A bit of background on my online training

Over the last 25 years or so I've found that indoor training is the key to improving my fitness and performance in time trials. Away from the vagaries of dealing with terrain and motor traffic, I can focus on the workout rather than survival. 25 years ago, power meters weren't readily available, and one's focus was on heart rate as a measure of exercise intensity. Indoor trainers offered adjustable resistance, but little else. In those days I found the structured plan in Pete Read's The Annual Manual (the Black Book), which presented a month by month plan for training on an indoor trainer, to be highly effective.

As noted in a post from June 22nd (Revisiting an old tandem), our old Longstaff tandem has been back in use while the Thorn touring tandem was out of action pending the seat post stump removal and indeed since the Thorn was repaired. It must be 20 to 25 years since it has seen regular use! It's a remarkable sprightly ride, but in its original set up rather a harshe ride, especially for the stoker.

Well, this was the last of our club's evening '10's for 2024, and really I'm near the end of my season. I have done very few open events, largely because of various domestic issues, and I have two events to come: an open '10' on 14th September and an invitation time trial on a closed circuit on 22nd September. I'm now switching my focus on changing my training schedule - but more on that in a separate post (it takes time to evaluate a new training platform, in this case athletica.ai).

Anyway, this was a pretty warm and humid evening for the nine riders who turned out for this event. As far as I could tell, my power was at my usual level, but didn't seem to translate into the expected speed (the time triallist's lament). After the previous week's difficulty in staying in the aero position, which was due to a combination of my sports glasses and the folded retention strap of my helmet, I felt pretty good while racing. Maybe it's just the end of the season?

A good mix of albums in this tranche.

The top pick from the albums new to me was Leonard Cohen's last album, which his terrific world-weary voice. This one got added to my Qobuz playlist, and may get more permanently added to my library.

This was the penultimate event in our 2024 evening time trial series, and with some fast riders entered, some good times beckoned. 

For my part I hoped to improve on my previous ride where I recorded 23:57. The weather was pretty similar to that event, though a bit cooler and the wind was a little more gusty. nevertheless, having seen some improvement on my training metrics I had some optimism. Unfortunately, my ride was imacted by some discomfort on the bike. This was due to a last minute change back to a visor-less Kask Bambino helmet, used with my prescription sports glasses. I wasn't riding my venerable Giro Advantage aero helmet, as (due to its age) the various straps that hold it to my bonce were pretty much all perished. Probably it's time to ditch that aero hat!

There have been a few examples of electric pumps for bike tyres on the market over the last few years. The first I was aware of was the Fumpa Pump, produced in Australia. I have the original model, and the nano Fumpa. I've also bought a Cycplus A2 Pro. These devices offer some advantages and some disadvantages for the cyclist. So in order of purchase, here are my opinions.

As an opening comments, these pumps all have battery capacity limitation to varying extents. Obviously the smaller pumps are more limited in this regard than the larger models. But I would not take an electric pump (or for that matter CO₂ cylinders) on a long bike ride in preference to a conventional pump. All these pumps can be used for inflating tyres with Shrader or Presta valves.

Originally set for the Stony Stratford course, we used the back up course of Astwood for this evening's event as we've seen very low entry numbers for the Stony Stratford course. As usual I prepared the timing and signing on sheets for the event, and rode up to Astwood on the P5 TT bike. 

We had 11 riders for the event, including a Sam, a new rider to our events. It was a little cooler than of late, with a blustery 17mph wind that promised to make the opening leg down to Chicheley rather tougher than usual. As it turned out, I think I rode a pretty good time trial this evening, recording a normalised power of 255W. Looks as though my form is building just as the season comes to an end! As expected it was a little tough out to the first turn but that was more than made up for by some wind assistance on the rest of the course. I finished with 23:57, which I was quite pleased with. It was enough for 2nd place - a distant second place behind Sam who finished with 21:01 despite a few hold-ups on the way round. I was first on vet standard.

After the debacle of a fortnight earlier, when our two lap event at Astwood had to be run as a single lap event with changed start and finish points owing to three-way traffic lights on the course, I decided it would be wise to check out the course first thing in the morning. Lo and behold, the lights were still in place (though one of the riders said they had been removed by the end of the previous week, so maybe they's been placed back).

A bit of a mixed bag of albums here. Of those I hadn't heard before, there were a few I ranked 5/5, which is good.

The first of these was Johnny Cash At San Quentin. This I loved despite my dislike of country music. It had everything a live album should have from great interactions with the audience to great interactions with the band members.

Thirteen riders entered this club event on the F15/10 Brogborough course. I'd been feeling pretty optimistic after my 21:56 in the VTTA '10' the other weekend! For the record, I've been following a TrainerRoad high volume 40k masters training programme - at least as best I can given various things impacting on my training. I don't do specific FTP tests as I prefer to use the TrainerRoad AI FTP estimation. I also track my training using intervals.icu which offers its own FTP estimate, usually a few watts lower than the TrainerRoad AI FTP estimate. I guess the true value lies somewhere between them.

On the evening of the event, we had a 13mph tailwind for the outbound leg, and a corresponding headwind on the way back to the finish. I'd chosen to ride the P5, and felt pretty good in my usual high gear with the tailwind. I'd noted good speeds whenever I looked at the Garmin - usually around 30mph. Of course things were a little harder on the way back, and while the power and heart rate went up, my speed and gearing went down!

I’ve increasingly felt the need to carry a mobile phone while out on the bike, and particularly when out on the time trial bike. This is for two reasons - firstly the potential need in the event of a mechanical I cannot sort out and secondly because there are functions I use on my Garmin Edge 840 computer that require a mobile phone.

Problem is that mobile phones have got bigger and bigger and my current phone, a Samsung model, is really a bit unwieldy for carrying, even in a jersey pocket. And when wearing a skin suit, the only real solution I’ve found is to carry it in a sealed case and hang it round my neck on a lanyard. That’s pretty uncomfortable!

We had rather nice conditions for our 20 mile time trial over two laps of the Astwood course. Unfortunately some traffic lights were placed on the course - three-way traffic control - just in the run up to North Crawley. This forced a change from two laps to the more usual one lap, and also to the start/finish points, which we set either side of the traffic lights.

I was well-warmed up before the start, but getting going on the aero extensions seemed a bit difficult, but by the time I exited North Crawley I was settled into a good rhythm. Because we were starting in North Crawley, the biggest climb on the course was within the first half instead of at the finish. Maybe this changed things a bit, but I felt like I held down a respectable power to finish in 23:43 to take second place on actual and on veteran standard.

This was one of my all too rare open events. The F11/10 uses the A41 as it bypasses Tring, and it’s the fastest local 10 mile course owing to the gift hill in the middle of the course.

The VTTA event was listed as preference to VTTA members, so the field was predominantly older cyclists with only a few Senior category riders (though many of the reserve riders were of that category).

Another tranche of 20 albums from the 1001 Albums generator. It seems that the critics that assembled this list continue to be a bit anglo-centric. Also, I'm really not clear what gets an album onto this list - popularity, sales, 'musical quality', influential? 

Of this set of albums, the one that was most influential on my taste is Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division. I bought my first copy of this album on release, prompted by a room-mate will impeccable post-punk taste. I had to buy a second copy after my flat was burgled as I couldn't live without it or the second Joy Division album Closer for that matter. I later recovered most of the stolen LPs albeit minus most of the mainstream LPs in the collection.

The 'summer' weather so far has been pretty poor and July has been quite coold and frequently showery. For this evening's club time trial, we had reasonably warm conditions, but rather windy. This was really obvious on the more exposed sections of the course.

But to backtrack slightly. After the equipment debacles of last week's Astwood event, I'd had a close look at the eTap on my P5 TT bike. It was workign flawlessly, and I really couldn't find any faults. So I'd planned to ride that bike at this evening's TT. By the time I was getting bikes prepped, the wind had got quite gusty and I worried that the 90mm front wheel rim might be a bit of a handful. Accordingly, I decided to ride the P3 with its H3s front and rear.

Well that didn't go according to plan.

I spent a chunk of the day continuing the rebuild of the Thorn tandem, then when the rain came on retired indoors to watch the finale of the 5th Tour de France stage. Then I got set up to ride up to Astwood (this includes printing out the timing sheets and signing on sheets). I got half a mile up the road, and found my chosen bike for the evening (my Cervelo P3) was making some loud unaccountable knocking noises. This sounded bad, and didn't appear to be due to the transmission, handlebars or seat, so I returned to the house and grabbed my other TT bike (my Cervelo P5). This entailed some hurried tyre inflation and a change of shoes (different pedal type - old Speedplay X-series). Then a mad dash up to Astwood. Of course, the level crossing was down, to my frustration!

We've had the Thorn tandem out of action since the seatpost broke on the last day of our cycling holiday about three weeks ago. I'd tried to shift the post stump using a mole wrench but couldn't shift it - though I was being a bit cautious as I wanted to avoid distorting the seatpost remnant which could make things even more difficult.

After seeking advice from local cyclists, the best suggestion was to take the offending seatpost to John the Seatpost Man in Chorley. I decided that taking the whole tandem up was going to be a hassle and, since I planned to give the tandem a good clean up, I stripped the tandem down and only took the rear frame section with us. We'd planned a visit to the Leeds area for family reasons, so we drove up to Chorley before heading east to the Leeds area. This was OK, except the drive to Chorley took ages, due largely to an accident up ahead of us as we skirted Manchester.

On our recent cycle tour in the Hebrides, we managed to drop our backup Garmin bike computer, an Edge 520 Plus, during a fast descent. It hit the deck quite hard, bounced then ended up in a watery ditch. We retrieved it, still functioning despite a badly shattered glass.

The underlying circuit board could be seen through the break, and the corner was abraded off where the device hit the tarmac. As far as I could see, the majority of the screen was still functioning, with a few dark areas at the top and bottom. Here's a photo of the damage.

With our usual favoured tandem out of action pending the removal of the sheared seatpost, I dusted off the spare tandem and we went out for a rather nice ride on a sunny day. I also replaced the seemingly perished tyres with new 28mm Continental GP5000 tyres. That was a struggle in its own right.

Longstaff tandem

Our latest club event was on the quick local course starting on Brogborough hill. We had pretty good conditions for the event, sunny and with a light 9mph headwind out to the turn. I did find the return leg rather tougher than I expected. Also unexpected was  my win in this event, with 23:24.

Full result over at the NBRC website.