Well, I felt pretty good for this club event, had mysterious effects on my Polar 720i HRM bike computer, and ended up with a slightly lacklustre performance!

I didn't receive the startsheet for this event, due to local mail problems, though I managed to get a copy emailed to me by a fellow competitor.  The night before  the event, I really didn't sleep at all well - this seems to me ever more frequent.  I kept on waking and looking at the clock, though I had no chance of over-sleeping, as I'd set the alarm. Eventually I got up at about 4am.

Carol and I got to the race HQ in plenty of time.  However, I felt pretty nervous, not helped by the sensation of my breakfast sitting heavily in my stomach.  This version of the course was one I don't think I had ridden before.  It starts very close to Tempsford.  After a brief warmup, I lined up - the pusher off was the North Bucks' own Tony Farmborough.  The start is very close to the northbound lane A1, and I was quickly up to speed.  The first 57 or so miles (see course description below) are usually quite quick, and so it proved for this event - I did the first 50 miles in 1:58:38, which is actually my fastest 50 of 2008.  By the time I left the A1 I was feeling pretty good.  As expected, the section to Shefford and beyond to the Norton RAB was a bit harder - at times the road surface is rough, there are frequent roundabouts, and it undulates quite severely.  To add insult, one RAB we had to cross four times had road works by my least favourite company, EDF, which was holding riders up (I must say, however, that the guy controlling the traffic seemed to be trying to get the racers through as quickly as possible).

My strategy for the race was to keep the gears a notch lower than I'd use in shorter events, and to keep the HR 5-10 bpm lower than for a 25 or a 50.  This worked well to begin with.

Tony Parks and I made the decision some weeks ago to go for this evening '10'  on the fast F20/10 course based on the A10.  On the eveningid turned out to be mild, but very, very windy.  I had a reasonably early start at 19:27, but Tony didn't start until 20:12.  The outward leg was pretty tough, grovelling into a gale, but at least the return leg was pretty fast.

Tony ended up in 12= place with a fine 21:49.  I was slightly more than a minute down with 22:50, and in 27th place.

Slightly more than 12h after the Herts Wh 10, I lined up at the start of the Hemel Hempstead 25 on the F13/25 course, which runs from Launton to Aylesbury and back.  It's an undulating course, that I've always found a little hard. This event was no exception, while the wind had abated slightly from the previous evening, some horrible showers were passing through.

The publishers seem to be making changes at the Aging Cell web pages.  This has meant that the paper is not presently available on open access, for which which Lynne and I paid a significant amount.

In the meantime, I've placed a pdf on this website.

I am not a historian (as should be evident from these web pages), but I am fond of reading books on historical topics.  A few years ago, I read Orlando Figes' book on the Russian Revolution, A Peoples' Tragedy, whiach ably describes the events leading up to the revolution and its immediate aftermath.  The Whisperers, published in 2007, concerns Soviet citizens' private lives during the Stalin years.  The work results from a wide ranging research project (more details from the author's website) utilising Russian and Soviet public and private archives. Eight chapters cover the years from  the revolution to the death of Stalin, with a ninth covering the years 1953-2006.

In the first chapter, I felt as though I was setting up to read a book of lists: listsof people, lists of their privations, lists of instances of misused power.  However, as I mad my way through the book, I found the stories of families and individual being told progressed very clearly and accessibly.  The book doesn't deal with Stalin's personality and motives, but does occasionally deal with individuals with quite close association with Stalin.  What struck me as I read the book was firstly the privations that those not Party members had to endure, both in terms of their accommodation conditions but economically, and how they could cope with this in the belief that the Party was a force for good.  Intriguingly, people often chose to believe theit nearest and dearest must have been guilty when they fell victim to the apparently randomly applied purges.  

Overall, the book presents an important story, in an interesting and acccessible format.  This material is relevant in an era where our own personal freedoms are continually limited and eroded in the supposed war on terror.  Our government aims to be able to lock our citizens up on suspicion, and without charge for up to 42 days, riding roughshod over hard won civil rights and liberties.In the modern IT era, we see increased data collection by central government, and even private companies have the ability to pry into our web-sufing habits (see my articles on this site on BT and Phorm).  Yesterday,the Swedish Parliament voted for routine tapping of cross-border interception of communication.  One wonders how the Soviet system managed to so effectively monitor and thereby repress the population in a pre-electronic era, and quite how the impact of IT on surveillance will ultimately impact on our western democratic societies.

Not the most auspicious way to get to a club event - I returned from London at 7pm, discovered there was no electricity in Aspley Guise (it eventually came back on at 3am the next day),jumped into my skinsuit, pumped up the tyres, and dashed down to the start of the event.  A very windy evening, though sunny and warm, which made handling tricky at times for those of us with aero wheels.

Certainly not the best performance, by a long chalk.

Napoleon's Wars: An International History, by Charles Esdaile,

Trick or Treatment?: Alternative Medicine on Trial by Simon Singh & Edzard Ernst, published 2008, Bantam press.

At this time each year, we see the launch of the following year's cycling equipment - sometimes (all too rarely in my opinion) a hugely significant technical advance is made.  Shimano's development of STI shifters for road bikes, which seemed to stimulate parallel development at Campagnolo, is one of these cases.  Addition of more gears does not.  For example, cyclingnews.com has an article outlining the changes to Campagnolo's lineup for 2009, with the addition of an 11th cog to the cassette in the top three groupsets, among other things.

I have had absolutely no experience with SRAM equipment, so I have no worthwhile opinions on that.  The kit looks good, has had good reviews, and it is good to see a third player in the field. 

Good innovations