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Today Today - December 2014

Having picked up a winter jacket over the weekend, I'm now looking forward to cycling in the colder temperatures that December will throw at us. I think I should be all set for the colder months now (a winter and and neck warmer is still on the list of things I need to get though).
 
850km with 14,340m of climbing for me in November, though the elevation is laughably off thanks to the Strava app.

Have almost six months' worth of power data from the Stages and can now geek out on the numbers. For those who are interested (i.e. me, me and me), my FTP has remained stable while I've lost 3kg, so an overall increase in the old watts-to-kg. This has definitely made me quicker up climbs, but I've lost a bit of top-end power for leg-burning efforts.

Expecting a bit of drop-off in terms of cycling this month, as I'll be back in the tropical north-east of England for a couple of weeks. Might get some rides in, but it's more likely that I'll do a spot of fell-running in between the mammoth grazing sessions of Christmas.
 
It was a flat riding month for me. Family stuff kept me out of the mountains until the last day of Autumn. Picked up a bug in the middle part of the month and it took some of my power with it when I finally booted it from my body.

But it was another good month distance wise, 1168km but only 5888m vert :ashamed: and about 1km/hr slower than my usual averages.

Like @leicaman I recently added some new items to enhance my winter kit. Pretty much good to go for winter, but still looking around for a good neck/face mask for the predawn river training.

In the last wiggle sale i picked up a few varieties of underarmour thermo base layers. Tried out the vest on the last few rides, very nice addition and cheap too! 5 stars!!!
 
792km for me. Work and rain over the last couple of weeks mean that I haven't been out as much as I would like.
Freezing weather is forecast for this week in Hanno. Not sure how much longer the climbs will be rideable.

Will start a slow transition to running for the winter and try and get some trails in.
 
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Been off the bike for a week and a bit, due to the far more important task of turning myself into a titan of 3D sculpting, modelling, lighting, rendering, and animating.

Went out yesterday for a high speed 60km flat river blast, and got taken out hard by an extremely slippery wooden section on the bridge just the other side of Sekiyado castle. Front wheel slipped out from under me, and despite managing to unclip, my foot also slipped under me on the ice-like mossy wet wood, and down I went. Landed on the side of my face / jaw, and bit my tongue really hard, which then started bleeding. Face hurts a lot today, but my bike is alright, due to it landing on the wet grass next to the bridge.

0/10.
 
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1762kms for November - which splits into 10 hours on rollers, 1067kms on road bike and 252kms on MTB....
 
Only 4 rides & 223 km for me in Nov. I intended to take a couple of weeks off but then had a complete enthusiasm breakdown. Not helped by the traditional dark wet & unpleasant UK autumn weather plus work suddenly becoming very demanding. Hopefully next weekend I can start to build for next year. I did set one record last month, 103.1 Kg. The heaviest I have ever been & 10Kg up from august. I have really enjoyed everyones ride reports & photos recently though & cant wait to be back.
 
723 km in November. Instead of using the last day of the month for cycling I went for a drive with my wife to Nagatoro, Saitama:

IMG_9611.JPG


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At midnight I fired up my browser to sign up for my first brevet next year on Jan 10. The signup period runs from Dec 1-27.

Today a little before noon I put on my rain jacket to ride to Kamiuma to have lunch with a friend, then on to Shinjuku for an errand. I stopped at a supermarket on the way back to score some butter (how can a rich trading nation that is not yet at war run out of butter?). It didn't start raining again until 2 km from home.

When I checked SportsEntry again in the afternoon, signup for the January brevet had already closed -- it must already have filled up!
 
Besides a day of rain, now a little windy, too.

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956 km with 957 km of climbing for November (compared to 1,695 km last year). With the way my knee has been feeling recently a few more weeks of longer training rides in Tama should give me back some of last year's form. Running is the main thing that consistently aggravates the injury so I just have to keep that in check. 111 km of running this month. 0 km of swimming because even running is better than swimming.
 
Was a very slow month for me last month. I've been making the change over to running recently so I only managed just over 400km on the bike. I hope to better that this month (even though I'll be away from Dec 22nd on holiday).
Fairly happy with my running, average just shy of 20km per run (although on my last run I felt a twinge from near my Achilles so I'll have to keep an eye out on that).
 
Been off the bike for a week and a bit, due to the far more important task of turning myself into a titan of 3D sculpting, modelling, lighting, rendering, and animating.

Went out yesterday for a high speed 60km flat river blast, and got taken out hard by an extremely slippery wooden section on the bridge just the other side of Sekiyado castle. Front wheel slipped out from under me, and despite managing to unclip, my foot also slipped under me on the ice-like mossy wet wood, and down I went. Landed on the side of my face / jaw, and bit my tongue really hard, which then started bleeding. Face hurts a lot today, but my bike is alright, due to it landing on the wet grass next to the bridge.

0/10.
Grim. Worst part of these kind of accidents is that miserable ride home. At least you had the chance to flash a bloody grin at the nodders as you made your way home. Heal up soon comrade!

On the plus side, thanks to your advice I now have this sat in front of me:
IMG00013.jpg

Yeah it's the front wheel and yeah it's laced radially so it's the easiest possible build, but I'm pretty chuffed nonetheless. It's currently at 80kgf - I'll finish cranking up the tension later. Took it slow and it's all gone fairly well. Only headache was of my own incompetence - I corrected a slight dishing error by tensioning the wrong side, making it a hundred times worse.
 
Grim. Worst part of these kind of accidents is that miserable ride home. At least you had the chance to flash a bloody grin at the nodders as you made your way home. Heal up soon comrade!

On the plus side, thanks to your advice I now have this sat in front of me:
IMG00013.jpg

Yeah it's the front wheel and yeah it's laced radially so it's the easiest possible build, but I'm pretty chuffed nonetheless. It's currently at 80kgf - I'll finish cranking up the tension later. Took it slow and it's all gone fairly well. Only headache was of my own incompetence - I corrected a slight dishing error by tensioning the wrong side, making it a hundred times worse.
Like your coffee table
 
Was a very slow month for me last month. I've been making the change over to running recently so I only managed just over 400km on the bike. I hope to better that this month (even though I'll be away from Dec 22nd on holiday).
Fairly happy with my running, average just shy of 20km per run (although on my last run I felt a twinge from near my Achilles so I'll have to keep an eye out on that).

You're not heading home are you? I hope to do a bit of riding / running around Saddleworth over Chrismas and the new year!

Andy

www.jyonnobitime.com/time
 
Grim. Worst part of these kind of accidents is that miserable ride home. At least you had the chance to flash a bloody grin at the nodders as you made your way home. Heal up soon comrade!

On the plus side, thanks to your advice I now have this sat in front of me:
IMG00013.jpg

Yeah it's the front wheel and yeah it's laced radially so it's the easiest possible build, but I'm pretty chuffed nonetheless. It's currently at 80kgf - I'll finish cranking up the tension later. Took it slow and it's all gone fairly well. Only headache was of my own incompetence - I corrected a slight dishing error by tensioning the wrong side, making it a hundred times worse.

Yeah, it was annoying having to spit out blood all the way home. My tongue was well swollen by the end it, so yelling at the endless ****s getting in my way was nasty.

Sweet, so you got going on the building. Nice one. Good idea to start with a radial front wheel for sure. So have you managed to get all the spokes at about the same tension, and the wheel true and straight as well?

About dishing; the ultimate method is to not bugger about with large unwieldy dishing tools, but to get a wheel that you know is good, put it in your bike, then dial your brakes so they are spot on with that wheel. Swap the good wheel out for the one you are builing and dial a single point on it to be absolutely perfect, and put a bit of bright electrical tape on the exact spot. Take the wheel out, and put it back in your truing stand, and true it with that spot as the reference point. Check it again once you are done, and then start with the tensions again. Repeat this a load of times, until you are happy with it.

Really good that you got into this. It is not exactly that difficult is it?

I have this idea that it would be good to show everyone in the whole of the club how to do this, so everyone can service and build their own wheels from the comfort of their own homes. Now that you are a fully fledged builder, you can join me in spreading the knowledge, if you like.

And good one on getting the tension metre. Now that you have done a build, do you agree that it is pretty much the most vital bit of kit next to the spoke key, right? I can't imagine ever building without one.
 
You're not heading home are you? I hope to do a bit of riding / running around Saddleworth over Chrismas and the new year!

Andy

www.jyonnobitime.com/time
Dammit. That would have been cool to meet up in Saddleworth. Unfortunately (although also fortunately) I'm going to Nepal for Xmas and the new year. Definitely up for some snowshoeing this winter though if you fancy it.
 
Yeah, it was annoying having to spit out blood all the way home. My tongue was well swollen by the end it, so yelling at the endless ****s getting in my way was nasty.

Sweet, so you got going on the building. Nice one. Good idea to start with a radial front wheel for sure. So have you managed to get all the spokes at about the same tension, and the wheel true and straight as well?

About dishing; the ultimate method is to not bugger about with large unwieldy dishing tools, but to get a wheel that you know is good, put it in your bike, then dial your brakes so they are spot on with that wheel. Swap the good wheel out for the one you are builing and dial a single point on it to be absolutely perfect, and put a bit of bright electrical tape on the exact spot. Take the wheel out, and put it back in your truing stand, and true it with that spot as the reference point. Check it again once you are done, and then start with the tensions again. Repeat this a load of times, until you are happy with it.

Really good that you got into this. It is not exactly that difficult is it?

I have this idea that it would be good to show everyone in the whole of the club how to do this, so everyone can service and build their own wheels from the comfort of their own homes. Now that you are a fully fledged builder, you can join me in spreading the knowledge, if you like.

And good one on getting the tension metre. Now that you have done a build, do you agree that it is pretty much the most vital bit of kit next to the spoke key, right? I can't imagine ever building without one.

http://www.parktool.com/wtb/547c9be4d64fb
You can see the tension charts there I think. Knobbed around a lot getting the wheel true as I could without going crazy chasing endless tiny spots. Dunno how far out they are, but not much. Got it radially true as well, so that part's solid.
I took the readings by pinging the TM-1 a few times and taking the average - it's hard to get an exact bead on the numbers sometimes. I tape markered all the low tension spokes, then when I double-checked before getting busy with the spoke key, half had miraculously hit the right tension.

Honestly I thought I wouldn't need that tool when I started as everything went so smoothly. It was only when I gave it a quick test and found out that I'd tensioned the wheel to about 30kgf that I realised how useful it is. Worthwhile investment.

Regarding dishing - as my new bike as yet doesn't have brakes and I know for a fact the ones on the Gazelle are completely off, I used the dishing tool. Hey, it was a freebie with the truing stand and it did its job. Now when I get the groupset, I should in theory be able to adjust the brakes to my wheels.
 
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