Solo

Sometimes you just need to get out and ride. Not because you're trying to get away from anything. Quite the reverse, because you're trying to get towards something. Yourself.

Don't get me wrong, the last few Wannabees club rides have been great, even the ones in the rain. But this weekend I needed to ride, and with a proper grown up evening planned in Cape Town Saturday evening followed by  a night in the Grand Daddy Hotel, Saturday morning was always going to be my best opportunity for riding.

The weekend club rides can be a bit too frantic for my tastes, too much pent up energy from the working week blasting off at a heated pace. With a cold start to the day forecast, but fabulous sunny weather later I decided to fall back to a solo ride starting at a more relaxed 8am. In the end, it was a shade after nine as my wheels rolled out of the gate, accompanied by a "ride safe" from Yoli and a "are you going to go large fast daddy?" from Ben.

One thing I did keep consistent with a club ride was starting out down the hill. This was going to be a relaxing solo ride on a gorgeous sunny winter's day, so a quad crunching climb up the hill did not fit the bill nearly so well as a whiz down followed by an easy loosening spin up Old Stellenbosch Road. A cheesy grin was already stuck on my face even before I reached cruising pace out along the R44. Today's ride would be  a gentle 70km odd out to Klapmuts and back - an old favourite route from Argus training rides earlier this year, and one I hadn't ridden since.

Coasting into Stellenbosch, my first reaction to the parked cars scattered both sides of the road was that there must be a school rugby game on. Then I noticed the bike racks hung off the back of pretty much every car and remembered it was the Die Burger mountain bike race today.. What amazing weather I thought for the riders, given the rain and storms of the past few weekends.  Our paths crossed a number of times on the road out of Stellenbosch, as the MTB trail zigzagged between farm trails on either side of the R44.

The riding was surprisingly easy despite keeping up a reasonable pace, no doubt helped by my training these last few weeks. And somewhere just between Krom Rhee road and Kanonkop it happened. The peace and quiet of riding with only my own inner voice for company caught up with me on the road right there, and suddenly I realised how much I'd missed riding solo: time to sit up and enjoy the view, with no distractions apart from the rhythmic whir of pedals and humming wheel hubs; time to think, and be alone with those thoughts.

Something wonderful happened over the remaining forty kilometres or so of riding - a whole host of murky and tangled issues that had been troubling me over the past few weeks unravelled themselves and everything became simple and clear again. It's something of a cliché to say it was a life changing ride, but in this case it would be absolutely true - quite literally, although exactly why will have to be the subject of a future entry. For now all I can really say is that something else I learned today is that through all the club rides and training, I won't be losing sight again of the pleasure and enjoyment of the occasional ride alone, for no other reason than the pure pleasure of cycling.

What the LEL?

"You're seriously going to enter that?"

Hent's view on my audaxing interests had mellowed a shade from his comment about me being mad at the beginning of this blog. He and Lanie were over for dinner last Saturday evening and our conversation had moved from cycling in general, to some stunning Joberg2c footage which had been used on a recent Avis TV ad. Hent raised an eyebrow at the 900km in 9 days schedule which prompted me to mention my intention to enter LEL (London-Edinburgh-London) next year. As we talked more, it dawned on me that I haven't really mentioned LEL here on the blog.

Two or three months back Yoli and I were having dinner at one of our favourite restaurants, Taste just outside Somerset West on the R44. For a day or so I'd been wondering about whether LEL would be a good idea, but I knew there was no point considering it unless Yoli was comfortable with the idea. Given that we have work, family and friends in the UK, it's not a difficult trip to combine with other things and no shortage of things to do whilst there.

A few things had sparked my interest in LEL. First of those was the distance - at 1,400km it's actually longer than PBP albeit with an extra day allowed to compensate for that. The next attraction is that it is two years before the next PBP event in 2015. Whilst that may make it a tad ambitious in terms of my training, it will give me valuable practical experience of what a long audax event entails, allowing time to improve and refine my ideas on equipment and preparations before PBP. And finally, there is the question of whether I am made of the right stuff to complete these long audax rides. Hopefully LEL will help me answer that question before committing myself to the qualifying brevets and the final stages along the road to PBP.

Luckily, Yoli is extremely understanding and tolerant of my cycling addiction and immediately grasped the logic of adding LEL to the DC as training stages towards PBP. Although maybe the candlelit ambience, Anton's excellent food and Ed's superb wine helped get the idea across too.

So that's how LEL came into the planning of my journey to Paris, and hardly a day goes by without some aspect of the going through my mind. The most often areas I find myself contemplating aren't actually the cycling at all - I can train for that. The trickier parts to gauge are what a workable sleeping and eating pattern will be. I know from reading many accounts of PBP experiences that, aside from injury, over tiredness and lack of nutrition are big dangers as the hours and days wear on. An average speed of 20 KM/h sounds easy until you think about doing it five days in a row. Actually for LEL the real average is closer to 14 KM/h but you need to get out ahead of that speed to eke out time to eat and sleep, not to mention contingency for mechanicals.

For now though, it's all about building the kilometres towards the DC. It's been hard at times to get out training lately, especially with some very wet riding. But the looming prospect of a tough team 200km ride in November and needing to make a final decision on LEL by Jan 5th 2013 have served as more than enough motivation to keep cycling.

Bad wheels, or bad luck?

Under any other circumstances, sitting outside on a sunny winters day at Rooi Els with a cup of cappuccino to complement the stunning views would more than enough to put a smile on my face. But when it is winter, and sunny days are rare, sitting looking at views is not something I'd trade for enjoying them from the saddle of my bike. And enjoying my midweek ride is just what I had been doing until my Easton EA 90 SLX wheels let me down again.

I'd made a concious decision to lead the group up the climb back from Betty's Bay. It's fairly long but not steep, making it perfect for settling into a nice brisk pace to spin up to the top. Being just four riders we ended up riding in twos: Penny alongside me at the head; and John and Tom tucked on our wheels behind. Energy wise, I'd judged the haul up well - as we crested the top I was starting to feel the effort in my lungs, although my legs still felt strong and energetic.

Starting the free-wheel down I was looking forward to seeing how well I would last the remaining few hills, given my recent lack of training and the decent pace we had kept up. But around halfway down I heard an ominous crack, followed immediately by a wobbling front wheel. I instantly knew it was another broken spoke, having had exactly the same experience at the end of the Wellington Lions ride back in February. I'm a fairly cautious (in other words slow!) descender, and Penny and John were already too far ahead to hear me cry out "mechanical". Tom pulled alongside as my bike rapidly slowed under the involuntary braking of the no longer round front wheel. He graciously offered to wait with me, but there was really no point him also spoiling his ride so I bid him farewell and asked him to let the others know what had happened when he caught up with them.

Luckily Yolandi was at home, and the hour it took her to reach me passed quite quickly with the views, my coffee, and my inbox to work through. I wasn't happy though: two spoke breakages in 8 months and less than 2,000km of usage is just not what I'd expected from high end wheels. Especially since everything else about them I like - they're very light and spin very fast. But durable they are not, at least not the set I have.

Having done some internet research - it seems that there are many happy customers, with lots of distance on these wheels and no problems. There is no shortage of other unhappy riders though whose experiences pretty much exactly mirror mine - multiple and repeated spoke breakages with relatively low usage, and also loosening hubs which is something I had to get fixed just last week. So I've lobbied Helderberg Cycle World to try and get me either a replacement set or a refund from Omnico, the SA distributors. Hopefully I'll get a rock solid set in replacement, and will be able to report back that I was unlucky with a defective set.

26 Jul 12 - Postcript to original entry:

Yet another case of superb service from Helderberg Cycles and Omnico, they replaced the wheels with a brand new boxed set. I can't really say whether my set were just defective, or there is something inherent in the Easton's that doesn't suit my riding, but it's great to have the support of my LBS and the importer in getting me a replacement set.

Photos from Easton website

Rain, Rain ...

Rule #5 - Harden The F*ck Up


Rule #9 - If you are out riding in bad weather it means you are badass. Period.

Source: the rules as laid down by the Velominati, Keepers of the Cog.

Today was definitely a day for contemplating both of these rules, and they were cited on a few occasions to cheer our small group of riders and prevent further defections to home or a coffee shop due to the inclement conditions.

Even though they disagreed on how much, and when it would start, every forecast was predicting a cold morning with some rain. With little doubt of a downpour, it was clearly a perfect day to break out the Endura Flyte jacket for it's inaugural ride, the only one of the items brought over on Mum's visit not to have been road tested yet. In theory, this jacket should be more water and windproof than my lightweight jacket or gilet, albeit at the expense of portability. Once on, the jacket needs to stay on as it does not fold down small enough to go in a jersey pocket. So you need to be pretty sure it will be cold and/or wet enough that the jacket will be needed for the whole ride.

Along with the new jacket, I also put on my Deluge Zipless overshoes and FS-260 leg warmers. Both of these have had one previous outing and proved their value at beating the cold, but this would be their first test in the rain.

I must confess, as I started down the road with all my layers on I was almost too warm. But even in the dark of the morning, I could just make the outline of some fairly ominous looking clouds in the sky. Sure enough, swinging right at the lights into Main Road and heading towards our meeting point at Waterstone Village a few small half-hearted spots of rain were already drifting lazily on the air. It was easy to ignore them at first as we chatted in the car park, but even before we started off a steadily increasing drizzle was glinting in the gathering beams of headlights arriving for the ride. By the time we reached Beach Road in Strand the drizzle had turned into full on rain - so much for the forecasts which had suggested we would stay dry until 11 o'clock.

A quick stop and confer and it was agreed that with nearby Gordon's Bay hidden by a blanket of cloud and rain, the coast road would not make for a pleasant ride. Not willing to abandon the ride though, the decision was made to change our route and we swung back and headed for Vlaberg. Conditions did not improve by heading inland though, and as we span wetly along our new route each junction we crossed saw a fresh crop of riders elect to turn for home. By the time we left the R102 the attrition was complete: our group had been culled to seven or eight die hard riders, buoyed along by a consensus that since we were already wet we may as well just keep going.

I was surprised how easily my legs span up the first ramp of the Vlaberg climb, but three and a half weeks off the bike for our holidays caught up with me on the second ramp and it was a slow crawl to the top and the waiting group of riders. Flying down the Stellenbosch Arterial, a mix of road spray and rain made for a solid drenching. Penny commented that it was surprisingly exhilarating, which in a weird way it was: it's not every day you get to take a 45km/h shower.

The remainder of our ride home from Stellenbosch was a bit of a struggle - my legs felt good, but lack of saddle time definitely showed in my energy levels. Our usual coffee stop was abandoned by consensus. None of us wanted to stop and allow the wet and cold seep in deeper and then have to get back on the bikes again. So we pedalled briskly for home, and bid our farewells as we peeled off the R44 at our various exit points.
 

Back home, after over two hours of solid riding in the rain, it was time to assess how the kit had performed. Wettest were my First Ascent gloves and shorts - to be fair, the shorts aren't billed as water proof, but the gloves in theory are all weather outdoor gloves. They did keep my hands warm, but get a marginal thumbs down for waterproofing. My legs felt wet during the ride, but rather surprisingly peeling off the leg warmers they actually seemed quite dry. I suspect the close fit of the warmers had something to do with the sensation of being wet, so these get a solid thumbs up. My feet were warm and toasty all ride, but the boot covers and cycle shoes were a little damp. I suspect fitting my mudguards for an audax event would see much less road spray on the boots and drier feet as a result, so another thumbs up there. Last to come off was my jacket. My jersey was only slightly damp on the back and dry on the front, which given the conditions I'd rate as excellent. Oddly, my thermal vest was wetter than the jersey, so I must have been sweating more than I had realised. First prize for dryness though goes to my new Pocpac phone pouch - not only dry inside, but outside too, although that probably bears as much testament to the effectiveness of the Endura jacket as the actual pouch itself.

All in all it was a surprisingly memorable and enjoyable ride given the conditions. Without the camaraderie of the brave souls who stuck it out it would have been a miserable ride in foul weather. But the lively and friendly banter kept going the whole ride, lifting spirits and preventing anyone dwelling on the steady drenching of rain and road spray. Cheers folks!

All photos from Endura web-site