So, I refurbished the transmission on the tandem before our cycling holiday, and on the evening before we're due to head north, I discover a serious problem with the chainset, and the thing needs to be replaced...the main (right hand) drive crank is seriously mangled and isn't in line with left hand crank. The granny ring also now strikes the chain stay.Cue phone conversation with the excellent Spa Cycles of Harrogate, and I've arranged to collect a Stronglight Impact tandem chainset en route to Edinburgh tomorrow.

Another lovely sunny evening for a North Bucks Road Club evening time trial, and a return to the Stony Stratford course for another counting round in the club league.  There was also a gentle breeze that promised to toughen the outward leg.  Oh, and a profusion of greenfly in the air!There was quite a bit of discussion as to whether we should use the replacement Nash-Whaddon circuit, as on our previous event at Stony Stratford when the course was affected by roadworks.  In the end, we decided to go with the usual course, as riders who'd ridden the course earlier in the week said the road was clear enough (and so it proved).  What was more worrying was the comments that travellers had caused problems near the turn on Monday, with kids playing 'chicken' with the riders as they passed.After a slightly delayed start occasioned by a parade of sports cars and a group of horses, we were off.  For my part, I found the outward leg really very tough.  The first few miles are quite twisty, and the winter has most certainly not been kind to the road, with even more potholes added to the existing unrepaired road defects near Beachampton.  Dodging the potholes, I reached Beachampton and began the climb up to Nash.  I really suffered on the final stages to Nash (probably I need to lose a bit of weight to improve my power to weight ratio!).  In Nash a motorist had kindly parked on the bend, leaving their car door wide open while they looked at the back end of their car.  Avoiding this stellar parking act (and hoping that other riders, and indeed passing motorists would too), I pressed on up to the turn.  A clear ride round the turn and off on the return leg, where I felt I wasn't reaching the usual speed on the first section back to Nash.  Once through Nash the speed was up well over 40mph at times - though tempered with concern over bends in the road and assorted road defects to come.I roared through Beachampton and on over the twists, turns and astonishing potholed surfaces, putting a big effort to cross the line in 27:19.  This was better than I'd felt I was doing, but I really need to work on the climbing!  On the other hand, it was faster than any ride I did on this course last year.Results

								Pos. on
Pos	No	Name	Club	Time	Cat	Vets Std	.+ / -	Vets Std
1	10	Tony Parks	NBRC	26.23	V45	30.29	.+ 4.06	4
2	15	David Glossy	Team Corley Cycles	26.29	S
3	7	Chris Dunwoodie	TeamMK	27.00	S
4	13	Robert Saunders	NBRC	27.19	V50	31.41	.+ 4.22	3
5	14	Glenn McMenamin	NBRC	27.35	S
6	8	Will Hilton	Virgin Active	28.06	S
7	5	Brian Primett	NBRC	29.12	V43	30.01	.+ 0.49	6
8	11	Aleck Hornshaw	TeamMK	30.18	V41	29.33	.- 0.45	8
9	6	Clive Faine	TeamMK	30.22	V63	35.05	.+ 4.43	2
10	9	John Buchanan	TeamMK	30.27	V40	29.20	.- 1.07	9
11	3	Gilbert Wheelwright	NBRC	31.24	V67	36.13	.+ 4.49	1
12	4	Christine White	NBRC	33.01	LV45	32.26	.- 0.35	7
13	2	Gordon Batcock	NBRC	33.27	V69	36.48	.+ 3.21	5
14	1	Alan Lawson	NBRC	33.29	V41	29.33	.- 3.56	10
		Tandem
	16	Kevin Stokes	TeamMK	25.08
		Geoff Perry	TeamMK

And here's a map of the course (note that the northern end of the course has an additional section including a return to the car park).
View Stony '11.4' 19/5/10 in a larger map

Courtesy of Information is Beautiful, we now find out what the UK is best at (Because Every Country Is The Best At Something).So, where Madagascar is best at vanilla, the Netherlands is best at Ecstasy, and Estonia is best at Adult Literacy, what is the UK best at?CCTVOh crap!

In

Looking out of my office window before riding up to Astwood for this evening's time trial, one might have been forgiven for thinking it was going to be a balmy warm late spring evening.  Well, it was fairly balmy - there was only a light wind - but warm it most certainly wasn't.  As we lined up at the start, the temperature was falling quite rapidly, and it was quite chilly.We also didn't have a pusher-off, so watching riders start by failing to clip into their pedals was really quite amusing,  Until it was my turn to start!  Anyway, roaring off down the main road to Chicheley, I was quite pleased that my ride up from work had been brisk (rather later leaving than I'd intended): my heart rate was rapidly raised to a decent racing level.  I roared down to Chicheley, I think in part because of a gentle tail wind.  I stayed in the saddle and on the tribars all the wayto the Chicheley turn, then as usual took the bend quite cautiously as it's often rather gravelly.  On up to North Crawley, and I was convinced I could see another rider ahead of me.  But who?  I couldn't figure it out, and for the rest of the race kept seeing the rider, then not, as the mystery rider moved round bends ahead of me.  I tried hard to keep on the tribars round the bends after North Crawley, which I think helped to keep my speed up along those sections.As I approached the final mile or so, I reckoned the mystery rider was #10 (and so it proved).  I scorched down the final descent and nipped up the climb to the finish, again staying on the tribars, finishing with 23:49.  As it turned out, this was only 5 seconds behind Tony P, and good enough for second place.  Actually, my best time on this course is a mid-23, so this was really quite a good ride for me (and certainly my best this season).Results (map of the course follows)

								Pos. on
Pos	No	Name	Club	Time	Cat	Vets Std	.+ / -	Vets Std
1	9	Tony Parks	NBRC	23.44	V45	26.30	.+2.46	4
2	11	Rob Saunders	NBRC	23.49	V50	27.33	.+3.44	1
3	8	Lindz Barral	i-team CC	24.07	S
4	10	Chris Dunwoodie	TeamMK	24.36	S
5	12	Geoff Perry	TeamMK	25.01	V50	27.33	.+2.32	6
6	7	Kevin Stokes	TeamMK	25.09	V47	26.54	.+1.45	7
7	5	John Buchanan	TeamMK	25.25	V40	25.30	.+0.05	10
8	14	Graeme Freestone King	Team Synergie	26.38	V50	27.33	.+0.55	8
9	4	Clive Faine	TeamMK	27.04	V63	30.30	.+3.26	2
10	13	Ruth Freestone King	Team Synergie	27.41	LV46	28.25	.+0.44	9
11	1	Gilbert Wheelwright	NBRC	28.20	V67	31.30	.+3.10	3
12	3	Gordon Batcock	NBRC	29.19	V69	32.00	.+2.41	5
13	2	Tony Brunton	NBRC	30.13	V45	26.30	.-3.43	11

Time Keepers:- Steph Cousins & Tony Farmborough NBRC
View Astwood '10' 12/5/10 in a larger map

A few days into the newest release from Canonical, Ubuntu GNU/Linux 10.04 (Lucid Lynx), what are my initial opinions?  On the whole the upgrade from 9.10 went very smoothly.  Since I'm using a customised desktop with Compiz effects, I didn't see too much in the way of visible changes.The seemingly much-discussed move of window control buttons from the right to the left of the window title bar completely passed me by, as this is how I've had my desktop for a few years now.Not much different in boot-up times, but this is a seriously tweaked notebook which slows it down post-login.  On my desktop PC, boot seems very quick, as does the post-login desktop setup.The new version of the Gwibber social networking app seems a big improvement.  It now seems to filter out the vile Farmville crap from FaceBook!  A simple interface as well, enabling access to different feeds (though I'm only using two Twitter accounts and Facebook).The big news for me is that iPod Touch support is there.  I believe that on a fresh installation this would probably work out of the box.  In my case I had to install ifuse (easy enough via synaptic).  Now I can add music to my iPod without having to go to a Win PC and load iTunes.  This worked well, but appeared to disrupt album artwork for those albums I'd already uploaded via Windows iTunes.  I restored the iPod, and repeated the album transfer, and this time, everything went smoothly - no artwork corruption, so perhaps this was just a coincidence.I picked up a tip (from somewhere out there on the web) to edit /etc/fuse.conf and uncomment the line

#user_allow_other

to

user_allow_other

This seems to have helped the upload of music files to the iPod.Related to this is the development of Rhythmbox as an alternative to iTunes.  I buy the occasional DRM-free mp3 album from Amazon: Rhythmbox has links to three other online music stores, including Ubuntu's very own Ubuntu One.  I decided to have a go with Ubuntu One.  This proved a bit interesting!  The interface is clean and easy to use: making a purchase of an album was pretty straightforward.  However downloading seemed a bit complex, though probably this was just because it was different to systems I'd used before.  Firs, the files get transferred to one's Ubuntu One cloud storage, of which there is 2Gb for free (you can upgrade to 50Gb for $10 per month).  From there, manual downloads are a bit of a nuisance: as far as I could tell you have to download each file one by one.Firefox was updated to 3.6.3 - no major issues.  (while this is nothing to do with Ubuntu, one of my plugins got updated and broke some website JS functions - this was Ghostery version 2.1, now inactivated until such time as the Ghostery developers get their act together - this isn't the first time the Ghostery plugin has affected Firefox function)

The weather forecast for the day of this race was annoyingly accurate: light rain and a blustery wind out of the north wind at about 15mph.  Still, this didn't deter me from riding over to Leighton Buzzard for the Bossard Wheelers '10' on the F12/10.  I gave it plenty of time, in case of punctures, and indeed rode along a part of the course to gauge how the wind would affect us during the race.At the HQ, I found I had a fairly long time before my start time.  It turned out that there had been a diesel spill at the Billington roundabout, but that the Highways agency had been along and sprinkled it with gritty salt.  While we weren't very convinced it would do much good, we were grateful that they'd made the effort!  I wasn't keen to go back out and get wet and cold, so held off till about 15 minutes before my start, when I nipped out to warm up briefly before the start.  All quite straightforward.  At the appointed time, I rolled forward, said hello to the start team and mounted the bike.  Unfortunately I had to dismount again rather quickly, to put my chain back on - I must have clipped it with my heel!Once off, I got up to a good speed quite quickly, but as so often happens on this course, came to a near standstill behind queueing traffic at the Billington roundabout.  The difficulty is then getting going again in the monster gear I'm usually rolling along in - this was no exception.  Up to spead again, and the wind seemed particularly blustery, particularly where I passed gaps in the hedgerow.  My computer kept dropping the speed display, and I was occasionally alarmed by how slow I was going.  The last mile before the turn were particularly hard as the course veered slightly into the wind.  At last I found myself riding up to the turn roundabout, and back down onto the course again - at a rather satisfying 32mph.  From here, the return leg was pretty quick, and I even had no traffic problems passing through the Billington roundabout the second time.  In fact, the worst aspect of the return leg was keeping an eye out for the myriad of small potholes that have opened up over the winter!Approaching the finish, I made a last eyeballs out effort to try and get under 23 minutes.  Unfortunately, I was thwarted and finished in 23:02 for tenth place.As usual the Bossard '10' was a well organised and very sociable event, even though organised by what must be one of the smallest clubs in the country.As it turned out, the ride home was a bit frustrating - my legs were a bit tired, and grovelling up the gentle climb towards Woburn was rendered rather tough by the headwind bearing drizzly rain.  I felt the beginnings of hunger knock, and ate the banana I'd conserved for just such a situation.  And I had a front wheel puncture just less than a mile from home.  Quite common round these parts after rain, as the rain tends to wash flints into the road.Here's a Google map of the course.  Results (top 15 places) below the map
View F12/10 8/5/10 in a larger map

Pos	No	Name	Club	Cat	Time	+/-	std	Std Pos
1	50	Steve Golla	Sigma Sport	Sen	21:29
2	15	Mick Hodson	St Ives CC	Vet	21:35	+	03:55	8
3	45	Tim Carter	Team Virgin Active	Vet	21:46	+	04:32	5
4	20	Ross Clarke	Team Milton Keynes	Sen	21:57
5	46	Dave Johnson	VC10	Vet	22:17	+	05:42	1
6	10	Simon Cannings	Team Milton Keynes	Vet	22:29	+	03:01	13
6	35	Mark Cook	Beds Road Club	Vet	22:29	+	03:01	13
8	32	Pete Lawrence	VC10	Sen	22:32
9	40	Robert Fletcher	VC10	Sen	22:42
10	19	Jim Moffatt	Spirit Racing Team	Vet	23:02	+	05:10	3
10	21	Robert Saunders	North Bucks Road Club	Vet	23:02	+	04:31	6
12	36	Gareth Pugh	Cwmcarn Paragon RC	Sen	23:08
13	7	Steve Clarke	Team Milton Keynes	Vet	23:12	+	05:26	2
14	42	James Fox	CC Luton	Sen	23:19
15	27	Geoff Bunyan	Spirit Racing Team	Vet	24:29	+	02:51	15

This evening's event was the third event in the NBRC 2010 time trial league, and the first in the annual series of interclub events with the A5 Rangers.  As it turned out, it was an overcast evening with a light breeze offering a little assistance on the opening leg.As I started, it seemed there was more traffic on the course than on recent events, and indeed ended up getting stalled at the first two roundabouts.  On the first, this was no big deal, as the road surface is so pitted and potholed that I always take it rather gingerly.  Anyway, I was riding with very little data on my Polar computer: since I'm using a Polar GPS sensor to relay speed and distance to the computer, everything depends on the GPS device working properly - tonight I suspect that the battery might have depleted a bit too much.  All I had to go on was my HR reading, but at least that was something to go on!Once on the dual carriageway section, things picked up a bit, and I felt pretty comfortable.  Approaching the turn, I saw Lindz, who had started two minutes before me, and I timed myself to the turn.  As far as I could tell, he was almost exactly two minutes ahead of me.  Redoubling my efforts, I pressed on, rounding the next roundabout and easily avoiding the potholes there.  From there it's downhill, and whacked in a nice big gear.As I crossed the line, I pressed the lap counter - it indicated 23:25, and since I started the timer when my minute man started, this meant I'd finished in 22:25 (or thereabouts pending the official results), this being my best time on this course since we started using it.  It's also my best '10' time for the last three seasons (at least), and a minute faster than I managed last season!  Really rather a fine results for me.

Pos	Name	Club	Time	Cat	Standard	Plus	Pos on standard
1	Tim Carter	Virgin Active	21.14	V44	26.18	5.04	6
2	Tony Parks	NBRC	22.10	V45	26.30	4.20	10
3	Dave Lazenby	A5 Rangers	22.25	V46	26.42	4.17	11
4	Rob Saunders	NBRC	22.27	V50	27.33	5.06	5
5	Dave Glossy	TMK	22.36	S
6	Lindz Barral	i Team CC	22.49	S
7	Geoff Perry	TMK	23.08	V50	27.33	4.25	9
8	David Carrington	TMK	23.27	V44	26.18	2.51	14
9	Darren Haydon	NBRC	23.36	S
10	Ian Stokes	NBRC	23.54	V50	27.33	3.39	12
11	John Buchanan	NBRC/TMK	23.59	V40	25.30	1.31	16
12	Kevin Stokes	TMK	24.00	V47	26.54	2.54	13
13	Rob Chaundy	TMK	24.36	V58	29.20	4.44	7
14	Ian Franklin	A5 Rangers	24.54	V61	30.02	5.08	3
15	Graham Mackie	A5 Rangers	24.56	V48	27.07	2.11	15
16	Tim Carey	A5 Rangers	25.48	V47	26.54	1.06	17
17	Trevor Parrish	A5 Rangers	25.53	V65	31.00	5.07	4
18	Clive Faine	TMK	25.55	V63	30.30	4.35	8
19	Murray Kirton	A5 Rangers	26.00	V69	32.00	6.00	1
20	Gilbert Wheelwright	NBRC	26.11	V67	31.30	5.19	2
21	Alan Lawson	NBRC	26.58	V41	25.42	-1.16	18
22	Tony Brunton	NBRC	29.05	V45	26.30	-2.35	19
23	Liam Barbur	A5 Rangers	31.11	Schoolboy 14

I see more about Valv.(Piti) in Cyclingnews.com (Valverde Accuses UCI And CONI Of Vendetta | Cyclingnews.com).  Perhaps to celebrate his rise to the top of the UCI points table, Alejandro Valverde has accused UCI and CONI of engaging in a vendetta against him, or more accurately exhibiting “an institutional and personal viciousness” against him.  He goes on in time-honoured athlete style to say:

No banned substance has ever been detected in my body and my biological profile is flawless.

Thing is, that's true of many dopers.  Until they got caught.  And the biological passport which would yield a biological profile was only introduced in 2008.  The antics of Dr Fuentes were exposed as the investigation into Operacion Puerto got under way in May 2006, so whey would Valv. (Piti)'s biological profile be affected by any supposed blood doping that occurred prior to Mat 2006?.What the report doesn't do is clarify Valverde's explanation for the match between his DNA profile and that of the blood labelled Valv. (Piti).  Is there a match?  And if so, how come a wider ban hasn't been applied?

One of the three riders named as having suspicious blood parameters is making an unusual defence claim (Rosendo's Blood Readings Due To Haemorrhoids? | Cyclingnews.com). Jesús Rosendo Prado has been suspended by his team, but the claim has now been made that there was an observed increase in oxygen transference between May 19, 2008, and September 27, 2009.Now, despite being a biologist, I'm not really clear what the UCI mean by "increase in oxygen transference", but Rosendo's team have fired back the defence that oddities in reticulocyte (immature red blood cells) and lowered haemoglobin and haematocrit levels were due to haemorrhoids.Blimey, one would have thought that not only would that volume of blood loss be awkward for a cyclist, but you'd expect a performance hit!  Poor bloke, having his troublesome haemorrhoids splashed about the interweb.