Your ride today.... (part 1)

[potsy]

I think we need to give your mojo a good talking to in the New Year!

Well I managed a rare ride out today, just under 18 miles but it felt like hard work.
At least my experiment with fitting 28c tyres to the Caad was a success, bit of extra cushioning on these potholed roads is most welcome, and my Raceblades still fit despite supposedly being for tyres up to 23c

 

[Glow worm]

Wall to wall sunshine here today, a day off work too, so a ride beckoned. I settled on the idea of taking the train to Bury St. Edmunds and then riding home.

Climbing up into the 'hills' from the flatlands, you get some decent views back toward Cambridge..

The nearest station to me is Dullingham. It's nice and quiet. The barriers are still shut manually, and the high tech platform information consists of the bloke in the signal box leaning out of his window and letting you know if the train's on time. There's even house martins nesting under the eaves of the signal box in Summer.

After the short train ride to Bury, I headed north aiming for a nature reserve called Lackford Lakes. The route, once thankfully away from the awful busy roads of Bury was lovely through woodlands..

I soon reached the lakes nature reserve which were pretty much deserted. The lakes looked very blue today..

Not much about bird wise though- just the usual ducks like shoveler, goldeneye and gadwall etc.

On leaving Lackford, I took a track to avoid an A road. They'd just harvested lovely red onions in a field and left loads just sat there. I may have filled up a bag or two!

The sandy Breckland soil gave me a nervous moment or two. It's hard stuff to ride through is sand..

Back on some quiet roads, I paused to admire Higham church..

The country hereabouts is nicely undulating with a few reasonable climbs. I'd just crawled up this one at about 4mph near Ashley. At the bottom of the hill is Suffolk, I'd just crossed into Cambs...

Nearing home, and at one of the few places locally above the 300 foot altitude line, I paused to look across Cambs, Suffolk and well into Norfolk...

Reached home just before sunset. I'd been riding into the low sun for some miles which always makes me nervous with some of the less observant motorists. I made sure I had my bright flashing rear light switched on.

36 miles in total, in shorts and T shirt all day- doubt I'll be doing that again any time soon.

 

[ColinJ]

@ColinJ
Slightly dodgy knees, hips, & occasionally back pain, seem to be putting paid to my return to decent mileage - my weight & the bloody big hill I have to get up to get back home don't help either.

My dad was crippled by arthritis in both hip joints. He never had them replaced so he was using 2 walking sticks from the age of 60 and barely able to walk by the time he was 65.

I started to get the early signs of degeneration in my hips about 15 years ago (my early 40s) and decided that I did not want to go the same way so I needed to see if I could do anything to slow down the rate of degeneration.

The first thing I did was to give up running. I used to like doing a 4 or 5 mile loop round Hebden Bridge but it was making my joints hurt too much. I'm ok walking but the repetitive impacts of running were getting too much.

I also started taking glucosamine sulphate and cod liver oil supplements. The use of them has been proposed by some doctors and rubbished by others. All I can say is that my hips don't hurt any more now than they did 15 years ago, so I am going to keep on taking them!

My knees started to hurt about 4 years ago. By 2012 I was struggling to get up from my armchair and walking down stairs or steep hills was painful. Then I got ill ... I had more important things to worry about than my knees, so I concentrated on getting well, and that included losing a lot of weight. (I had been over 16.5 stone when I got ill, and am over 4 stone lighter now.) Guess what? My knees stopped hurting! What I thought was terrible arthritic damage was more a case of my knees giving up due to the strain of lifting all that weight.

I suffer from back pain too but I haven't cracked that problem yet. I think mine is due to poor flexibility and lack of core strength, rather than any significant problem with the spine itself.

That's a long-winded way of saying that losing some weight and doing as much cycling as you can would probably be a big help as might be taking the right supplements! Making sure that you get enough vitamins B, D, K and A is also important. I feel better now than I did 6 or 7 years ago. Good luck with it!

Wall to wall sunshine here today, a day off work too, so a ride beckoned. I settled on the idea of taking the train to Bury St. Edmunds and then riding home.

Climbing up into the 'hills' from the flatlands, you get some decent views back toward Cambridge..

View attachment 60087

The nearest station to me is Dullingham. It's nice and quiet. The barriers are still shut manually, and the high tech platform information consists of the bloke in the signal box leaning out of his window and letting you know if the train's on time. There's even house martins nesting under the eaves of the signal box in Summer.

View attachment 60088

After the short train ride to Bury, I headed north aiming for a nature reserve called Lackford Lakes. The route, once thankfully away from the awful busy roads of Bury was lovely through woodlands..

View attachment 60089

I soon reached the lakes nature reserve which were pretty much deserted. The lakes looked very blue today..

View attachment 60090

Not much about bird wise though- just the usual ducks like shoveler, goldeneye and gadwall etc.

On leaving Lackford, I took a track to avoid an A road. They'd just harvested lovely red onions in a field and left loads just sat there. I may have filled up a bag or two!

View attachment 60091

The sandy Breckland soil gave me a nervous moment or two. It's hard stuff to ride through is sand..

View attachment 60092

Back on some quiet roads, I paused to admire Higham church..

View attachment 60093

The country hereabouts is nicely undulating with a few reasonable climbs. I'd just crawled up this one at about 4mph near Ashley. At the bottom of the hill is Suffolk, I'd just crossed into Cambs...

View attachment 60095

Nearing home, and at one of the few places locally above the 300 foot altitude line, I paused to look across Cambs, Suffolk and well into Norfolk...

View attachment 60096

Reached home just before sunset. I'd been riding into the low sun for some miles which always makes me nervous with some of the less observant motorists. I made sure I had my bright flashing rear light switched on.

36 miles in total, in shorts and T shirt all day- doubt I'll be doing that again any time soon.

Lovely!

It was horribly grey and windy here today, but at least it was mild and dry so I forced myself to go out on a 19 mile loop over the local hills. When I got to 1,000+ feet up, frustratingly, I could see that the Vale of York in the distance was bathed in sunshine but I was stuck in the middle of a huge patch of thick cloud cover here. Still, I felt better for having done it.

The forecast is for early sunshine tomorrow, with rain to follow in the afternoon. I'll have to try and get up early and get out and back before the bad weather hits us.

 

[PatrickPending]

Another my ride yesterday, and the day before. Saturday A 50Km loop down to Ashby Parva - had the flu all week so was good to be out....if rather hard work. And Sunday, a breezy 85Km trip down to Naseby. Was nice, hard work again but I'm getting back into it......

 

[Dark46]

Well I've just got back from a 25 miler and at the end 2 twats tried to wipe me out.
A couple of weeks ago someone called my chicken because I didn't go up Frocester Hill with the fast group. Well someone had to look after the newcomers. Well today I decided I was going up it! But why did I pick a day with a head wind, bloody nearly killed me lol . Coming down was great fun reaching over 40 mph twice before having to break for tight hairpins. The ride from there was dark and dangerous. Unfortunately someone just been knocked off their bike at Waterwells roundabout . Glad to say it wasn't me . I came up from Davy way to the roundabout by the dance school , I looked right while moving there was a car coming and he was indicating left. I carried straight on and so did he ! I can't repeat the language I used. Let's say he got the point and it was very colourful ! At the lights at Woodvale some twat tried to cut the corner in front of me, what is it with some people?

 

[gavgav]

I nipped out after an early work finish, to test my new lights for the first time in proper darkness. Also the 1st time I have ever Braved a ride in the dark. I'm bit of a woos really !

I did a circuit of Shrewsbury, in shorts and a light jacket. Is it really the end of October? Feels like June, climate wise, to me.

I took the route down to The Quarry Park, adjusting the front light slightly, as it was pointing too far up in the air to start with. Strong headwind on the way down there. Then it was a short climb up through Porthill and back via the cycle paths that follow the Inner Ring Road. It was nice to be passing the traffic that I normally sit in when driving home.

I LOVE my new lights!! Only had them on the second setting and they clearly light the way ahead. I think they are better than some car lights (certainly Land Rover Freelander lights @Rickshaw Phil )

Next job is to use them out on the country lanes and stop being a woos

9.5 miles at 11.4 mph avg. I hate town cycle paths. Too slow and in Shrewsbury's case, badly maintained!

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

Following on from a random visit to my parents home on Saturday which resulted in the emergency felling of a tree damaged in the gales, I needed to go back to finish off the tidy up of the garden and start on the prep for making my Christmas Cake... So having managed to bully myself out of the house this morning, I had a hard ride over to their house whilst I found against a surprisingly gusty headwind. Going out was pretty uneventful with various random people saying hello to me. I did meet 1 other roadie (OK the only other cyclist I met) who very clearly had several layers on both top and bottom, skull cap and buff... I couldn't help wondering if he was trying hard to make life harder for himself - it was 17C at the time and I was at the time in only the 1 layer!
Jobs and the likes done and it was time to head home. I had some nice rays of light early on, but sadly nothing to photo...

In Middlewich I had the usual suspect in a 4x4 pull alongside me straddling both lanes (one goes left and the other right and I'm in primary in the left). I know this pair from previous encounters and today was sadly no different from other encounters. Passenger window goes down, and I get the usual line "Get a car". I don't bother with the arguments or the "get a bike/life" line... I have taken to more subtle questions... so once again they got the line "Why do I need 2?". needless to say between them they were stumped which is what I had hoped for... and I got away in front of them forcing them to wait until the road was wide enough for them to get passed me (They are the only vehicle that does this at this junction - everyone else is really well behaved and just stay behind me in the queue (of all of 4 cars today!) so I don't let them bully me...).

Between Middlewich and Bostock Green the, well I would love to say evening light but it was only 4:30pm so I will have to settle for late afternoon light was wonderful and really warm and putting some glorious colours into the autumn trees... sadly it is a really busy road and there was nothing really to photo... and by the time I got somewhere that would have looked half reasonable the light had passed...
After that, other than pointing out to a driver that she had stopped for a green traffic light (and no I wasn't pulling out in front of her because the car coming up behind hadn't worked out she was stationary...) I had a good journey home. Been a while since I have been out on the bike, have been a touch under the weather and today was surprisingly warm!

44 miles (my garmin had issues finding me again so missed some of the data as usual)... http://www.strava.com/activities/212388361/overview nothing fast, just steady as she goes.

 

[Rickshaw Phil]

Another monday and another commute. As already mentioned up-thread, it's surprisingly warm out there, so the shorts had an airing. I had to wait a while to get out of the village at the start but after that there didn't seem to be too much traffic on the roads. A southerly wind was against me for the first couple of miles but then helped quite nicely the rest of the way.

With the clocks changing I was travelling back in twilight, and with the warmth, and the lighter winds than this morning it was quite pleasant. If things at work carry on the way they are, I might be travelling later and in full darkness quite soon, but we'll see what happens.

I was taking it quite easy today so was a little surprised to have averaged 13.2 for the round trip.

 

[sgl5gjr]

Sunday....... Mam Tor Road......Castleton in the Peak District not a long ride....but a good climb plus great photo chance to see the collapsed road due to the landslide......

 

[Gravity Aided]

Another monday and another commute. As already mentioned up-thread, it's surprisingly warm out there, so the shorts had an airing. I had to wait a while to get out of the village at the start but after that there didn't seem to be too much traffic on the roads. A southerly wind was against me for the first couple of miles but then helped quite nicely the rest of the way.

With the clocks changing I was travelling back in twilight, and with the warmth, and the lighter winds than this morning it was quite pleasant. If things at work carry on the way they are, I might be travelling later and in full darkness quite soon, but we'll see what happens.

I was taking it quite easy today so was a little surprised to have averaged 13.2 for the round trip.

You changed clocks already?

 

[RWright]

You changed clocks already?

I think they changed Sunday morning. They change them sooner than we do here now, by a week or so. Don't remember for sure about spring but we may change them sooner than they do now too.

 

[coffeejo]

You changed clocks already?

I think they changed Sunday morning. They change them sooner than we do here now, by a week or so. Don't remember for sure about spring but we may change them sooner than they do now too.

They change like clockwork (sorry!) on the last Sundays in March and October.

 

[djb1971]

I nipped out after an early work finish, to test my new lights for the first time in proper darkness. Also the 1st time I have ever Braved a ride in the dark. I'm bit of a woos really !

I did a circuit of Shrewsbury, in shorts and a light jacket. Is it really the end of October? Feels like June, climate wise, to me.

I took the route down to The Quarry Park, adjusting the front light slightly, as it was pointing too far up in the air to start with. Strong headwind on the way down there. Then it was a short climb up through Porthill and back via the cycle paths that follow the Inner Ring Road. It was nice to be passing the traffic that I normally sit in when driving home.

I LOVE my new lights!! Only had them on the second setting and they clearly light the way ahead. I think they are better than some car lights (certainly Land Rover Freelander lights @Rickshaw Phil )

Next job is to use them out on the country lanes and stop being a woos

9.5 miles at 11.4 mph avg. I hate town cycle paths. Too slow and in Shrewsbury's case, badly maintained!

It's good when your lights let you see, told you, it's fab!

 

[Elybazza61]

First 'proper' commute for a while and the Garmin decides to not save it so no Strava link(still at least it worked ok Saturday for my Gran Fondo ride).Not that swift a ride and had to avoid all the rowing coaches wobbling along the Cam cycle path.

 

[ColinJ]

You changed clocks already?

Yes, at the weekend. It is always at 02:00 on the last Sunday in October and they go forward again on the last Sunday in March.

Funny, I always assumed that there would be international agreement on which days the changes are made.

PS Ok, ok - TMN to @coffeejo!