appropriate rate.
3. Tyres. Ride thick tyres. Now is a great time to buy yourself a set of Continental Gatorskins or similar. Also, I’m a fan of using 25s instead of 23s through the winter. A tyre with good puncture protection cuts down on flats. A 25 has a better ride quality, and is less prone to pinch flats. All of this is geared towards keeping your training rides uninterrupted by flats, and keeping your longer rides more comfortable.
4. And finally, you guessed, do some good bike maintenance, clean your steed – probably moreso that your Summer / racing bike, replace any parts that look worn, get stuff dialed in so you can focus on training and racing in 6 months time, not fixing stuff.

And there you have it. In a week or so it looks like it will be back to the UK for me permanently – LeMond Spin Bikes will become a distant memory. Wet cold rain and wind will become the reality and so I will roll with the punches until the next adventure.

Keep the rubber side down and remember to always enjoy the ride!!!!

Chris

Steel Wheel Bike!!!

A must see: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665045/soft-ride-bike-has-steel-tires-and-you-can-ride-it-now

This is doing the rounds around Squadra Coppi, a Northern Virginia road racing club.

For W Hotels’ “WOW Bikes,” Ron Arad designs a bespoke bicycle that reimagines the wheel using nothing but curved sprung steel. And anyone who stays at the hotel can ride it.

Twenty-five years after his Well-Tempered Chair, Ron Arad has used a similar process–in which the naturally sprung properties of tempered steel, bolted in tension, gives a natural yield or “softness”–to build a bike with wheels made of sprung steel.

To account for the added flexibility in the materials, Arad’s sprung wheels of steel are in fact a little bit larger than the average bike wheel, says Marcus Hearst, director of the design department at Arad’s studio. But it’s this yield that gives the wheels a slight cushion and makes the wheels work in a practical way. Hearst said it’s a surprisingly comfortable ride, and, ironically, the faster you go, the smoother it is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The wheel uses 18 individual strips of steel that are pinned at various tension points to act together as one single unit. “We’ve actually done very little with the material,” Hearst tells Co.Design. “When you bend that steel, the way you pin it, you create natural curves. It’s almost like a flower.” The adjacent “spokes” create an additional shape that your eye naturally wants to fill in.

The bike was put together in two weeks, from start to finish, which left no time for testing. “The ultimate surprise was that it worked the first time,” Hearst says. Sprung steel, in particular, has a bewildering array of choices, based on the tempering or mixes, because the process to give the steel more or less “spring” is notoriously difficult to gauge without testing. And, of course, there was some initial skepticism from the manufacturer. “They laughed at us when we told them what it was for,” Hearst chuckles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Until October 29, the bike is available for guests of the W Hotel in Leicester Square to ride around the city. And as part of a fundraiser for the Elton John AIDS Foundation, the bike is up for auction, along with other bikes custom designed by the likes of singer Paloma Faith, illustrator Natasha Law, fashion designers Patrick Cox and Alice Temperley, and artist Benedict Radcliffe.

Farewell to MyFitnessPal

I have been back in the UK for just over a week and as I predicted in my previous missive, there are no nearby races before I head back into the sandbox on 05 Oct so long rides are the order of the day.

Apart from seeing my family the biggest excitement was getting on the Salter fitness scales to determine how much work that I would need to do.

 I do like the Salter scales. It allows me to monitor weight, BMI, body fat, water and calories required and obviates the error-ridden analogue scales provided in our desert retreat. Granted I did have to endure a weekend at a friend’s place in Colchester quaffing champagne because his redundancy from the Army has been accepted and no time in the legs but how many pounds could that be? We got back to Trowbridge on Sunday evening and on Monday morning I stepped onto the Salter and waited whilst it whirred into life . . . . . 151.6 lb read the display; as I looked into the mirror I mouthed the words “f^&^ MyFitPal” and stepped off thinking that the only solution is 60 km+ rides for the next week at best effort.

However, the Colchester trip was well it as I had the privilege to meet with a very discrete and humble Belgian ex-pro who owns a bike shop in that part of the world. Patrick Schils has been in the UK for 23 years and has been selling the Belgian bespoke bikes that bear his namesake for that time. In the last 15 years he has opened his own shop in Colchester and it is a treasure trove of memorabilia. It is a rare moment to find a bike shop where the owner lives and breathes cycling. It was typical of Patrick that, although he was getting ready for a Sunday race (he is a few points off Cat 2) he made more than an hour to simply chat everything road-racing; and he knew everything about road-racing. Between his story of how Eddy Merkx fit and bought him a frame through to his exploits on the Ras, I came away with the romantic idea that I would love to bring my bike down and say: “hey Patrick, how can I improve”.  The one thing that did leave me scratching my head was when I asked him how often that he trained and what sort of training that he did. He reassured me that it does take about 10 – 12 hours per week but for him it is all about the bike. No gyms, no weights, no core strength just riding his bike with as many races as he can fit in. If you are in Colchester then you must fit in a visit: http://www.veloschils.com/ Browse the site and be impressed by Patrick’s Palmares.

So tipping the scales at almost 152 lb I got back on the bike realising that the only solution was one that I knew: 60 km in 2 hours or less for every day with as many hill climbs as I could. By mid way through the first week I was back to 149 lb but then the drive train on the training bike, the Specialized Tarmac,  gave in. I must be honest, it has probably done about 15k and is long overdue a new groupset but I have just not got around to replacing it. I was out on a wet and windy session when the conditions made their way into the drivetrain and the gears would simply not stick so I limped home and spent the rest of the week on the racing machine or the turbo trainer. By this morning’s session (65 km in 120 mins) I was back to 145 lb. Granted a stack of that was water (although my water % still reads 60.1% which is fine).

The highlight of the weekend was watching Cav win the World Championship. Team GB had done a lot of work at the front and with 5 km to go it looked like the other national teams were going to take them apart. The chaos that ensued really meant that Cav would either win and dispell the thoughts that his success was down to his lead-out train or that the later would be proved correct. As the peloton went under the red kite it seemed like the later conclusion was foregone: the Australian lead-out was firing; Ian Stannard looked spent and Geraint Thomas was desperately looking round for his sprinter to try to bring him back to the front. Indeed, it is clear that GT spots Cav in the last 500 m and pulls aside realising that he can do nothing for him. Given the number of riders to his front it looked as if Cav was finished but the line that he chose on the inside and his pure speed seen him make the front and pull clear- it was a superb win for Cav, the GB team and British cycling. The tally was 6 medals across the event which is very impressive. Being married to a Welshwoman, I was disappointed for Nicole Cooke who placed 4th.

So with a week to go before I return to the Sandbox, probably for the last time, I will leave you with that image of exultation as Mark Cavendish siezes victory in the World Championships . . . it has only been 46 years!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cycling/15052887.stm

Enjoy the ride!

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drinking Saint Emilion

Adieu to the Kite Surfer: Whisked away by the winds of change . . .

I was compiling a series of links to discuss when the Kite Surfer, whom I believed was heading out the door for some well-earned leave, revealed that destiny had decided that his fate lay elsewhere and that he would not be returning to the desert so with exchanges of “Bon Voyage” and “Keep writing” he was whisked away on the winds of change.

The most poignant piece that I stumbled across this week was Nicholas Roche Vuelta blog. Roche, son of Stephen, is a stalwart rider who maintains a top 20 position across most of the Grand Tours. The Vuelta D’Espana is the last of the 3 grand tours and tends to suffer as a result of exhaustion. Roche describes one of the hieneous mountain stages: stage 15; a stage where, sadly, Bradley Wiggins loses the Red Jersey of the overall leader on CG. Roche has been praised time and again for his easy-going yet engrossing style and it is easy to see why in this piece. The ferocity of the climb is recounted in the ratios that the riders have selected. I will let Roche take up the story . . .

http://www.independent.ie/sport/other-sports/nicolas-roche-i-went-ballistic-at-our-bus-drivers-remark-2866562.html

I had also promised an update on http://www.myfitnesspal.com

While it is a useful tool to log the perennial calorie input / output equilibrium I must be honest and say that its prediction that I would lose 3lb of French bread, cheese and wine is inaccurate because I have lost no lbs!!! Granted it is very diffiult to accurately estimate the quantities of food but I have cut down drasticallly on my sugar intake (white chocolate cookies) and maintained exercise levels but the needle currently hoovers at 150 lb. I will persevere until the end of this desert stint and then re-evaluate. The key take-away thus far is the monitoring of food stuffs and sugar intake so it can’t be bad.

The season is almost over. A quick check of the British Cycling website reveals that there are no races within striking distance for me when I get back to the UK in mid-Sep. I may look for a sportif just to keep the miles up but I have almost resigned myself to getting into winter routine of long steady zone 1/2 rides to keep the base fitness steady. So, on current predictions, it looks like I will finish the season as a Cat 3 having begun as a Cat 4 and the next challenge will be deciding if I want / can put the work in over the winter to challenge for a Cat 2 promotion. My initial feelings are that I would have to make a very determined effort as my build and record point towards longer, hillier races but there are far more criteriums than there are hills so I would need to generate a stack more power to challenge for the flat sprints. Set against this challenge is the march of time . . . .

Shifting, quite literately, to the technology side of the debate I notice that Wiggle are offering a pre-order of the new Ultegra Di2. I do like Wiggle; they are fast and friendly and their returns services are always no quibble. Having been really disappointed with the Saris Bones they refunded the entire cost and the postage. This piece, however, is not about Wiggle per se, but Ultegra Di2. I expect that it will be very popular as it reaches a large audience given its pricing and spec. To top it off it gets a 4 1/2 star rating from Bikeradar: http://www.bikeradar.com/gear/category/components/groupset/road/product/review-shimano-ultegra-di2-transmission-11-45107 so this will definitely be on the list for roadies this Christmas and to help make that decision, Shimano have distributed 1000 try-before-you-buy bikes around their distributors so that you can have some fun before the season starts in earnest!

The last piece of news before I wrap up is the switch-round of teams as the season closes. It looks like Radio Shack and Team Leopard will joins forces for 2012 allowing Bruyneel to take the Shlek brothers under his sizeable wing and get them ready for Le Boucle 2012: http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/leopard-trek-confirms-merger-with-radioshack

So with 9 days to push before I join the Kite-Surfer in the land of wind and rain it is back on the LeMond spin bikes with no immediate races to worry about it will be nice to dream about what difference that Di2 will make and get very jealous of Mrs C riding the coastal paths of Glamorgan in the Sunday morning sunshine!! Bon chance to the Kite Surfer in his forthcoming 100 miler and wherever the winds of change may take him.