New wheel's come to life

I wondered if Merry knew that change was in the air. Starting from the gate, the clouds were grey and heavy, and the wind was fresh, bordering cold. I wasn't particularly motivated to go cycling with the imminent threat of rain, and as I started to climb the first hill the rear gear's started randomly slipping across the lower cogs whenever I stood and put pressure on the pedals. I stopped a couple of times to see if I could twiddle the barrel shifters to improve things, but a few Km down the road the real problem became clear. My rear gear cable snapped clean off at the shifter hood.



After a few moments tidying the mess, I turned for home, with the joy ahead of tackling the nasty Yonder Hill climb on my patched up 2 speed - the new gears being hard, and harder. It wasn't yet 2pm though, and Helder Cycles would still be open. Despite the less than enticing riding conditions, I figured rather than waste the afternoon I could nip by and hopefully get the cable replaced and gears fixed. Luckily they weren't too busy, and less than an hour later I was pedalling back up the R44. It took a lot of effort to ignore the slip road at the top of the hill and suppress the urge to head home to a warm couch and some trashy TV.

Merry behaved the rest of the ride, and although the threat of rain never diminished, it also never quite arrived either. Just spots here and there, but nothing to make me want to put my horrible sweaty, non-breathable rain jacket back on. I resolved to go online that evening and actually order the wet weather gear that I'd been slowly mulling over for a week or two.

Closing the garage door, I also wondered how often I'd be riding Merry again. With all the components now arrived, tomorrow would be build-up day for the new bike. Maybe the broken cable was just coincidence - but in over 4 years Merry had delivered trouble free riding. It's bizarre for a breakage to happen the day before the new ride came together,

Pictured left is William of William's Bike Shop part way through the build-up process.

As it turned out, the new bike wasn't quite completed in one go on the Monday. The one component I had decided not to buy purely from internet research was handlebars, and sure enough that was the one item none of the local suppliers had stock of any of my preferred choices. In the end we decided to put a standard 42cm Giant bar on as a stopgap for now to let us complete the build and replace it with something fancier later.

The remainder of the build was completed on the
Thursday, with relatively few hiccups - just the odd screw thread not quite reamed out fully, but all things that William had the tools to sort out.

I'm not a weight weenie, but it was also a pleasant surprise to see how light the complete build had come out - a reasonably svelt 8.3kg. That will go up of course when the light race wheels and saddle are swapped out for their more durable and comfortable audax counterparts.

It was very hard to contain my excitement on the first ride. At last the new bike was a whole machine - not just a pile of components and dreams lying around in boxes on my office floor. That lighter weight was immediately noticeable on the first few climbs. Combined with the stiffer frame it made for a lively and spirited feel. Just the merest extra surge on the the pedal and she leaps eagerly forward, ready to race. The riding position is also quite different, although it felt very natural over the short 30km test ride I did with Marleen. It seems that Justin may have been right about my saddle height - William's setup ended up very close to the 74cm bottom bracket to saddle top height he had predicted. The lower 72cm setup on Merry had occasionally felt cramped on recent rides, but it's surprising it felt good at all.given how large a jump in saddle height 2cm is. I've also got a hunch that William was right about me needing a seatpost with more lay back. It's only marginal, but I did find myself pushing out over the back of the saddle to get into a natural and powerful pedalling position.

That's tweaks and fine tuning for the future though - for now, I'm greatly looking forward to putting some solid kilometres under Jolly's wheels. Oh yes, the name, Jolly. That was in fact my first choice, but my impression Dad's gang had the nickname of The Jolly Boys proved to be mistaken. That minor detail doesn't really seem to matter now though - those first few turns of the cranks put such a huge smile on my face that Jolly is clearly the perfect name. And it'll still be a memory and link to dad, regardless of it only making sense because of my faulty memory.


All photographs by author.

Bike bones

And just like that the long wait was over - the UPS delivery guy was at my gate.

The last couple of weeks settling into the new winter training routine has distracted me nicely, but the excitement returned when I heard the van pull up outside.

Immediately I was struck by how light the package was, but that was nothing to how ridiculously little the frame weighed when unpacked. The look and feel is metal, but close your eyes and the titanium evaporates leaving you holding nothing but air.

Every bit of research I've done suggest that the weak spot, if there is one, in a frame is the quality of the welding. I am no expert, but to my untrained eye the quality of Justin Burl's russian frame makers looks pretty darned good - even and tidy welds all around. Time will tell, but so far I'm very impressed.



Also packed into the box were the USE Alien titanium seatpost, Ortlieb bar bag for essential supplies on those long audax days and nights, and most importantly the Kinesis DC07 front forks. I'd not come across the Kinesis brand until Justin recommended them to me, but they feel reassuring solid without being overly heavy. Importantly, they have discrete mudguard eyelets behind the drop outs, not something you'd ever use on local fun rides and day races but vital for staying dry on long all-weather endurance events.

The last major piece of the jigsaw is the Ultegra groupset. I lucked out on this and got an absolute bargain at the Argus expo a few weeks back.

Hopefully all these parts will come together nicely next Monday on build day, and by this time next week I'll have words and pictures to post from the build up and inaugural ride.

I may also have decided on the new bike's name by then - there's a few candidates floating around in my mind, but I don't think she can really be named until we've connected on that first ride.

All photographs by author.

Hel's Hills

This weeks particular torture served up by the autumn and winter training programme was hill intervals. Suffice to say, that my first attempt at these resulted in a lot of sweating, gasping, and a peak heart rate of 175bpm. In theory that is 2bpm more than 100% heart rate, assuming of course that you believe the standard age based calculation of 220-age.

Anyhow, back to the hill laps - I devised a nice little circuit that I have called Hel's Hills. It loops around various angles of the hillside on which we live, the Helderberg.  The benefit of being local is that I'm training almost as soon as I leave the gate. The downside is, well, the circuit! Parel Vallei road starts out with a decent climb, steep but manageable. As it swings into Silwerboom road though the gradient pitches upward sharply  and it's a battle even on the small blade and 25 tooth rear cog to keep any kind of momentum going. First lap around I was sucking in gulps of air and battling pretty much all of the last and steepest section in a standing climb for. Second lap around I managed better, staying in a seated climb for most of the hill, with just an occasional standing surge to stretch out and keep my speed above a crawl.

I decided my legs needed a more gradual ascent between laps to loosen the legs before the next assault, so threw in a short loop down to Old Stellenbosch road and back up Irene avenue. The extra section making each lap into a figure of eight, and adding a nice gradual hill that you can steadily work up a good pace on. The only part of the circuit I'm less than sold on is the tearing descent down the other side of Irene, very steep and a badly placed 4 way stop and left turn mean that instead of running down it at speed, I end at the bottom with seriously over heating brake blocks. It'll do for now though, 11km per lap and 300m of climbing, this week's session being 2 laps making for a respectable start of 600 vertical meters for my first week of hill laps. Hopefully over the coming weeks I can speed up each lap and build up to 3 and 4 laps in the time clawed back from each faster lap.

This week had a few other cycling related highlights too. The hub forum served a considerable amount of interest in LEL 2013. It seems quite a number of SA based cyclists have an interest in taking part, one of whom also lives in Somerset West which could tie up nicely for training sessions. Also via a thread on the hub, it looks like we have the makings of a team for the Double Century in November. Our group will be meeting for an inaugural ride together on 22nd April.  More on these in future entries as they develop.