Aren't Bicycles Great.

Lord_Baltimore

This is what got me into cycling:

And I'm still at it :cool:. I love my bikes.

armyknife

It goes without saying that bicycles are great, but they save money too; there's a modest local bus journey that I've replaced by cycling and each return trip saves me £8.50 and I get a free bike ride into the bargain. :-)

Johnmcl7

My Mum has had a shot of an ebike for the last month as part of a scheme to encourage cycling, the only condition is that she had to log all her miles she would have done in the car. It's the first time running the scheme so there's been issues with it and the bike was a lot later than it was meant to and the timing hasn't been great but my Mum has put a lot of effort into it and used it for most of her short journeys.

Rather than go a run in the car into the countryside we've been going for runs on the bike, this ebike isn't as fast as the one she had last year which makes it a little easier on me but it's great being able to choose any router and not worry about how much climbing there is.

The bike goes back tomorrow and I'm pleased my Mum is wanting to buy one herself so been spending the last few hours to see if there's any 2016 bargains although I'm not seeing much so will possibly just wait until Spring.

John

armyknife

Johnmcl7 wrote: »

My Mum has had a shot of an ebike for the last month as part of a scheme to encourage cycling, the only condition is that she had to log all her miles she would have done in the car. It's the first time running the scheme so there's been issues with it and the bike was a lot later than it was meant to and the timing hasn't been great but my Mum has put a lot of effort into it and used it for most of her short journeys.

Rather than go a run in the car into the countryside we've been going for runs on the bike, this ebike isn't as fast as the one she had last year which makes it a little easier on me but it's great being able to choose any router and not worry about how much climbing there is.

The bike goes back tomorrow and I'm pleased my Mum is wanting to buy one herself so been spending the last few hours to see if there's any 2016 bargains although I'm not seeing much so will possibly just wait until Spring.

John

Sounds like a very elegant solution, John.

Johnmcl7

The good news is that there's an ebike on the way - dispatched yesterday so hopefully here on Monday or Tuesday. I'd failed to find a cheap bike after much hunting and asking on the pedelecs forum so gave up but while half asleep after a call out to work in the middle of the night randomly managed to find the exact model she'd hired for £500 off.

She's been ordering her various accessories for it although the weather at the moment isn't looking great.

After the fatbike gathering dust over the summer in favour of the plus bike, this week it was wet and cold and time for it to come back out. Unfortunately this week Trek recalled it due to an issue where the fork can break so it's back with the bike shop as I'm not risking riding that. On the plus side Trek are offering £80 credit so looks like it will be getting a new rear tyre.

John

brat

Lord_Baltimore wrote: »

This is what got me into cycling:

And I'm still at it :cool:. I love my bikes.

I too was a huge fan of the Q bikes when they arrived in the Beano mid sixties. Our gang named ourselves C1 to C5 after the name of the school grounds we cycled round back then.

We were K1 to K6 in the summer holidays when we holidayed on Cumbrae each year with friends we met up with there. K stood for Kames Bay which was where we would meet each morning for our ride round the island.

Great Times!

brat

For the last three months I've spent much more time on the turbo than out on the road. I've ridden over 2000 miles on the turbo in the last three months which I would never have done on the road over winter.

Has anyone else taken to the garage or spare room and converted it into a mini gym with their turbo trainer, fan and associated paraphernalia?

It's not like the outdoors, but with software like Zwift to challenge you, it's damn close...

Ain't bikes great!

Johnmcl7

Road cycling is unpleasant in poor weather but I don't have an indoor setup as quite happy to get out on the mountain bike which is much more bearable. You're not going so fast into the cold air and generally pedalling harder for the lower speed plus the routes are often a lot more sheltered. I had a superb ride out in the snow the other week starting off belting along the snowy roads while cars were struggling and up into the snowy hills and gliding along the untouched snow under a bright moon. Annoyingly I remembered a camera but left the SD card in my PC

I saw a post which in response to a lot of the negativity of 2016 suggested putting together positive moments of 2016 so no surprise most of mine were cycling:

http://imgur.com/gallery/mO0n5

I've been looking races or events to do this year although nothing catching my eye so far, I'm in an odd position as last year I finished all the challenges I'd set myself several of which I never thought I'd do. I certainly wouldn't have thought I'd have done any of those things a few years ago but it's surprising how you can just build it up bit by bit.

I am looking forward to getting out cycles with my Mum on her ebike as that went well last year on the hire bike even when the weather wasn't great. I've also bought a little Mavic drone which should be entirely feasible to take with me on the bike and get some views of the pretty scenery.

John

Nasqueron

brat wrote: »

For the last three months I've spent much more time on the turbo than out on the road. I've ridden over 2000 miles on the turbo in the last three months which I would never have done on the road over winter.

Has anyone else taken to the garage or spare room and converted it into a mini gym with their turbo trainer, fan and associated paraphernalia?

It's not like the outdoors, but with software like Zwift to challenge you, it's damn close...

Ain't bikes great!

I stick my turbo, mat, fan in the spare room and watch stuff on the computer, found the tablet volume isn't loud enough to hear clearly.

I tend to do about 20 miles in one go for an hour but I'll try and get out as it's just a pain to heft the bike upstairs and change the wheel and then put it back so I can commute on it as I don't use my main carbon bike on there and the CX gears aren't as good a setup as the commuter one (46/36 vs 50/39/30 - both 11-28)

brat

I'm hoping to get a more permanent set up than I have now. I'm currently having to move the dining table out of the way to allow me to move the bike in through the patio door. The TT sits under the table ready to be used. It's direct drive so it's easy to haul the back wheel off and stick it on the cassette, but setting up and tidying up does take at least 20 minutes each time so I'm hoping to minimise that soon, when I get part of my garage converted into the "man cave".

Since using the turbo I've been looking a lot more at stats, although I'm not sure if that's just through geeky interest in data or a desire to improve. I hit 60 in June anyway so any notion of improvement may just be a forlorn hope.

I started looking at my Functional Threshold Power FTP figure which is the highest wattage you can maintain for an hour. What the software does is to ask you to pedal full pelt for 20 minutes (after a warm up) then it takes an average power reading over the 20 minutes and multiplies it by 0.95 to give a figure for an hour.

That power reading doesn't reflect your weight, so the figure used for comparison is the Power/Weight ratio or Watts/Kg. Because I'm light (60kg) my power/weight ratio seems to be relatively high, which is good on Zwift, because it keeps me up with the pack leaders if I wanted to compete in the races.

The other thing I noticed is that my heart rate can be quite different over the same session on two different days. If I've had a good sleep, my heart rate for a session can be 5 to 8 bpm lower for the same session than if I did it after a poor sleep off a nightshift (like today). I also notice the heart rate fluctuates downwards if I lower my body towards the bars, and it rises if I sit more upright, which is presumably because the heart has to work harder to pump blood higher.

But I do think I'm going soft. Some of my mates have done 40 miles in the wind and rain this afternoon, while I sweated away to Zwift (and Emilia Fox on Silent Witness).
I'm starting to wonder if I'll only get out when the sun's beating down .:undecided