2011-12-23 A Christmas Cracker

• Festive 500
  It started with the Christmas Cracker
  
  
  

[ame]http://connect.garmin.com/activity/136003071[/ame]

One member of lfgss.com took it upon himself to recce a route out into Kent, so I decided to tag along. As it was organised on a forum focusing on fixed wheel bikes, I took mine out for the day. I was even slightly prepared for this one, having tinkered with the bike this week, to the extent of even truing wheels. I had intended to go a tooth down for winter, previously on 49/20 but only had 48/19 in the toolbox so gearing has increased to 66.8 inches, with 25mm winter tyres.

Last night the clothes were laid out, - the decisions regarding layers were made, shoe choice was not made (dominators or dragons), and porridge left to soak. So when the alarm went this morning it was a case of turn on the coffee machine, porridge in microwave and quick shower. By the time I was towelled dry the coffee could be made and the conscious day could begin. Quickly checked the forecast – it was looking not too bad so decided to take the carbon shoes (they are not as weather proof as the dominators) but to pack some overshoes, rain jacket packed, and decided a gillet was in order for the day.

London traffic to the assembly point at Victoria was stop start, but thankfully the last minute shoppers were not up yet clogging the roads. Met Laner and Amygdala at the station and promptly got on a train. A quick train to St Mary Cray and we met the rest of the reprobates, Spybot, Tonyme and Bernie. Tonyme has a contact at a screen printer round the corner from the station so we were lucky enough to get coffee and mince pies and a guided tour of the factory before the ride started. I doubt this will occur on all my festive rides, but this was an auspicious start to the series. The factory immediately made me think of the Reprographics blog by another cyclist http://generallucifer.wordpress.com possibly the funniest, driest account of working in a printers.

There is a certain grim joy to bringing the wrong toy to the party, and our route was bumpy and I am a lump, so things were going to be hard work today. So the perversion of riding fixed where gears would have been preferable was revelled in. From the outset we were quickly into climbing, and my legs were in dragging mode. Probably not helped by the day before doing 50 miles and a visit to the gym. It felt the wind today was not in our favour, but then I have never experienced it to help me, it is either against me – a day of ‘bad legs’, or I have ‘good legs’ and clearly am not wind assisted at all.

Kent is not an area I know well, but some of the lanes were familiar from doing the Tuesday Night Ride Club jaunts. However things have a different aspect between a cold winters day and summer dusk, so it was an odd sense of faux déjà vu. To compound this, there was the sense that I may have also ridden some of today’s course in the opposite direction previously, so it was all slightly disorientating. Thankfully we had our human guidance machine – Oli Spybot, who was constantly giving directions and ensuring we stayed together as a bunch. I am always grateful to people to do this kind of service, it can be quite exhausting taking the responsibility for the groups welfare and he did it with calm and grace.

The Garmin was playing silly buggers today. On all the steepest climbs it would give a %age incline for a while and then suddenly stop telling me any more about the gradient. Not sure if this is designed to protect or antagonise my fragile mental capacities regarding steep hills, at 14 stone, I am clearly not cut out for ascents. It can be frustrating when the data is so usually to hand and it suddenly stops.

Magpie Bottom was one of those ascents, it is preceded by a stinky downwards passage past a herd of cows which was bad enough. The birds arse was even worse, strewn with slimy crap on a ludicrous bit of steep country road, the Garmin stopped giving incline data just after it flashed 18%, my knees were burning and I stood out of the saddle. Clearly my technique was poor – probably too much toe down bringing my weight forwards of the bottom bracket and the rear wheel slipped and my trajectory went from up to straight into the bank, though thankfully got a foot down in time to save myself a tumble.

A lot of our conversation revolved around the days conditions, a gentle drizzle for most of the time. But the efforts we were putting in meant the rate of perspiration and transpiration exceeded the precipitation, so it was not too detrimental. The damp under tyres did impede the descents, some of those would have been so much fun spinning like lunatics, though given the sketchy nature of mud, moss and grit it did not inspire confidence to let go. Max speed achieved was 35.9 mph, so approximately 180rpm cadence was achieved.

We nipped through Knole Park, which was an utter delight, no golf balls came our way which was a relief, the path through the grounds was great fun to let the legs loose on, it offered good grip and clearly there were no cars around to pull out from a side road.

At Knockholt some of the group wanted to visit a pub – the décor sounded bizarre from the accounts given, something to do with a train going round the Christmas tree. Sadly Bernie and I both had things to do this afternoon, so decided we would head back to the capital together.

Earlier this year I was hospitalised down in the West Country, with compartment syndrome after an accident. Came close to losing a leg – it needed rotten nerves and muscle to be removed. Bernie had visited me during those dark days, when I was heavily sedated and the medical staff were not being forthcoming as to a likely prognosis. Thankfully their worst case scenarios did not materialise, and these days the leg has some impressive scars and works quite well, but not as well as it used to. It was a delight to chew the cud with Bernie, without the morphine fug. He is such an elegant rider, I am used to seeing him on ridiculous lo-pro bikes in fixie skidder guise, but this has clearly put him in good shape to spend long time smoothly turning his cranks down in the drops. My riding never feels effortless, Bernie looks like he could spend all day on a bike and not break a sweat.

Had never used the carbon soled shoes for fixed riding, and it did show a gap in the damaged legs pedal stroke, a little deadspot that will need to be ironed out. May have to investigate one legged turbo drills to address this. Carbon soles did make a difference on ascents, the lack of flex and increased power was appreciated today, but they are terrible to walk in.

We parted ways at Bromley and I thought it would make sense to pop in to the lovely people at Brixton cycles to discuss bike nerdery, Xmas plans and just a general catch up.
Hoping to see some of them on Sunday for a Waifs and Strays ride around London (any excuse to get a few more festive miles in). From Brixton it was the familiar route back to Kew, I got into the house and the heavens opened. Some braised oxtail and red cabbage helped warm me up before a quick bus ride to Richmond to pick up the 29er from Bikelab, tomorrow I plan to get a few off road miles done at Swinley Forest. Stupidly forgot the Garmin so can’t claim the 2 miles back home with that bike!