Day: April 3, 2009

Staying warm, eating food

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Twice during my training, I’ve stupidly failed to eat enough during the ride, and both times the effect has been pretty severe.  Typically, I’ve been out on a ride which turned out to be longer than I expected (eg. because of a strong headwind).  Then I run out of food/water, and I think “stuff it, I just want to get home” and press on rather than stopping to refuel.

This is a really bad idea.

Three things happen.  Firstly, your energy just goes away and cycling suddenly becomes hard.  Secondly, your body temperature seems to drop rapidly – but you don’t realise how chilled you’ve got until you stop cycling.  Thirdly, your concentration, risk perception and reaction times become seriously impaired.  The worst part of this is this: It happens fast, and I don’t realise that its happening.  I mean, I know I’m tired and hungry, but I don’t notice the temperature drop, and once you’re in the bad zone you’re just thinking about getting home and nothing else.

Boy, this is all good stuff to learn during training.  Actually, I’m much more conscientious about eating and drinking when I’m on long rides.  Every time I even think about water or drinking, I take a drink.  And I eat something at least every 10 miles or 45 minutes.  But I seem to have a dumb blindspot during ride of about two hours.

I guess the main risk during the actual LEJOG ride is towards the end of the day when I’ll be tempted to “just get there”.  Or to try and take a ‘late lunch’ instead of stopping at the right time.  So I hope that writing this down will help me remember this!  And I’m definitely going to pack some glucose sweets for instant emergency refueling.

Edit:  It’s just occurred to me that there was also something else in common on both these rides.  The first part of the ride was slow and hard work (hills, or against the wind) so I was hot and sweating.  Then the second part of the ride was at higher speeds and colder weather.  So, the temperature drop combined with the wind chill on damp cycling gear makes for a nasty combo.  A wise cyclist would stop, adjust layers and be comfortable …

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Changing gear

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I was excitedly looking forward to getting my shiny new touring bike this week.  Unfortunately, when all the new bikes got delivered to BikeTrax (the bike shop), my bike was missing.  Ridgeback, the company who make the bike, now say they can’t built it until June because of supply problems.  I spent a lot of this week on the phone, but didn’t get anywhere.  I’ve now had to cancel the whole order.  Google take note:  Ridgeback == bad.

All of which means … plan B is needed!  I’ll do the ride on my existing bike, which is a 8-speed hub geared Courier Nexus which I use for commuting to work.  Whilst undeniably the touring bike would’ve been a bit nicer, I’m reminded of the title of Lance Armstrong’s book – “It’s Not About The Bike”.  The challenge is a mental and physical one at heart, and the bike itself is a relatively minor factor.  On the plus side, I’ve done all my training on this bike and I know that I can do long days in the saddle fairly comfortably.

I’m doing some maths to figure out if it’d be worth tweaking the gear ratios for the hilly sections at the start and end of the LEJOG route.  Even though the hub gears are all fixed, there’s still a sprocket on the back wheel which you can replace with something other than the default 20 teeth job that came with the bike.

Training: I’ve just got over a fortnight of colds + stomach bugs so the training has been a bit light recently.  I cycled to work a couple of times, including a mammoth 18 mile off-road route coming home on Thursday which looped around next to the airport (passing just under the planes as they departed!).

If I’m feeling up to it, I’ll cycle to/from Kirkcaldy this weekend (~50miles).  Next week, I’m heading down for an evening blast around the red route Glentress and then I’m cycling  to Ayrshire and back at the weekend (~130 miles over 2 days).

Logistic-wise, I need to:

  1. finalise my gear list and try fitting it into my panniers.
  2. Buy a handlebar mount for the GPS
  3. Finalise the route, get it onto GPS and figure out where I’m staying each night
  4. Err, that’s about it.

Five weeks to go …

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