www.lewiz.org

Just got back from a very quick cycle around the block.  Despite having had my bike since last Thursday (i.e. ever so slightly over a week), I’ve only been out riding… two and a half times.

The Thursday I got my bike I obviously peddled around for a while, enjoying my new speedy racer.  In fact, I did the same on Friday, but before I even got two miles, my chain came off, so I pulled over to the side of the road to resolve the problem, only to get a gash in my tire.

As this was my first bike in over five years, I wasn’t yet kitted out with the essentials: my only option was to pick the bike up, stick it over my shoulder and walk home.

I spent this weekend in Manchester and sorted out my tire problems at Vlad’s house, only to miraculously manage to get a drawing pin lodged in the same tire later on in the day.  Again, we got this patched up, but come the following morning, my tire was flat.

This week I put a big order in with wiggle.co.uk, buying myself a set of five inner tubes (£15 for the lot), one of the awesome CO2 pumps (it’s near impossible to hit 100-120PSi with a small hand-held pump), a whole pile of patches, a proper track pump (makes it a real breeze to reach 110PSi), a large saddle bag (which I might be replacing with the medium-sized one, as it doesn’t quite fit), two Specialized Ribcage pro bottle cages, and two (yes, two!) Cateye Strada Cadence cycle computers.

At my Dad’s recommendation I opted for a speedo that does cadence, i.e. how fast you are peddling.  Wednesday evening (about three hours of it) was spent attaching the damn thing to my bike.  I’d have bought a wireless one, but wireless speedos that do cadence cost upwards of £80!

So, I finally got all of my order in today, I replaced my dead inner tube with a brand new one, loaded the saddle bag with a spare tube, CO2 canisters and adapter, puncture repair kit, phone, keys and an emergency stash of cash.  I’d brought my trusty old Specialized water bottle from home, so I filled this up and set off…

In the end I was only out for 24 minutes… as I don’t have any lights (thanks to buying two speedos by mistake!), I didn’t want to stay out any longer for risk of being run down like Vlad*.

I’m counting this as the first time I’ve really been out… my first trip involved a fair few stops while I buggered around with my bike, and when we were cycling to/from Manchester and around Heaton Park there were too many kids and stops to really get worked up.  The first ten minutes of this ride was pretty hard work… I was doing about 10mph until I got warmed up (I guess).

I’m still in the 20th century so I can’t provide a map or blow-by-blow speed readings, but my stats were:

Time: 24m

Distance: 6.37m

Average speed: 15.7mph

Max speed: 28mph

Cadence: I guess around 73rpm

So, clearly not as impressive as either Chris Gerhard or Talbot, but I’m quite happy to have an average speed of near-enough 16mph… even if my ride was a little short!

Tomorrow I plan on doing a quick trip I found on a website that goes from Windsor to Chertsey Great Park… it’s only 21 miles, but I think that’s quite ambitious for now.

See www.cycle-route.com/routes/Chertsey_to_Windsor_Great_Park_Loop-Cycle-Route-76.html for the Google Maps route.

Tags: Cycling

This entry was posted on Friday, August 17th, 2007 at 7:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.