Word has reached me via the timetrialling forum that my favourite time trial, the Duo Normand 2-up team time trial, is slated to return in 2025 and will be run on September 21st.

The last time I rode the Duo Normand was in 2019 - in 2020 it was abandoned owing to the Covid pandemic, and it never returned to the calendar, though I recall a half-baked effort with an event over two days with a short run and a very short 2-up time trial. My long-term 2-up partner and I are very excited by the possibility of another outing at the Duo. Our first race was in 2003, and with the exception of one event, roade it each year until 2019. We even won the Corpo category in 2010 at the combined age of 100! 

I’ve now been using Athletica for a few months. While the indications I see on form via intervals.icu are nothing but positive, I reckon the proof will be in performance on the ground in the New Year’s Day ’10’ - about 6 weeks away. Here's a banner from Athletica, proclaiming "Train Smarter, not Harder". Does the app live up to that billing? Read on...

The whole training plan seems rooted in science - every so often I see a link to a publication or at the least an athletica blog article. This makes the app seem much less of a black box than, for example, TrainerRoad. There is a regularity about the training plan: each week has a recovery session; a 30:30 short HIIT session; a Threshold session of 4m intervals set at several watts above threshold; two tempo/sweetspot sessions, one of which is at higher gear/lower cadence as a strength training session. Interspersed are endurance sessions, often long enough that I’d prefer to do them outdoors. I’ve also noted that while I sometimes struggle to complete sessions (particularly the Threshold sessions), I am more able to do so than I was with TrainerRoad. Every few weeks, there are threshold and power profile tests scheduled. I’m unsure how these play out in terms of fine-tuning the various parameters, but as far as I understand it, the system looks at the power profile graph as a whole (or maybe specific points along the chart).

Some real stinkers in this set of albums, but some real classics too.

Kraftwerk can usually be relied upon and here's another great album, with two distinctly different sleeve designs out there. The same is true of my favourite Kraftwerk album, Autobahn. 

When I bought a Tacx Neo 3M trainer, I decided to set my partner's bike up on the old first generation Tacx Neo. It was still pretty functional, if a little noisy, and I thought it might be fun to ride together on a virtual cycling platform. Prior to this, her bike was mounted on an old non-smart Cateye CycleSimulater trainer.

With a switch to a smart trainer and a virtual cycling platform came the need for easy to manage gear shifting. I'd had the bike set up with old Campagnolo 8-speed gears with Ergo-levers. But I had an 11-speed cassette mounted on the Neo trainer. Poking around in my parts bin unearthed a pair of Shimano rear mechs, one 9-speed and one 10-speed, and a bar end shifter that could be set in friction mode. I swapped out the Campagnolo rear mech and installed the 10-speed Shimano mech with the bar end shifter set in friction mode. All was well with that arrangement, except gear shifting was a little inconvenient with the bar end shifter.

After our seatpost issue on our spring cycle tour, we switched to our near 30-year old Longstaff tandem. After a few modifications (most notably fitting 32mm tyres), we’ve ridden this tandem exclusively over the summer. One peculiar issue was that after an hour or so riding, there was an irritating clicking sound. We couldn’t quite place it, but it seemed to be associated with a saddle.

We’ve always found it helpful to fit a suspension seatpost on the rear of the tandem, as the stoker can’t always see what’s coming along the road. We have a Cane Creek Thudbuster on the Thorn touring tandem (it was the non-suspension post that snapped) and we had an ancient ITM suspension post on the Longstaff tandem. I can’t personally vouch for the effectiveness of suspension posts, I’m not actually the user - I’m relying on feeback from my stoker on these matters of comfort.

I’ve generally gone with advances in bike technology as they’ve developed over the years. Mostly these have represented refinements in existing technology, such as the steady creep in gear numbers from 5 speed freewheels (when I was cycling to school as a teenager) through to 12 speed cassette hubs. In mechanical gears, I’ve usually been able to keep abreast of which cassette spacing would work with what combination of shifters and gear mechs.

All that began to change as we moved into combined brake/gear levers (STI from Shimano and Ergopower from Campagnolo).

And in this set of 20 albums, loads more folk and country. Plus two albums by The Pogues within 3 days. Of the two Pogues albums, I preferred If I Should Fall From Grace With God over Rum, Sodomy and the Lash.

I don't have much in the way of Pogues albums in my library, both these were added to my Qobuz favourites.

Well, I’m about 6 weeks in to my Athletica.ai subscription. So far it’s been pretty impressive, and here are some observations.

I’m seeing a kind of regularity between each week’s workouts. Generally speaking, there’s a sweetspot workout, a strength/endurance trainer workout, a short interval HIIT workout and a threshold workout. These are supplemented by one or two longer endurance workouts, which I generally try to do outdoors.

The last time I bought a smart trainer, I plumped for a Tacx Neo. It’s a beast of a trainer that has stood up to the rigours of my indoor training pretty well in the 8 years plus I have it. Garmin Connect records that it has been used for 2665 rides (covering 92,968.4km) since 28 July 2016.

My usage stepped up after Covid struck in spring 2020, and once I’d recovered sufficiently from my early (and so far only) bout of Covid, I enlisted in Zwift, and pretty quickly was bookending my working day (working from home) with Zwift rides. At the outset, the first generation Tacx Neo was robust, and pretty silent. The internet seemed awash with tales of technical issues with these trainers, but mine has been pretty much faultless over the years.

I don't as a rule like hill climbs. I much prefer longer climbs that I can settle into. But I felt duty bound to turn out and be the sole NBRC member to take part in what is traditionally the club championship. I expect you can see where this is going...

This year's course was at Three Locks, and is actually a big ring kind of climb. Unfortunately the weather turned to wet as well as quite cool just before I rode over to the course! We had seven riders signed up, and six turned out.