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Life has been a mixed bag recently. I started putting some focus on endurance/distance in preparation for 10 Under the Ben. My ~50 mile loop around Kincardine was followed the next weekend with a ~65 mile ride back up from Ayrshire against a strengthening headwind. But following that, I got a bit of a chest infection which I didn’t shift for two weeks, plus a stomach bug, plus toothache. Arg! So, two weeks passed as I waited to get healthy again, only managing an easy trip around Glentress during that time, and it knocked me out of doing the Contin SXC race last weekend. Boo. 🙁

Still, this week has been better. I cycled to work on Wednesday for the first time in ages, and took the afternoon off today to blast round the red at Glentress at nearish race pace. Leaving from the hub cafe, I reached Buzzards Nest after 19 mins, top of Spooky Woods after 47 mins, and was back at the Hub in under 1h 20m. The matrix/lombard st trails are still closed sadly. The only real trouble was a sore lower back coming down Spooky Woods. I often get this – I think it’s maybe the change from “climbing muscles” to “standing on pedals” muscles. Maybe some “core strength” work required? I dunno really.

I had my heart rate monitor with me, mostly to cajoule me into riding at something like race pace. Average rate from the hub to spooky woods was 153. I experimented with different levels of exertion on the long climb. Mostly, I stayed between 150-155 but at time I moved up to 160 and it seemed fairly sustainable. Anything above 165 feels like I’ve started a countdown timer – okay for short bursts, but not for a sustained climb.

After SXC race 1, I decided I needed to up my training somewhat. It became clear during the race that a) the basic pace was higher and b) there’s a big need to tolerate short bursts of higher output.

So, training-wise over the last 2 weeks I’ve done:

– four days commuting to work (about 80 miles total). Two of those days, I used the ride into work to do intervals (ie. going flat out for a short time, then recovering then repeating). I intended the ride back home to be a gentle recovery, but both times I got suckered into racing other cyclists. *grin*

– last weekend, a 30 miles jaunt over the Pentlands. Super muddy, rutty, technical and windy. But I enjoyed it and definitely felt it improved my technique.

– this weekend, a 55 mile road trip via Kincardine. Pretty pleasant, and it felt a lot easier than the last time I did it (last year) which suggests that my training is going pretty well. This is in preparation for 10 Under The Ben in May – aiming to do ~50 miles offroad then.

I definitely feel improvement in terms of being able to sprint for longer, recover more quickly and push bigger gears when I have to (my tendency has always been to spin all the time, but that’s not always possible in MTB races). But the increased training is also taking its toll as my body adjusts – I need to be careful not to step it up too quickly too soon.

There’s still 3 weeks until SXC round 2 at Contin. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with the intervals midweek and longer rides at weekend, and be able to see an improvement during the next race 🙂

Yay, I just did my first proper competitive mountain bike race! \o/

It was substantially tougher than I expected! I thought I was a) pretty fit, and b) reasonably fast. Ooh, it turns our that there’s lots of people who are much fitter and much faster than me. Final results aren’t out yet, but I’m pretty sure I finished 19th out of a field of 43 in my class. (Update: provisional results have me 25th out of 52; dunno why they’re different from what was on the screen at the finish line).

The weekend started nicely with a 3h drive down to Kirroughtree on Saturday afternoon, through some very fun “driving roads” – south of the Leadhills, accidentally onto a tiny B road for a while, then on through Galloway forest. Having promised rain all week, the weather forecast changed its mind at the last moment and so with “sunny intervals” on the cards I had decided to camp.

I also decided that switching to my new “fast but not very grippy” tyres was a good plan.

Neither of these turned out to be good ideas.

After finishing my tyre change, I got chatting another friendly mtb’er at the campsite (Alex), with me explaining that it was my first race etc. Turns out, he was entering the elite (ie. scary fast) group the next day. He’d done lots of races, so I got a few handy tips although his description of the course (“much more technical that the 10 Under The Ben course”) left me wondering what I’d signed up for.

As the sun set and the rabbits hopped away, I had a great view of the stars. Then it occurred to me that “no cloud cover” plus “March in Scotland” means VERY COLD. Indeed, my 3 season sleeping bag wasn’t a match for the ice which formed on the outside of my tent (I kid thee not) and it was rather chilly all night long.

Onto race day: fuelled by porridge and tea I headed along to Kirroughtree. A big slow queue for race registration before I could head out to reccy the course. At first it seemed pretty tame – fireroad and a steady singletrack climb up through the woods. But when I hit the first steep climb, my rear tyre spun out immediately on the soft muddy forest floor and I had to push up the hill. I quickly realised my ‘fast’ tyres were entirely the wrong ones for the day and so another tyre-change would have to be on the cards.

As I made my way round the course, it became clear this was no 10UTB-style “fireroad plus bits of singletrack” course. It was mainly “natural” trails, snaking their way through trees – which meant loads of super slippy tree roots. This was the theme of the day – roots, roots and more roots and lots of soft forest mud. I haven’t really done much roots before, so I did a lot of sliding out and this made it tough course. Vertically, it felt like most of the lap was climbing, and the only sustained descent was right at the end of the lap – swoopy trail-center hardpack. There were two incredibly steep climbs on soft ground – which I’ve no idea how anyone could cycle up (I ran them). Not many steep descents – the two big ones were still pretty straightforward. Mid-course, there were a few wee rocky bits, but it was easy to carry enough momentum to cross them.

I’d set out on my reccy lap about 1.5h before my race started. However, I didn’t take a map so the only way I could be sure to get back to the right place was to do the entire course. A bit non-optimal, doing 3 laps rather than 2, but at least I got to see the whole course ahead of time. I got back to the carpark with 30 minutes to spare, but with sweat pouring off my brow and a tyre change still to perform.

Fortunately, I’ve been practising doing speedy puncture repairs recently – primarily to see if it was feasible to fix a puncture without losing too much race time (not really; takes me ~4mins). But nonetheless, I was pretty glad of the practise because I managed to switch tyres and get the bike back in one piece just in time for the start. I wasn’t sure what to wear either. I did the reccy lap with leggings on (cold morning) and a cycling jacket over a base layer. But I was overheating by the end of that lap. In the end, I just went for shorts and a long sleeve top, figuring that I was unlikely to suffer from cold during the race (v true!).

Whistle blows, race starts. I had lined up maybe 3/4 of the way down my group because I had no idea how I’d fare, especially having seen the course. But I spent the first half lap either passing people, or trundling along singlefile in a queue until others either fell off or the road got wide enough to get past.

I recognised the approach to the first steep hill, where I’d spun out on my reccy lap. I was following another rider, and as he tried to power up the hill, his wheel spun out. But, with my grippier tyres on, I was able to keep pedalling – yay!

The rest of lap 1 was pretty processional, with clusters of five of so riders bunching up behind slower riders. I managed to pass quite a few folk on the wider uphill sections, but also lost several places on a dumb fall going downhill. Unsighted by the rider on front of me, I didn’t see that “left” and “right” were two fine options, but “straight on” lead to a big immovable object … boing!

There were lots of minors spills throughout the field, as people encountered the many slippy tree roots. I went into cyclocross mode several times – if people ahead were getting stuck, I just got off the bike and ran with it. I made up a useful number of places that way. Turns out, having a steep staircase to climb/run up on the commute to work was useful training after all!

At the end of lap one, I was thinking I’d pushed too hard. But by lap two, everyone was much more spread out and it was easier to stick to a steady pace. I passed quite a few people, but a lot of the different categories set off at basically the same time, so it was never clear how I was doing. Halfway through lap 2, I got passed by 2 or 3 of the fastest younger riders on their 3rd lap – man, they are super fast uphill .. scarily so! I was pushing hard enough that my stomach started feeling dodgy for a while so I had to back off a bit. On the last half lap, I had quite a lot of (tired) fun. The swoopy bit back towards the line felt fun (it was downhill) and there was a couple of guys in sight which gave me something to chase (although to no avail).

Over the finish line, and … nothing. Just a bunch of cyclists hanging around chatting. I had to ask someone where the timing screen was, and figured out that I’d came in 19th out of 43 riders. Ah well, not too bad. The course was substantially harder than I expected. If it wasn’t so root-sy it would’ve been easy, but then …

So, what I have learned?

• Open category is definitely the place to start. I’ve heard the same story before – “I thought I was pretty fit, until I entered my first race”. I can add my voice to that now!
• My fast commuting pace is, well, more akin to warmup pace rather than race pace. I get plenty warm cycling normally, but during the race sweat was dripping from my head like never before. I’m totally reassessing what I consider a “training” ride now.
• Need to figure out how to ride over roots. Abstractly, I know hitting them straight on is good .. but you don’t always have the choice. Unweighting is good, which works fine for single roots but they often come in groups. Carrying speed might be a good plan, but I need some faster legs first.
• Need to practise intervals, and improve anaerobic fitness. Distance cycling is almost all aerobic; racing is often anaerobic.
• Need to improve core muscle strength – my lower back was killing me after the downhill at the end of lap one. I get the same thing towards the end of Spooky Woods at Glentress. Need to figure out what I need to change.

Good stuff from today:

• Yay, I did a race! *ticks box*
• Judged my pace fairly well. Only overcooked it a little on lap one, backed off a little on lap two (to avoid breakfast revisital) and ended lap two with only a wee bit of energy to spare.
• Switching tyres pre-race.
• Remembered to keep looking ahead and planning ahead. I got annoyed at 10UTB by the number of times I hit the start of a steep climb in the wrong gear … managed a lot better today.
• Running up the steepest hills rather than pedalling at a snails pace.

Next round is up at Contin, near Inverness, in a month’s time. Rar! 🙂

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.

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!

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

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.

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!