Tell us about your weekend ride

Lovely write up - good luck with the TCR

Inspirational! Great website too!

Did you ride back?

No, I took train back. It's a juggling act trying to balance these training rides with 'regular life'. I'm planning a few more efforts like this ahead of the race though.

Brutal race Saturday. Went through some of western Norways most beautiful areas though.

I emptied myself on the initial Climbs to get myself in the fastest Group possible. Then spent 100km resisting the urge to Climb off the bike. The 9km Climb in the middle was a bit of a slap in the face....

https://www.strava.com/activities/613362818

Local weather was meant to be rubish Sunday. So we drove back to the same area for a recovery spin.

Rode up the 12 km, 1100m, Climb at the end of the valley. Along a crazy mountain road to a ski centre at the top.

Worse attempt at a recovery ride ever. Even by my standards.

https://www.strava.com/activities/614588328

Theres pics on the Strava link. Too tired to fight With the forum photo system.

3:42:54 100 and another club record.

100!
Thats a lot of hotdogs.
With bread rolls?

Far out, that looks effing steep.

Edit: Sorry, I meant the post above, that 9km climb

2nd Edit: I meant both I guess

Its a 125km profile. So its a little squished.

Pretty sure its a Nice 7.5%

Sort of Climb I'd usually quite like. But after the 40+ kph paceline it felt like a wall. No idea how the pros do this shit in the alpine tour stages.

To give you another perspective:

I don't know how you guys do this one. I've only gone back on the bike for two months now, but I do one climb here and I am empty. And that's granny ring all the way to the top. As soon as I hit even a medium slope it's a complete shock to my system. After that every little kicker gives me jelly legs and when I stand up in the pedals to rest my crotch or stretch out I come to a close to standstill.
I am really de-motivated by this, but I'll just aim to do my two rides a week and hopefully get better at it again.

Which brings me to my weekend ride: Same like last week pretty much, norton summit up, montacute down, 40km ish, but nicer weather, slower because I felt shit and a broken spoke on the way down because I am fat.

100 pints.

The imperial version of the Centurion.

Pacing.

Get to know what effort you can hold for certain Climbs, and hold that. There is constant resistance through the pedals. So its a very specific kinda effort which needs training. But once you have trained it a bit. Its just pacing. Spinning the easiest gear you can With a relaxed upper body will help the legs.

You have to look at Climbs in terms of time too. It doesnt help that someone tells you its only a 4km Climb. If it takes you 30 mins to get up it. Its a 30min Climb. Your body doesnt care about kilometers. It cares about time spent under stress.

I rode Vatterrunden in Sweden at the weekend. Been talking about it with a friend who lives in Stockholm for a couple of years, we are both keen cyclists, but rarely get a chance to ride together, it was my first time and would be his third..

We had a start time of 1:18am. After a heavy night at a gig in Stockholm the night before, I woke up tired and hungover on Friday morning, wondering why I had done this to myself, before what would probably be a fast 300k that night.

We got up early, packed the car, had some breakfast and headed off for the 3 hour drive to Motala, looking for somewhere to park for the weekend. After registering and eating all the pasta in the world, we tried to get some sleep in the car before starting, neither of us could sleep so we went into the town to watch other riders set off.

Rain had been forecast all week, but all day it had held off. We literally clipped in to follow the motorbike out of town and the rain started, it would continue for the next 220k, and as we found out later was actually a class 1 storm. When we planned the ride I was imagining a sunny ride in a beautiful setting, what followed was the worst weather I have encountered on a ride this year, and I have rode in all weathers in the UK this Year!

After 20k my shifter stopped doing anything, and I couldn't change any gears on the back, I was stuck with 52-12 or 36-12. We were sitting in a quick group, so I decided to keep going and take a look when we stopped at the first
control. We got there, had some food and I decided to get a mechanic to look at my bike, as I didn't have the right size tool to open up the shifter. After some confusion as they clearly had not seen sram hydraulics before, and also didn't want to let me show them, I got them to open up the shifter and found that the cable clip had snapped so there was no repair happening. I put everything back together, pushed the limit screw to make sure it stayed in the same place and decided to crack on with it and just grind up any lumpy bits, it was Sweden and I felt confident it would be fine.

By this point we were soaking wet and the stop had eaten into our time and moral, we pushed on in the driving rain, looking forward to the morning and daylight. I gave all my spare clothes to my mate who was literally shaking from the cold.

After sitting with a club for a good while, with me grinding out too big a gear gear on the flats and the lumps, they stopped at a control and we decided to keep moving. Daylight came and the rain continued we got to a control at about 180k and had the best lasagne I have ever tasted for breakfast, though at this stage anything warm would have been the best thing I had ever tasted.

From 180k we only stopped twice to fill our bottles, and apart from that bounced through, as after the weather and my mechanical it became less about enjoying the ride and more about just getting it done.

By about 220k the rain stopped, but my knees were starting to feel the effects of pushing too big a gear for hours, it was getting frustrating as I needed to push too hard to keep up with the quick groups and after a while would need to back off, particularly as when it came to any sort of climb I was having to drop everyone and smash up it to keep the momentum going and then, not having a different gear to recover in was hard, I'm pretty sure everyone thought I was mental never using any other gears on lumpy bits.

It was now getting a bit hairy, with club riders riding to fast and beyond their talen, causing some pretty bad accidents, there was some shocking riding on display especially given the conditions. One in particular passed us really close with the last person almost nudging my front wheel pulling across thefront of me, then further up the road they smashed straight into the back of a slower group, it was carnage, and probably ride ending for some of the people they hit, absolutely stupid behaviour from people who should no better.

We started riding alone and defensively after seeing 3 more bad crashes, our pace picked up for the final 50k and we finished at 13:50 missing our target of 12 hours, but given the circumstances we were both massively happy with the time, I think my mate found my mechanical more stressful than I did, I knew I could get round, I don't think he was so sure.

It was a challenging ride given the weather and mechanical, but enjoyable as it was time spent on the bikes with a good friend. The route itself was actually a bit boring with not a great deal to see, it wouldn't be a ride I would repeat but I'm glad I have done it once as it was a different experience to riding Audax in the UK.

TLDR I rode my bike in Sweden here is the Strava. https://www.strava.com/activities/613858129

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Scunthorpe ACH solution did not work with your rear derailleur?

I needed Rob there to do it for me, I wasn't sure 100% what to do and didn't want to end up in a worse gear! I had to pay a mechanic 150 krona to do nothing to my bike!

Send the bill to SRAM.

Planet X will be getting an email when I get back! The part where the top of the cable sits is made of plastic, it is literally broken away so won't hold the cable, it's only had 3000km!

Defo warranty job. My SRAM/Zipp wheel will NOT be back in time for my 50.

Thanks Zipp, thanks a bunch.

That's what I am worried about, the time it will take to sort it out. I'm expecting to be riding my Colnago for a while.

Did London to Brighton and thought it was a lot less congested than in recent years. Does anybody else concur? Has the fad for cycling started to tail off? Or am I imagining it?

https://www.lfgss.com/comments/13053118/
https://www.lfgss.com/comments/13053122/

Likewise - I think maybe the seeding helped.

Having hung around in Brighton till the day after - we got lucky with the weather!

Don't forget last weekend was father s day too.. Lot less cyclists around in general

My best father's day present was being let out on my bike for 4 hours (between 4am and 8am).

Not even kidding. Good job the boy is great otherwise this would be horrific.