Andrew’s LE-JOG cycle ride

Finally the ice has (almost) cleared from Holyrood Park, so I was able to do my homebrew “fitness test” to start my training. I figure that timing myself over three laps of Holyrood Park / Arthurs Seat will be a good yardstick. I can come back and do the same course in a few months and see if I’ve got faster. There’s little in the way of traffic lights or junctions, and it’s a mixture of steepish climbs, fast descents and a fair bit of flat road too.

Date: Jan 16th 2010, 15:00
Route: Holyrood Park loop (3.3mi including 100m ascent)
Distance: 3 loops of 3.3mi, plus 2mi there and 2mi back = 14miles.
Bike: Courier Nexus

Lap 1: 13m50s, 153bpm average => 14.3mph average
Lap 2: 14m22s, 155bpm average => 13.8mph average
Lap 3: 14m26s, 155bpm average => 13.7mph average

Notes: Start/end at zebra crossing near Holyrood Palace. Snowgates were shut at bottom of hill, requiring a short muddy/icy excursion. Lots of pedestrians around, but didn’t have to stop for traffic.

Heartrate was 160-163 climbing the hill, which felt sustainable. Went up to 167 after the final steepest bit of the climb, which didn’t feel so sustainable! Tried to keep at 150-160bpm round the rest of the lap, but ran out of gears on the downhill.

I went to re-setup the gears on my bike (Gary Fisher Hoo Koo Ee Koo) last week and couldn’t get them working. Now, this is a bit frustrating because I’ve set up gears many times before and, although it can take a wee while to get them indexed right, the recipe is simple and pretty foolproof.

But for some reason, shifting wasn’t happened right. After a while, I realised that it wasn’t really an indexing or limit-screw problem; the bike would eventually go into every gear. Instead, it was as if the bike had developed memory. If I’d previously been shifting up, then the first down-shift would be ignored! Subsequent down-shifts would work fine. It was as if the bike could remember whether the previous shift has been up or down.

My first suspicion was that the derailleur pivots were corroded or gunked up. I was just about to go ahead and strip it down – but, upon releasing the gear cable from the derailleur I realised that the derailleur itself was moving completely smoothly. Hmm, strange, can’t be that then.

My next suspicion was that the ratchet mechanism in the shifter had gone funny. But, by watching the cable move as it came out of the shifter, I could see that it was doing its job correctly – each click of the gear lever moved the cable out/in by the same amount every time.

Finally, I watched the gear cable along its length. Near the handlebars, it moved in time with the shifters. But at the other end, it wasn’t moving at all on the first shift. Suddenly, I suspected the cable itself. Releasing the gear cable from the derailleur again, I wiggled the metal cable back and forwards through the last ‘loop’ of the black outer. It moved, but it certainly felt a little bit sticky. Sticky enough to cause the problem? Perhaps there was enough resistance to counteract the tension released by the first click, but not enough to resist two clicks.

Lacking any objective means of measuring the friction, I decided to replace them. With a bit of help from Sheldon and my trusty Dremel, I soon had the new cables cut to length – using the old ones as a pattern.

And, guess what? I now have silky smooth just-like-new gear shifts all over again. Woo!

I started 2009 with the aim of riding LEJOG in May. I’m really glad I blogged it all, because now I can return to the posts as a spectator and enjoy a different side of the ride.

In 2010, I’m starting with a different aim – to race in round one of the SXC (Scottish Cross Country) mountain biking series at Kirroughtree, plus the Ten Under The Ben endurance race in May. I also intend to blog my preparation and training and, being lazy, I’m just going to reuse my LEJOG blog and continue tacking on new posts to it.

End

Originally uploaded by Andrew Birkett

Heh, I’ve had this photo ready since about day 5.
The last 16 miles were hard work, with a stiff wind coming from the side and front, and a couple of hills to add to the fun. The run in to John o’ Groats goes on forever and it’s a pretty nothingy place to be honest. I’m glad I’d been there before in the car – I wasn’t harboring any high expectations! There’s a closed hotel, a cafe, the sign post, a few tourist shops, one other unsociable cyclist and a lot of motorbikers.
I phoned home, phoned for a taxi to get me back to Wick, got photo taken and had just settled down to a celebratory cup of tea when the taxi turned up. He had a bike rack – what a clever idea – and soon I was whizzing past landmarks in reverse order back towards Wick. We passed about 7 LEJOG cyclists still struggling against the wind on their way to the end. I find it strange that these folk must’ve been just behind me on the road for the last few days, yet I never saw them. In the whole ride, I only passed one person heading north, and wasn’t passed by anyone. But I guess everyone gets funnelled onto the one road just before the end.
Kinda wierd to think how different tomorrow will be. I’ve been in a really regular routine for the last two weeks. In a way, because the final destination is so nothingy, it makes you appreciate the journey as the main thing rather than the end point. Today was a good day for cycling, and I enjoyed it. But equally, days pass and life goes on and I’d always rather look forward to the next thing than try to keep hold of past times. Diem carpe’d.
If anything, a kind of stubbornness has been the most important attribute on this trip. Having decided to get from A to B, you get faced with a big sequence of mini challenges to overcome. To get to your goal, you just need to keep overcoming the challenges until there are none left. It’s almost mechanical. If you’re tired and still have 20 miles to go, you need to first cycle the next 5 miles and then worry about the rest once you’ve done that. To climb a big hill, you first have to pedal up the nearest bit of it. Sounds dumb, but that’s what kept me going at points when my brain was telling me that it was too steep, too far.
Probably the best bit of advice I heard before I left was from a TV documentary following some people doing an extreme race to the pole. A psychologist told one of the racers: when you get tired or frustrated, it’s easy to become a danger to yourself. If you get into that situation, you should imagine that it’s not you there, but instead, your daughter or son is there instead. Now think, what would you want them to do in that situation? Good advice indeed. It saw me stop for food when my instinct was to press on. It saw me stop and take the time to put on warmer clothes rather than push on and risk making bad judgements from cold. And it saw me pulling into the side of the road countless times to let approaching traffic past if I didn’t like the look of the road ahead. Crazy psychological trick, but it works well.
In the end, I averaged 12.1 mph whilst riding, but with lunches and breaks and navigation it was 8.3mph overall. Max speed was 43.2mph – lots of fun. I left by 9am most days. I arrived at anything between 3pm and 7pm. My bike worked great – no punctures, nothing replaced, and only the seat ever needed any adjustment. Physically, I fared well. Day to day, I felt pretty much the same. My right knee got sore, in a way that hurt most when unclipping from pedals, so I think I twisted it at some point when reaching back to get something out of the panniers. I took 200mg of ibuprofen for a few mornings and that settled it. I got a pinched nerve like pain at the top of my leg around the middle of the ride, but then I noticed that my seat wasn’t pointing straight – fixing that fixed the pain. No saddle sores, but I did steal a tub of sudacrem from my wee girl to take with me. (TMI warning!). It is an anti bacterial barrier cream and good for putting on the bits of you that contact the saddle to disuade any bugs from causing painful spots or infections. Fignon lost the Tour de France because of a sore butt, so good for us mortals to err on the side of caution!
Traffic was fine the whole way; better, not worse, than I expected. Weather was probably worse, and I’m glad I took waterproof socks and winter beanie hat in addition to my normal rain gear. Probably biggest risk to life and limb came when I was stopped and getting stuff out of panniers. The bike had a habit of rolling off to the side, and I nearly twisted my knee several times trying to grab a toppling laden bicycle.
Road surfaces are often poor, particularly in south scotland. I often ended up cycling precisely along the painted white line at the edge of the road because it was the smoothest part of the road!
Enough wittering – I have to catch a 6am train in the morning!

John o’ Groats

Originally uploaded by Andrew Birkett

Journey ends here. 1002.66 miles. Think I’m going to go home now.

All that remains

Originally uploaded by Andrew Birkett

Last page of my map. I started with a thick pile of map pages torn out of a road atlas, and have been throwing them away as I make progress. It’s strange to only have one page left.

Wick

Originally uploaded by Andrew Birkett

Lunch stop in Wick, after 54 miles. It has been pleasantly sunny all morning, and only the smallest rain shower on the way into Wick – one side of me was getting roasted by the sun whilst the other side was getting wet! The wind has been mostly behind me, but swirled around a lot and the last half hour or so has been harder work.
I’ve passed lots of cyclists going the other way – plenty of pairs with full touring gear, and one big bunch of race bikes with a huge RV support vehicle with a banner saying Lifecycle on it. They’d just started, and told me that there weren’t any big hills left for me. Unfortunately for them, they were just about to hit the Berriedale Braes, so I couldn’t tell them the same good news!
I think it’s 18 miles left, so I’m fuelling up on macaroni cheese and tea. Tomorrow, I’ll need to remember to eat less!

Dunbeath

Originally uploaded by Andrew Birkett

Dunbeath, and a new land speed record of 43.2mph, breaking my previous best back from day 2!