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vpCogworks
Time for an update.
Over the last two years at Herne Hill Velodrome I’ve been having a good time with the Yellow Beast at Intermediate sessions, sometimes the Track Skills sessions and some Race Training sessions. And one forum track day. ;) I had hoped to enter the league in 2014, but it wasn’t possible due to work. This year I’ve finally had enough time and energy to do it.
I decided to start making an effort to ride at least one hour a day with training in mind and started this in January. By April I was in some sort of decent shape. Before the first night I was a bit nervous, because I didn’t know what to expect. What would the pace be like? What were the formalities? How friendly/unfriendly were other racers and the officials? I hadn’t actually been to any Wednesday evenings to watch.
My debut went well; In the three races of the first week I came third, sixth and second! The second week I had to miss because I was riding with Chris Hoy at a work thing, which I thought was ok to miss one week of league for. At the third week I got a second and two fouth places.
After the third week and for about two months, I have been out of the game, unexpectedly busy and tired with moving house and doing lots of diy, which was a bit sad after such a good start, and not a little depressing thinking about my league ranking going down, but last week I came back and I won my first race! This week I won my second race. Hurrah!
The bike:
A couple of weeks before league this year I decided to get that ring. I couldn’t really afford it, but yolo.
I got steel RaceFace bolts too.
Now I think I have the Goldilocks gear. The 48x14 was too spinny in the sprints and the 48x13 too big for longer races. The 50x14 is just right for most things I’m doing. I don’t like faffing about changing gears between races.
I’ve tweaked the riding position a couple of times, but only slightly. I haven’t needed to change any parts. I quite enjoy that the drop is so low that I have downtube strike rather than toptube; I keep a bit of bar there to prevent dings. The saddle is pretty hardcore, but I never ride it for longer than a two hour intermediate session with a break, so it’s fine. I haven’t had any accidents and I’ve had one slow puncture on the rear. I took the wheel home for a week to put a new tyre on and one of these days I’ll get round to repairing the first one. Today was actually my first time riding the 19mm tyres in the wet; no problem. I have tried running them at the stated maximum of 220psi, but I have settled on pumping them to about 160 most of the time.
Apparently I’m the only rider repping the forum at this year’s league. Come and cheer me on. :)