Done It!

Just got home after doing the Fred Whitton Challenge yesterday.  There were 6 of us on the day, and we all completed it.  My knees are a bit stiff today, but getting better all the time.  Hardly saddle sore at all, and I don't think it's because I'm completely numb!

I'm really glad to have made it.  I  was have a few doubts around two thirds of the way round, as my knees started to twinge, but popping a few painkillers was enough to keep me going.  And I felt committed because of the sponsorship I had received - Big Thanks to all who donated.

The weather was mixed - heavy showers for the first few hours, then brightening up.  I was very glad that it wasn't raining on any of the evil descents - Honister, Hardknott and Wrynose.  As it was, there was plenty of surface run-off making for very tentative braking, but it was usually possible to aim for the next dry patch to scrub off more speed.

Only fell off once, going up Honister.  I landed badly after my front wheel lifted, and couldn't get out of the cleats quickly enough.  Sore elbow!  Lesson learnt for Hardknott and Wrynose - going up them I took a number of "hydration" stops, and got out of the saddle for much of the rest of the time.

On the subject of hydration, Saturday was the first time I've added a salt/glucose suppplement to the water in the bottle.  The difference was really dramatic - I didn't feel drained at any point despite hardly eating on the way round (just a muesli bar, a bath bun, and a piece of home-make carrot cake).

Anyway, less idle chat, and on to the stats!  No official time yet, but the times I have are:

• Total time from start to finish: 11:22:25(*)
• Time spent at official checkpoints: 1:39:22
• Time spent repairing punctures and getting lost: 9:38

(*) I wasn't aiming to keep this time low - I was allowing time to regroup at checkpoints, so that the riders could meet up, and to make life easier for the two support cars (thanks Penny, Ruth and Sue).

So total time productively cycling is 9:33:25, but my official time (after Acts of God ;-) is likely to be around 9:43.  Which I'm very happy with - I was aiming for under 10 hours, by pacing myself for 9:51 - so beating this despite a puncture is great.

Other key stats:

• Time spent stationary other than the three official checkpoints: 28 minutes
• Average heart rate 143 (max 176 climbing out of Ambleside near the start, and again on Newlands)
• Ascent (from the GPS) was 3643m

In terms of perceived effort, Hardknott is far and away the biggest challenge, followed probably by Wrynose (possibly because it follows on so closely from Hardknott).  Then comes Honister, then Newlands, then Kirkstone, then Whinlatter, then all the others.

Would I do it again?  Possibly - I certainly want to take on some more big sportives.  I'd be tempted by the official Fred Whitton event, but it's held in May, meaning fewer long, sunny days to train in (especially if you live in Scotland).

We'll see!

Comfort

I've just discovered Assos shorts!  They are one of the best comfort upgrades you can get for your bike - it's like wrapping a duvet round the saddle!

They're not cheap, and it seems wrong to be paying more for a pair of shorts than you'd pay for a saddle.  I have tried for comfort; I've got a seatpost with Zertz elastomer inserts, and a Koobi PRS Alpha saddle with elastomer shock absorbers.  But the shorts have had by far the biggest effect.  Helen and I both have them, and can't recommend them highly enough.

And on the subject of saddle comfort, I posted a while ago, waxing lyrical about the wondrous new seatposts with fore-and-aft screws.  Well, I was wrong, wrong, wrong!  While they are good in terms of seat angle adjustment, but the need for a screw in front of the seatbost forces the clamp to be positioned above the seatpost rather than behind it.  So, unless your saddle rails go a long way forward, or your seat tube is angled well back, you end up with the saddle too far forward, putting too much pressure on the sit bones, and/or the hands.

20.5miles, 460m ascent, 16.5mph, 156bpm

5 laps of Arthur's Seat, with lap times ranging from 12:16 to 11:12 (on the last lap).  Felt really good - times were comparable to last time, but the ride was 150% longer and I had a lower heart rate.  The training must have done some good!

Next ride on Saturday - Strontian to Polloch and back, and repeat until knackered, or 100 miles, whichever comes soonest.

Slacking

Not a lot of blogging recently - but fortunately that doesn't betray a (complete) lack of training.

What happened, you see, is that we did the Coast to Coast Reivers route with Louise, Helen's sister - 170 miles from Tynemouth to Whitehaven.  The night before, I tried to get the route into my Forerunner, by inputting it into BikeRouteToaster.  To cut a very long story short, I eventually got the route entered at 1 in the morning, then the web site crashed and lost all my work.  I then traced the route on a physical map instead, on the grounds that paper doesn't crash.

This was the start of my fall out with electronic training aids, and without stats, what's the point of posting?  Suffice it to say that since last time I've done...

• Two midweek runs with the Edinburgh Road Club
• One Saturday run with the above (hilly route, got dropped!)
• Much of the C2C route, supporting Helen and Louise
• 96 hilly miles; Arisaig to Polloch and back
• 84 fairly hilly miles; Arisaig to nearly Kilchoan and back
• And probably some other stuff I've forgotten.

Sadly, none of the above counts, 'cos I've got no stats.

Plan now is a short ride tomorrow, then a big ride at the weekend, then (gulp) the Fred Whitton next weekend.  I'm not feeling prepared!

45.4 miles, 470m ascent, 18.1mph

An evening ride with the Edinburgh Road Club, and felt much better than Sunday.  Average speed obviously mich higher, but it makes a big difference being on flatter terrain with people to draft.

The ride was very much in three sections.  The first 25 mins were spent in the fast group (I discovered later) and averaged 22.3mph.  I got dropped, but then picked up by the slower group, who I stayed with for the next 65 mins, averaging 20.5mph.  However, I got calf cramp hammering back into a headwind along the coast road, and was dropped again.

Finally, a three more stragglers hove into view, and we trundled home at a more relaxed pace, spending a further hour at 14mph.  I'd rather have taken this stretch a bit faster (maybe 16mph?) but it was nice to have a chance to chat rather than riding full on.

So, I was dropped twice, but still feel much more confident about my cycling than I did at the weekend!

A tale of two rides

Two training runs this weekend:

27.4 Miles, 700m ascent, ave 13.5mph, HR 140bpm
49 Miles, 1422m ascent, ave 13.1mph, HR 150bpm

This was a new ride that I'd worked out in the Lammermuir hills, starting from Gifford.  The ride itself is perfect for the training I'm doing; quiet roads, and steep hills.  Lovely!

The first ride on Saturday was with Helen.  The first part of the ride was fine, but after nearly 14 miles, my saddle fell off.  Actually, that's not quite fair; my saddle seemed to be angled back a bit, so I tried to adjust it and the bolt sheared.  That's the second time that this particular seatpost has managed to eat the fixing bolt.  Maybe it's trying a make a comment about my weight?  Anyway, we turned around, and cycled back, with me standing up all the way.  And Helen carrying my saddle.

I felt really strong for the whole ride, and rather regretted that we hadn't simply carried on with the planned route despite the handicap.

After replacing the seatpost(*) on Saturday night, I returned alone on the Sunday.  The fist part of the ride went swimmingly despite slightly tired legs, and 17miles in my average speed was up at 14.8mph.  But then it all went a bit wrong - my bum was aching, I seemed to have no power, and the second half of the ride was a full 2mph slower that the first.  I cut the route short and returned to the car quite demoralised; how the hell am I going to manage the Fred Whitton if I had so much trouble with that?


(*) Oh yes, the seatpost!  The one fitted to my bike was the original carbon fibre affair that came with the Tricross.  It's got the traditional arrangement for the clamp, with a single bolt holding the parts together.  These are always a challenge to adjust, because the seat angle invariably changes as you tighten the bolt.  Plus, you can understand the bolt shearing, because the whole construction conspires to use your body weight to lever the bolt apart as effectively as possible.

The replacement seatpost that I had lying around looked like carbon fibre too, but proved to be well-disguised aluminium.  However, the clamp was designed with bolts fore and aft, so you adjust seat angle by tightening one bolt and loosening another.  Why aren't all seatposts made like this?  [Stop-press: I just checked Wiggle, and it seems that many seat-posts are made like this!  So why have I never seen one before?]

10.5 Miles, 207m Ascent, Ave 16.1 mph, HR 160

No posts for a bit, sadly reflecting a lack of training.  Not no training at all, but no training with stats availalable, so it didn't really count!  We did a 21m, 310m ascent ride last weekend from Arisaig (including four climbs of a very steep little hill), and then I did an hour on the trainer on Tuesday, apparently at a little over 200W.

Today, though I came across this site, which provides calculators for power output.  So I thought I'd put in some figures from the hill climbs on today's ride just to see how much power I'm generating.  The answers are a bit inconclusive, as they show an uncanny ability to increase my power output by 30% while dropping my heart rate.  However, with a bit of averaging, they indicate that with my heart rate around 170bpm I can produce around 250W.

I also came across this site, with lots of excellent hill climbing tips.  It points out that a good climber's weight should be no more than twice his height in inches.  That gives me a maximum weight of 9st 8lb.  So I've got six weeks to either lose 2 stone, or grow by over a foot.  Frankly, neither seems likely, but I think I'll focus on having a growth spurt.

Fred Whitton Results 2010

I did a bit of analysis of this year's results on the FW.

This chart shows the number of riders that finished in each 10-minute period.  It shows that 7:50 is the most popular finishing time, and 11:10 is about the point where you drop off the curve.  Note that most entrants are keen club cyclists - not like me!

In terms of speed 7:50 would be averaging around 14.3mph over the full route.  If I can manage that, I'll be delighted.

50 Miles, 920m ascent, ave 13.1mph

(or 866m ascent, according to bikeroutetoaster)

Another Peebles-based ride with Helen, on lovely quiet roads.  Unfortunately today was horrendously windy (arround 22mph winds), so neither speed nor distance were anything to write home about.  Concentrated today on maintaining a high cadence - if it works for the TdF riders, it should work for me.

Much more relaxed than my last training ride - average HR was 139bpm (cf 163 last time), with 25% in zone 2 and 48% in zone 3.  That should be a level of effort I could sustain on a longer ride.

I've just compared this with my ride to Braemar last year.  That had an average HR of 138; 36% in zone 2, and 50.5 in zone 3.  Remarkably close.  But last year, my average speed was 14.7 on a route that was only 8% less hilly.  I think I've got my work cut out over the next couple of months!

14 miles, 268m ascent, average 16.2 mph

That's better - got the average speed up a bit at last in a ride up to Mortonhall, then down to Holyrood and round Arthurs Seat.  Worked hard all the way (inspired by watching Cav win stage 5 of the Tour de France), and managed to get cramp in both calves at one point, but soldiered through.

After chatting with Dave at the weekend, I've concluded I need to get much more technical about this whole affair, so I'm now starting to track my heart rate along with the other stats, so that I can get a feel for the level I should be working when I finally do the Fred Whitton.  This ride had my average up at 163, in zone 4 for 73% of the time.  Helen tells me that the TdF riders cruise with a heart rate of around 130 - I only dipped that low twice, probably at traffic lights.

The stats in the subject were from my GPS - the bikeroutetoaster equivalents are 14.1 miles, and 265m ascent.  Amazingly close, but I'll try to track both where possible so that I'm not training based on the GPS stats, for a ride that I've planned using bikeroutetoaster.

41.6 Miles, 963m ascent, average 14.6 mph

Last Saturday, a solo ride, because Helen couldn't be prized out of bed.  So instead of the planned spin round Peebles, a bit of quick replanning was required.  My criteria weren't overly fussy - 50 - 60 miles, back roads, lots of hills and starting from home.

A little internet browsing later, I concluded that the Lammermuir Hills would fit the bill quite nicely, though in order to keep the distance down I would have to use main roads to get there.  So (and I'm sorry if I get a bit geeky here) I set up a route on Bike Route Toaster, saved it as a tcx file, loaded it into Garmin Training Center and uploaded it to my Forerunner 305 GPS.  Job done - now I just had to follow the little black line on my GPS screen!

The route to the Lammermuir Hills turned out to be quite busy, especially on the A68.  Finally I got to the back-road section that I'd been waiting for, but it quickly turned into a (very steep) Land Rover track, and shortly after that the little black line proceeded through a gate into a field of sheep!  Not having a map to re-route myself, I was forced to just cycle back the way I came.

Lesson learned: carry a map?  No, actually, I'll just make sure that when I route myself over little white spindly roads on Google Maps in future, I'll call up satellite view to make sure they look like roads, not fields!

Thinking about performance - a bit slower average speed than last week's much longer ride.  However, the route was considerably steeper, and contained a very rough section, and was ridden with no breaks, so I think I can be reasonably content with the time.

Found the Squeak?

A day off from training today, so I set to finding the annoying squeak on my Specialized Tricross that I get whenever I stand up and turn up the effort.

Last week I replaced the bottom bracket bearings in an attempt to banish it, but no luck.  Today I took off the seatpost and bottle cages, then removed the crank, stripped it down, and put it back together with plenty of grease between all mating surfaces. No joy, just as creaky as ever.

Just before giving up for the day, I swapped out the rear wheel for the one on the Planet-X, and suddenly all fell silent.  I put the Tricross wheel back, and still pretty quiet.  So it looks like the noise is in the area of the axle and quick-release, so next time I'll know where to concentrate my efforts.

Anyway, it's nice to have a shiny clean crank, even though it was a waste of effort.  Helps to set off my blingin' new KMC X10-SL shiny gold chain.  If I was that way inclined I'd be tempted to use it as jewellery, except a gold chain would probably be cheaper!

78.5 Miles, 890m ascent, average 14.8 mph

Just got back from a lovely ride south of Peebles.  Planned to download all the stats from the GPS and show lots of pretty graphs and maps and stuff, but the GPS is in the car, and I can't be bothered to go and get it.  Sorry, but you'll have to put up with me wittering instead.

We did a route heading  southwest out of Peebles to the A701, then south a bit, then east past the Talla and Megget reservoirs (including a nice little 20% climb), along to Mountbenger, then south again to Crosslee, over towards Selkirk, and then back to Peebles.

The day was much more interesting than anticipated.  It started with the discovery that Peebles had decided to hold their "Beltane Festival" on the one day of the year (possibly the decade) that I wanted to drive through.  And for a bit of fun, they hadn't bothered putting up any diversion signs after closing the A road that goes straight through the middle.  iPhone satnav came to the rescue, though, and after a couple of false starts we made it to the car park.

Our next exciting encounter was with a classic car rally - 200 cars - which had decided it would be a fine day to process along the single-track, 1 in 5 hill that joins the Talla and Megget reservoirs.  Most of the drivers were considerate, though, and Helen got lots of encouragement (plus a load of verbal from a gruff Weegie that we'll assume was positive).

Just when we thought the day couldn't get any more exciting, we encountered an RAF helicopter landing in the road west of Mountbenger, apparently picking up the victim of a motorcycle accident.  We appreciated the enforced rest, but hope there is good news for the casualty.

And then, finally, the highlight of the day!  Descending into Crosslee, Helen spotted a sign advertising "Riks Cream Teas".  It was out of our way, and didn't say how far, but it's never wrong to seek out a scone, so off we went.  In the event it was only a mile or so, and well worth the effort.  Rik's little catering enterprise is run out of a couple of stationary caravans, with a tented outdoor area, but the scones were excellent.

So how was the riding?  Fairly comfortable, a bit tired towards the end, but no real problems.  The only challenging bit was the 20% hill, which I tackled rather more aggressively than Helen, giving me time to stop for a flapjack half way up.  Helen managed not to stop and overtook me while I was munching; I gave chase and we summitted together.

We'll both sleep well tonight.  Until I roll over onto the blistering sunburn on my arms, that is.  Ouch!

A Bit of Background

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

OK, not quite that much background.  It all started in the Plockton Hotel, in May 2007.  Helen, emboldened by half a pint of Lancaster Bomber, wouldn't let drop Stuart's comment that he "bet she couldn't complete the Munros by the time she reached a certain, significant birthday".  At the time, that meant 250 mountains in 2.5 years.  The bet would be settled by by a "slap up meal in the Plockton Hotel, and us much ale as she could drink".  Frankly, the second part of that was never going to cost very much.

Now fast-forward 2.5 years of frantic Munro bagging.  Numerous pairs of boots had been bought and trashed, the car had put on many thousands of miles, but the challenge had been met.  Amazingly, for those who have ever played board games with Helen, she didn't cheat once.  It was agreed that the bet would be settled in Chester for various reasons, especially Dave and Nic's burgeoning bump, so off we trooped.

(Hang in there, I will get to the point eventually...)

After having enjoyed a splendid meal (and Helen had made the most of "all the ale she could drink" - pathetic), conversation (not involving Stuart) turned to the fact that it was now Stuart's turn to face a challenge. Cycling is much more his bag than walking, and so I suggested a cycling challenge in the Lakes.

By the next day, preliminary Googling was complete, and the basic stats (112 miles, 3000m ascent) were burned into my psyche.  We all trooped off to dinner chez Bernard (a splendid effort at almost no notice) and I popped the question to Stuart.  To "sweeten" the pill, I offered to join him in the endeavour.  After minimal cajoling, Stuart accepted - I think secretly he wanted a focus for some training, as did I.

So here we are, both training like mad towards a deadline in September.  Stuart's in Chester, and is being coached by the ever-helpful Dave, who recommended that he start his training by going back several months in a time machine to build a base level of fitness.  Oops!  No such professional help for me, just getting in the miles, and enjoying the opportunity to tart up my slightly tired (or tyred?) steed.

The Training so Far

We've been training for a couple of weeks now. Twice a week we get dizzy doing laps of Arthur's seat (one lap is 100m ascent and 3 miles). Last night we did 4 laps, the longest yet.

Last Saturday we did our first distance training ride, 30 miles along the north Cumbrian coast to visit our friend Ian for a cup to tea, then 30 miles back to the car. Lovely, sunny, flat ride at a comfortable pace - and no ill effects the following day! Averaged 16.8 mph.

So we've done half the distance, but with 200m of ascent (rather than 4,500). Tomorrow we're upping the distance a little (to either 65 or 75 miles), and also the ascent (to 700 meters) riding in the borders. I'll let you know how we get on.

Introduction

On September 9th, 2010, I'll be undertaking "The Fred Whitton Challenge". It's a cycle route of 112 miles in the Lake District, including the main passes. That amounts to 3800m of ascent over the course of the day, which will be quite a challenge. See here for details.

If you'd consider sponsoring me in this endeavour, to raise money for Macmillan's, please visit my justgiving page.

The purpose of this blog is to track my training and thoughts about the event.