Some like it Lumpy

The forecast for the weekend was not great. Saturday morning looked like the only real opportunity to put in some kilometers in anything other than wet conditions. I made an executive decision I would put in a short hard ride on Saturday and go and take the Kona out to play in the mud on Sunday. It seemed everyone else was busy on Saturday. I would be going alone.

Except that I wouldn’t. I had planned a ride that would have a lot of climb, some of it steep, ramping to 20+% and including one ot the longest in this small hilly country.

Now I live in a valley so it is a climb to begin and that rather set the scene for the day. It was a day with few breaks everybody climbing at their own pace and then taking their turns on the front.

And hilly it was.

As ever in these group rides my aging legs were not entirely happy during the first of the climbs and I spent a fair amount of time spinning the Pickenflick’s little gears and watching people disappear up the road. It wasn’t that easy hanging on when the pace line formed either. The Pickenflick runs a super compact chainset with the little cog on the chainset being 28 and 30 out back, but a 42 -11 combo for the flats and downhills.

The Pickenflick is a wonderful thing but it does have it’s limitations. It also weighs in heavy with its 29er wheels and discs.

When we got back to my house in a little under 2 hours 48km and just over 800m ascent on the clock one of our group was not happy. “I don’t like getting the bike out for less than 50km”. So I offered the possibility of another loop of around 10-12km and another 150m. So a select group of 5 set off to keep our friend happy. We ended with just over 60km and 937m ascent.

The final route can be found here

What was most pleasing was that one of the group was a Luxembourger who rode regularly admitted to “Never having been here before in my life” and saying after checking the data from strava later “...and I learned that the was a place as high as 408m in the middle of our country”.

Another of the riders while climbing hard up to the 408m informed me that it “was beautiful”. Which came as a bit of a shock to me because I was struggling so much I had not lifted my eyes from my stem and the square meter of tarmac in front of it, but when I did he was right. Later that afternoon with a beer in my hand and Strade Bianche on the TV I checked through Strava. Plenty of new PR’s and one of our group making it into the top 5 of a descent...but I led him down, where was my medal? My gps had messed up a bit at the start of the downhill. Damn! Later still after a ticket had been put into the Strava helpdesk I got a nice email to say they had resolved it. Nice one Strava...kudos to you!

I guess being a bit heavy, riding a heavy weight bike with disc brakes and a misspent youth scraping footrests of motorcycles round the back roads of Scotland does have some benefits. Having people to chase and to sit behind also helps a lot when looking for medals it seems.

Spring is Coming

It’s a difficult time of year for me. I don’t particularly like riding roads in the wet and cold. There seems to a correlation between how inattentive car drivers are and the weather. The worse the weather them more frequently they seem to close pass or completely miss my presence on the roundabout. It is however a time when I have to put in more and more road miles. This means change.

It is the time of year when my bikes (I know, I know but hey they all get used and used well) have to swap roles.

I have 4 bikes here in Luxembourg: my road bike - the Kaon, my cyclocross bike - the Pickenflick, which is never raced but provides for extended commutes and playtime exploration in the forests; my Kona - an old school, late 20th century hardtail mountainbike and the Ute. The Ute is a special thing. It is the bike I bought 25 years ago, when at age 30 I gave up smoking and restarted cycling. When I say it is the bike I bought, what I mean is it is the frame that is left from the bike I bought. Nothing else remains. Nothing at all! The bike was a ‘hybrid’: flat bars; triple chainset; and a wonderfully 90’s  metallic purple and white paint job. It has been many things since then including a long spell as a fixed wheel commuter in Aberdeenshire. It is now reborn as a drop handlebar shopping bike/tourer with 105 gears and road tyres. Except at this time of year. This time of year it is all change.

To misquote a popular TV show “Spring is coming”. Spring brings with it some of the most fun a cyclist can have on the road, if you can call it a road. Spring brings the “Cobbled Classics” and I love them. I love everything about them. I love watching them, I love the anticipation and I love the participation. Who could not love clawing your way up the Koppenberg forced onto the very edge of the cobbles by all those people who, unable to ride it, are forced to walk? Who could not enjoy being part of 16,000 participants some serious some less so? Who could not enjoy “sprinting” against the 5 year old on his tag-a-long in the finishing chute of the Ronde van Vlaanderen and seeing his look of determination, watching the grin spread and hearing his shouts for mum to go faster? Who could not enjoy the battering of hands, wrists and backside that the cobbles of Paris Roubaix give out and arriving exhausted sore and beaten to the velodrome, find that extra bit of energy to ride up the banking and accelerate to the line?

And so the bikes need to change. The Kaon gets cleaned, serviced, wrapped in towels and placed on the turbo trainer. (a spare wheel with a trainer tyre on means it can easily be brought back onto the road if the weather turns out nice). The cyclocross (Pickenflick) gets cleaned, serviced and a nice set of 28 road tyres. It becomes the winter road bike, working on the principal train heavy race light it should mean the comparatively featherweight Kaon flies when used in anger. Which leaves the Ute being reshod to take to the mud and gravel of my forest commute.  The slightly harder gearing doesn’t hurt there either. The Pickenflick may actually be the tool of choice for both the Ronde Van Vlaanderen and Paris Roubaix, it was last year, wet cobbles and mud mean I feel happier with my overbuilt 29er wheels and disc brakes, but if the weather looks good then the Kaon will fly.

Spring, I love it, but the preparation begins early. Unfortunately if you aren’t fit enough to cover 160km with either steep climbs or prolonged accelerations at regular intervals then both rides could easily become purgatory. So Spring starts in January for me. Inevitably it begins with a post Christmas weigh in and the realisation that I have to give up beer for a few weeks (at least on school nights ;-)). Then comes the Tour of Sufferlandria “The Greatest Grand Tour of a Mythical Nation” and on top of my commute miles it brings  9 consecutive days of high intensity interval training on the newly prepped Kaon.

Then come the hard miles, persuading myself to head out at weekends into the cold and damp for 2-5 hours a time on the newly dressed for the road Pickenflick. This I make easier each year with the purchase of a new piece of kit. Last years Gabba and this years Sportful Fiandre Light jacket (both rather excellent if I may say so) have forced me out the door knowing that it is the only way I can justify purchasing such items.  

The ride home is also hard. As the light fades and the temperature drops  I know I have to take that turn left instead of right; to force the Ute with its road gears and 25 year old steel frame, to take the long way home,. But you know what, every year that moment of pointing the Ute down some singletrack mudslide, some hill that it’s canti brakes and skinny cx tyres shouldn’t cope with, every year that moment turns to the biggest of grins. You can't help but smile, when forearms pumped, the tatty (now blue(ish)) steel bike not only survives but sets a Strava PR. Every year I am rewarded by this scruffy old bike, every year I give thanks for the decision to give up smoking, take up cycling. At this time of year, full of change, anticipation and trepidation, every year this bike reminds me of the joy that one decision has brought me and every year I promise that while other bikes may come and go the Ute, in one form or another, will be with me for a lot longer yet.

Winter is fading...Spring is coming. Spring...it’s a time of change. The bikes change. The tracks change. The forests change. And I become renewed.

Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.

H. G. Wells