Review of the Year - 2013

My 2012 Mercian Vincitore Special

First of all, a few basic statistics  because as anyone who reads my posts will know,  I love numbers

Total distance cycled = 6541 km

Total ascent climbed = 48006 m

Total energy burnt    = 144125 Calories

Total time in the saddle = 331 hours

which is pretty much the same as last year, though much of this year's cycling was done at a greatly increased intensity and pace; with the result that I have visited far, far less coffee shops.

But the statistics tell only part of the story, and perhaps a boring part at that.

The cycling year was centred around my challenge to ride with my son, as Team Roberts, in the inaugural Ride London 100 Mile Challenge. Given that I had never completed such a distance before and that it had to be completed in a set time to avoid being pulled from the event, this was all a very daunting challenge for me.

Despite some awful weather for the first 4 months of the year I kept to my training schedule and gradually got stronger and faster so that in the event I managed to complete the course in around 7 hours. This could not have been achieved without the great support I received from my friends, both new and old, in the cycling community. We used the event to promote and support the mental health charity Mind and raised almost £3000 for their cause. Much of this came from offering a Cycling Food on the Go Recipe booklet which contain favourite recipes complete with stories as to why they were special. These were freely given by a peloton of lady cyclists from across the world.  A big thanks to you all.

Each year I attempt to visit a new part of the country and explore it by bike. This year a new friend invited me to Rutland to explore its beauty. It was a boiling hot day and I ran out of both food and liquid after about 30 km of a 100 km ride. I will be eternally grateful to Kevin for looking after me, towing me along and even volunteering to park me whist he got a broom wagon to take me to the finish. I refused that offer and suffered but I learnt never to go out without sufficient supplies again.

My other aim this year was to take a series of  mono photographs to try and capture the essence of my cycling year and to act as a reminder in years to come. I have taken many images, but the aim was to distil it down to a panel of six, and here they are :-

The whole cycling year has been aimed at completing the challenge of riding the inaugraul London 100 with my son

The year got off to a very cold and snowy start. This is a picture of Cycle Route N68,  a track close to my home and at the beginning of my winter rides

With the weather continuing to remain foul and my fitness still at a low ebb for such an arduous challenge, I soon started to feel the pressure.

When the weather did at last begin to relent it was time to bring out the Mercian Vincitore and treat it to a set of Go-Faster wheels, marginal gains and all that.

During the months of Spring and early Summer, my distances and continuous time in the saddle increased, but occasionally I succumbed to that temptation of all OAP Cyclists, the Tea Shop.

And this shows that I did eventually make it.  In the event it was 164 km and I managed to get round in 7 hours.

And that is it for 2013.

The next post will lay out my hopes and ambitions for 2014

A Business Case for Improved Data ?

As a friend pointed out, my last post was all about numbers.
And in particular the amount of effort expended both by myself and a friend when we went on the same ride. I also commented upon how one could compare one's effort expended on different rides. This caused a lot of debate at the local tea shop and indeed necessitated the consumption of extra cake as we could not agree.  . Now all these discussions were based upon algorithms and the raw data provided both by Garmin and the bathroom scales to provide the necessary power to weight ratios. Whilst one can seek marginal gains in weight reduction by purchasing lighter kit, you are still left with estimating the power generated .. until NOW!

I have seen a new toy ( re-phase that, an essential piece of kit ) and this article is an imaginary conversation with my non-cycling wife about its prospective purchase. Your role is to comment on whether you believe that the Business Case is Incredibly Sound or, perhaps, just Excellent :-)

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Me:  I think I need a new set of pedals
Wife:  Why?  You've already got pedals on ALL your bikes. Are they broken?
Me:  Well, not actually broken
Wife: Besides you have that overflowing box in the garage which you tell me is full of ESSENTIAL bits, to mention nothing of the fact that that a second box of your cycling stuff seems to have appeared in one of the spare bedrooms
Wife : and what was in those packages that arrived from Wiggle yesterday?  Were they pedals?
Me : No, that was absolutely imperative winter clothing for when the weather turns. Anyway, about these pedals. They are produced by Garmin and are called Vector pedals and they allow the measurement of power asymetrically which can be viewed in real time or even as a rolling 3 second average so I can see how it changes over the course of a ride and whether one leg is working harder than the other.
Wife : How much?
Me On the positive side it measures power quickly and accurately and delivers loads and loads of useful numbers to my Garmin Edge 800 or any other ANT+ head unit
Wife : How much?
Me : It also measures the dynamic difference, and as you might know, there is often a different balance at the beginning and end of a ride, or when sitting or standing, or at low power or high power.
Wife : But you tell me that you never stand on the pedals as it hurts your knee
Wife : Anyway, would it make you go any faster?
Me : No
Wife : Would you be able to climb hills easier?
Me : No
Wife : Would you be able to ride any further?
Me : No
Wife : Humph!!
Me : They are supposed to be transferable between bikes so they are a sort of bargain
Wife : But you would NEVER transfer pedals between your bikes, you would need a set for each of them
Me : Admittedly I would need a new set of Look Compatible cycling shoes but I think you get a FREE pair of cleats, and in comparison the shoes would be relatively cheap
Wife : How much did you say these pedals were ?
Me :Well, without the shoes , and the cleats, I think they may be on Special Offer at about £1500 each

Wife :  < This is where you fill in wife's response in Comments Section below >
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Is the case made?

The Aging Effect

I love numbers

One of my first memories is being a little blonde, blue eyed choir boy sitting in the Choir Stalls at St Edwards Church in Leek, Staffordshire and, during the sermon, factorizing the hymn numbers and testing them for primality.

So you can imagine how, many years later when I retired and bought a bike, how delighted I was to discover Garmin and be able to amass data streams of every variable imaginable from my rides. Of course, collecting data is one thing, turning that into information and knowledge is quite another.

My last post talked about Virtual Cycling brought on by the fact that my body needed a rest to recover from the stresses of my London 100 adventure. But now, after  two weeks of complete rest,  I thought it time to try and see if my knee ligament had healed. A young whipper snapper ( anyone who is more than 26 years younger than me falls into that category! ) had invited me to go on a slow, sociable ride with him and after I had examined his statistics on Strava it was obvious that he was in need of some serious education in cycling etiquette, namely the NECESSITY to stop at tea and cake shops. So I took it upon  myself to induct him to the Tea Shops of Derbyshire.

As an aside I have noticed that many of the younger generation that I ride with, zoom along, zipping past scores of tea shops without a thought of the calorific delights that lie within. I have decided it is my personal mission to rectify this failing in their lycra clad make up.

The ride itself was only 33km and the pace was a mere 22kph with 287m of climbing. But it was hard work. Indeed it was very hard work and demonstrated to me how just two weeks with zero exercise can cause an OAP's fitness levels to drop off dramatically.

Now it so happens that my companion is also a numbers nerd and has a Garmin Edge 800 like mine and so after the ride was over I thought I would compare his effort expended to my efforts.

Total distance  33.1 km and elevation gained was 287 m

                                          Me                                                         Mr D

Avg Power                        95 watts                                                   94 watts

Cadence                            81 rpm                                                     75 rpm

Avg Heart Rate                 137 bpm                                                  107 bpm

Max Heart Rate                 160 bpm                                                  136 bpm


Now there are many different algorthims for calculating one's Peak Heart Rate before you explode, and the most optimistic one for me gives a value of 169 bpm, so you can see from the above that I was approaching the limit whilst my companion was forever in tick over mode. It did seem to me that this demonstrated the aging effect on one's fitness quite dramatically.

What did surprise ( worry ? ) me though was that I had needed to expend so much effort and so I thought I would compare my performance this time with my Ride of a Lifetime, London 100, which was only a couple of weeks ago.

A breakdown of how my heart performed was interesting.

On the London 100, whilst the journey was obviously much longer, about half of the ride was spent at Moderate Level of effort with the other half at Tempo,  which for me means * race pace * . Only 3% of the time was my heart operating at threshold level and I would need to check but that was probably when climbing Leith Hill.

Compare  this to my Return to the Saddle Ride after 2 weeks complete rest

and you can see that 15% of the time I was operating in Threshold and the majority of the time at Tempo.

No wonder I felt it hard work!

So I have attempted to turn data into information, as for the knowledge gained; does it mean that I should have tried harder at London?

Review of the Year

I love numbers

As such I tend to set myself targets, create spreadsheets to monitor progress and scour articles about gear ratios, rotational mass, power to weight ratios and other arcane things.  Needless to say, none of this affects my personal performance and I potter along as before.As a result of all this my favourite essential cycling accessory is probably my Garmin 800 which provides loads of data to keep me out of mischief for hours.
Having taken up cycling only recently, about 5 years ago now, and being an old age pensioner, I do have to accept that my ability on a bike is only going to go one way...downwards.
The act of retiring, and the receipt of a pension,  gives one a crystal clear perception of one's own mortality. The annuity bean counters make an estimate of one's life expectancy and payout accordingly, in my case they placed their bets on my lasting until I was 73 years old, anything beyond that then I am winning! My son tells me to be more optimistic and so for the purpose of target setting I assumed I would live until I was 80 years old. So, being a cycling novice I decided, at 60,  upon a distance target of 2000 miles ( 3200 km ) a year with the aim of reducing this by 100 miles per year to allow for growing infirmity. This then acts as the main yearly goal and for this year that translates into a minimum distance of  2400 km or  1500 miles .
Having so far ridden 7030 km and climbed over 50000m  then this first target has been achieved.

My second aim was to explore more of our countryside on my bike. Here I count this as a partial success. I have been invited to join in with other cycling groups in Cheshire, Shifnall, Leicester and a lung busting ride in Derbyshire. At all the places I have made new friends and been  made exceedingly welcome despite them all having to travel at a much slower pace than they are used to in order to accommodate me. Thanks go to Mark, Andrew, David and Scott for letting me tag along on  their rides. I was hoping to do a short cycle tour but in this I failed, not wanting to cycle alone and being unable to find others who had the same desire.

One of the main reasons for being wary of cycle touring was my lack of ability as a bike mechanic and a fear of  breaking down in the middle of nowhere. During the year I have tried to address this deficiency and regular readers will have seen my efforts as a Novice Bike Mechanic.

Not having been a lifelong cyclist, I do not possess the fund of stories of the trials and tribulations of times past when all the hills were steeper, the wind was windier, the rain was  wetter and carbon was a thing confined to pencils. Indeed climatic and geographical change seems to have happened in the 40 years prior to my getting on a bike!  One of the things I did learn from these tales of yore was that "Steel is Forever "and that Mercians were the Prince of Cycles. And so the highlight of my year was in obtaining my own handmade, personally fitted Mercian Vincitore Special on my 65th birthday in March. This is an example of engineering beauty and excellence and draws spectators wherever I go.

As my interest in cycling has grown I have become aware of the competitive side to this sport. Whilst I am now too old to take part,  I have enjoyed watching the sleek riders on their aerodynamic machines as they compete in local Time Trials, probably the purest form of cycle racing. At the other end of the spectrum I have revelled in the mud spattered and bedraggled riders as they attempt the Cyclo Cross challenges that our  autumn and winter can throw at them. Muffled up against the driving wind and rain I am glad that I AM now too old to participate in this peculiar form of personal pain.

Perhaps my greatest achievement this year was to undertake Wiggy's Challenge. Wiggy was an excellent and enthusiastic cyclist who for a variety of reasons had fallen into the state of becoming a " Lapsed Cyclist ". His challenge was to resolve this problem by undertaking to ride every single day for a week and he asked others to join him on this venture and share their experiences. I wrote an article about this and as a result of the Challenge I have encouraged many others to get on their abandoned bikes and ride again. It mattered not how far, how fast or how often; the important thing was to cycle again and experience the joy and companionship such an activity can bring. So far I know of about two dozen people who have returned to cycling from me telling them this story.

Finally, this year I learnt something about the importance of nutrition to a cyclist. Whilst there are many tomes written about this and experts a plenty; at my level I have discovered it is all about CAKE. Being the generous sort of guy that I am, I wanted to share this knowledge with others and so have produced a little pdf booklet  entitled " Cycling Food on the Go  - Recipes for Success ". If you would like a copy you can get it from :-

http://thediaryofmybike.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/cycling-food-on-go_15.html

Jewellry for a Mercian

Did I ( or my wife!! )  ever really believe that once I had bought the bike that that would be the end of the expenditure?

Having acquired my new bike it was not long before I realized that I needed a few extras and so I prepared to drop down to the local supermarket to get some stuff.

“STOP!!!! “ shouted one of my cycling friends on the web..
” You can’t just go and buy any old junk for a hand crafted Mercian Vincitore Special. It will ruin the entire look. Accessories for a bike are like cuff-links for a dress shirt . They need to be chosen with care to reflect the personality of the bike.

And so I started doing some research.

Cycling Nutrition is a black hole to me.   I rapidly discovered that going on long rides and taking neither liquid nor food with me led to severe energy loss and numerous aches and pains throughout my musculature. So I decided to buy a water bottle to ensure that at least I had some liquid. On one of my old bikes, which has no bosses on the frame, I just attached the bottle cage to the downtube using a couple of black plastic cable ties, a sort of workable if not elegant solution. I say “ sort of works “ because the bottle does occasionally spontaneously eject itself from the cage when going over a pothole or bump in the road.  I thought for the Vincitore it deserved something better. So I ensured there were two sets of bottle cage bosses built onto the frame and I chose an Elite Custom Race Bottle Cage in a colour which matched the rest of the frame paintwork. This is claimed to be a true design classic and the self adjusting and rubber tensioner grips should hold the bottle in place even over the worst roads that I might encounter. So far, no bottle missile ejections have taken place so it is performing well.

I am no long distance tourer but I do have to transport spares, tools and other stuff. So what to use to carry these things about. The plastic bag strapped to a rack which I have been using just did not seem appropriate. Searching around and talking to others I discovered Carradice. In the early 1930’s Wilf Carradice, frustrated that there were no suitable saddlebags to buy, decided to make one for himself. To his surprise, he was inundated by friends asking him to make more. And so, Carradice of Nelson was born. Even to this day the heart of the company still remains the core range of 100% waterproof cotton duck panniers and saddle bags with leather straps, which have withstood the test of time for over 70 years and are loved and cherished the world over. They are still made by hand in the factory in Nelson and mine was made by Sue.

I am fascinated by numbers.

I always have been.

As a small choir boy I used to pass the time during the service by factorizing the hymn numbers and testing them for primality. And so it was only natural that I would want to record all the data associated with my cycling. Faster, higher, further does not really apply to me but I still wanted to record my achievements/failings and discuss them with my cycling friends on our Tea Shop Tours.
Technology has advanced since those days of my boyhood when one had an odometer attached to the fork which clicked over at every revolution of the wheel. There are a wide variety of devices on the market from wired to wireless and an increasing range of data that can be captured. I chose a Garmin 500 and added on the optional wireless heart rate and combined speed/cadence sensor  which pretty much covered all of the information bases aside from full web access. The data is displayed in up to eight customisable fields per 'page' but now there are a full 41 options to choose from and three instead of two pages on which to spread them out.  
Whilst I transfer all this to my computer using Garmin Connect, and recently I have started to use Strava as well, I still use a spread sheet to keep track of total distances covered and see whether I am on target for my self set yearly mileage.  Defence in depth and a protection should the web services expire.