Brother All Day - LEJOG machine?

You are refering to the couple of seconds it takes to release a quick link? and throwing it in a slow cooker?
If only I could get back the amount of time I've tried to degrease and clean oily chains..

You need to degrease it fully the first time at least right? Then you'll want to be removing it to clean and re-wax at least occasionally, so then you'll need to get the soup out of your slow cooker or have a spare chain slow cooker and all that. Keep on top of an oiled chain with a quick wipe and relube and don't drown it in oil and it's less than a minute without removing and refitting the chain, usually before just I head out as I've forgotten when I got back after a few beers. Most things are pretty easy if you're used to them but I don't think waxing is less maintenance, different maintenance that requires more planning maybe.

I didn’t clean my bike for a year. I’m not convinced I’ll get into chain waxing !

As Señor Otter says, I’ll probably just lube and wipe a bit more frequently now.

I’ll probably just lube and wipe a bit more frequently now.

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I suspect a saddle might not end up being as big of a comfort gain on a fixed bike since you're spending a ton of time out of it? If you're chunky enough with the tyres, I guess the biggest thing are the gear ratio and bar position.
I run 65 gear inches which is great for commuting but after a 200 audax (not in a rush to repeat that) I'm thinking a bigger gear might be wiser. Hills will be hard either way, but would be nice making the descents easier.

I’m a militant saddle sitter for as long as possible haha. But I’m keen to try other saddles just in case. The longer stem does seem to have helped a bit too weirdly.

And just for you @ltc

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Looks loads better! How does it feel though?

Better than expected. It’s how I had the bars with the shorter stem and felt like I might need the extra angle upwards for comfort going from a 70 to 110mm stem.

Saddle might need to come forward a touch, and up a bit, but it’s feeling better than ever. The handling is MUCH improved.

I'll echo ltc.. it looks even better now.

Copied from the weekend ride thread:

I almost didn't want to write about it.

Some time over a decade ago, me and philxthomas rode a fixed century from Newcastle to Berwick. I rode a Dave Yates lo-pro, Phil was on a vig. The weather was nice, the day was long. But I genuinely don't remember it being that bad. Is it just that I forgot? Perhaps the folly of youth carried us more than I realised. I remember passing some German cyclo-tourists on their ultra utilitarian hybrid tourers, and them enquiring about our bikes and our planned ride, asking in their heavy accents: "But why are you doing this?!", I don't think we had an answer then, and I'm not sure I have one now either.

...

Time is painfully short at the moment. The drudgery of day to day life, up at 530, work for 630, home for 5, get the youngun on the evenings I have him, rush through dinner and bathtime, get youngun back to his mums for bedtime routine, back home for 8, attempt exercise or try and reduce the ever growing list of household admin, shower and bed. The weekend arrives, youngun for one day, and then one day to get something done. What will the something be? Life just seems like a constant stream of reactive tasks. Got to eat, got to tidy, got to buy food, got to clean up, got to wash clothes, got to go to work. The weeks fly by. Nothing in the calendar to look forward to. But one day a week, I can try and put my name to something.

I've been injured for a while. A strained adductor in my leg that means I can't run or climb. Usually I'd lope off somewhere and flog myself round some mountaintops - be it a fell race or just a long run on my own. Trying to carve meaning into my existence through physical application. I am capable. I can do things. But the injury persists. I do my exercises - squeezing pillows between my knees as I sit on the sofa. They are tiring, difficult, and somewhat effective exercises but they're also galling. How on earth am I ever to meaningfully recover with such pithy rehabilitation? The answer lies in the fact that I don't think I could actually do anything more strenuous than the pillow squeezing. It will take time, patience and persistence. But ultimately, when Monday morning rolls around, I need to have something more to my weekend than just pillow squeezing.

Fortunately, I can still ride a bike. Feet locked into a fixed axis of movement means that hamstrings, quads, glutes and calves can all fire happily without needing the stabilisation support of my retiring adductor. So now what?

I rode my second ever century a few weeks back at the start of June. It was a long day, but with gears and company for half the miles, it was doable. The final 15 or so miles are always going to be gruelling I guess. Three weeks later I did another, this time steeper but perhaps with more confidence. So what next? I'd wanted to ride the Hard Day in January this year. I even got the train down to London from Leeds for a training ride with Ruserius in November. But life soon fell apart, and any hopes of HDIJ fell by the wayside. So the logical progression presents itself. A geared century, a steeper geared century, then a fixed gear century. Pick a sensible route and surely it shouldn't really be much different? And here begins that tale.

Rides from Leeds are fairly straightforward. Head to the Dales for hills, head to York for the flats. So I picked the latter. There's some lumps to overcome getting out of Leeds, but it's flat as a pancake after Tadcaster really. So the puzzle of route planning begins. No real goal other than a total distance of over 100 miles, and hopefully with minimal climbing. So I dot to dot a route out of Leeds, a detour round Ecup Reservoir, then towards Bramham and the familiar roads to Tadcaster. Plan a convenient stop at the petrol station for calories. Bolton Percy, Appleton Roebuck, Acaster Mablis, cross the Ouse at Nabburn, Escrick, Skipwith, Thorganby, Wheldrake (google cafes and plan a stop here), Elvington, Stamford Bridge (not that one), Haxby (no time to stop at the bakery), Shipton by Benningbrough, Newton on Ouse, Linton on Ouse, Little Ouseburn, Whixley, Cattal, back into Tadcaster, Bramham, Thorner and onto Leeds. It all seems reasonably cohesive. Check the weather. Standard Westerly winds but at an agreeable 5-8mph. Rain? Yes and no. It could be dry, it might not be. Recent forecasts have been as imprecise as they're known to be. Pack a jacket and hope for the best.

Pack the rest of the bag too. Meticulous or just scatterbrained hurrying around. Gather gels, make sure you have tubes, tools, repair kits, discover that the knife in the tubeless repair kit is rusted shut, set it free with some chain lube, bike cleaned last weekend so no maintenance there, charge lights, inflate tyres, change saddle, lay out clothes for the morning, try and pick shorts that won't chafe, top up the little jar of chamois cream, think, think, think, set an ambitious alarm, set an even more ambitious meeting time for dinner with friends, get to bed too late.

Alarm went off at a respectable 7am, but was snoozed until a less respectable 750. The 8am calculated departure floats by. The mental maths pings around my head. Calculating average speeds and allotted stopping times. It's fine. I'm not late I'm just planning on riding faster now. It was an economical schedule to begin with and now I'm setting off 50 minutes late at 850. I'm meeting friends for dinner at 5pm. So I have around 7 hours if I am to be back home by 4pm. Which is an average speed of 17.5mph if I'm allowed an hours break (total). This is absurd but I'm on the road now.

With the detour round the reservoir, there's some lumps for about the first 20 miles. My legs don't really feel that fresh. The spirited hilly 30 miles on the fixed on Friday still knocking around in my quads. But the average speed is on target and the weather is looking nice enough that I'm even worried about sunburn. Stop at the petrol station in Tadcaster for a sandwich eating time trial and water top up. Get the calories in before you need them. Then onto the familiar roads east.

I'm feeling generally alright. My saddle isn't quite as comfortable as I'd like. I notice the big difference that constant peddling and less time out the saddle makes. I'm sitting at the desired 17.5mph, but I am waning a little. Getting to Wheldrake at 45 miles feels like more of a drag than it should. The doubt creeps in a little. But the cafe is nice. Sandwich, coke, coffee, water, ablutions, re-apply chamois, and back on the road. As I'm setting off, the giant grey clouds ahead become apparent. It looks like I'll just manage to skirt round them, but soon enough the approaching cars and tarmac get wetter and wetter. Better stop now to put the jacket on before I'm caught out. And at the 50 mile mark, the jacket went on, and stayed on all day.

The rains come, sometimes spitting, sometimes driving. Morale is generally lowering. The wind seems unpredictable - it doesn't totally seem to be a Westerly, as it chops and changes as I weave around the b-roads. Yet sadly it does arrive in earnest at Stamford Bridge when I turn West properly. It's not too oppressive, but I can definitely feel it in my legs - the pedals become a little heavier, the rigid and efficient machine becomes a little softer, requiring more input for less gain. Relief as countless closed road signs lead to a bridge passable by bike but not car (the potential detour too much to bare thinking about of course).
At this stage I have to admit, that this endeavour, with its endless forgettable roads, in inclement weather, on my own, for the purpose of satisfying a purely numerical goal, is actually rather miserable.
"This is miserable" becomes my internal mantra. It floats round in my head. I am not interested in putting a positive spin on things. I must remember that my stubbornness has consequences. This is entirely of my own design, for reasons I cannot retrieve.

Near Benningbrough, I'm forced into a pothole by a 4x4 driver. Despite there being plenty of room on their side, pushing a cyclist off the road is the obvious choice in the mind of the urban 4x4 commander - don't want to get the land yacht near any bushes now do we? There's a thousand words of spite I could write on that alone, but I'll try and save the bile for something more worthwhile.
The ever too familiar whirring hiss of a puncture on a wet tyre arrives. The tyre sealant is trying its absolute best, but the neat little slit is just too keen to release air into the atmosphere. A hurried retrieval of the repair kit follows, and with surprisingly minimal fiddling, the hole is plugged. And I feel extra smug as pull out the little knife I'd freed up and lubricated the day before to trim the patch. I am generally relieved at how straightforward the repair was - having never actually reapired a tubeless tyre before. A quick air top up and I'm back on the way. The time off the saddle was definitely appreciated too. The familiar hissing reappears down the road but this time it's the rear, and clearly having witnessed my swift suturing of the wounded front tyre, this time the sealant leaps into action with no further surgery needed.

There's a quaint little wooden toll bridge at Alwark. And that's about all there is to worth mentioning beyond this point. Just drudgery into the wind. Forgettable road after forgettable road. Saddle discomfort seems to be about half the battle. Count miles, check the time, schedule slipping away, average speed waning. My brain clunking around as I try and do timing calculations for arrival times. I should be about 4 or 5 miles from Tadcaster now. See a sign. 8 miles to Tadcaster. Fuck sake. Sign by sign, the miles slowly lower.

Finally I get back to Tadcaster. Mild relief at the opportunity to refuel. My stomach feels bad. I force a sandwich down but it dawns on me that I've neglected to keep eating and I'm unlikely to recover in much of a meaningful way between now and home. 90 miles. Check the map. 15 to go. I just hope that my legs have something left for the hills into Leeds.

I feel grim. The last miles of a big ride are always bad, but with entirely faded legs, arriving inclines and a headwind now blowing me into single digit speeds, I have reached peak misery. I'm less than 10 miles from home and I'm trying to work out if I can somehow ring a taxi. Just get to 100, then you can bail. At one point I'm literally cursing into the wind. Thankfully there's no one around to witness me shouting "Oh just FUCK OFF" as I crawl uphill at 6mph, with the headwind threatening to stop me altogether. A low ebb.

But I do arrive home. Weary and out of sorts, but home and relatively on time. I'm only 10 minutes late for dinner with friends. I don't fancy any booze but I'm sure things will settle down with some food. I push around my roast dinner, before excusing myself to throw up what little I'd actually managed to eat.

I called in sick today.

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Great writeup, & a familiar route & story! It's always the tradeoff with taking the flat way out east - headwind is the leg killer on the second half.

My Whoop suggested I should read before sleeping (but not on a screen), so read your write-up. Loved it. Definitely some relatable moments, but with gears, so not even close!

hell yeah Nef

that seems like a nice pace for 100 miles fixed on your own (with rain and punctures and cunts, even)

I think I understand what you felt about the "purely numerical goals" or at least have been somewhere similar before, but what else are we to do with our time on this earth? It seems the ride had meaning for you, or you wrote some nice words about it either way so probably worth it!
But having been in a same-ish or at least vaguely related place with how I approached taking my bike out before, I've also found that I'm able to chill out more now, because I know that I am able to tough it out if I really want to. I do still have to tell the wind to go get fucked tho sometimes (often).

Anyway, even if we forget all that, this is absolutely some straight hardman riding, well done. And you even got an excuse to take a day off work?

Great write up and great effort!

Great read! It’s somehow made me want to go out and do a fixed century.

kudos on the ride, and a great story.
reminiscent of something out of boneshaker magazine, which I miss.

Great write up and big up for sticking with it and getting round. I’ve been feeling some of that same work/eat/sleep drudgery recently too - I should go for a bike ride.

Glad people enjoyed it - always feels a bit funny to take the time to write it all out, wondering if it’ll just disappear into the ether unread by anyone, lol.

I think there’s some genuine concern that there’s a slightly self destructive habit forming with these rides - the cost I’m paying the week after is a bit much. And the problem with numerical goals is that they become ever escalating while also remaining largely meaningless - so the sense of reward fades quickly, and the urge to repeat comes around again too quickly as well. And that’s when my body is already struggling with them.

But for a slight change of tack, I’ve entered my first TT for the year in a couple of weeks. So I’ll see how that goes. I assume this recent cycling will translate into some kind of usable fitness, but maybe not quite as well as when I was commuting more regularly last year. Who knows? Guess I’ll just have to go out there and see. At least it’s only 25 miles and I’ll have gears!

he problem with numerical goals is that they become ever escalating while also remaining largely meaningless - so the sense of reward fades quickly, and the urge to repeat comes around again too quickly as well. And that’s when my body is already struggling with them.

"arbitrary numbers"

ah Tadcaster, I grew near there! fond memories of everyone repeatedly getting food poisoning from Tadkebab... the wind can be brutal round there cos it's so flat, well done for making it! I was more of a slogging around Wothersome in deep mud on a 90s mtb with my mates kinda guy when I lived there...

Good write up and great effort @Nef
Every year I say I'm going to try and do a century and every year the chance comes and goes. Going to try harder this year.

You can do it!

This popped up on Facebook, 14 years ago!

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