Been a while since I posted about cycling - the explanation is that I've mostly been in the garage pounding the turbo. To deal with the tedium that is turbo-training, I've been listening to a variety of music via Spotify (via an old 1st generation iPad). In no particular order, here's some recent training music:[embed size="compact"]Mindflayer – It's Always 1999[/embed]Loud, fast, noisy - just what's needed. You can't listen to gentle ambient when you're trashing the turbo!On the other hand, a bout of mid-70s nostalgia led me to It's Alive, a double live album by the Ramones. I mean, what can you say beyond One Two Three Four![embed size="compact"]Ramones – It's Alive[/embed]Sadly, It's Alive seems to be unreasonably expensive as a download, presumably because many sites price albums on the basis of the number of track. And when most songs are about 2 minutes long, there are a lot of them!And an Oblivians album:[embed size="compact"]Oblivians - Desperation[/embed]Related to Mindflayer, and in a very similar vein is Lightning Bolt:[embed size="compact"]Lightning Bolt – Hypermagic Mountain[/embed]On the other hand, recovery sessions on the turbo don't demand such an aural assault, and the latest album from Wooden Shjips fits the bill.[embed size="compact"]Wooden Shjips – Back to Land[/embed]This is billed as "psychedelia" - to be honest it sounds to me at times like Suicide but played with guitars.As ever, you can view my listening habits over at last.fm.And how is the training actually going? I've returned to the training programme that has served me well in the past, the Black Book (a.k.a. The Annual Manual) by Pete Read. This training manual seems to have achieved mythical status and appears to be hard to come by. Essentially, it describes a month by month progressive turbo training programme, based on heart rate. I guess it pre-dated the advent of affordable power meters. In any event I still prefer to train using heart rate over power, on the grounds that HR better reflects my physiology and the effort I'm putting in. I use the power meter data to better understand how a particular turbo session went and to estimate my fitness level as I move through a training plan.I do have a bit of experience with turbo training and, with a bit of work-life balancing, now train on the turbo early in the morning before cycling to work. This gives a good balance of higher intensity work with easier recovery style riding. The big hope for this winter is that I can make it to the 2014 season without a Christmas cold, or a recurrence of my lower back problems - both of which had a dire impact on my racing last year.The metrics as analysed using Golden Cheetah seem pretty encouraging, and I'm looking forward to the club's New Year's Day '10', about 6 weeks away. At the moment, I'm optimistic.

Here's a BBC News page with a segment from a recent Newsnight programme discussing Spotify and whether it does artists a disservice -Spotify - friend or foe of musicians?We still see the issue of low royalty rates for the musicians, but increased ticket sales as a consequence of exposure via Spotify is mentioned as a bonus. But, at the risk of sounding like a stuck record (!), why has no-one actually looked into the effect of music-streaming services on music purchases? Perhaps I am an oddity who buys more because I can listen first, and extensively before buying an album?The internet offers a hugely diverse route into finding music, particularly the social aspects of last.fm, Spotify, Bandcamp and Soundcloud (all of which I use), and many others I don't have time for. Maybe this isn't all about piracy, lost sales and the like but is a new way of business that needs to be grappled with.

I've been a Spotify subscriber for about 9 months now, and I view it as a really exciting and useful way to listen to new music. But some in the music industry view it more darkly - see for example comment articles by David Byrne and Thom Yorke. These two articles provoked a response from Dave Allen, who takes a different view.Personally, I think there's a fundamental problem with the discussion (though I think I tend towards Dave Allen's view): that is that none of these articles really contain hard data on music purchasing within the Spotify subscribers (and indeed comparing those people with non-subscribers).For my part, I'm of an age where my music listening and buying has seen several game changes. My first record was this:[embed size="compact"]https://open.spotify.com/track/2A0VyjrAJQPXVKxRzxEePG[/embed]And my first LP was Dark Side of the Moon:[embed size="compact"]https://open.spotify.com/album/3a0UOgDWw2pTajw85QPMiz[/embed]But in those days, finding and buying music was very different. I spent loads of time browsing through the inky music papers (NME in my case), listening to friends' LPs (and taping them), and above all frequenting dark record shops. Most of those record shops were bizarrely idiosyncratic in their owners' attitudes (see this listing for examples!). My memories of those days are obviously coloured by rose-tinted spectacles, but the sense of community was great, along with pressures of poverty meaning that every music purchase was most definitely considered thoroughly. And not just in terms of the music itself - peer group issues were very definitely an issue! My affection for vinyl remains because my shelf of LPs, perhaps 5 feet of LPs, contains records firmly registered in my memory as markers of my life: I can recall the circumstances in which I bought virtually every one of them. I recently digitised the majority of them, and the process became the most astonishing memory trip. I suppose the affection I have for vinyl is obviously related to the the packaging, almost invariably superior to a CD package, but also relates to the need to look after, cherish, the object.CDs became the medium for music (I ignore the cassette tape). Oh how wonderful it was to not have to worry about scratches, crackles and generally damaged product. But something was lost for me - buying records became a rather humdrum and unexciting business, and as internet ordering became the norm, I found myself less and less likely to actually visit record shops. I live in a town almost bereft of record shops now, and the overall effect was that my interest in, and purchase of, music reached an all time low.A few years ago, a review of a device made by Logitech - the Squeezebox - in a Linux magazine piqued my interest. I've blogged before about this system, sadly discontinued by Logitech, though it lives on beyond the grave (see also other systems such as Sonos). I quickly began ripping my CDs to disk - running a music server on an old Ubuntu linux box, I made the initial false move of ripping to mp3. Recognising my mistake, I re-ripped to flac! Listening to music through my home network really revitalised my interest music. There were so many advantages in accessing albums without ferretting around shelves of CDs, searching for obscure tracks became so much easier and so forth. Over the years, my Squeezebox system grew. Now I operate a Squeezebox Touch, my original Squeezebox 3, two Squeezebox Radios, plus I use a software player on my MacBook Pro, and apps on iPads and Android devices. Along the way, I started using last.fm as a way of interacting with others, and trying to find new music. But still, accessing new music remained an issue, despite buying Mojo (for classic rock music and dead, decrepit and generally missing in action musicians) and The Wire (for my more avant-garde tastes).Enter Spotify. Admittedly, I was a little late to the music streaming party but I've been enthusiastic ever since. I rapidly upgraded from the advert-laden free account to a paid Premium account, largely to enable listening on my iPad. I only interact with one friend on Spotify, but even that is enough to open my eyes to a wide variety of music I wouldn't normally here. I frequently don't like her suggestions, occasionally hate them, but quite frequently really enjoy her playlists. I also widely use Spotify to check out albums I've read reviews of.So, in all this, what effect has Spotify had on my music listening? Well firstly, it's enabled me to listen to music I'd ordinarily never hear. Secondly, it allows me to check stuff out before shelling out for it. I can use Spotify in conjunction with the Squeezebox to generate "Smart Playlists", uncovering some hidden gems.And guess what? I have greatly increased the numbers of albums I buy. This is an impact on the music biz that doesn't seem to be considered in many commentary articles on music streaming services. Maybe I'm an outlier here, but the exposure to music leads to increased purchasing, at least in my case. And I blundered across a review of music listening/purchasing trends among 'young' people (with a foreword by Feargal Sharkey) which as I recall seemed to indicate an unexpected (to me) desire to own the music rather than merely have a download. Another important factor is that the young do have a lower disposable income, and I would expect them to use copying to increase their music collection - much as I and my fellow students did with cassette tapes back in the 1970s. I guess what I'm trying to suggest is that this whole issue of fair remuneration for artists is wholly unresolvable without a robust dataset. And, of course, we can add to the discussion the role of the music companies in all this.

Thorn Cycles have a 100 day return policy (with some obvious conditions). Those 100 days are pretty much expired. Will we send the new tandem back? Absolutely not. See the multi-part review for the explanation.

I haven't written a preview of the 2013 Duo Normand, principally because both of us have had particularly lacklustre seasons this year for reasons of pressure of work and of illness and injury. However, on a recent joint holiday to Normandy, we did seem to see the vague signs of returning form. I built on this by riding five events between coming back from Normandy and returning for the Duo Normand. Everything seemed to be falling into place. From my perspective, at least. Things began to change a few days before we were due to leave for the Duo Normand - Gerry reported he'd picked up a cold. What was worse, it appeared to be quite severe. Not to worry, I observed, it'll probably pass before the race itself. But I found myself sharing a cabin on the overnight ferry to Caen on the Wednesday before the race with a severely bunged up and coughing team mate. It was looking a bit bleak for our tenth outing at the Duo Normand.

This event was the second time trial of the weekend. It is also likely to be the last event to be held on the F1/25, as scheduled roadworks are expected to affect the Black Cat roundabout, and may leave a legacy of traffic lights. I've never really got on with this course in recent years and usually find myself floundering on the return leg - there's often a head wind on those exposed sections of road.I got up quite early and sorted out my kit in advance of being picked up. I noted it was really very cold, with a real end-of-season autumnal feel. I could also hear owls hooting as I pumped up my tyres. I travelled over to Tempsford with Katja, a friend from work who's quite new to time trialling - this was her first ride on the F1, I think. The sun was low in the sky, and there was quite a bit of low lying mist. Over on the F1, things were pretty clear as we got our numbers and set out to try and warm up.By the time I started, I was thoroughly chilled - my Garmin data for the event showed that it was around 8 degrees, and it had bee colder than than. I had a good start and rode off to join the A1. Coming down the slip road onto the A1, I picked up a decent amount of speed, though it was obvious that the southbound sections would, as so often is the case, suffer from a nagging headwind.Once round the Sandy roundabout, my speed picked up with the tailwind, and the northbound leg was pretty nice. Except for my Assos skinsuit, the legs of which were riding up. This had been evident at the start, where another competitor had noted that this showed off my leg tan quite nicely. This, however, wasn't really uppermost in my mind, as the skinsuit was rather uncomfortable. In an email exchange with my Team Grumpy colleague and so-called team mate, it was asserted that this problem must have been due to my stick thin legs. I prefer to claim that the leg grippers are defective. Anyway, this situation made the photograph that David Jones took look remarkably odd  - to the extent I am reluctant to post it (oh, vanity).Despite the sartorial defects of my ride, by the time turned at Buckden (unusually, I was held up there by traffic), I was becoming increasingly confident that I might record a decent time. One of the ways I try to keep focus is to continually recalculate my ETA at the finish line. At some point before crossing the Black Cat, I'd concluded I was possibly going to do a long 57. This spurred me on, and indeed I crossed the finish line in 57:52, my best time on the F1/25 since August 2010 (and 2010 was my last good season, when I was knocking out 6 season best times). 

The weather continued in its cold, wet and windy trajectory for this North Bucks club event on the Astwood circuit. I set out on the bike in a a pretty heavy drizzle, and I was thoroughly wet after  a couple of miles. By the time I got to Astwood, I was pretty cold too. Amazingly five other idiots hardy souls turned out for this event. I had pictured being the only one!I was warming up in Astwood when I spotted a very large diesel spill on the road - this really isn't the kind of thing one wants to see when riding a bike on wet roads. Up to this point, the main road hazard had appeared to be the large numbers of road kill amphibia littering the tarmac!Anyhow the six riders lined up to do their best (I was #3). And off I went. Fortunately the short queue of traffic waiting to join the main road that had built up while I waited to start all managed to clear by the time I started. Unfortunately, once out on the road I realised that the diesel spill was out there as well. It was big enough that almost the whole of our carriageway was covered - just a couple of feet in the gutter was clear. I was somewhat apprehensive, particularly when choosing when to pass a rider on this section. This state of affairs continued all the way to Chicheley, and it wasn't until after turning off towards North Crawley that the roads were free of drizzle.Once round that corner, the wind provided immediate assistance (it had been a bit tough to Chicheley, but the diesel offered enough of a distraction!) and I made pretty good speed at least until the road began to rise up towards North Crawley. Oddly, I was finding my neck a bit uncomfortable while in an aero tuck, which is quite unusual and which left me worrying about tomorrow's '25' and, indeed, the upcoming Duo Normand.Anyhow, I pressed on, catching a second rider before finishing in 24:55. I was in second place behind a guy on a road bike with mudguards! However, being the only veteran meant I was first on vet's standard. Oh, such is life that I need to grasp at such straws!That was the last club time trial of 2013, with only the Hill Climb Championship remaining on 5th October.

This was my second '10' of the day, just as it was almost exactly a year ago to the day. The reason this sticks in my mind is that in last year's Icknield RC '10', I was brought down at around 26mph by a couple of kids messing about on the old A421. This, of course, was occupying my mind a bit, as was the prospect of charging down Brogborough Hill at the start of the F15/10 on a fairly windy afternoon (also on my mind was that I was starting as #30, a position not really warranted by my time trial performances over the last couple of years).The last time I rode on the F15/10, roadworks forced a last minute change to the course, so I suppose that it shouldn't have come as a surprise that this had happened again on this event. Fortunately this time the amended course was still 10 miles (last time we'd been reduced to 6.5 miles!). The new course, as described verbally by the organiser, used the section between the two roundabouts twice. We were to start heading west, turn at Marston Moretaine RAB, head east to the usual turn RAB, return to the Marston Moretaine RAB, head east once more to the usual turn, then head back to finish somewhere before the start point. This was all rather confusing, as the description didn't leave me with a clear picture of how far it was from the start to the first RAB turn, or where the finish would be in relation to the start. Still, I was sure it'd all become crystal clear!I rode down to find the start in plenty of time, and rolled up and down the road until nearly at my start time. This was rendered rather alarming by the large numbers of kids messing about on BMX bikes and scooters (see opening paragraph) - surely history wouldn't repeat itself! I stopped briefly to explain why all these oddly costumed cyclists on weird bikes were riding up and down the road to a couple of small kids and their mother. It was interesting to hear that they'd figured out this was a time trial (presumably recent TdF and Olympic success is responsible), but they thought we were racing on a residential street! I said we were actually racing on the main road.As I started, I wasn't sure how far the start was from the first roundabout. As it turned out it was just under a mile. Unfortunately I'd thought it was going to be a bit less, and had kept the gear a bit lower than I'd normally use in preparation for the roundabout. Oh, and did I mention the headwind? Once round the first roundabout, things got a bit quicker due to the tailwind. On the first eastbound leg, I was quite surprised by the distance between the finish line and the start point, but at least having clocked its position, I had a bit of clarity regarding the course layout.I was relieved that there were no children at all playing on the course, and indeed the event went quite well. Overall there were three sections heading west and into the headwind, which broke up the difficult sections quite nicely.I thought this amended course was rather good, though I suspect that the finish line time-keeper must have had an interesting time, with riders coming past twice in the event. I suppose that if the finish could be on an exit road from the course, things would have been easier. To be frank, I preferred this course to the 'real' F15/10 despite the multiple RABs.I finished with 23:47, which at least was consistent with the morning's '10'. I left before all the results were out.

Rather a cool morning, which I suppose indicates autumn is now upon us! There was also a rather stiff breeze as I rode over to the start area for the first of two 10 mile time trials (the other being the Icknield RC '10' on the F15/10). Also rather annoying was that the problems I'd been having with my cadence sensor while in France recently were persisting (erratic readings often at least double the real readings), and indeed compounded by absolutely no HR data being received from the chest strap. Ho hum. And we can add another of those cases where the Garmin couldn't start up properly.Nevertheless I lined up to start while trying not to think about the defective computer. I'd been warned about a trench-like road defect at one of the roundabouts, and I had my eye out for that - particularly since I had had an alarming incident on this course last time due to a roundabout pothole. In the run up to the first roundabout, some twonk driving a khaki coloured van or 4x4 towing a big trailer scared the pants off me by driving close and hooting his horn. Apart from that, I had no trouble with traffic, despite the traffic volume, which at 9am on a Saturday was somewhat higher than we see in the evening events. At some point just before the second roundabout, the Garmin decided to announce, via a loud beep, that it had begun to function.As I'd thought as I rode out to the event, the ride up to the dual carriageway was into a rather stiff headwind, what was rather depressing was that this persisted after turning onto the dual carriageway. Still, I thought, it'll be easier on the return leg. And so it proved, at least until the final straight (which always feels much harder to me than it looks like it ought to). With one eye on the Icknield RC event later in the day, I did try to keep the gears a bit lower than usual, but I found as usual that this just slowed me down!I finished with 23:41 - quite reasonable given the conditions - and wondered what the afternoon's event would be like - particularly the fast descent at the start - in the windy conditions. Results at the NBRC website. 

This is merely a brief addendum to the previous four parts of this tandem review, and really addresses any additions and/or modifications to the original spec of the tandem as delivered. While I think this tandem is a real tandemist's tandem - by which I mean that the frame and component choice have been really well chosen - I do think that fine-tuning even such a high quality tandem is inevitable.