First Tracks

Woke up the other morning to a couple of inches of snow so decided to finally take my fatbike out where it was designed for. OK it's only a couple of inches but better than nothing. Rode up to the Ridgeway and once I'd passed the farm mine (and a fox's) were the first tracks.

Things got a bit narrow in the woods

The fat tyres floated over/through the snow rather than digging in like a regular tyre. More like skiing in powder than on piste.

After a few miles it started getting colder so I decided to turn round, must investigate some warmer clothing!

Strava Madness

Well I noticed on Strava that I'm only 12 seconds off a King of the Mountains on one of my local segments. As that was done on my singlespeed mountain bike it should be fairly easy to beat, especially as I've just set up the Peregrine as 'monster cross': fat tyres, rigid forks, gears and drops. That should make it easy to make up those seconds, especially as I can pedal down the down hill bit in the drops rather than coasting.

I don't think it's relevant but my best time was set when I was fitter, lighter, on a calm Summer's day on a dry trail. It's been raining for about a month here non-stop, the farmer down the road has built a huge wooden boat and the trail has about as much grip as a greased ice rink.

Ignoring the fact that the rain was horizontal I set off, warming up nicely on the 2 miles  to the start - OK I may have pushed a little too  hard but I was good to go. Up the first climb, I was certainly faster. Of course I couldn't prove it  as it was dark and the driving rain was blinding me but I had a plan and was sticking to it (unlike my tyres to the trail) nothing could go wrong. Over the crest of the first hill I changed gear in anticipation of cruising down the other side, and taking enough momentum to help me up the other side.

Which was great except the wind hit me like a train, no chance of coasting down there (not that that was on the agenda I was a dead cert for the podium) I changed back down through the gears working as hard to get down the hill as I was to get up it. Eventually I made it into the dip at the bottom. Literally. Being a minor valley, it was of course flooded and I came to an ungainly stop in the clay.

Hauling my bike out of the quicksand I attacked the final slope ignoring the wheel spinning in the clay making slower progress than I'd hoped, fighting both the wind and the hill. My lungs were making a desperate bid for freedom as I gasped for air. Perhaps now a tiny seed of doubt had planted itself in my mind?

And then that tiny seed grew into a fully fledged beanstalk as my rear wheel popped out of the dropout. This was of course due to the awesome power that I was putting down and nothing to do with shoddy maintenance. Taking shelter under the beanstalk I did the honourable thing. I gave up and headed for home.

So 'Anonymous Rider' your KOTM is safe for the time being. But I have you in my sights!

Dusk 'til Dawn 2012

Ooops! Wrote this weeks ago but forgot to publish!

What could possibly go wrong? I'd entered "Dusk 'til Dawn", a 12 hour mountain bike race that, as it's name suggests runs overnight with 2 people that I 'know' from a cycling forum.

Well the preparation didn't perhaps go as well as I'd hoped, moving house and a summer that resembled a monsoon cut down on the amount of riding I did but I wasn't as unfit as I could have been. I'd managed to meet up with my local bike shop, for a couple of off-road evening rides.

First hurdle came as I loaded the bike into the car. I'd just got everything in when I could hear the ominous hiss of escaping air. Somehow I'd managed to gash one of the tyres. Fortunately I had a spare in the shed and was eventually on the road. At least it happened at home rather than half way round the M25.

Three hours later I was pulling into Brandon only to see my teammates, recognisable from a photo on the forum riding in the opposite direction.A quick game of telephone tag later and we managed to meet up to plan our tactics get something to eat. Bob volunteered to do the first lap, which was a relief for me at least as I don't like riding in large groups and hopefully the field would have evened out by the time my turn came.

Sure enough it had so I set off my lights making a pool in the darkness. I could see a group of riders ahead of me and slowly drew them closer. As we chose not to have a practice the first lap was a voyage of discovery for me. Over what on a map seemed to be a fairly small and flat area - remember it was in the middle of Norfolk - the organisers had managed to put together an interesting course with a mixture of twisty singletrack through the woods and stretches of fireroad or double track for overtaking (or being overtaken!). Not that stopped a few people barging through where they couldn't really, although on the whole the majority of the overtakes were safe and courteous.Managed the first lap in around an hour and passed over to Steve for his lap.

We then retreated to the restaurant tent and tried to keep warm. Our saviour the whole night was the cheerful folks on the catering van who provided a never ending stream of tea, coffee and, the highlight, baked potato with chilli! I think that is what kept me going as we shivered through the 'off-watch' period. My thermometer was reading around 0C and with each lap the frost was getting heavier on teh gound. We soon fell into a pattern of 2 hours resting: chatting, snoozing, drinking tea and generally trying to avoid hypothermia and one hour of riding. As I got more used to the course and it dried out during the night I was able to put in some faster laps - well they felt faster but the official times still haven't been published.

Highlights of the race for me were 'Santa's Grotto' where someone had strung multi-coloured glow-sticks from the trees and had set up a sound system playing a selection of classical music - truly surreal. My turn came for the final lap before time ran out, it was just getting light so finally I was able to see where I'd been riding all night. There's something special about riding as the sun rises and it gave me a lift that I was able to pass a few riders. At this stage people were more tired and happy to pull over and let you past. As I overtook one guy he looked at my lack of gears - I was riding single-speed - and shouted "that's what I like to see, singlespeed and going for it". After that I had no choice but to put my foot down and sprinted (a relative term)  for the line coming in just before the 8 am cutoff. Overall we did 11 laps between the 3 of us, and whilst we didn't trouble the podium, achieved our main aim of getting round and having a good time.

And now, 48 hours later would I do it again? Well maybe. I learned a few lessons about endurance racing that night the most important being bring a tent and a change of clothes. We were the only people in the catering tent for most of the night and spent most of it very cold despite wrapping in blankets and other riders were surprised at how unprepared we were. I think the psychological boost of getting into something warm and dry after each lap would have helped enormously. So the jury's still out...

Finally, thanks to Steve and Bob for a great night!

2 Wheeled Human Powered Dune Buggy

The Pugsley lives!

Using a mixture of spares from the shed and some online purchases I transformed this:

Into this:

I've even managed a few test rides. The Pugsley is probably best described as cycling's answer to the Dune Buggy. The fat tyres make it very different from anything else I've ridden before. On the road it seems to have a mind of its own - which was even worse until I sorted out the tyre pressures. Now it's not really the ideal conditions for the fat tyres, at 3.7" they're a LOT wider than normal mountain bike tyres which are about 2.2" and run at a lower pressure. The width combined with the low pressure means that they float over snow, sand and mud. At the moment the temperatures here are in the high teens (remember this is London in March!) so snow is, at best, an unlikely proposition; the only sand locally is in the children's playground or the pile I found in the car park in the picture above and we have a drought warning so mud is fairly scarce too.

Having said that it's also great fun on normal trails. Despite the lack of suspension it gives a smooth ride as the big tyres absorb a lot of the vibration and bumps, the big wheel diameter helps it roll over obstacles (rocks, roots, small dogs...). As the scratches on my arms and legs will testify it's maybe not as precise as my other my bike but I suspect that's more a case of a bad workman blaming his tools than any inherent design flaw.

It's also a head turner, as I came home through the park a group of teenage skateboarders stopped me to ask questions: is is harder to pedal?, is is slower than a normal bike?

So all I need now is some snow, lots of rain or a trip to the beach to properly try it out.

Excessive Weight Gain

A freak eBay 'accident' now sees me the owner of one of these:

A Surly Pugsley 'fat bike' - that's just a stock shot from Surly's website, not mine - hopefully collecting mine this week.

Need a few parts to get it ready for the trail but then I'll be good to go. Looking forward to playing in the mud, sand and snow (for the one official day of winter)

The Second Law (and the others!)

There are 3 basic laws that govern our life. At least I've found them useful.

The first of these is "Do not travel faster than light". This one was invented by Einstein sometime last century. `Scientists are quite agreed on the reason behind this. Now whilst most people's eyes tend to glaze over at the thought of theoretical quantum physics it really is quite simple. If you do then you'll end up travelling back in time and killing your grandfather in a 'crime de passion' and marrying your grandmother. Things just won't work out because you remind her too much of a younger version of her dead husband and she has trouble living with the memory. Eventually this causes a breakdown a in the space-time continuum and you'll suddenly vanish in a puff of non-existence. Probably not the best way for anyone to start their day. And not to forget the weight gain associated with high speed travel, I mean just look at any regular business traveller. All that jetting around and they inevitably pile on a few pounds. Remember they're only travelling at half the speed of sound, just extrapolate that a little and you'll see that old Albert was on to something.

Which brings us to the Second Law. Sir Isaac Newton proposed the Second Law in 1687 and published it in Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. In brief it states:

"The change in velocity (acceleration) with which an object moves is directly proportional to the magnitude of the force applied to the object and inversely proportional to the mass of the object."

In other words an object will keep moving unless something happens to it. So what does this mean to me? Well, when cycling I try to expend as little energy as possible, whilst getting from A to B (or more usually from A back to A via a series of indeterminate points) as quickly as possible. Now, cyclists face a range of opposing forces: friction from the road and the bike itself, wind, hills and having to slow for corners! There's very little that can be done about the first three at least once the ride has started but I'm working on the last one.

The normal technique for riding a bike (or most other vehicles) is to go fast into the corner, hit the brakes late and accelerate out of the turn. All fine in theory but my bike is set up as a single speed - exactly why that is is a whole other topic - which means I lack the ability to accelerate by shifting up through the gears so I need to find another solution. Since I can't accelerate so easily I need to take as much speed out of the corner as I can which means going in faster, or trying not to hit the brakes. In other words, "Conservation of Momentum", or attaining the mythical "flow".

The theory is quite simple, commit to the turn, look where you want to go, get your weight in the right place and it will all work out fine. The practice is a little more complex: for a start the surface is muddy, rooted and rutted, I go into the turn thinking all the right things, have the OMG moment "I'm going way too fast for this!", hit the brakes and the wheels lock up. This is where an unintended consequence of the Second Law cuts in...

With the wheels locked there's now nothing keeping me and the bike in that perfect arc, matching the curve of the trail. Instead I'm obeying 300 years of traditional physics and continuing at a high speed in a straight line (it works for and against you that Second Law), sideways and directly for a bunch of trees. Now is probably not the best time to remember the advice that I was given about skiing off-piste in the woods: "Don't think of it as skiing in the trees, think of it as skiing in the gaps". That inner voice sure knows when to pick it's moments. No, the only thing to do is relax, slide and hope that nothing soft and delicate comes into contact with anything hard or pointy.

Which, despite the fact that the only New Year's resolution I've managed to keep is "Don't make resolutions" brings me to, let's call it an objective rather than a resolution, for 2012. To improve my technique on the bike this year.

And the Third Law? Well that's actually borrowed from skiing.

"Don't eat the yellow snow"

Cabin Fever

Going mildly (and expensively) stir crazy here!

Had a minor operation on Saturday. My wife says to clarify that it was a hernia repair rather than a vasectomy as "everybody" knows that with "men of my age" it's either one or the other.

Anyway, no real drama, like clearing the shed or doing the filing it was just something I'd been putting off until, last Thursday I called the surgeon who said he could do it on Saturday. So I'm housebound, and as I'm most comfortable lying down bedbound. So far I've avoided the siren call of daytime TV and spend my days listening to music, browsing the internet and practising Sonic the Hedgehog in a vain attempt to avoid humiliation by my son when he next challenges me to a race.

As I can't ride my bike I'm doing the next best thing and reading about biking and other people's bikes (all in the name of 'research' planning my rides for this year). Unfortunately this leads to a condition known as 'gear envy'.

 Now as any reputable medical professional worth their salt will tell you cabin fever and gear envy is a pretty potent combination and not one for the weak of will. Which brings us to the expensive part.  In my delirious state I have somehow managed to acquire a brand shiny new freewheel, and since it won't fit my existing hub, an equally shiny hub for it to fit it on.

 Must go as the men in the white coats are coming to take my wallet away.