Your ride today....

[HLaB]

The usual Saturday ride but at a relaxed pace. One of my mates is coming back from a knee injury and we kept it nice and relaxed for him. Being a sociable ride we finished in the pub. Well before the 12.5 miles cycle home.

I must've p'tured on the ride but the sealant done its job and I didn't have any noticeable loss of pressure. I had thought I'd saw a splash of milk.

Cleans up well!

 

[straas]

Out on the MTB again today, definitely in the honeymoon phase.

Managed to stitch together a really nice almost entirely road free ride, taking in a lot of Carrington moss.

Whilst riding through the moss I was wondering what function it performed as it seems to have relics of an industrial past.

Turns out it was bought by the Manchester corporation in the 1800s from the earl of Stamford who unusually inherited the title after his second cousin unexpectedly died, giving him large swathes of Cheshire land including the estate of Dunham Massey (now a national trust site) the earl was educated at Oxford and became a clergyman before being sent out to the commonwealth because of his proclivity for drinking and gambling. It was bought for the depositing of "night soil" when sewer networks were not developed and buckets & latrines were more common. A series of tramways was constructed to assist in this, which is likely some of the relics I observed.

In WW2 after the decimation of Coventry, a strategy was developed whereby areas near to large conurbations but not too close had infrastructure installed to make them appear to be towns with buildings on fire - the moss was one of these sites, with the intent being to try and divert enemy bombs into areas where they wouldn't cause damage.

I love being out on the roads gliding along on slicks, but there's a beauty in not having to shoulder check to see if you're about to be flattened by an impatient driver.

 

[ColinJ]

I went out on my bike today... That would not normally be worth mentioning but I was ill on and off over most of the winter so it is actually only my third outdoor ride this year, and the first since the end of January!

I have been doing easy rides on my turbo trainer, but only 45-90 minutes at a time.

I am now down in Devon and a strong, chilly, blustery wind has been blowing for a few days here, with rain from time to time. Today was windy again, but with only sporadic light drizzle. I decided to go out and do 2 or 3 hours on my favourite lumpy lanes near Crediton, keeping my efforts very low because I am unfit, and not 100% healthy either.

I could feel every little rise in the road, even little ramps that I normally sprint up. I don't have a power meter on the Devon bike so I have brought my heart rate monitor strap down with me so I can keep an eye on my efforts. It turns out that I didn't really need to bother... The rules turned out to be: (1) Lowest gear for every significant climb. (2) Ride as slowly as I can without wobbling and falling off the bike!

I'll have to force myself to avoid hard efforts so I can ride most days while I am here without fatiguing myself too much. Here are some of the stats from my ride:

That easy 40% was when I was freewheeling and would not have happened on my turbo sessions because I spin continuously throughout each turbo session. It meant that the ride did feel easy despite tackling about 630 m of ascent in my little 35 km jaunt.

The sun made a welcome appearance a few times and the drizzle never became a nuisance.

I had heard that the local road surfaces had taken a battering over the winter and that was obvious. About 50% of the potholes that had been repaired over my 5 years of cycling in Devon now need repairing again. The minor roads are not truly awful, but vigilance is definitely needed!

I should be able to do lots of rides as easy as this one, and hopefully a couple of harder ones while I am down here.

A nice afternoon on the bike!

No fake dairy here...