To commute or not commute……..
Not commute
Despite having snow tyres I wasn’t keen on the whole commute
to work thing this week, the temperatures were so cold and despite significant
surfing of the tinterweb I was still didn’t have a good option for keeping my
toes warm
I knew this meant it was to be a tricky week to get my
training miles in
Day…Monday, weapon of choice….Evo single speed, destination….woods at the back of my work. My Evo had already proven itself in the snow so I was really
looking forward to a blast around the woods and I wasn’t disappointed, the sky
was blue, the snow was perfect, it felt like being in the Snowboarding in Alps,
I was disappointed to not have my Gopro with me as it was just stunning. I
followed my usual route but noticed someone elses tracks at times so deviated
occasionally for the better. The ride was only an hour but a really good one
that I shall remember for a long time.
Tuesday was a chance to repeat Monday but with the inclusion
of the afore mentioned GoPro, sadly the cloud was back and I couldn’t be
bothered to faff about so I just went out and retraced the same route. It great
fun, knowing how the terrain was meant I could pick up the pace, but it was
pretty tiring, single speed offroad is a work out on a dry sunny day, let alone
in the snow. Got back to the bike sheds and gave the bike a quick checkover and
bash the snow off, only to find that my brakes were down to the metal…..downer!
Wednesday was to be a road day on account of the knackered
brakes issue, time to really test the snow capability of “Scotty’s” tyres. Went
out to do my road loop, haven’t done it for quite a while, it’s a lovely ride
through hampshires country lanes, these are sometimes a bit grubby due to farm
equipment use so I didn’t know what to expect. It was pretty hairy, the tyres
were fanatastic, no loss of grip in a straight line no matter how hard I tried,
I was impressed, got a bit tricky though when snow and slush were deeper
because of the amount mass of the stuff I was trying to “plough” through, bit
like riding through sand, not the tyres fault, just physics. This meant a great
deal of concentration was needed on some of the roads, the farm used country
lanes were a bit naff too, worse than I thought they might be. Overall I
completed the route but didn’t enjoy it.
The rest of the week was to be made up by a couple of walks,
something I do not do, so it made a change and walking to the bike shop was one
of the chosen destinations to get new brake blocks for evo.
It occurred to me that as mountain bike miles are often
considered to be like riding twice as many road miles, therefore I thought I
might be able to tenuously justify a completed training week……If I convert exercise
completed into time instead of mileage and convert that back to road miles I
might just be in…..so ….my commute is normally about 2hours, give or take, and
its about 28 miles, so 14mph, this week I have done 2 hours on single speed, 1
hour on scotty and walked for 1 ½ hours
so that’s 4 ½ hours so that equates to 63 miles…105K….sounds plausible
Saturday and Sunday were not be cycling days as I would be
on my Frame Building course….exciting or WHAT
I shall log the full frame and forks journey at a later date
For now….
This is how it starts
Target mileage 100K
Total distance achieved 105K (theoretical)
No comments:
Post a Comment