Counting teeth

Sometimes I talk to cyclists (by this I mean actual, real people who are cyclists, and not the imaginary people in my head who I address in this blog), and they demonstrate their superiority in all things bike by attempting to discuss with me the number of teeth on the sprocketty things at the back of our respective bikes. These people always know the number of teeth they have on each sprocket, and I never do. Sometimes I have to look to check which bike I am riding.

Obviously these people are geekier than I am about bikes. That people even exist who are geekier about bikes than me might come as a surprise, but it is true, they do (and when I say people, I don't really mean people, I mean men).

I think these people actually consider the gearing of their bikes before they buy them. I tend to buy a bike because I like the colour, or the shiny bits attached to it are aesthetically pleasing in some way, or the man in the shop tells me that it's really great and it's just what I need (they often say that). I have been known to discuss the merits of triples over doubles or compacts with bike shop assistants, but we can usually both tell that neither of us really knows what we are talking about, our eyes glaze over, conversation peters out and I buy the bike anyway just to end the embarrassing silence.

So in an attempt to satisfy my inner geek, to bolster my male pride (seriously dented now that I have admitted in public that I choose bikes entirely on the basis of the colour), and to maintain the impression that I understand these things, I have decided to perform a survey of the number of teeth on all of the sprockets on all of the bikes in the house.

I also think it could be useful to know which gears I use, which combinations I like, and maybe even, why. All of this valuable research will lead me to the conclusion that I need a new bike. Probably.

The result of all this oily tooth counting is summarised in a table. This shows the number of teeth on the chainset, whether double (or compact) or triple, and the number of teeth on the cassette sprockets; these are labelled "front" and "rear" in the table (respectively) for simplicity, and possibly clarity.

The "Gear inches" columns show the gear inches for each gear combination, calculated in the following way:

Gear inches = (F / R) x D

where F is the number of teeth on the front ring, R is the number of teeth on the rear sprocket and D is the wheel diameter in inches, including the tyre.

This is explained, and can be calculated here and here. Wikipedia has a good explanation of gear inches, and its origins for those interested. Although it dates back to the days of the high wheeler (AKA penny farthing), the usefulness of the measure is that it allows you to directly compare gear combinations on different bicycles with different sized wheels.

I've done the calculations for all of the gear combinations, even though I realise that some of them are never used, or at least aren't really sensible to use; big ring at the front to big sprocket at the back being the obvious example.

Bike	Gear manufacturer	Front	Rear	Wheel size	Gear inches
Best road bike	Campag  Veloce / FSA – 2 x 10	50 34	25/23/21/19/17/16/15/14/13/12	700c	52.6/57.2/62.6/69.2/77.4/82.2/87.7/93.9/101.2/109.6 35.8/38.9/42.6/47.1/52.6/55.9/59.6/63.9/68.8/74.5
Old steel  road bike	Shimano RX100 – 2 x 7	52 42	23/21/97/17/15/14/13	700c	59.5/65.1/72.0/80.5/91.2/97.7/105.2 48.0/52.6/58.1/65.0/73.6/78.9/85.0
Tandem	Shimano Deore / Sugino – 3 x 8	48 36 26	30/24/19/17/16/14/12/11	26”	50.5/54.9/60.166.4/74.3/84.2/90.2/97.1/105.2 40.0/43.5/47.6/52.6/58.8/66.6/71.4/76.983.3 29.5/32.0/35.0/38.8/43.3/49.1/52.6/56.7/61.4
Hybrid	Shimano Altura – 3 x 7	42 32 22	28/24/21/18/15/13/11	700c	40.5/47.3/54.0/63.0/75.6/87.2/103.1 30.9/36.0/41.1/48.0/57.6/66.5/78.6 21.2/24.8/28.3/33.0/39.6/45.7/54.0
Modern MTB	Shimano Deore – 3 x 9	44 32 21	32/28/24/21/18/16/14/12/11	26”	35.1/40.1/46.8/53.4/62.3/70.1/80.1/93.5/102.0 25.5/29.1/34.0/38.9/45.3/51.0/58.3/68.0/74.2 16.7/19.1/22.3/25.5/29.8/33.5/38.3/44.6/48.7

 
Once I had counted all of those teeth, tabulated them and calculated the gear inch values, then I needed to think of something to say about them. And I'm not sure what that something is, so I may just be waffling from this point.

The tandem

From what I have read about tandems, especially touring tandems, most people agree that the widest range of gears possible is a good thing, and I haven't seen much convincing evidence for the use of doubles or compact doubles on tandems anywhere that has hills. Some racing tandems are almost certainly excepted.
Given that this isn't a racing tandem, and that I have ambitions to tour, and that I am surrounded by hills, the gear options on my particular tandem look well thought out and appropriate (but purely by chance as I only bought the tandem after I happened to see it in the shop window from the car). There aren't quite the low gears you would get on a true MTB, but I'm not sure I could keep the tandem upright with any lower gearing.

The road bikes

 

I think that I already understood the difference between the road bikes; the old steel bike (an Orbit America from 1991, pretty much as new in terms of build) has an old school double and a 7-speed rear, meaning that the gearing is limited and there are no easy options uphill. A bike for flat country, or more likely, proper hard men. I do love this bike, but I might not quite be up to it.

The new road bike (an alloy Bianchi from 2009) has a compact double, and from the numbers you can see that you get a wider range than the Orbit, both because it's a compact (50/34 compared to the Orbit's 42/52) and because it's a 10-speed. But what makes better sense to me now is why I seem to be changing gear so much, and why those changes are often changes at the front and the back at the same time. The gears are just too far apart and there are often no easy routes between those gears that are close together in terms of gear inches. So that might well explain why on rolling ground, for example, I never seem to be in quite the right gear... And why I don't think a compact double would be my first choice in the future no matter what the marketing men want me to believe.

The hybrid

This is geared pretty much like a mountain bike, but I guess the big wheels make a difference to the gear inches. To be honest it is fine; probably the gears are a bit low, as I spend more time in the big ring than on the other bikes, but given what I use it for, it is OK.

The MTB

This has some very low gears, the kind you struggle to move your legs fast enough for. This seems to sum up the difference between roadies and offroaders. With a road bike the cooler you are the bigger the gear you can push, with an MTB the smaller the gear you can turn without the bike falling over, the cooler you are.

I'm not very good at spinning my legs that quickly, but apart from that this has all the gears I need, and they always seem to be in the right place.

Summary

I'm fairly certain that my perfect all-round bike, for the terrain I currently ride on, would have a triple somewhere in the region of what I have on the tandem.

The obvious alternative, the compact double, looks great on paper, but not so good in real life.

The downside of a triple is the increase in weight, which is small enough for me to live with, the alleged increase in maintenance overhead, which I am not really convinced by, and the sheer unhipness amongst the wannabe racer crew, who I don't care about (especially when they are walking and I'm not).

I wonder how many others would come to this conclusion if they gave it some proper thought and could get away from the attitude that only old men and weaklings needed triples? Or just stopped buying what they were told to buy.

And maybe I should have thought this through before I bought all of those bikes.

Banana flapjack, golden plover & chicken pie

Banana flapjack

Snow was forecast to fall overnight again, but there was barely an inch this morning. Rain first thing, followed by sunshine meant that what little snow there had been was mostly gone by 10:30.
In the meantime I took the opportunity to chuck together some flapjacks to eat while out running later that morning. The basic recipe was deliberately less buttery than a typical flapjack to make it easier to eat when running. I turned out to be short of oats so had to eke out the posh big organic oats with some dusty looking oats from a mystery bag tucked away in a corner of the cupboard and of uncertain vintage. They smelled OK, so in they went. Still not quite enough oats, so a handful of rye flakes to make up the oats to 8oz.

I added half a banana to stop the flapjacks being too hard or too chewy, again to make them easier to eat when running, especially on a cold day. The banana makes the flapjack a bit cakey and probably not quite as flapjacky as I might like, and more banana flavoured than a flapjack should ideally be, but today I was more interested in eatability and digestibility, so the banana had to go in.

Recipe

8oz oats, crushed a little by hand if very coarse (to make a denser flapjack)
3oz butter
1.5oz sugar
3tbs golden syrup
1/2 a banana

Melt butter with sugar and syrup, but don't overcook. Mix in oats and mashed banana. Press into baking tray and bake for about 25 minutes at 180C, until golden.

Golden Plover

We ran up the riverside path to Allendale and then up towards the moor. There were large numbers of lapwing and curlew calling in the rough fields below the moorland edge. The weather was surprisingly good; the sun was shining, the sky was blue and the valley seemed to be sheltered from the wind making it fell almost warm.

Once on the moor proper there seemed to be golden plover calling from all directions, but no visible sign of them. Red grouse, by contrast, whirred about, noisily proclaiming their presence.

There was almost no snow on the ground here, and the rapid thaw had produced streams of water. The ground was wet, but strangely seemed to be too wet to be properly muddy. The tops across the valley were still covered in snow; probably simply down to the greater altitude.

We did about 6 miles across the moor, mostly on good tracks, plus a couple of miles at each end to get to and from home, making a fairly easy 10 miles or so. And one stop to sample the banana flapjack, which wasn't bad at all...

Chicken pie

Home to chicken pie for a late lunch, and chicken soup to make for supper from the bones of the chicken.

 

How do I get there from here?

Another bike entry. Sorry. I will get round to writing about swimming at some point. I might even get round to swimming...

But for now I am still thinking about cycling. And that may be the problem. I think a lot about cycling; in fact I think about cycling a great deal more than I actually cycle.

So where is it that I want to get to? Well, I want to get to the point where I can cycle 200km in a single day. Surely that should be possible? But I think that I might be a bit scared of the very idea of cycling so far, because I never get anywhere near to addressing this goal.

So I am trying to formulate a plan. If I were aiming for a goal weekly mileage for running I could find endless plans and suggestions, most of which boil down to  "increase your mileage by no more than 10% each week, and periodically back off a bit before building up again at no more than 10% a week...". But cycling isn't like running; there doesn't seem to be such a rule of thumb.

I am hoping that this is because if I increase my running mileage too quickly I will break, but I can increase my cycling mileage at any rate that I like, because cycling doesn't break you. At least, provided that you don't fall off.

I think this means I have to invent my own plan and see how it goes, hope that it doesn't break me, and back off if it gets too hard.

So here it is, a 3 month plan to get me up to 200km. It is very simple; I assume one big ride at the weekend, and some background rides of about 30 miles in the week.

Week	Total miles	Long ride – distance	Long ride – time
1	60	30	2 hours 30
2	66	36	3 hrs
3	73	43	3 hours 30
4	80	50	4 hours
5	90	60	5 hours
6	100	70	6 hours
7	110	80	6 hours 30
8	120	90	7 hours 30
9	132	102	8 hours 30
10	145	115	10 hours
11	160	125 (200km)	11 hours

By increasing the total mileage at a rate of about 10% a week, but keeping the background volume the same, I get to increase the long rides a bit more than 10% a week. Now whether I should drop down a distance or two every 6 weeks or so, then start increasing again, I'm not sure, so I will see how much this hurts. I may also miss a few rides because of other commitments, so some pauses may be added that are out of my control. I also need to bear in mind that I am entirely incapable of following any training plan...

The other point is that I'm not interested in speed, so I'm not doing any speed specific training. Which flies in the face of convention; but I'm not planning to race.


And the answer to the question posed in the title of the post is obvious. How do I get there from here? By getting on my bike and riding instead of thinking about it...

The weather - part 2

After the fog and wind on Friday, the weather forecasters were now promising snow and ice for Saturday. So we did the sensible thing and stayed in the house eating home made croissants.

The snow didn't come, so we ignored Sunday's forecast (more snow and ice) and planned a long(ish) run, mostly off the road.

 

When I got up on Sunday morning there was no snow. Then it started snowing, and an hour later there was about an inch . And then it stopped. So we ate breakfast (more croissants!), digested for a bit, then got ready to run.

 

We left the house, a covering of fresh snow on the ground, but the sun shining from a blue sky. By the time we got to the edge of the moor it was much greyer, and a strong, bitterly cold wind was blowing. The path was covered in two or three inches of frozen snow, topped with occasional deeper drifts of light dry snow, sculpted into delicate waves by the wind. Then it started to snow again, and the wind was blowing it horizontally. Who would have guessed that the snow would only start falling heavily once we were on the most exposed bit of ground on the entire route? Well, I for one would have put money on this happening...

 

We carried on past the chimneys, the drifted snow was deeper over the next part of the track, and finding areas of shallow or frozen snow to run on was difficult. Occasionally, our feet went through the snow and the ice below into deep muddy pools of icy water; sharp on your ankles as you go through the ice and surprising (to say the least) when your shoe fills up with cold water. Still, it gave us something else to think about.

 

We got to the road on the other side of the moor and headed down to the next track. Once we had removed the ice from the baler twine securing the gate, the track down, although covered in a few inches of frozen snow, made for good running. And so long as we kept moving we were warm enough.

 

Back on the road at the bottom of the track, a banana eaten, and then a run down the steep road and then up to Ninebanks. Still on the road, we were looking for a footpath we didn't really know, to take us back to the Carrshield to Allendale road. It was signposted through a farm yard, then the signs disappeared. We set out in what seemed like the right direction, but it quickly became clear we were off the path. We carried on regardless, climbing steeply through deep frozen snow and tussocky sedge. After scrambling over one gate we reached a second (padlocked) gate onto the road. Oh well, we got where we wanted to be (about 500m below the finger post for the path we had been looking for), and it is all access land, so no harm done.

 

The road was covered in ice, and the wind was blowing hard, cold in itself but carrying fine blown ice. Wrapping buffs around the bits of our faces that were the only remaining exposed skin we headed back up the road. Again the snow at the side of the road had been sculpted into waves and peaks; quite lovely but the wind that was creating these effects was a bit unpleasant.

 

Astonishingly we then saw a bicycle coming down the road. With skinny tyres and drop bars... and staying upright on the ice, despite the wind. I was quite impressed.

 

We got back to the track across the moor past the chimneys, and now the wind was blowing hard, creating a blizzard of blown snow (it wasn't snowing) about 6 feet high, making navigation difficult, and making forward progress difficult. We pushed on, past the chimneys, where the snow on the track was less deep, and then finally back to the road.

 

Going down the hill the conditions quickly became benign once more, making it hard to believe how severe they had been just a short time before.

 

Only a total of 14 miles, but definitely a small adventure.

 

Oh, and the Inov8 TrailRoc 255s mentioned here got their second outing, and were great in the snow. 

 

 

The weather - part 1

I know it is a terrible cliche, but I am English and the English do like to talk about the weather. Perhaps not quite as much as they once did, but the weather is still at least the second most popular subject for aimless small talk among strangers.

The reason that the weather is the subject of endless speculation in England is probably explained by its entirely unpredictable nature. Other countries are colder, have more snow, are warmer or have more rain, but it is usually predictable. In England it is sometimes a bit cold, or snows a little, or rains, or even (but very rarely) it is quite warm. Often it is all of these things in a single day (usually in August); but it is never predictable.

So, in case you haven't already guessed, this was my half-hearted attempt at an introduction to a distinctly weather-themed post. Sorry.

Last Friday I managed to sneak out at lunch time for a quick ride on the Bianchi. It didn't seem too  bad when I left the house; cold and a bit windy, but not bad. But I wasn't starting from the house, because I only had a couple of hours and I wanted to ride on a road I hadn't been on before. So I had engineered a lift to a suitable starting point that gave me a route of just under 30 miles back to the house.

We went up over the moor at Plenmeller and it was foggy. And I hadn't brought a light for the bike (I don't really own a light for the Bianchi, but that isn't really the point). Or a hi-vis vest thing (and I do own one of these). So I just assumed it would clear by the time we got to where I planned to start.

When we got to place where I planned to start cycling I decided that the fog was bound to clear once I had gone a mile or two. When I got out of the car I noticed how cold and windy it was; this surprised me as I assumed "foggy" meant "still", because shouldn't the wind just blow the fog away? But it was hard to deny that it was very windy, quite cold and foggy. So, obviously I set off anyway.

I went up the hill, and then down past Eals to the Alston to Brampton road, and at last the fog cleared a bit. This road seems quite flat in the car, but is actually "rolling", and it seemed impossible to find the right gear, or to get into a rhythm. I was quite glad to get to Alston, but the turn onto the cobbled and steep main street was hamperd by two cars attempting U turns (or something). I thought the first was parking, so went to go past it, and it pulled out to drive up the hill. I had to unclip as I thought I might need to stop, and what with the new pedals and cleats, couldn't clip back in. I came to a halt, tried to set off again, failed to get momentum and clip in, and had no choice but to walk up the polished cobbles in my ludicrously slippery new cleats.

I was then forced to buy a hot cross bun from the Moody Baker to make amends for this inglorious performance. I ate it while trying to look less of a prat than I was feeling, and it was good.

At the top of the hill I got back on the bike without incident and headed towards Nenthead. I have never cycled up this road, but the section beyond Nenthead is always populated with walking C2Cers in the summer. These people usually have nobbly shod MTBs, which on the one hand might mean they will have lots of low gears, and if they have to walk then I will definitely be wearing down the rest of my new cleats. On the other hand it might mean that they don't really know what they are doing.

Surprisingly I rolled through Nenthead and up the other side quite easily, then turned off towards Allendale via Carrshield, and into the fog. This time it wasn't clearing, and I was probably completely invisible. But I just had to keep going, despite the lack of visibility from the fog and my misted glasses, and the wind, now blowing hard.

I managed to get home in one piece, mostly this was luck; there weren't many cars about. Descending was genuinely scary, I couldn't really see, but I know the road was full of potholes, and it is steep, and bendy. So I went very slowly, and in the end it was fine. I might not choose that route again in the mist, though...

I've never done a sportive

The thing about cycling is that I never get to do it as much as I intend to. The more I think about this the more I realise that there are several really good reasons why this happens.

Firstly, my plans are always essentially vague; I must cycle more this year, I say emphatically (actually, probably not say, just, well, think, but emphatically, definitely emphatically...). I don't say "I must cycle 100 miles a week", or "I must cycle 3000 miles this year", or anything at all specific, I just say "I must cycle more". And then, obviously, I just don't.

My second excuse is that I don't do any cycling type events. If it was running we were talking about here I would have signed up for 10 events by now, and then I would have to get out the door and train to avoid turning up at a race I was entirely unprepared for, and having to walk most of it. And I don't underestimate the word "race"; if you run, at whatever standard, you will eventually enter a race. Not an event, a race.

Then there is my training partner (who is also my wife), who doesn't really cycle much. If we go out running, we tend to go together, and if we go swimming, we do that together. We usually enter the same races, and sometimes we even run them together. She does go out on the tandem with me, but doesn't currently cycle on a solo bike with me (or at all really). This means that when I cycle, I go on my own, and although she is quite encouraging and probably doesn't really hold it against me, I have this sense of smouldering resentment in my mind. And while I am out she usually does especially useful things like earning money or even hoovering the rugs, and this just makes me feel more guilty (sometimes she does less useful things like rearranging her collection of nail polishes in order of the colour spectrum, but this is obviously just scary).

So this year I have a plan to address those very issues.

First of all, I have a goal: a rather conservative (and therefore eminently achievable) cycling target of 2000 miles (or 3220 km to be more traditional).

Secondly, I have entered an event.

At this point I need to digress a little once again. I have never, to date, completed (or even started, although I did once enter) a cycling sportive or an audax, or a race or a time trial, and to be honest races and time trials are entirely out of my league.

As for sportives, I'm a bit put off by sportives as I have a slightly biased view of them as being full of "middle aged men in lycra", comparing their latest shiny carbon fibre "steeds" and "weapons of choice" and discussing the merits of leading brands of energy gel. And then they would all humiliate me by being faster than me.

I'm also a bit put off by Audax events as I have a slightly biased view of them as being full of  mildly eccentric bearded blokes, on outlandish recumbents, saddlebags bulging with moth eaten windcheaters and lemon curd sandwiches. And then they would all humiliate me by being faster than me. Even the 84 year old on a "trice".

But at least audax events are cheap; with a sportive I may well have to pay 75 quid to ride the same public roads I could ride any day of the year, the sole difference being that if I choose to do the sportive I get a "free" banana and an out of date energy bar half way round.

Anyway, to return to the point, I have entered an event... and it is a sportive. It is only 60 miles (100 km), but it does give me something to train towards. And I need to see if my prejudices are justified in any way. I also need to be sure about the audax things, so I have one or two of them on my radar, but I may need to enter incognito given my comments about the lemon curd.

So I think I have finally arrived at my plan to address the third and final problem; how to stop feeling guilty about Mrs JD. And the answer is.... I have entered an event, but better still, so has she, and we are going to do it together on the tandem. Which means we need to train together on the tandem... and so harmony is restored.

Footnotes;
(1) We have entered the Virgin Money Cyclone Challenge B ride on the 29th June, and are considering the 100km mini Dales tour audax on the 8th September.
(2) I was only joking about the lemon curd.
(3) I am still fairly sure most people at an audax event would be able to humiliate me by being faster than me over any distance greater than 500m.

My left foot

I have a bunion on my left big toe. Properly known as a "hallux abducto valgus deformity" according to Wikipedia.

I am fairly certain that this is the result of genetics and not the result of wearing excessively pointy shoes, but whatever the cause, a " lateral deviation of the great toe" (and not apparently an enlarged or deformed toe joint - thanks again to Wikipedia) makes my foot a funny shape. I can't help but think that having "Morton's Toe", that is a big toe that is shorter than my second toe, in a world where all shoes assume that your big toe is your longest toe, has assisted in the development of my bunion.

But, whatever... I have a bunion on my left foot and the significance in the context of running, swimming and cycling is that it has an impact on the shoes I can comfortably wear. And to be fair it isn't much of a problem with swimming.

Because I need to comfortaly accommodate the bunion I need wide running shoes, and preferably ones that are made with quite soft fabric. This seems to be most difficult when it comes to off-road shoes which are often narrow and often have rigid protective welts directly over where my bunion goes. If the fabric won't stretch over my bunion, it is going to hurt. Sometimes some convenient stitching goes directly over my bunion; this won't stretch even if the fabric will, and it has the added benefit of often being abrasive.

So unless a shoe is really wide (and they may now exist, but as such shoes are a recent innovation, time will tell), it must be made of a soft stretchy fabric, with no welts and no stitching or seams in the area of  the bunion. And that is the sort of shoe I buy for trail running or fell running.

But all of this comes at a price; fell and trail shoes aren't made of strong fabric with welts and narrow fitting by chance. In particular the shoes I choose give little protection to the parts of the feet most likely to come into contact with sharp rocks (especially, you guessed, the bunion), they may also reduce precise control on very technical running sections, and most importantly they are not resilient.

Softer fabrics, stretched to an unusual shape, soaked with acid bog water and scraped against sharp rocks don't tend to last long. And if you look at the picture at the top of the post, the result is clear. All of the shoes have split at the point of the bunion, some after less than 100 miles use. The shoes in the picture are, from left to right, Inov8 f-lite 230, Inov8 x-talon 190 (both great shoes, but just too narrow), Saucony Peregrine, Inov8 terrafly 303 (disappointing as this is Inov8's new wider "anatomic" fit) and the New Balance 101.

I need to make it clear that I don't really blame the shoe manufacturers for failing to produce shoes suitable for one person with unusual feet, but I wish I could find comfortable, long lasting off-road shoes both for short technical blasts on the fell and longer days out on trails. Any suggestions?