In which I review the power meters I've been using over the last few years. All of these seem to be accurate and consistent in their data. This is a brief review of the four systems I currently use - and to cut to the chase, of these four power meters, which would I recommend as a power meter on a new bike build?

Given that two of these power meters are discontinued, the choice comes down to the SRAM Red chainset or the Assioma Duo pedals, and from the viewpoint of easy transfer between bikes I'd recommend the Assiomas (which can also be bought in a version to be fitted to Shimano pedal bodies). I should add that all four of these power meters have been absolutely faultless in use.

A supremely comfortable saddle for touring use. Possibly my oldest bike component that is still in use (even if only occasionally).

During a recent garage clearout, I unearthed this saddle. It's clearly seen better days - the surface of the leather is a bit cracked and the rivets are a bit green! These photos were taken after I applied some Proofide.

It had been 5 years since we last packed for a Normandy holiday, including both the tandem and a solo bike. Since then we’d changed to a more modern Ford Focus, and I at least had a few concerns that all our stuff wouldn’t have fit inside.

I needn’t have worried.

In which I suffer a series of bike crises before even leaving the house, and have a lacklustre performance.

So as usual I started getting set up about an hour before I needed to set out for Astwood. When I came to pump the tyre up on the P5 TT bike, I found that the front wouldn't get up to my desired pressure, then the rear disk wouldn't stay inflated (I think because the valve core came a little loose). So I switched to the P3.

Part 1 - 2020

So it will come as no surprise that 2020 was the weirdest cycling year since I came back to the sport in 1990.

I started in reasonably good form, considering the drop in motivation I had experienced through the autumn of 2019 and into winter. I’d continued a lot of travelling, with monthly trips to Edinburgh - though in training terms these weren’t too disruptive since I’m able to set up a turbo trainer there. I did an OK effort at the New Year’s Day ’10’, and settled down to try and ramp up the training for the opening event of my 2020 season proper, the Port Talbot Wheelers 2-up ’25’ in March.

In which I grab the soldering iron and splice together wires and plugs to place the 'brains' of the eTap system deep in the bowels of my TT frame!

Earlier this year, I travelled to Wales for a Team Grumpy reunion of sorts, in the form of a 2-up team time trial. This was a ‘sporting course’, so I took along my Cervelo P3, currently equipped with 11-speed eTap Red gears. By the time the bike had been in and out of the car a few times, one of the blipbox ports had stopped working (this happened before, with the P5). 

Owing to work-related pressures, over the last few years I've had less and less time available to blog and to maintain websites. I've focussed on maintaining two Joomla! based websites:

North Bucks Road Club - my current bike club

Part 2 - Racing restarts 2021

2021 looked like it’d go the same way as 2020, with massive levels of infection, illness and death following the foolish decision by our pathetic and incompetent Government to grandstand over "not cancelling Christmas".  However, things did settle a bit, and by mid-April we felt able to start running our 2021 series of club time trials.

We planned how to do this in a Covid-safe way, taking the following measures: