Category: Other

Well, the Voodoo is back. A new frame under warranty and no questions asked, so that’s pretty good of them. It’s weird to have the same bike but shinier and with the logos intact. The first ride back was incredible: suddenly, I could pick lines that required some precision rather than leaving huge margins for error. Every landing was like Tigger, bounding back up for more. Awesome fun.

But that was a few weeks ago now and now my motivation has mysteriously taken leave. Generally, I take it for granted that I want to ride. For fun, with friends, or in training for future goals. Occasionally, people ask me where it comes from or how I don’t get bored. There’s so much depth to mountain biking in making yourself strong enough for an event, in reading terrain, in understanding the dynamics of moving weight to get the effect you need, in all kinds of ways. But it is demanding. And sitting on the sofa today, as yesterday, that demand seems like an unnecessary hassle.

My last ride “ended” with a fall that hurt my knee a fair bit, leaving me without the strength in it to keep my leg in line as I pedalled. From there, I had to limp home with my tail between my legs and the snow in my face. I hadn’t felt like going out in the first place and had forced myself, expecting to wrap up warm, crank up the iPod, and find some rhythm once I was out there. My iPod wasn’t working (it’s not great to rely on such things!), and my riding was laboured until the fall, then it was just slow.

So, I’ve been indulging in doing nothing. Newspapers, TV, and tea. Feeling that little ball of steel forming inside me, waiting for the will to go out and ride like I need to in order to have the legs for the Tour Divide. It is coming, but today I’ll be cranking up the heating and keeping it lazy. Mmm… croissants!

So that’s another bike down. My bike-breaking history is not as bad as some: two aluminium, and now one titanium.

I’ve never really got that excited about the bikes, it’s always been about the riding. Last year, I happened to be in Portland at the time of the North American Handmade Bike Show and it was just about the most boring thing ever. Wow, lugs. Tidy welds… super. But what made them better than my 1×1? Lighter, and more niche but well up the slope of diminishing returns. I’m kind of glad that beardy frame-builders exist, but I don’t think I want to go hang out at a convention centre with them.

So, I’ve tried to pick bikes on the basis of functionality. The label and the finery does too much damage to the wallet when decent geometry shouldn’t cost the earth. And what makes me deserve a multi-thousand pound frame? And that’s pretty much how I look after my bikes. They’re the vehicle to a world of singletrack and fun, not an end in themselves. So clean them when you have to, and chuck them in the shed when you don’t.

The Voodoo was my most expensive bike yet. £1500 complete from Halfords, it’s still 4.5 times less expensive than a top-of-the-range “race” bike. My first ride on it was beset by problems. The head-tube badge popped off after less than half an hour. The slidey dropouts kept sliding up, so the chain kept coming off. There was no honeymoon period, but it sprinkled gold dust over the descents and whipped up the climbs. I could sort the dropouts and bollocks to the head-badge.

Since then it’s been ridden and crashed, scratched and left caked in mud, hosed down and ridden through rivers. And the mantra has been “forget about the bike” – if it’s good enough to get me there and back with a grin, then it’s good enough. This summer I rode other bikes for a while as the rear wheel from the Voodoo was away for serious repairs. When it came back, I hated that bike. Too whippy and unstable. Too big to crouch low. But I settled back in and the ride came back. I knew how far I could lean forwards, how much I could grab an edge from the tyres, how to flick my hips over jumps and drops.

So, I’m sad that I can’t have those ride experiences right now. The Voodoo is with Halfords while they decide whether I’m a fat ape who runs his seatpost too high or a victim of a dodgy weld. Part of me hopes that they don’t send a new frame, then I can go choose something else. But that ignores the money and the important thing:

The ride.

For now, it’s fun time on the Pug. I don’t know what I’m going to end up riding next week, but as long as the trails offer up challenges with one hand and fun with their, it doesn’t matter. I suppose I’ll want a new bike for the Divide, though 🙂

And late with posting about it. But the festivities were pretty good.

It was an early start so that Emily could go swimming with her club and I could sneak in a ride. As I pulled into the Look Out car-park, it was remarkably quiet but it was also 7.30am. I hadn’t ridden off-road in about a week and every time that happens, I revert a bit to being an indoors person. The air felt cold and I wanted to start out wearing a jacket. In fact, part of me didn’t want to start at all. But as soon as I turned those cranks, a massive weight left my shoulders and a massive grin slapped me in the face. Oh, yeah – bikes are awesome! Everything felt good: the bike felt lively underneath me, the trails were in good shape, and I was loving it. No time to ponder age, there was singletrack to go for!

There’s a trail we know as “the rooty trail of death”, and it has claimed victims. I came into it having pedalled and pumped and ragged my way from the car-park. My iPod was thumping and images from last night’s Earthed DVD danced around in my brain. You know the rest. All speed and no plan, my front tyre went diagonally along a root, bounced off a mound of earth, and back into a tree. I tipped over the bars in semi slow motion, seeing the tree stump that I was going to land on. There was only time to go loose before I hit the ground.

At first, I couldn’t move at all. Then I could get up, but the pain was all-consuming. Slowly it faded to the point where I could think. I’d kinda spoiled a good ride and set myself up for a painful birthday. Damnit. The dead leg meant that I couldn’t ride back up the other side of the hollow I’d flapped into. The graze on my hip was sore under my jersey. I kept up the ride, though, knowing that these things fade.

My style was cramped now, and never as free as the first 1/2 hour. Still, it was a ride and you can’t knock it. One patch of crash damage below…

The next part of the day was present-from-Emily time. Heelys! Ever since they came out, I’ve been jealous of todays kids growing up in a world with wheely trainers. It turns out that they come in adult sizes, so now I have my own. We went down to Hyde Park to give them a spin. With my battered legs, it was hard to balance on the wheels but I got there in the end. Emily’s roller-blades were much quicker, but the Heelys got the attention (possibly in amusement/sympathy, but they were fun).

And in-between, there was time for Anish Kapoor‘s very playful works at The Royal Academy of Art. From sort of woven concrete in forms that echo industrial manufacturing, caves, and primitive art to huge mirrors that put the whole building into a snow-globe, to a giant block of wax that travelled through the gallery, it was fun. And then there was Homer’s giant belly-button.

So, older and still none-the-wiser.

After an annoying session of fixing bikes (broken cranks on the Balfa, snapped rack mounts on the Karate Monkey, buckled wheel on the Voodoo, Rockhopper built as stand-in for KM), I took my frustrations out on the Voodoo’s gear hanger.

Now I have a nice Ti gear-hanger key fob. Take that bike maintenance!

This might make me a singlespeeder, though…

A few weeks ago, I broke an eyelet off of the back of my Karate Monkey. It’s my work bike so I frequently have to carry loads of stuff in the panniers, and one day it was just too much. The bottom of the rack broke free of the frame and made a horrendous noise as it jammed into the rear cog/chain.

Keeping it real, I took the bike to my local garage and they brazed the eyelet back on. Hooray for steel frames! But the cheers were premature… today one side failed due to incompetence, then the other side (the recently fixed one) broke off again leaving me with over 5 miles to get home. Doh!

The incompetence was hearing that something was loose on my way to work and deciding to fix it when I got there. The number one thing I’ve learned about riding bikes a long way in various places is “fix it now, it can only get worse if you leave it.” But, like an idiot, I left it anyway. I went round a corner, and suddenly the back of the bike went crazy as a bolt fell out and my load got jiggy. I paced up and down near the site of the wobble, but I couldn’t find the bolt. Nearly 10 miles to get to work and 5 miles back. Time to improvise and (would you believe it?!), no cable ties.

The one thing I did have was my cable lock, so I worked it around the frame, rack, and pannier itself. Pulling it as tight as I could, I had low expectations. But bodge-tastically, it held. I got all the way to work without as much as a rattle. Sweet.

Then, on the way home, I hulked the bike around on the way up a bridge (they pass for hills in London). There was the hideous noise again as the non-bodged side of my panniers snapped off the frame again. OK, now it’s more than 5 miles with a bike lock holding one side of my panniers and nothing holding the other. I jammed the free side into a convenient bit of dropout and thought smooth thoughts all the way home.

Luck of luck, I made it. Adding to my luck, it was only a few days ago that I got my new saddle bag from Epic Designs. The perfect replacement for my panniers (at least for now). I think I’m going to be in the market for a steel frame with tougher drop-outs now. And I’m going to loctite the damn things into place!

Well, last weekend was Maxx Exposure and once again the sun shone on me (at least until it went down). I’d imagine that 75 miles of chalk and dark would be quite intimidating in the wet, but when I arrived at Beachy Head it was all dust and ice-cream vans.

I was pretty motivated for this one. No racing in a while had given over to a month or so of proper training rides where I cranked out single rides over 70 miles every weekend. If I was going to get back in a competition, I wanted to go well. The only hitch in my preparation had been a slip-up at work that meant I’d had to race up to Harrow (the far end, 18 miles) at high speed to pick something up from a school and zip over to another school (6 miles away) before everyone went home, and then a 15 miles return trip. It had felt good to zip around London on fresh legs, but I knew that it wasn’t the right preparation for the weekend.

Nonetheless, the good weather meant that my plan of riding the race, sleeping for a few hours and then riding back again seemed like it could fly. My kit list looked like this:

Outbound:
2x 1.5 L bottles Maxim
Malt loaf
9 bar

Back:
12 scoops dry Maxim
Lemon squash
Malt loaf
9 bar
Fresh riding top
ipod

Camping:
Muesli
Spork
Torq Recovery
Tent
Sleeping bag
Thermarest
Socks
Underwear
Fleece
Pegs!

Lights:
2x Ay Up
2x 6h batteries
3x 3h batteries
Extension lead
Petzl

I was being pretty safe about taking loads of kit. I was hoping to finish the race in 7 to 7.5 hours but carrying 9 hours of food and light, plus a spare light and extra battery. I wasn’t expecting to change from a short-sleeve top on the bike, but took a jacket anyway. Fortunately, my camping/return gear was shipped to the end for me. Even so, I wasn’t ultra-light but I wasn’t going to be rescued by anyone.

The safety briefing was more amusing than these things usually manage. Apparently, a rider had run into the back of a sleeping cow last year and complained when he got covered in cow poo. Mind the cows, then.

Soon enough, we were off though, and I was spinning like a fool. I know these races are long, but getting caught behind people in the first hour is really frustrating so I tried to push on without being an arsey racer. It was great to see the green landscape stretching and rolling ahead, with cliffs standing tall to the sea. I flowed and cranked and hoped that the lactic pain from yesterday’s London riding would dissipate.

Things thinned out pretty quickly and I soon found myself behind a sponsored but not very elite rider. In typical style, he shut a gate in my face when I was only 2 bike lengths away. Charming. There are some fast chalk descents in this first section and I cruised up behind him with my hands loose and my brain mellow. I could carry way more speed than him, but decided not to overtake and risk a pinch-flat on the rougher line. Backing off, I followed him down to another gate. At least he held this one, but as I slowed I could feel my back tyre bouncing too much… I had pinched anyway.

I stuck in a new tube as quickly as I could with many riders going by. So much for not getting held up in the early stages. Making double-sure I hadn’t been lazy about reinflating, I was off again. Up to checkpoint 1 was a steady stream of overtaking and jolly riders. Everyone was enjoying our high-speed ribbon of South Downs. I knew the approach to CP1 from riding that area with Emily a few weeks ago, so I could remember our sunny cow-herding antics as I hurtled through the dark descent and kept a sharp look-out for them cows.

The checkpoint was fairy-lit, but only the briefest of stops for me. I hoped to refill on water once later, but otherwise stay self-sufficient. The climb out of there is tough. It is steep enough to be a bit too hard to fully attack, but not steep enough for a slow grind. So a slow grind attack got me there, and straight down the other side only pausing to offer help to a rider with an uncooperative light-mount.

I was feeling pretty strong, only about 2 hours in and just closing down each red-lit bike in front of me. Passing people in the open terrain, the red rear would turn to white front light and seem to follow me forever. Eventually, I’d look back though and see the source was dropping back but the modern beams cast huge distances. I hadn’t run both of my Ay Ups together in a while and it was turning out to be fantastic. The bar mount gave me shadows to pick out rocks and holes, the helmet mount let me look round corners. I could look where I wanted to go and let peripheral vision take care of the immediate trail – just like in the day.

Most of the rest of the race was a blur. The white trail glowed like an imagined thing, and I just kept going, deliberately pressuring myself towards speed. I came across one racer who seemed to be a local and pretty friendly but singlespeed necessity dropped him on a climb. I came across another who was taking things pretty seriously but got away when I had puncture number 2. With the second puncture, I gave up any calculations of where I would finish. I just wanted to push hard and see what happened.

So it was a great surprise to see Mr Serious with about 5 miles to go. I could see he was suffering and tried to chat, but it wasn’t going anywhere. And then he tried to race me up every rise. Still keeping it chatty, I turned the screw. My pace turned up and up, I used my attempts to cheer him as a way of showing that I wasn’t out of breath. It wasn’t nice, but he’d been rude and was acting for all the world like he was going to try to out-sprint me to the line. Then, with 3 miles to go, he stopped. It took me a distance to notice and, looking back, he seemed ok. I debated going back to help, but decided that he would have said something if he was in real trouble.

So I rode on, and into QE park. As I was riding, I could remember how this stage felt last time. I had been suffering badly then, but now I was cruising. Good. I crossed the line and that was it. About 7.5 hours for 75 miles, and a pretty enjoyable ride.

It was time to refuel, pitch my tent and get some sleep before heading back. Sandwich, Torq recovery, dry clothes, bed. Nice.

Through the night, I could hear other riders coming in. The last guy took about 12 hours, ouch. By morning, I lay in my tent wondering if there was a way out of riding back. Unable to think of one, I went about the necessities. Breakfast, loo, pack up tent. I had my camping kit in a big Camelbak and last night’s kit in a normal Camelbak. With no space to spare, I rode out of the campsite with my little bag strapped to the outside of my big one. As I left, an organiser asked where I was riding back to. I told him Eastborne, and he thought I was joking.

It was tough to get going, and I felt further disheartened as someone out for a normal ride cruised past my rolling trudge. The day was still beginning though, and I hoped that the stiffness would evapourate with the mist.

On the way back, I was using the public taps described on the SDD site and it wasn’t too long before I reached the first. I dropped my pack on the ground and made no hurry to refill my bottles. This was going to be a long day and I hate carrying loads on my back. It is really good that a national trail like this has the taps. They open up all kinds of independent travel along it. For walkers, bikers, or horse-riders carrying food is OK but carrying enough water would be an absolute killer.

The stop had helped and I could appreciate unwinding the route in reverse, this time with views. Postcard sights of rolling hills and trees connected me to the sea in the distance. The trail was busy with other users and it was nice to see them out. I had very small reserves, though, and any kind of real hill was pushing me off the bike and into a depressing push-fest. As soon as I got to the top, my good mood would be back and the miles would fly by. So, I tried to settle into doing this all day and knowing that arriving would take care of itself.

Unfortunately, it was hot… baking hot. And I wasn’t drinking enough. The day wore on and I wore out until 25 miles from the end I just lay down near a tap and considered bail-out options. I knew I didn’t have the legs to ride up the remaining hills so it was going to be a long pushing session with aching shoulders and no real rewards. So, I did bail. I caught a train from Lewes to Eastborne and finished off pushing up the tarmac to Beachy Head.

Looking back on the weekend it was fun, but disappointing. Matt Page had beaten me by an hour in the race, and I’d bailed on the ride home. It’s hard to know how to react to the race… averaging 10mph despite 2 punctures is pretty good by the standard of what I was aiming for, but a world away from the top riders. So what’s the point of training hard and spending so much time if I’m still in the second division? I’ve either got to be faster or riding for another reason. Iditarod this year and Great Divide next year are for their own reasons – they’re days in the mountains, they have their own beauty and rewards, the race is just a pretext. But UK races are usually another matter. As a piece of riding, they mostly suck. The competition is what makes them and the closer you get to the front, the harder it is to take the next step.

So maybe I should ride for fun and ride for epic and skip the race part. Or maybe it’s just winter coming on 🙂

Hooray for things beginning with “Max”. Not “Maxed out! Stoked!” like some sort of Californian, but Max for Maxxis, Maxim, and Maxx Exposure.

First there were tyres. I’ve been running Racing Ralphs for the last few months. They’re light, fast-rolling, and all-round grippy. But they’re expensive and fragile in rocky environments. So with one set of them shredded beyond use, it was time to get another set (for racing, duh!) and something for everyday riding. Being a magazine-skeptic and a cheapskate (and stealing the idea from Tim B), I went for Maxxis High Rollers. By picking them up in an actual shop, I was able to get my hands on their zillion different versions and go for 2.35, 60a, wire. Big, cheap, not too sticky.

Now until I read an article in the one good magazine, Dirt, I thought tyre were somewhat simple. Then, I saw a WTB tyre designer saying that their Weirwolf tyres weren’t very popular because there’s a big gap between the central knobs and the side ones. So as you lean over, you get grip at the vertical, slip in-between, and then more grip when you get leaned all the way over. With my old (lesser) skills, I hated that tyre. High Rollers look kind of similar and ride as he described. They brake and accelerate with gobs of traction in a straight line. They carve amazingly if you give it some. But if you only lean a bit, then they drift. Since I’ve been working my skills upwards recently, the aggressive carve has come into force and I love it. I jammed my weight down so hard in one corner this weekend that the bike hopped itself out of the exit. The weight shift had given me the grip to snap around the corner and a giggle-inducing jump/acceleration out of it. Fantastic.

On your left, High Rollers. Big aggressive middle bit, big aggressive sides, big gap in between.  (the picture must be from a small size, it’s more noticable on the real tyre). On your right, Racing Ralphs. Lots of little knobs mean similar traction the whole way round and not much drag.

Then there was Maxim. I’ve been riding on a diet of Malt Loaf, Oat Cakes, nuts, potatoes, and water. It has worked and I’ve been able to feel smug about not putting expensive sports-crap in my body. But I’ve also been comprehensively out-ridden by top riders who do use all that stuff. So I did a little experiment. Convention among these sport drink sellers seems to be that you need 1 g of carbs per kilo of body weight per hour. Looking at the back of my Malt Loaf, that’s 1.5 loaves per hour. Crikey! I usually eat 1 loaf over about 4 hours. Since Emily has a big tub of Maxim from her swims, I used some on my big weekend ride. 3 scoops (180 g of carbs) per bottle with some lemon squash for taste. I rode for 2 hours with 1/4 bottle per half hour. Then two hours with 1/2 a malt loaf per hour. Then two more hours on the carbs. Then 1 more hour with nothing (should have planned that better). Now, I know that it’s dry around here at the moment and that I’m getting back into training so feeling pretty good, but that was the longest time that I’ve ever felt that powerful on a bike. It was unbelievable, 6 hours in and I was still playing around. Still smiling. And still making more than 10 mph average in hilly terrain. The bonk when I ran out of food was pretty gruelling but, if I take plenty with me, this could be a new source of speed and freshness.

And finally, there’s Maxx Exposure. Named after Exposure Lights (which often seem to have Maxx in the name but aren’t as nice as Ay Ups), it’s an 85 mile night race along the South Downs way. You get to see the white cliffs of the South Coast at sunset and then the night is yours in a big point-to-point race with fairy-lit, sofa-equipped checkpoints. I haven’t done this one in a while, but I’m planning a South Downs Double, so it seems like a fun way to ride the route in the meantime. Ordinarily, you set up your tent at the end, they bus you to the start, and you ride back to the campsite. With my eyes on an upcoming double, I’m going to drop my tent at the end, and drive to the start. I’ll ride the race, sleep a bit, then turn round and ride 85 miles back to the car again. Or something like that. It’ll be silly fun.

Some photos that summarise the summer.

Welsh Ride Thing: Some good views!
Welsh Ride Thing: We’re not obsessed by cows (honest).
Welsh Ride Thing: Not a bad view from your canvas bedroom.
Zorbing:
Just before the start of Emily’s swim of Lake Zurich:
During the Lake Zurich swim:

Northern France in a The Mystery Machine (unknown cyclist):
Bringing gourmet cooking (and tea) to le froggies. Mmm… beanfeast:
Cow pretending not to be interested in farmer carrying food near campervan parking spot number 2 (not obsessed by cows, remember):
Monet’s garden in Giverny:
For some people the hippy van may have caused them to wear flowers in their hair, not me:
The aforementioned flip flops. Not performance footwear, not a performance summer:
Faux free-rider contemplation (while Adam finds his focus with the camera):
The aforementioned big drop:

I was supposed to be going to Austria for my mum’s birthday this week, which would have been a lot of fun. Time to have walks, dinners, drinks… chilled out stuff with no connection to bikes. Unfortunately, a couple of inches of snow intervened. As usual South East England fell to pieces. No flights, buses, or underground in London. No underground? It’s under ground!

The positive to take from it has been snow riding straight from my front door and chance to write one or two things here that had been brewing as ideas.