Category: Bike Stuff

My first Charity ride of the year is in a few weeks and I need to raise £70 or the Stroke Association will be very grumpy with me. Please sponsor me and help fight one of the biggest killers in the UK.

It is the 33miles over the London Bridges starting at Tower Bridge and heading west. It will be a good test of the new bike as the terrain is a mix of roads and cycle paths. I’ll carry some more spare inner tubes after last year’s memorable ride and hopefully it won’t rain anywhere near as heavily this time.

Please dig deep!

Managed 3 miles between getting home and before it got too gloomy to fine-tune the handlebar and cleat positions. Bike rides very well. Haven’t really belted it yet though, stayed around 20mph in the middle cog. Shifting is smooth. Pedals worked fine. A nice effortless ride. I need to raise the seat a little so I’m going to raise it a few mm every ride until I’m happy I’m getting full result from my pedalling stroke.

Weird things: standing on the pedals is odd (pretty much sat straight back down) as the bike doesn’t seem to have any weight to it so there is less wobble that I’m used to. Need a nice hill to work that out. Cornering is also going to take some getting used to as it feels a lot different to my other bike, so I don’t really know where the limits are. I do love the bike though. Dropped an email to Focus UK telling them what a great product it is.

I’ve got a busy weekend so I’m going to be pining to go out on it again.

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I finally splashed-out on a new bike. After a lot of dithering, I finally went for the Focus Cayo from wiggle.com. It is a nice german bike with a nice carbon fibre frame. With pedals and a few other bits and pieces it has cost me £1200. Today the pedals arrived along with some colder-weather riding gear. I have not had a chance to ride it yet as that annoying thing called work keeps getting in the way.

I had looked at the Scott range of bikes but the fact is, I get as good a bike with slightly better gearing (“the groupset” for those in the know) for about £700 less. Compare the Focus Cayo starting at £1000 with the Scott CR1 Team for £1400. I get Shimano Ultegra rather than the lower spec Shimano 105 set but pay £400 less. To get Ultegra on a Scott means the CR1 Pro at £1740. The difference between the bikes boils down to the name on the bar in my view. I’m sure some top-end tri-athlete could test them both and find the £740 of extra value but for me, that’s a family holiday for a week somewhere.

I did also look at the Focus Cayo Expert with the top-end Shimano Dura-Ace group set or the Pro with SRAM shifters. SRAM shifters work in an odd way and I was not ready to change yet. The Ultegra set shifts slightly differently from the Sora set on my trusty and still much-loved Raleigh Absolute but not so much that I’m going to fall-off whilst working it out.

For pictures of the new bike, look here. I’ll let you know what it is like to ride just as soon as I get a chance to actually ride it.

One thing is for sure, I’ve signed-up for the Thames Bridges ride again this year so whilst it is a bit gravelly in places, the new bike will be out in public by then.

I had my bike stolen again. Obviously not the same bike.

June 2nd 2006 – my bike was stolen from Brentwood station.

Oct 11th 2007 – my bike was stolen from Brentwood station.

This is getting a bit boring now. My silver hybrid “Terrano” bike was worth about £100 which means claiming from my home insurance is pointless. Buying another bike is pointless too as they only seem to last 2-12months.

I refuse to get down about it. I am a crime statistic yet again. Somebody else has again made gain at my expense without thought to how it might affect the owner of the property they have stolen. Selfish. I have to pity them.

Guess I’ll be walking tomorrow then.

So I didn’t get around to buying a new bike and the interest free offer is gone. Could still walk into Evans with £1400 in my pocket but I don’t see that happening.

Thought I’d better get out on my trusty Raleigh as it has been sitting in the shed for the last few weeks. Ran out to Galleywood and nearly home – got a flat. The rear AGAIN obviously. Not unlike my Essex coast Ride but this time I had my new Gatorskins fitted. So I was a bit puzzled. Turns-out this time the wheel itself had done it (pinched where the tape had slipped – discovered this at home later). With no spare, I walked home and dug out the puncture repair kit.

My recent investment in a Truflo track pump was one of the best things I ever did. Where I used to fight with an electric pump, now a few puffs from the pump and the needle hits 100psi. If you walk into Evans, ignore teh £40 pumps and ask if they have one of the Truflo ones. It does the job and costs £20. One tip though, lock it onto the valve with the lever down (in-line with the pump’s pipe) and pull it out to lock onto the valve. This is the opposite to every other pump I own and did confuse me at first.
Those new tyres did make a difference on the ride. Much easier to maintain speed than the old ones. And they didn’t let in a puncture after all. Must but some spare tubes.

I saw the Scott CR1 Pro in the window of Evans  in Spitalfields.

I’ve always liked the look of the bike and the balance of a top-notch carbon frame with good quality (but not top-range) gearing and equipment. My kind of bike. My current bike is a Raleigh Absolute. Aluminium alloy, Shimano gearing. Trusty beast.  Looks good but starting to look a bit dated. But do I really do enough cycling to justify spending a whopping £1400 on a new bike? I’m not really sure.

Would the new bike make me cycle more? Very definitely. Isn’t £1400 of bike a big risk to have laying around the place though? Yep. What If I prang it ?

My wife says I should buy it if I want it. And that is just not fair. Surely the marriage contract states that she should tell me all the other things we should spend the money on instead. But no, she is letting me buy it. So Now I really don’t know.

To top it all, apparently I could get it on interest-free credit if I buy it online and pay it off at about £60 a month.

Maybe maybe.

I’ve decided to get my bike back on the road just in case we get some sunshine again this year. It needed a pair of tyres after my problems with the Essex Coast Bike Ride. I opted for the Continental Ultra Gatorskins which look semi-slick, have some edge grip to prevent every corner becoming a tumble (I’ve only done that once and once was enough) but most importantly have a high degree of puncture resistance.

It will be good to get out on the road again, even if only for a few 15-20 mile practice runs.

It was a simple mission – 60miles cycling from Southend via East Hanningfield, Maldon, Steeple, Bradwell, Burnham-on-Crouch (brief ferry crossing) and back to Southend. It rained early in the morning but cleared by the time the ride started. 20miles in and the sunblock came out.

The ride itself had about 500 people taking part and the majority opted for the shorter 35mile route. So the long ride was fairly solitary other than the occasional handful of riders to overtake. The more experienced riders showed their form early on and passed by at a pace that I had no hope of matching. My average by the time I reached the ferry was 15.7mph over the 51miles.

During the long wait for the ferry over the River Crouch, I acquired some sunburn on my upper arms and on my legs just above the knee where I had not reapplied the sunblock. Doh!

From the ferry it was a clear run back towards Southend and I passed a few stragglers. They had the last laugh though as 2.5 miles from the end my rear type punctured. After languishing beside the road changing the tube, I had to limp home from there as my tyre only had enough pressure to make it ridable. Cornering had to be taken very slowly.

So I dropped the speed off and got in at just under 4hrs 10mins. But at least I got there!

It was a good day out and I raised over £200 for a very deserving cause. Thank you to all my sponsors!

Spent several hours in London watching the Prologue for the Tour de France. What a real spectacle! The fastest riders did the 5mile course at 30miles an hour. Which is only about twice as fast as I could do it. I don’t feel unfit at all

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