Early Season Hilly Time Trials - How Hard Are They ?

Just for fun, I thought I would compare and contrast some of the early season hilly time trials I have been entering. These are all mainly in the Cheshire or North Wales border region.

The ones I have entered in 2013 are:

• Chester Hilly 14 (23rd Feb 2013 - snow !)
• Oswestry Paragons Hilly 17 (16th March 2013 -wet)
• Birkenhead North End Cycling Club Hilly 22 (Good Friday 2013 - very very cold)
• Wrexham Mountain Time Trial - 24 miles (takes place on 14th April 2013)

I also did these in 2012 (apart from the BNECC one).

I've graphed below the profile of each of these time trials - I've normalised the altitude so the start point of the time trial is always at zero.

 

Clearly, the Chester Hilly TT looks fairly flat compared to the others, whereas the Oswestry Hilly 17 and the Wrexham Hilly 24 look pretty challenging.

If I take the "reported" elevation gains (from a Garmin 800), I find the following results:

• Chester Hilly 17, elevation gain approx 180 feet: Height gain (feet) per mile = 12.4
• BNECC Hilly 22, elevation gain approx 480 feet: Height gain (feet) per mile = 22.8
• Oswestry Hilly 17, elevation gain approx 920 feet: Height gain (feet) per mile = 54.2
• Wrexham Hilly 24, elevation gain approx 1950 feet: Height gain (feet) per mile = 81.2

If I plot my speed in these events, and the median speed, and the maximum speed, there is an approximate straight line fit (decreasing with increasing height gain per mile).

I assume the different lines are simply due to the different power/weight ratio of the riders. If you assume the power/weight ratio of competitors is distributed normally (i.e. like a Gaussian distribution) you would expect roughly a normal distribution of times in one of these time trials and this seems to be roughly true (see below 2012 results from the Oswestry Hilly 17).

Anyhow the reason for doing all this is I wanted to know what sort of speed I should expect for hilly time trials - by looking at the height gain (feet) per mile, I can get a pretty good idea of what speed I should be aiming for, and whether the ride is a good, average or poor one.

Timetrialling in the snow !

Not posted on here for a while - probably because the weather in January and February 2013 was mostly dire. Managed to get a few good rides in despite the wind/rain/snow/ice.

The season started again officially, for me, on 16th Feb with the Chester Road Club Hilly 14 club event. On this particular weekend, it was warm enough for cycle shorts, and no gloves. We had a strong wind behind us on the A41 section (first 5 miles or so) but unfortunately that meant we had the wind against us on the rest of the course. I managed a time of 43 mins 33 seconds, which was almost a minute better than the same event in 2012. The winner did a time just a few seconds under 36 mins.

The week after saw the Chester Road Club Hilly 14 again, but this time the Open event - with a total of 95 entries ! This weekend was however, much colder than the one before, and there was snow during the event, although luckily not enough to stick to the road. This was the first time trial I've done where I've worn cycling tights rather than shorts, with about 4 layers on + gloves. Most riders went slower than the week before, but somewhat bizarrely, given the grim conditions, I actually went faster, with a final time of 43 mins 22 seconds - which I make to be an average speed of 19.8 mph. The winner (from Wrexham Road Club) did 32 mins 39 seconds.

Strava details below: 

http://app.strava.com/activities/42078613

Someone was also kind enough to take a photo of me - I was clearly enjoying the good weather (NOT) !

I guess this means the cycling season has officially started. So far in 2013, according to Strava I've done 517 miles and 22,000 feet of climbing.

Next events up are the Oswestry Hilly 17 on March 16th and the WCTTCA 10 mile time trial near Doddleston (March 24th).

A trip to the Eureka Cafe

On 23rd December, a few of us from the Chester Road Club cycled up the Wirral to Thornton Hough for an unofficial, fun, 10 mile Christmas time trial. The circuit was good although at one point the road was partially flooded (which meant we had to slow down a bit). Did a 30 min ride, which is not too bad for this time of year, considering the weather (wet and windy).

Picture below shows us just before the start.

After that we went to the Eureka Cafe (which is a famous cyclist's cafe on the Wirral) to meet up with some other Chester Road Club cyclists who had been on the normal Sunday run. As it was a couple of days before Christmas they were serving mince pies and mulled wine. Very pleasant, and also very packed - Sunday around midday is clearly not the best time to turn up if you want a seat.

Bikehike website

Just recently came across a useful website called bikehike which is at (not surprisingly): http://bikehike.co.uk/index.php

You can upload routes to this website (in various formats) and then download them directly as courses to your cycle computer. The example below shows a route I did in Summer 2012, as a tcx file. You need to go onto Course Creator from the above website (link at top of page) and then press the Load Route link (on the right hand side bottom window). See picture below:

Once the file is uploaded, a map of the route (including elevation data if desired) appears as below:

If you then choose the Save Route option, you have the choice of saving the route to your GPS device - see below.

All in all it's a very useful website for converting from one format to another and for downloading courses to your cycle computer. Well worth using.

Winter training on rollers

It's been an eventful few weeks. Our recent Chester Road Club ride up the Horseshoe Pass on 18 Nov featured in the local paper. The Chester Road Club had it's Annual General Meeting on 30th Nov - we've had approx 20% increase in membership over the last year which is good. Myself and 4 others went out for a ride last Sunday (1st Dec) which perhaps wasn't wise as it was bitterly cold. As we cycled along a country ride in the general direction of Mickle Trafford one of the riders hit black ice and went down heavily, and I also came down. Neither of us were seriously hurt, although I must have bent my thumb in an unusual direction as it swelled up and half my hand was bruised. It's still swollen now almost a week later, but getting better.

Anyhow, I ordered some rollers a few weeks ago, and at last had the chance to try them in earnest. Some photos of the rollers are below:

 

The rollers themselves are Elite V-Arion Parabolic Inertial Rollers, and they were on offer from Wiggle (cost just over £240 including delivery). The rollers have a shape which keeps the wheels near the middle apparently.

I chose rollers as I had never really liked a turbo trainer. I thought the extra concentration you need for rollers may make such training more interesting.

Anyhow, after holding on to a convenient fence for a few minutes, I finally plucked up courage to let go, and it was surprisingly easy. Did 30 minutes at an average cadence of just over 100 (low gear, with the roller at the back set on the easiest of it's 3 settings).

The rollers also fold up conveniently and are very light. I had to adjust the position of the front roller so the axle of my wheel was over the centre of the roller, but apart from that it was pretty straightforward. Very impressed and much more exciting than riding on a turbo trainer.

Horseshoe Pass Part 2 (18th Nov 2012)

Two weeks ago (on 4th Nov) you may recall I wrote about a ride myself and Ian Sutton did over the Horseshoe Pass (link at: http://chestercyclist.blogspot.de/2012/11/chilly-ride-over-horseshoe-pass-4th-nov.html).

Anyhow, a lot of Chester Road Club riders seemed to like the look of the route, and so a repeat run was planned for the 18th November. The main difference between the two rides was that on this occasion, 18 riders turned up !! The second difference was that the weather was much better - still cold, but blue sky all the way, and quite pleasant at the top of the Horseshoe Pass. The final difference was that we did the ride quite a bit more quickly (I think the average speed on 4th Nov was around 14.5 mph or so, whilst on the 18th Nov it was over 15.5 mph).

All in all a good day out. Photos at start of the ride and at the top of the Horseshoe Pass are below.

There is a link to the gpx file at: Horseshoe Pass route from Chester 18 Nov 2012

What I liked about the route was: (1) It was a fairly flat ride out to Llangollen, (2) the long descent (Sunspot descent) for about 4 miles on the way back to Chester is awesome, (3) the Horseshoe Pass climb is a good work out, (4) the Ponderosa cafe is a good food stop

This ride also took me to over 3000 miles of cycling for the year :)

Chilly Ride Over The Horseshoe Pass, 4th Nov 2012

Myself and Ian Sutton (from the Chester Road Club) went for a fairly gentle ride out into the countryside, at least it was fairly gentle until we got to Llangollen, and then we had to go over the Horseshoe Pass.

We set off at 9 am, looking like two Michelin men - due to the number of layers, overshoes, gloves, hats we were wearing, since it was close to zero Centigrade.

It was fairly flat til we got to Ruabon, when it started to get undulating. We took it easy over the Horseshoe Pass and stopped at the Ponderosa Cafe for a quick coffee and cake. It is the first time I've ever been there and not seen another cyclist - however, considering there was frost on the grass, and freezing fog at the top of the Horseshoe Pass it wasn't a big surprise.

Once off the Horseshoe Pass it only took two or three miles to get back into relatively warm, blue skies. We had to do a bit of cyclocross to get through a road closed due to roadworks, but the ride back to the Chester was quite nice, mainly as it was mostly downhill.

Not an excessively fast ride at 14.5 mph, but a good workout given I haven't been on the bike for 3 weeks. Strava summary of ride below (4th Nov ride):

Samsung Chromebook

I just bought a new Samsung Chromebook, from Amazon, for £229. So far I am liking it a lot. What is particularly impressive of course is the boot up time (around 5 seconds or so). The first time was a bit longer as it was upgrading the operating system.

You can look for apps in the Chrome Web Store (and even organise them so you can see Apps which will work offline).

I have been editing my blog using the Chromebook, and adding photos etc is very straightforward.

Battery life also looks good, in excess of 6 hours.

Only downside so far is that Spotify doesn't work, since there isn't a browser version at present - although there are rumours there will be in the not too distant future, so that may be a short term issue.

All in all it's worth a look - not having to worry about OS updates or antivirus etc is very good.

Also, when you buy one these Chromebooks you get 100 Gb of storage on Google Drive for free for two years.

Some photos of the machine shown below:

Visit to China

For approximately two weeks, from the middle to the end of October (2012) I was in China. Initially I spent 5 days in Shanghai, at an excellent hotel close to Shanghai's domestic airport (Hongqiao). I was speaking at an Industrial Lubricants Technology Forum, believe it or not, which attracted upwards of 300 people.

As part of this event, there was a Ferrari F1 car in the hotel lobby, which is something you don't often see.

The hotel room where we were giving our talks was also quite impressive - see below:

We had some time to go out and have a look around Shanghai. Below is a photo of some of the Shanghai skyscrapers taken from a part of Shanghai known as "The Bund". 

We went into a bar in "The Bund", and somewhat surprisingly there was a sculpture of bicycles going up vertically in the hallway !

We visited some good restaurants whilst in Shanghai, including Jesse's and a chain called Southern Beauty. 

At the end of the week we visited a customer south of Shanghai, near to Ningbo, which meant going across a 30 mile bridge across the sea, which was quite impressive. 

I then flew up to Beijing for the weekend, and we visited one of Beijing's oldest roast duck restaurants (unfortunately I can't remember the name) but Beijing (or Peking) duck is fantastic - I particularly like the way they cook the skin. 

On the Sunday morning I went around the Forbidden City, which is an amazing, enormous, historic place. Unluckily I lost my camera here - so no more photos. I think it fell out of my jacket pocket. (However the camera was about 5 years old, and I had backed up all the photos, so it wasn't the end of the world - when I got home I bought a Panasonic Lumix TZ25 to replace it, which looks very nice.)

On the Sunday afternoon, I went to Baoding (about a 3 hour drive from Beijing) which believe it or not is famous for Donkey Burger, which was not the best thing I ate whilst in China. 

On the Tuesday morning I flew to Chongqing, which is a city of approx 30 million people, in which the cars all run on gas (CNG to be precise). We also went to a restaurant which was famous for spicy hotpot. Basically, a large bowl of water, filled with various chilli's and other hot spices, was brought to the boil, and then different types of raw meat, vegetables, fish were cooked in the sauce, and then eaten. It was so spicy, it numbed the tongue - I could tell it was spicy when I woke up in the middle of the night and needed to drink two bottles of water.

Finally, I went to a place in the far south of China, called Zhuhai (in fact it is very close to Hong Kong) where  I stayed for a couple of days before finally flying back to Europe - in fact the trip back was quite stressful as the flight from Zhuhai to Beijing arrived late and I nearly missed my connection to Frankfurt - I got on the plane about 10 minutes before it was due to take off which was a bit too close for comfort.

Anyhow, I would certainly recommend a trip to China - an interesting country, with lots of good food, and cheap, very good hotels. Plus in most cities, there are usually quite a lot of interesting historic places to visit. 

30th Anniversary Horseshoe Pass Hill Climb, 7th Oct 2012

This event, organized by Fibrax Wrexham Road Club, attracted 101 entrants (including one tandem). Simple really, starts just before the Britannia Inn, straight up the Horseshoe Pass, and finishes just by the first layby as the road flattens off near the top. It was a beautiful day for the climb, although there wasn't the usual tailwind at the finish. The photo below shows the scene an hour or so before the start:

Total distance was 2 miles 585 yards. According to Strava, total amount of climbing was 827 feet, and the average gradient was 6.7%. My official time was 15 mins 50 secs, whilst the Strava version of the course gave 5 mins 39 secs. Anyhow, it was the best part of 40 secs faster than any previous time up here so I'm reasonably happy. See profile of route below:

Good turn out from Chester Road Club with 11 riders, most of whom did between 12 and 14 mins, with Alistair Wrenn being the best CRC rider with 11 mins 25 secs. Dan Evans (Rhos on Sea) was the best time I saw with 9 mins 51 secs.

Group photo of most of the Chester Road Club people who rode below:

Full set of results available here

Hilly Ride Into North Wales, 15th Sept 2012

With my final race of the season coming up (a hill climb up the Horseshoe Pass on 7th Oct 2012) I thought I'd better get some hill climbing in.

So I went out of Chester towards North Wales, up the "Steps" and round towards Llangollen, over the Horseshoe Pass, and then over towards Ruthin, back up "the Shelf" through Llandegla and back to Chester. Route below for those who are interested. Not a great time but quite a tough route. Also discovered that my maximum heart rate is 174 (previous highest I've ever seen was 173). You can cick on the map below to get more details.

Free Maps for Garmin 800

I bought a Garmin Edge 800 package last year which included heart rate monitor, cadence sensor and UK/Europe road maps. I always thought the maps looked a bit bland, and there were a lot of roads I ride on in North Wales which weren't on the maps !

I looked into buying an OS Discovery map but according to the Garmin website a micro SD card with such a map is £199 !

So I looked into some other options. In particular there were a couple of useful blogs here and here. The second of these blogs directed me to the following website: http://talkytoaster.info/ukmaps.htm.

I happened to have a spare 4 GB micro SD card (from an old mobile phone) so I made sure there was nothing on it, created a folder called GARMIN (I did this when the micro SD card was in a card reader but I guess you could do it if you had put it into the Garmin Edge). Then I downloaded a UK Open Source Map which had contours and was routable (i.e. it should still work as a sat-nav). The download site is at:
http://talkytoaster.info/120907-British-Isles+Contours-Routable-GMAPSUPP.zip

It's a 500 MB or so file so may take some time if you have a slow connection.

Once this was copied to a sensible place on my computer, I unzipped the file, and renamed it just GMAPSUPP (it should be an IMG file so filename should be GMAPSUPP.IMG). I then simply copied this into the folder I had created on the micro SD card, unplugged the micro SD card from my Garmin (the one with the UK/Europe maps in) and put the newly created SD card in.

I tried it out today on a route into North Wales from Chester - it is much much better than the other map. All the small roads in North Wales on the route I did were in the map OK. There are also maps available for other countries.

It may not be as good as the OS Discovery maps but considering those cost £199 and the map I got above was free I'm pretty happy with it.

The Secret Race

This book, subtitled "Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-Ups and Winning at All Costs", written by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle, gives a fascinating insight into the life of professional cyclists from the mid 1990's. Reading the book you get some idea of the pressure on riders to perform and why some may have chosen to take performance enhancing drugs.

According to the book, up until about 1998 or 1999, the pro-teams managed their own doping programmes. However, in the 1998 TdF a Festina team car was stopped by customs on the French border and a massive stash of performance enhancing drugs were found. Since taking performance enhancing drugs is illegal in France (unlike many other countries including the UK, USA, Italy and Spain) the police were involved and criminal charges were levelled.

From 1999 onwards, according to the book, riders had to organise their own supplies, and many riders had links to specialist doctors, such as Dr Ferrari and Dr Fuentes. Quite apart from EPO, testosterone and cortisone, according to the book, the donation of blood bags, and the re-infusion just before a race was common. Much later on, when Dr Fuentes' lab was raided, a large number of blood bags were found belonging to many riders in the peloton (at the time). Tyler Hamilton himself failed a doping test because the testers found he had had a blood transfusion from someone else (this was clearly a mix-up since he was supposed to have had his own blood put back in). In addition, Tyler Hamilton recounts how some riders had "echo positives", whereby when the transfused blood was put back in, any doping products that were in there at the time of donation could result in a positive test.

Clearly, a large part of the book implicates other riders at Tyler's own team and others, and of course, Lance Armstrong is mentioned many times.

It is difficult to know how much of the book is true, but the co-author Daniel Coyle said he made sure to corroborate Tyler Hamilton's claims. However the book comes across as more than just plausible, and since I assume this is also what Tyler Hamilton told the US legal and USADA authorities in sworn testimony, it is pretty convincing.

Hopefully, things have changed somewhat now that testing is better, and it seems to be true that times for some of the key mountain stages in major tours are quite a bit slower now than they were in late 90's/early 2000's.

I have to say this is one of the best books I've read on cycling, albeit rather depressing. 

Cheeky Bit of EtapeCymru + Night Riding

Have not blogged for a while due to a bit of travelling with work. Last week for example I was in Leeds all week at a conference (the 39th Leeds-Lyon Symposium on Tribology if you are interested).

Anyhow, I decided to blow the cobwebs away by doing a decent ride on Sunday 9th September. The previous week I had done a good ride out from Chester -> Mold -> Ruthin and back via the Shelf and Llandegla with Tim from the Chester Road Club. For some reason I had felt pretty knackered all the way through the ride (average speed for 46 miles, albeit with 3000 feet of climbing, was only 15.4 mph). So I wanted to try it again, this time though I was on my own. I also knew that because the Etape Cymru was on, the Shelf would be "closed road" conditions.

I arrived at the bottom of the Shelf from the Ruthin side, and the marshals seemed a bit surprised when I turned up the road from the wrong direction!. I think I was slightly ahead of the leading group of 8 or so riders who went up quite quickly and soon overtook me (although I was then only overtaken by another 5 or so riders as I went up the ride). Once through Llandegla I turned left and went back to Chester whilst the Etape Cymru went straight on. If anyone saw me, I was the one wearing a Chester Road Club top. I don't feel too guilty about doing this since I did the Etape Cymru in 2011, and the Shelf was supposed to be on the route but was missed off (however if anyone really is offended by what I did, I'm perfectly happy to cough up the £3 I probably owe - 5 miles or so of the 92 mile route !). This was much better than the week before, and I knocked off around 7 minutes and had an average speed of approx 16 mph. Map of the ride is below:



For what it's worth, for the bit of the Etape Cymru I saw, it looked a lot better organised and marshalled than the 2011 event. If you were in it I hope you enjoyed it. Personally I felt it was quite expensive, considering I ride most of these roads all year around. The Broken Spoke and the Circle of Hope Charity Ride are much better value in my opinion (even if they are not closed roads).

Anyhow, enough of Sunday's ride. The week before, Thursday 30th August I think, that I joined a few people from the Chester Road Club in a "night ride". We set off about 6:50 pm and I got back home around 9:30. For most of the ride we needed our lights, and it was a novel experience riding as a group down narrow country lanes. Very enjoyable and I will probably do it again (there was a ride on Thursday 6th Sept but I couldn't go as I was in Leeds. Route for the ride below:

Time Trial Results 2012

Summary of my time trial results so far for 2012. Just one more to do in 2012 - the Horseshoe Pass hill climb on Oct 9th (DHC/1). I think I'm getting better compared to the start of the season - at least there's something to build on for next year :)

Date	Distance	Course	Time	Position	Average Speed (mph)	comments
18th Feb 2012	14.3	D14/1	44 mins 17 secs	20/22	19.4	windy
25th Feb 2012	14.3	D14/1	43 mins 53 secs	53/65	19.6	windy
17th March 2012	17	D18/2R	1 hour 1 min 13 secs	37/50	16.7	wet
15th April 2012	24	D24/1	1 hour 32 mins 38 secs	47/66	15.5
17th May 2012	10	D2/7	28 mins 20 secs	28/33	21.2
24th May 2012	10	D2/7	28 mins 6 secs	not known	21.4
10th June 2012	25	D25/8(E)	1 hour 14 mins 8 secs	not known	20.2
20th June 2012	10	D2/7	29 mins 15 secs	8/10	20.5	VERY WET
19th July 2012	10	D2/7	28 mins 53 secs	16/20	20.8
26th July 2012	10	D2/7	28 mins 31 secs	not known	21.0	WINDY
2nd August 2012	10	D2/7	28 mins 19 secs	not known	21.2	WET/WINDY
9th August 2012	10	D2/7	27 mins 47 secs	27/35	21.6
17th August 2012	10	D2/7	28 mins 19 secs	21/37	21.2

Horse Shoe Pass (yet again !)

Did a good ride out into North Wales on Saturday 21st July. Total mileage was approx 53.5 miles with about 3500 feet of climbing, and I did a time of 3 hours 17 mins - which is about 4 mins faster than the last time I did this route. Details from Strava below:



Also did a 10 mile time trial on Thursday 19th July on the Saighton circuit. It was slightly wet and quite windy, and I did a pretty awful time of 28:53. Hopefully will do a better ride next Thursday in the Chester Road Club event.

On Tuesday 17th July I did the Chester Road Club chain gang (twice around the 7 mile Saighton circuit) where I averaged about 21 mph.

Lastly, on Sunday 15th July, went out with 69 Cycles and we did a good ride out to Connah's Quay (along the Chester cycle path) up Pioneer Hill and then back through Buckley and Hawarden. Reasonably high average speed for this route - see below:



Will go out with 69 Cycles again on Sunday 22nd July - if I keep this level of activity I should start seeing some benefits in terms of faster TT times. 

Victoria Pendleton Documentary

Watched the documentary earlier in the week, on BBC1, about Victoria Pendleton. It was pretty inspirational stuff. It showed the amount of work and dedication needed if you want to get to the top in sport. Often you see the glamorous photo shoots or adverts or podium presentations, but you rarely see all the unglamorous stuff going on in the background, which was shown in the documentary.

It should be said that her achievements are even greater when you realise that, according to the documentary, the Britsh Cycling Management Team seemed completely devoid of any kind of emotional support.You got the impression they would be happier managing a team of robots rather than real human beings.

Firstly there was the romance with her coach. Work place romances are commonplace and are not illegal, nor morally wrong. Often management turn a blind eye, which rather sensibly seems to have been done in the first instance. However, why the manager chose the day she won a gold medal in the Beijing Olympics to tell everyone in the cycling team about their relationship - despite the fact it was none of their business - seems to be a case study of not how to handle such an issue. Let's be perfectly clear, neither VP or her coach have done anything wrong and have absolutely nothing to apologise for. In fact, despite raising some sort of initial moral issues, and sending the coach off to the swimming team, the management can't have too many scruples as they've brought him back into the team.

Secondly, just after she won the 2012 world championship, she collapsed to the floor, and Dave Brailsford, instead of hugging her or showing some empathy, shouted "Steve" - who is the psychiatrist - clearly anything to do with emotion is done by him - to sort the situation out !! He seemed quite a nice chap, but you got the impression he has his work cut out after the riders have been through the tough training regime that is in place.

In fact the only person in the documentary who seemed to have even less emotion that the above people was the mysterious Swiss coach, who came across as some sort of "Terminator" type character. 

Anyhow, hope VP wins gold in London. Whatever happens, she is a legend in British cycling.

Recent Bike Rides

Had quite a bit of traveling with work during June, so didn't do as much cycling as I would like. I am now back in the office for a few weeks so hopefully will settle into the following routine:

• Saturday - longish ride 50-70 miles
• Sunday - 30 mile ride with 69 Cycles (Chester)
• Tuesday - 14 miles - chaingang with Chester Road Club (CRC)
• Thursday - 10 miles - Time Trial, Saighton course (D2/7)

 Yesterday, I went out with a couple of  CRC riders (Neil and Tim) and we did a good ride out to Ellesmere - which looked quite nice - we stopped by a lake in Ellesmere for something to eat and drink. Did a reasonable 17.5 mph average for a "rolling" 60 miles or so. Route below:


On Sunday 8th July, a group of 6 of us went out for the 69 Cycles Sunday Sort Out (69 Cycles is a bike shop in Chester: website at: http://www.sixtyninecycles.co.uk/). We did a pleasant ride out to Delamere and back: Route below:



Need to decide what TT/sportives to do next - still undecided about the Etape Cymru (which I did last year). Will have a think about my schedule in Aug/Sept/Oct and update in the next blog.

69 Cycles Sunday Sort Out Ride 17th June 2012

Went along to this as the time/distance were convenient (8 am start, finish by 1015 or so). Good turn out of around 15 cyclists. We did a pretty challenging route over to Brymbo in North Wales and then up to Bwlchgwyn before heading (mainly downhill) back to Chester. Good average speed for that course of around 17.6 mph.



Good crowd of cyclists, good atmosphere, well recommended - although quite challenging on return to Chester. Good for speed work. Will definitely come out on this again. 

Alf Jones Memorial 25 mile TT, 10th June 2012

This was the first 25 mile time trial I've ever done. It was on Sunday 10th June 2012, and my start time was 0705 (!!). It was also about half an hour's drive from Chester, so it was a pretty early start. Start and finish was close to the A41/A49 roundabout near Prees, with the HQ being at the Raven Cafe. I didn't particularly enjoy the course, as the A41 is pretty heavy with traffic, at least towards the end of the race, and there were three roundabouts you had to go round pretty much all the way.

Anyhow, my aim was to keep above 20 mph, so I was aiming for 1 hr 15 mins or less.

As it turned out, did a 1:14:08 - which was above 20 mph, but not by much. I only overtook one person on the race, who I beat by 5 minutes, but it turned out he was 67 ! Looking back at the ride stats, I think I could have gone harder - as it turns out I was still feeling OK so did another 20 mile ride on the same afternoon. I seemed to be catching people up on the hilly sections, but then falling back on the flat sections, possibly because I am not using a high enough gear. Anyhow plenty of room for improvement next time.