First 'biggie'of the year

Route and section - not quite the intended Jack and Grace Cotton Audax

Last night I was told that potential partners for doing the Jack and Grace Cotton Sportive out of North Bristol had evaporated. Ah well, I thought; do the club ride instead. I even but a post on FB to say I'd be there - but it wouldn't post. Thanks FB!
So there I am this morning driving to Clevedon to the club ride thinking as to whether doing the Audax was actually a better idea. I could see from the motorway that it was raining in Clevedon. Decision made.
I got signed in just in time to have missed a wave of starters with 20 minutes to go before the next group left. I decided to go on my own - I'd doubtless be on my own for most of the day, I might as well start like that as well. Feeling good. Wind at back, flat road, 20+ mph and I started reeling people in. Going well. Arrived at the first check-point. Fortunately there were others there as, due to complete inexperience of audax rides, I had no idea what to do. I didn't have my glasses either so I couldn't read the writing on the card. Some friendly guy sorted me out with a pen and I wrote the last post time from the postbox which he said I should. He could have told me to write down which royal's crest was on the front. I'd have been no wiser, but fortunately audax folk aren't like that, it seems.
Lovely flattish roads heading north through south-west Gloucestershire. What a route! Pretty villages, open countryside, wind behind. More 'others' getting reeled in. Arrived in Berkley. Popped in the grocers to borrow a pen to write down the name of the cafe on the corner (friendly guy had also told me I needed to do this). Conversation in the grocers turned to how far; "60 miles! - I 'm jealous that you can" says a lady customer - who I then get to read the next instruction to me which says I have to stop at a 'sign in' in Epney after 48km. Good, good. Where in Epney? Nothing on the card; should have the course notes for that and of course, given the late decision to ride the audax, I hadn't got them.
Nice person number 4 helped me out. I reeled in a fellow audaxist and asked him if he knew where we were stopping. "Pub. In Epney. Anchor I think. You'll see the bikes outside". With that we parted. It was 'The Anchor'. There were cyclists. Signed in, washed the outside of my bidons off, as they were now carrying about the same weight as one of my cycling shoes in mud, and carried on. The route was now across the wind and therefore a bit slower. But not much - still going well.

The Anchor at Epney - with cyclists

Approaching a roundabout on the south west fringe of Gloucester I glanced down for directions. Blank screen. My Garmin had turned itself off. Oh yey! No route card and no Garmin. This just got harder, lots harder. It shouldn't have gone off - it wasn't short of charge. It wasn't wet. But it had. It did re-start and re-load the course but it never gives directions when this happens, just a trail of purple across the roads and when the roads get thin the line gets invisible. It rapidly went invisible. There resulted a trek around the recently built 'domestic zone' of any new town in Britain; which this time happened to be called Quedgley. Forwards and backwards. Exploratory. Lost. Eventually decide that the only course of action was to get on the A38 and head south with a view to turning off and hoping to re-hit the audax route further on.

Lost in Quedgley

It worked. south down the A38, east on a B road towards Stonehouse (always reminds me of the politician, John Stonehouse, though for the life of me I can't remember why I remember him). On a corner a minor road joined from the left and there were people emerging from it that I recognised as folk I'd briefly interacted with and then gone on past earlier in the day. Back in business then.
Now at this point you might think that I'd cycle with these folk with a view to being certain of the route. I meant to. I didn't work. For the first of a number of occasions from that point of the ride I found that I'd left them (and subsequently others) behind fairly quickly - but I had a strong purple line so I wasn't too worried. I certainly wasn't concerned enough.
It all went swimmingly well as far as the next sign in point - a farm shop cafe. You can see where it is on the section at the top of the blog - the spiky bit at 92km. Where I left the route in the final section I don't know. I was happy that I was following a purple line except that I got to a junction and had a choice or orange roads; not good. I hung around for a while to see if anyone would ride past; surely someone would - then I could just follow them. No one did. They wouldn't though would they. They were on the right route.
Nice person number 5, an elderly lady who lived at the house on the junction, was happy to direct me towards Aztec West (where I'd started from) though not entirely sure of the roads towards the end. It worked. All I needed was nice person number 6 to give me the final directions. Back. Arrived. Hooray. It's all closed! Bad! Arrives nice person number 7, one of the riders of the audax,who was happy to direct me to the signing off check-point, just about a mile away the other side of the M5.
Perhaps I will learn the lesson. The route was supposed to be 64 miles, I did 71. In Quedgley I must have taken a 'long cut' as I got to the farm shop cafe 4 km too late. From there it was supposed to be about 20 km, By the time I'd been to the last check-point and back again I did 32.  On the plus side I'd powered round the 71 miles I'd ended up doing with a very few cyclists going past me and then staying in front of me all day. Of course, they didn't get the chance at the end.
For the record there's rather less of Gloucestershire now than there was this morning. I brought quite a bit of it home attached to my bike, me, my helmet, bidons... My wife just emerged from the bathroom. She says that 'The next time I come home wearing Gloucestershire could I please spend longer rinsing down the bath". Seems fair.

Speaking a new language

This evening I went for a blast up Sa Colobra. Half an hour's seriously hard work. Legs know I've done it - though I think I could do it more intensively. Heart rate maintained at at least 85% threshold for over 20 minutes and over 95% for about 8. I never left the conservatory, of course.

Last week two new toys entered my life; a turbo trainer
Elite Volare review by Matt Williams

and a heart rate monitor...

Dangerous toys! Suddenly I find myself in 'training sessions' having measured my threshold heart rate and maintaining percentages of it because a youtube video clip tells me to do so. ...and it's fun.

I never was a fan of cycling in the dark, and when there's cold to add to it I'm not going to get motivated. Possibly; once or twice; but the last four years says no - not regularly.  So I invested (spent) my Christmas and birthday monies on the new toys so that I can cycle in the dark with the lights on, in the cold (if I choose), but without going anywhere. For ages I looked at turbo trainers as something I'd hate, just sitting there, peddling away, same scenery, bored. Wrong! The list should read; pushing myself to the point of dripping all over the towel under the bike, matching cadence and effort to a well thought out schedule (thanks GCN Cycling), watching the scenery go past - tonight Majorca - and absolutely intensively involved. For any body that wants to try the session - here's the link...
GCN Sa Colobra climb video

Mind you - this technology has issues. Saturday morning I was out on a club ride. There were only four of us as the weather had been forecast to be terrible, though it wasn't. It was windy. Jim hadn't got long and went home early. That left three. Coming back across Puxton Moor into the wind I was leading with the other two (I thought) tucked in behind me. It was hard work. I decided that, as I couldn't maintain any serious speed into the wind I would motivate some effort via the heart rate monitor. I found a rate that seemed to fit with decent effort (about 160 bpm) and pedalled at a rate to maintain it. It was windy remember - this rate managed to maintain only about 14mph! Approaching the left turn at the end of the moor I turned to my companions to express some joy that we'd soon be out of the wind. They weren't there. They weren't close. They weren't within the half mile that I could see back across the moor. At this point I was bad - sorry folks. I knew it was supposed to start raining around midday and the sky was getting dark with associated drips. I decided to push on for home. The new toy took over again - I deliberately maintained a heart rate of 160-170 back to Clevedon with the effect that I was back at the car, changed and driving away when the rain started properly. It also served to do the threshold heart rate test.

So what now? The handlebars on my bike are starting to look like a plane cockpit - basic computer, Garmin, now the heart rate monitor and, at this time of year, the lamp holder even if not the lamp. Even these have had to be arranged so that I can fit the 'difficulty changer' of the turbo trainer on as well for those evening sessions in the dark. MAMIL I have been for a while, now it seems we have to add MAMWD - pronounced as Welsh of course (Mamuud) and meaning 'middle aged man with devices'. If I'm going to speak this new language of heart rates, thresholds, turbo trainers and percentage maximum effort then I may as well add to it. On Thursday GCN tell me I'm in for a high intensity workout. I'm just off to check the dictionary of 'CycleTrainingSpeak' to see what that means.

DP

No through route

I reckon I need a cyclocross bike. 35 miles this morning; far from vast, but about half of them were off road. On my road bike. Poor bike!

The whole point was to seek out the local equivalent of the passage to India going west from Europe. That, as you may remember, lead to the discovery of America. Well, rediscovery. Again. How Columbus gets the credit for the discovery of an already populated country is a testament to the idea that the powerful write history. Our local equivalent would be the route from Wick St. Lawrence to Kingston Seymour. There's clearly a road missing through that area. At present the only route is a several mile detour via Congresbury and Yatton. Or is it? Close study of the OS1:25,000 map suggested that there was a possible route on a track. I'm not averse to tracks if they're in decent condition. One of my favourite rides of this year was the club Strada Bianche where we connected various bits of 'not road' together one Saturday morning, all punctuated by nice 'un-jolty' sections on road to make it feel like a reasonable road bike excursion. So, decent weather for the first occasion in three weekends - time to investigate...

"Sorry", says I, realising that the couple of ladies walking towards me were about to accost me for cycling along their private property. "Somebody told me there was a way for cycling through to Clevedon along here". This had the desired effect. The invader was now a poor lost cyclist. "Oh no, it's not this one. You need the route through where they're doing the building of the new sluice. Up that way". Promising...
Half a dozen climbed gates later I was the other side of River Yeo following what will clearly be a very cycle-able path once it's finished (and the gates are removed). Looking good. Right up to the point where I met the gate coated in barbed wire with some very nasty loose and tangly sharp stuff on the top. The folk at the farm that the path is going to go through are clearly putting off the advent of cyclists for as long as possible. Hopefully, in due course, they'll become more welcoming - it would be a great place to open a cafe!

As the map above shows (of that section of the ride), I didn't have any luck with any of the other investigations of that area either. This wasn't the way to America, India or, indeed, Kingston Seymour.

There's been another section that has been inviting investigation; getting from Kingston Seymour onto the coastal path that comes south from Clevedon. We included a short section of that when we did the Strada Bianche. I had hoped to investigate it after solving the north west passage from Wick St. Lawrence. In the circumstances the only solution was to go via Congresbury. Naturally, being in the mind to go 'off-roading', I checked out a short link from the Strawberry Line into Yatton. It worked; but boy was it muddy. So muddy that I failed to steer a corner and fell (well unintentionally dived) off into the ditch at the side. Yerrgh.

Every picture tells a story. This is the picture...

All the tracks that go off Ham Lane look, on the map, as though they have a chance of connecting onto a track that would be the continuation of the coast path from Clevedon. That one is a good one; a tarmac route that has a lumpy surface; tarmac but not a road, great for adventurous folk on road bikes. As the tracks go off Ham Lane they all look like they they could push through to the coast. None do. I had a great time doing easy grade cyclo-cross (avoiding the harder stuff as there would be no way that a club ride would take it on anyway) but no through route was discovered.

I had one more section to investigate. Avoiding Clevedon itself by discovering that Colehouse Lane really is a decent road, I headed back towards Kingston Seymour on the Yatton road. When Mike and I had done the original ride checking of the PacTri Strada Bianche we'd discovered a likely looking track going off in Northfield (north of Yatton at the Kingston Seymour turn) that could be an alternative to road cycling the B3133 back into town.

No good either. What might have been a track extension wasn't. There was a path, but nothing for road bikes. So, as I said in the title, no through route. Lots tried, all but one failed and that was hardly a rousing success. But hold on - I had a great time for two and a bit hours checking it all out, riding unlikely looking lanes that turned into passable tracks that then became impassable tracks so I turned round and tried the next one. Fun. How many of those impassable tracks would 'go' on a cyclo-cross bike as opposed to a road one with 23mm tyres? Expensive question. I suspect that part of the answer to the bigger question was that I chose to return home via the Strawberry Line from Yatton...

Dave

What Goes Up...

...will trigger a Garmin or Strava segment. It's getting to the stage where plotting routes on a Garmin in some areas has to be done with the segments removed or you just can't see the roads. I am partially to blame!
Until reasonably recently I was only tracking myself on the segments set up by others - there were enough after all. Cheddar - choose which version you want to use; Burrington - start from the road, start from the cattle grid, finish at the car-park, finish at the 'genuine top'... You get the picture - many. Why so many I wondered. The last few weeks may have given me a clue on this, I feel. First - let's take the case of Harptree Hill. We rode this on a club ride a fortnight ago. I thought we'd ridden it pretty well so I was interested to see how we compared. Having loaded the activity onto the computer - no possible comparison. A segment had been posted, but it continued across the flat section on the top as well as taking in the hill. No comparison possible. However...



Location, gradient profile and list of top times - Harptree Hill (the steep bit)

...by virtue of creating a segment myself it was possible to investigate the bit I was interested in. 13th for weight and age group - not bad, not great, but decent. Improvable. Given that it's improvable I decided that I'd leave the segment up - some more green pollution on the Garmin map.
We have an agreement in the club that you can basically do what you want on a hill as long as you stop at the top and wait for others. This works; everyone gets to climb at a pace that suits them and fools like me that want to take things on can do so. Today was such a day. I've been getting steadily better at doing Bleadon Hill over the past few years. Today I gave it a real blast. I knew the time would be good. It was with keen interest that I opened up the segment file and - 17 minutes and basically on the bottom of the pile. What? On closer investigation I realized that the segment as created by someone else went to a rise further along the crest than the point where it was sociable to stop and wait for the group to catch me up. The 17 minutes was going to include a lot of standing with a bike. Time to create another segment - I wanted to know how I'd gotten on. So I did...

Garmin Segment Times List - Bleadon Hill to West Mendip Way

Wehay! Not just a good time compared to age group and weight but 6th of all male riders! 2.3 seconds behind Mike Wall (whoever Mike may be) and he had a following wind, I had a headwind. So, the competitor in me says that I can improve on that 6th; I can get into the top 5. Does that matter; probably not. Does it give a reason to go blast up that hill again at some stage; oh yes! So the segment has to stay. More pollution.

Back to Mike Wall. I don't think I've met you/him. Somehow though I feel a familiarity. Mike's is a name that sits above me on a number of segment time lists, and below me on a few. Shalice, whoever you are, the same applies - though I don't think I've ever beaten you on anything. Paul777d, Clubrunnerlive, Retromop, DaveBRC, AlThomoThomson; all familiar names that I've become used to seeing on the lists. And not just the local lists. Retromop appears on the 'Descent to Llansoy' over the border in Wales. There are other familiar seeming names on the lists for the Cotes des Cochons in the Vezerre Valley in France; certainly English names not French ones; Nick Orme, Adrian Cogger. If there weren't so many segments it could be fun to have days where everyone that had recorded a time was invited to come and have another go, or eat a burger at the bottom/top/end, or - well anything really. How many of these people would we actually find we recognize?
So what are segments for? Personal challenge? Unlicensed racing? I guess that there's a range of answers to that. How long will the craze last for? I don't know. Fun though... and makes my legs ache!
Dave

Last Sportive of the Season

If you've ever ridden a sportive on your own then you will know that their are two alternatives for how you get to ride it. Two alternatives; no real choices! Either you get to ride round with others or, as I did when I rode my first, the Shropshire Devil three years ago, you get to spend the day on your own. That day it was cold, so cold that it didn't rain, it snowed - not much, but it snowed. I'd decided that I would find a group and stay with them. At the start I became aware that I was near a team from Liverpool University; great thinks I, I'll hook in with them. 2 miles of hanging on the back later I gave up. I could do the sportive at my pace or fail before the first feed stop at theirs. I spent the rest of the day working my way up to groups that looked useful; standard pattern; a few miles on my own, see a group, a couple of miles to chase them down, arrive at a hill and find that I'd lost them, a few miles on my own... On a club ride I'd have stopped and waited. We don't do that on sportives. Why not?
Last weekend I rode the Evans RideIt Wiltshire Downs Sportive - snappy title guys. Great weather, cool but not cold, no wind, clear, sunny, what more could I ask for? In the run up to it I'd been expecting to only do the 60 mile version; since the cricket season finished I'd done a few 50 mile rides but no 'long' ones. Once I saw that weather forecast it was inevitable that I'd do the 80. For sure I told myself even as I was doing the first 20 miles of the route that I would make a choice as I approached the ride split but, in truth, I'd made the call two days before. So 80 miles when I've only been training for 60 - this would be fun.

Hitching in with a group at the start is easy. There was I, waiting at the tape to be first away in the second wave, when the starters called me through with the first; "You heard the safety talk? OK, go". For the record, I'm now in discussion with Evans as their note taker didn't get my number and I therefore appear as DNS (did not start) - this I find mildly annoying; it doesn't matter, but somehow it doesn't seem fair. Anyway, ideal position to select ride partners from. Having learned from experience I don't hook in with the fast guys these days; I look for a 17-18mph on the flat group. Having ridden through half the first wave I found myself losing ground on the other half. Time to bridge over. Chase down complete I found a possible pair. We arrived at a hill. They fell out of the back door. Back on my own - oh, so be it. A couple of miles later they chase me down on the flat. Ah good. We ride together, we meet a hill, repeat. 5 miles later we're back together. Another hill. Finally I managed to drop in behind them on the rise and we stay together for a distance. Now this might seem an obvious move but, unless you're a way better bike handler than I am, it's hard work staying safe riding slower than you want, a short distance behind someone you don't know, who has a habit of changing pace and going in 'not straight lines'. Ah the experience that we take for granted on club rides. Calls of 'hole', 'slowing' and so on are just what happens - part of keeping us out of hospital. In the sportive situation I tend to assume that other riders are going to make these calls - I'd be better off assuming they won't. Still, Andy and his mate who's newish to cycling serve well; I've found a riding group. And let's be honest here, it's me I'm criticising, not Andy's mate. Whenever the issue arrives on a club ride I whip round the side, cycle up the hill and then wait for others at the top. Even when I did match pace with them it wasn't that I'd done anything clever, it was just that the hill wasn't as steep and we were far better matched for pace on it. The first two were much steeper - see the pic below - those two pointy 'thorn' type things at the start of the medium/long rides - followed by the ramps.

Feed stops - good or bad? I always get amazed on club rides that some of a group will only eat at a coffee stop in the middle. I'm a hamster, always have been. When mountaineering I always went for eating 'little and often' so when it was pointed out to me pretty early in my cycling career that I'd do much better if I ate on the way round, it seemed an obvious point. It was definitely one of the things that made the early step from 35 to 45 miles being a comfortable ride. On a recent club ride I sat down with my cup of coffee at Banwell Garden Centre (good café - recommended http://banwellgardencentre.co.uk/contact-us/) and, leaning back in the chair, realised my pockets were still rather full. I duly pulled out  a couple of remaining energy bars, a breakfast bar, a couple

of gels and a Mars bar - I like to have a selection of stuff available so that I can have 'what's right for now' when it gets to eating time (every 50 minutes - in theory). The snakes at the table (snakes - eat once every few months) looked at my stache with horror. I looked at their cakes with equivalent discomfort. Anyway - feed stops. Having ridden a few sportives I'm coming to the conclusion that the 30 mile feed stop is badly placed. Seems to me that when we pull over at 30 miles we're all pretty much in a strong place. Those doing the 60 mile routes are still fine, those doing 100 mile routes are cruising. Can I put in for a 40 mile standard? We tucked into the offerings, refilled bidons and 'used the facilities' but nobody, truly - nobody, looked like they needed a break. Sunday's second feed stop, 58 miles into the 81, was a different picture. Granted it was at the top of a long hill out of Marlborough (Hackpen Hill), but the conversation was different - how much left was a common theme. By then it wasn't so much of a feed stop as a rest from the saddle for a few minutes. Rather typically for my experience of second feed stops - placed in a car park; no loo. Perhaps we just don't drink enough when riding... Perhaps those trees on the top were intended as 'enough screen'? No.

And just how focused on the road are we? The picture shows the descent off Hackpen Hill. When riding it I was oblivious to the existence of the white horse, far too concerned about getting the corners right on the drop down. Across the Somerset levels I regularly see deer, herons, buzzards... When the going gets tricky the cyclists see tarmac! Perhaps I should start a local craze for carving peat horses.
Evans may say I didn't start - but I did finish. Granted there was a patch from about 65 through to 75 miles where I was wishing the miles away but, given that I was 15 miles of training length short, I'll take that. I would have appreciated it if at least one of the four riders that used me as a tow-hook in that least section had done some work on the front before they disappeared but, as two of the four fell out backwards and the two that went off forwards I later caught and finished prior to, I guess they were in a worse place than me so perhaps they can be forgiven. That's that then: sportives done for this year - I don't fancy being committed to some wet, windy nasty in November or December. If there's a convenient hole in the weather I may go for something out of a youth hostel. My son and I have a sort of plan to do a thing - maybe out of Ilam Hall. That's the great thing about loose plans; no commitment, so you don't have to back out, just not finalise any arrangements if the weather is against you.
So, with thanks to Evans Cycling for a pleasant ride on Sunday (and a few aches on Monday) I shall draw this to a close. If your interested - the activity file for the sportive itself can be found here...
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/938101570 Perhaps it could be your season closer next year?
Happy miles.
Dave

By way of introduction...

In December 2011 I gave myself a challenge - to cycle up all the road climbs in the western Mendips that could reasonably get a grade on the Tour de France. I knew I'd need something to keep me going once the original impulse had faded so the Mendip Road Bike Climbs blog http://mrbclimbs.blogspot.co.uk/ was born.  I did them, so have many others. I still get a laugh from remembering the beaten cyclist who, when I enquired if he was OK part way up Ebbor Gorge, replied," I'm going to murder that Mendip Road Bikes guy if I get hold of him!" I didn't tell him who was cycling past. Four years and the best part of 10,000 hits later, it's time to write again.

The idea of this blog is to be broader. MRBClimbs was naturally limited by its title. This will be about rides; some in the Mendips, some not. It will be about my thoughts on whatever cycling matters have my attention at the time. It will be about the addiction that is road cycling.