Extra-long roundup for an extra-long weekend (June 2nd-5th)
Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2012 5:04 pm
In world news, Mike Hall finished his round-the-world bike ride in a record breaking 92 days, at 200 miles a day. Amazing! Locally, I didn't see any red and black Clifton body paint on the York naked bike ride so I think fatsprinter must have wussed out - see you next year 
Anyway, here's what I got up to while the Queen was having her party down in London.
The Anfield 100
If you've never heard of the 7P principle, it states that “Proper prior planning prevents piddling poor performance”. My lesson in its workings started when I noticed and entered something called the Anfield 100 mile TT on the Jubilee Monday. “Ah great” I thought, “that must be near Liverpool, I can get the direct train from York.” Later when I looked at the map, I found that it was actually some way from the 'pool, much nearer Shrewsbury. Oops.
My problems started on the Thursday before when, about to ride out to Bulmer/Ganthorpe, I noticed a big slit in my tyre. That was easy enough to replace, but my gears had also started skipping. Hoping that this was due to a gunged-up system, I gave my bike a quick clean. No joy: they still skipped. I gave my bike a deeper clean: still no joy. On the Saturday I took the offending Ergo into Cycleworks, where Fraz gave me the bad news that the shifter was indeed kaput and would need to go for a service, followed by the good news that he had a spare that I could borrow. Thanks Fraz!
My problems were not, however, at an end. My tri-bars have springs that flip up the elbow pads when I'm not using them, and one had broken, so I'd removed the pad and taken it into Barnitts. Re-fitting the pad on Sunday, a circlip went PING! and vanished. No matter how frantically I searched the floor, I couldn't find it – and I was also starting to run late for my train. What could I use to improvise? Aha, here was a spoke – that would work! It was a bit skinny but it would have to do. Shoving it in my bag along with some cutters and pliers, I made the station just in time for the last sensible service to Shrewsbury. Once aboard the train I could fettle to my heart's content, bending the spoke into something that would hold my elbow pad in place. The finished article didn't look very strong, so I planned to ride with it until it started to come off, then wang it at the nearest marshal and ride on the drops from then on. After all – I comforted myself – Roy Cromack didn't have drops, did he?
My sleeping arrangements for the night were in a village hall near the start, which was actually the HQ for the Tricycle Association 50, which was being run on the same day. I say “arrangements” but I hadn't been able to raise the organiser on the phone, so my plan was to find the hall and hope for the best, with a tent in my bag in case this didn't work out. Given Sunday's rain this was a grim prospect, so finding the hall at 10pm was a big relief, though it didn't entirely convince me that this whole Anfield 100 idea was any the less insane.
In the morning, all the rain had gone and had been replaced by clear skies. Wonderful! I pedalled to the HQ, signed on and made for the start with a good few minutes to spare. Disaster! Why had my speedo stopped working? I tried every trick in the book to coax it back to life but they were all in vain, and I was now running late for my 06:15 start slot. Oh well, I'd have to do it the old school way, on feel. I raced for the line, to find number 17 rolling into place. Damn.
Starting in the next vacant slot at 21, my one bit of proper prior preparation started to pay dividends: I'd worked out a schedule and taped it to my top tube, so I could ride to this and use it to gauge my efforts. The course started with an out-and-back up to Prees roundabout, after which it was 3.9 laps around the A53, B5063, B5062 and A442. At Prees I was three minutes down on schedule but I made up a minute on the way back. I wanted to go under 4:30:00 and had scheduled for five minutes less, for which I needed to lap the circuit every 47 minutes. If I could keep that up, I still had time.
My first lap was two minutes over-budget. It started off with some B roads that were pleasant to ride if not super-fast, which were followed by an awful drag up to Tern roundabout on the A442. This was very exposed to the wind, on a slight uphill and with bone-shaking road surface. According to my start-sheet, this event counts for some SPOCO league – I think I've found the stretch of road that makes it qualify. Every lap I dreaded the A442, all five and a half interminable miles of it, and longed for the Espley turn that meant I could speed back down the A53 towards Shawbury corner and the start of the next lap.
Lap 2 did have one thing going for it: I was due to pick up a bottle. This did provide a welcome break in the hated A442 section but to be honest, I had plenty of fluids on board. I'd started with two bottles and was handed up two more en-route – a useful service provided by the organisers – but finished with a bottle to spare, though I drunk fairly conscientiously. The same couldn't be said for food. I though I'd eaten a lot the night before but it evidently hadn't been enough, so though I'd brought a gel to eat on each lap plus a couple of spare energy bars, I felt hungry throughout the ride. The first energy bar proved almost impossible to open (7P principle again), so imagine my dismay when I dropped an almost-full gel and realised I'd need to break into the second bar. This one really did prove impossible to open, so my one foot-down moment of the whole hundred miles was when I stopped to ask someone else to open it for me.
At the end of Lap 2 I'd lost a further three minutes, so my schedule was now serving more as a reminder of how badly I was doing than an actual target to aim for. To counter the depressing lap-by-lap reminder that was behind, I was getting a cheery lap-by-lap wave from Jim Hopper of Derby Mercury. I'd first bumped into him at 5am one morning near Melton Mowbray when we were both doing 24 hour rides, now it turned out he was doing the TA 50, which used the A53 in the opposite direction. Back on the 442, Lap 3 brought with it the final realisation that this was an exercise in damage limitation when I was handed up my second bottle at 75 miles. I had 55 minutes supposedly left and there was no effing way I was gong to break the hour today! At least there were a few more bystanders, as the normal world having awoken now it wasn't silly-o'clock anymore and a few of them had come to spectate.
One last B-road stretch, one last purgatory spell up the A442 and one last sprint down the blessedly smooth A53 – and here was the chequerboard. It was all over, in 4:46:04. My first 100 and certainly the fastest century of my life, though not as fast as Richard Handley who won the day in 3:46:08. I was glad to stay within an hour of him, if only just!
That was certainly an experience and I hardly feel like I've done 100 miles - those are usually day-rides, whereas this was over so fast that my elevenses back at the HQ were only slightly late.
If you want to do 100 miles, mid-July offers you both flavours. There's the Three Bridges audax on Saturday 14th (go on, enter it, the organiser's really friendly
) or the YCF 100 mile TT on Sunday 15th. See which one you prefer!
Anyway, here's what I got up to while the Queen was having her party down in London.The Anfield 100
If you've never heard of the 7P principle, it states that “Proper prior planning prevents piddling poor performance”. My lesson in its workings started when I noticed and entered something called the Anfield 100 mile TT on the Jubilee Monday. “Ah great” I thought, “that must be near Liverpool, I can get the direct train from York.” Later when I looked at the map, I found that it was actually some way from the 'pool, much nearer Shrewsbury. Oops.
My problems started on the Thursday before when, about to ride out to Bulmer/Ganthorpe, I noticed a big slit in my tyre. That was easy enough to replace, but my gears had also started skipping. Hoping that this was due to a gunged-up system, I gave my bike a quick clean. No joy: they still skipped. I gave my bike a deeper clean: still no joy. On the Saturday I took the offending Ergo into Cycleworks, where Fraz gave me the bad news that the shifter was indeed kaput and would need to go for a service, followed by the good news that he had a spare that I could borrow. Thanks Fraz!
My problems were not, however, at an end. My tri-bars have springs that flip up the elbow pads when I'm not using them, and one had broken, so I'd removed the pad and taken it into Barnitts. Re-fitting the pad on Sunday, a circlip went PING! and vanished. No matter how frantically I searched the floor, I couldn't find it – and I was also starting to run late for my train. What could I use to improvise? Aha, here was a spoke – that would work! It was a bit skinny but it would have to do. Shoving it in my bag along with some cutters and pliers, I made the station just in time for the last sensible service to Shrewsbury. Once aboard the train I could fettle to my heart's content, bending the spoke into something that would hold my elbow pad in place. The finished article didn't look very strong, so I planned to ride with it until it started to come off, then wang it at the nearest marshal and ride on the drops from then on. After all – I comforted myself – Roy Cromack didn't have drops, did he?
My sleeping arrangements for the night were in a village hall near the start, which was actually the HQ for the Tricycle Association 50, which was being run on the same day. I say “arrangements” but I hadn't been able to raise the organiser on the phone, so my plan was to find the hall and hope for the best, with a tent in my bag in case this didn't work out. Given Sunday's rain this was a grim prospect, so finding the hall at 10pm was a big relief, though it didn't entirely convince me that this whole Anfield 100 idea was any the less insane.
In the morning, all the rain had gone and had been replaced by clear skies. Wonderful! I pedalled to the HQ, signed on and made for the start with a good few minutes to spare. Disaster! Why had my speedo stopped working? I tried every trick in the book to coax it back to life but they were all in vain, and I was now running late for my 06:15 start slot. Oh well, I'd have to do it the old school way, on feel. I raced for the line, to find number 17 rolling into place. Damn.
Starting in the next vacant slot at 21, my one bit of proper prior preparation started to pay dividends: I'd worked out a schedule and taped it to my top tube, so I could ride to this and use it to gauge my efforts. The course started with an out-and-back up to Prees roundabout, after which it was 3.9 laps around the A53, B5063, B5062 and A442. At Prees I was three minutes down on schedule but I made up a minute on the way back. I wanted to go under 4:30:00 and had scheduled for five minutes less, for which I needed to lap the circuit every 47 minutes. If I could keep that up, I still had time.
My first lap was two minutes over-budget. It started off with some B roads that were pleasant to ride if not super-fast, which were followed by an awful drag up to Tern roundabout on the A442. This was very exposed to the wind, on a slight uphill and with bone-shaking road surface. According to my start-sheet, this event counts for some SPOCO league – I think I've found the stretch of road that makes it qualify. Every lap I dreaded the A442, all five and a half interminable miles of it, and longed for the Espley turn that meant I could speed back down the A53 towards Shawbury corner and the start of the next lap.
Lap 2 did have one thing going for it: I was due to pick up a bottle. This did provide a welcome break in the hated A442 section but to be honest, I had plenty of fluids on board. I'd started with two bottles and was handed up two more en-route – a useful service provided by the organisers – but finished with a bottle to spare, though I drunk fairly conscientiously. The same couldn't be said for food. I though I'd eaten a lot the night before but it evidently hadn't been enough, so though I'd brought a gel to eat on each lap plus a couple of spare energy bars, I felt hungry throughout the ride. The first energy bar proved almost impossible to open (7P principle again), so imagine my dismay when I dropped an almost-full gel and realised I'd need to break into the second bar. This one really did prove impossible to open, so my one foot-down moment of the whole hundred miles was when I stopped to ask someone else to open it for me.
At the end of Lap 2 I'd lost a further three minutes, so my schedule was now serving more as a reminder of how badly I was doing than an actual target to aim for. To counter the depressing lap-by-lap reminder that was behind, I was getting a cheery lap-by-lap wave from Jim Hopper of Derby Mercury. I'd first bumped into him at 5am one morning near Melton Mowbray when we were both doing 24 hour rides, now it turned out he was doing the TA 50, which used the A53 in the opposite direction. Back on the 442, Lap 3 brought with it the final realisation that this was an exercise in damage limitation when I was handed up my second bottle at 75 miles. I had 55 minutes supposedly left and there was no effing way I was gong to break the hour today! At least there were a few more bystanders, as the normal world having awoken now it wasn't silly-o'clock anymore and a few of them had come to spectate.
One last B-road stretch, one last purgatory spell up the A442 and one last sprint down the blessedly smooth A53 – and here was the chequerboard. It was all over, in 4:46:04. My first 100 and certainly the fastest century of my life, though not as fast as Richard Handley who won the day in 3:46:08. I was glad to stay within an hour of him, if only just!
That was certainly an experience and I hardly feel like I've done 100 miles - those are usually day-rides, whereas this was over so fast that my elevenses back at the HQ were only slightly late.
If you want to do 100 miles, mid-July offers you both flavours. There's the Three Bridges audax on Saturday 14th (go on, enter it, the organiser's really friendly
) or the YCF 100 mile TT on Sunday 15th. See which one you prefer!