Today's Ride

Been quite enjoying the early morning rides especially paired with it being a 4 day weekend for some meaning the roads have been super quiet. Nice 37.67 miles/60.62 km with 1989ft/606m of elevation this morning, found some newish routes on what seem like newly resurfaced roads which was nice. No pictures from that as pedalling seems to take precedence and there's also not much interesting about former mining towns that never recovered from the 80s...

Then it pissed it down all day, was about to walk to the corner shop to pick up some juice and noticed it'd stopped with the sun trying to make an appearance. Seemed a good occasion to take the Inbred out for a quick 3 mile round trip, after riding nothing but rigid bikes since September having 120mm travel on the front feels great. Also nice to not have to **** on getting kitted up and just walk out, grab the bike and go.





Someones in trouble...



Quite a fast rolling thing even on 26, half tempted to follow Novocaine's suggestion and squeeze 650bs in there. Have a set of 670mm flat bars and a single speed kit coming courtesy of various forum members, will be running at 38/16 initially, have a 42t ring kicking about somewhere too - fortunately the deckas/snail/whatever other branded chinesium rings are pretty cheap so won't be too hard to find a nice ratio mostly suited for pottering about to the shops and back, occasional singletrack etc. Wouldn't mind a set of black XT cranks and a black saddle but also think it's quite nicely matched up as it is.

winjohn said:

Mrs Winjohn decided that we should be out riding on Easter Sunday at 7.00am. I checked the weather app as we left the house, "5 °c feels like 0c" Brrrrrrrrr.
A blast of air straight from the Artic seemed to be in our faces most of the ride but the sun felt warm on my face, one of my favourite words "apricity", which seemed oddly appropriate this morning in April as we were cycling by the city.

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Spotted this rather nice looking bike on the way back...looked Italian but no idea.
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I'd decided to ride my rebuilt Spa Audax which fely very sprightly with the Ultegra carbon wheels I've fitted, it's rapidly becoming one of my favourite bikes to ride on the tarmac.
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The poor yellow thing is an Olmo Giro

3-4mph NE gentle breeze. Big broken clouds with clear skies over top. Chilly 6 degrees, lower in the valleys. Great conditions to stretch the legs before logging back into the matrix.

Pretty nice shot with another big fancy boat in the bay and a shower towards Praa.

I had to look up "Praa". Never heard of it before. Odd name for the UK.

First ride in a couple of weeks due to reasons. Having to start again with the short rides. Usually I don't like to stop, today I couldn't find enough excuses to pull over like take a photo, blow nose, drink & felt like a nap.

I've taken a picture of this before but as I said, any excuse to stop today and this was at the top of my first climb.













Felt good to be out again but also tough being unfit and a rather overweight. Hope to be doing it often again and building back up to the rides I was doing a few weeks back. Today a short 5 mile loop was my limit, a few climbing sections though, like right at the bloomin start.

Totoro said:

First ride in a couple of weeks due to reasons. Having to start again with the short rides. Usually I don't like to stop, today I couldn't find enough excuses to pull over like take a photo, blow nose, drink & felt like a nap.

I've taken a picture of this before but as I said, any excuse to stop today and this was at the top of my first climb.

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Felt good to be out again but also tough being unfit and a rather overweight. Hope to be doing it often again and building back up to the rides I was doing a few weeks back. Today a short 5 mile loop was my limit, a few climbing sections though, like right at the bloomin start.

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Can you do more flat stuff to warm up before the hills? Even if it is dull and maybe up and down the road with neighbours wondering what you are on you will find the hills easier. 5-10 mins ideally.
If you are unfit then you wont get the benefit cycling the hard bit because your body will be trying to shut down too soon.

Frankenorange said:

Can you do more flat stuff to warm up before the hills?

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Don't really have flat stuff here, well not until climbing anyway. Lots of today was flat and easy, I even live halfway up a steep hill though so its a climb at the start & end too. Could be worse