Today was the start of a new season at LifesCycle, so to celebrate appropriately they’d set up 4 back-to-back rides. (Well, there were 15-minute changeover gaps between them…). The rides were

• Frankie goes to NZ – with Martin*, Josh and Alan
  This ride will launch you into an afternoon of Spinning fun and hard work with great sounds and energy throughout from the LifesCycle big guns.
• Into the Mountains – Hugh and Team
  An hour of thumping beats with Hugh and Richard ….taking you into the lifesCycle mountains. Attacks and surges bringing everybody up the steep slopes together.
• Ethno World Ride – Izzy, Jeannie and the Tribal Team
  Think jungle, world and ethnic fusion in a tribal beats based ride for all. Great sound, motivating beats and a great filmscape to continue your fantastic journey with LifesCycle
• Comfortably Numb – Andy Hunter
  And to finish, bringing it all home with the best of Pink Floyd in sounds, visuals and motivation.

*Martin pulled his back just before the big day and so couldn’t ride.

I had fantacised about doing all four rides but Elly and I came to our senses and opted for the final two.

Izzy and Jeannie led the class through a ‘typical’ Tarahumara day. Early in the morning, they were up and running while we warmed up on our bikes and then tried to catch up and keep up with them, through jungle, rough terrain, up a canyon-wall path and on up to tonight’s mountain-top campsite. The Tarahumara runners were always ahead of us, despite them being on foot and us being on fast mountain bikes. However, this was [for us] a good thing: after all the jumps and sprints, the Tarahumara had sorted the campsite, put up the shelters and cooked a meal for us cycle-bound slowcoaches! The last push up to the campsite was filled with shouts of encouragement from Jeannie and Izzy, exhortation effortlessly moving from voice to voice. [Out of character: how on earth does anyone have the energy to even whisper when putting so much effort into cycling?] Lots of whoops and yells, digging the last of our energy from our reserves so we could make it up the mountain and then collapse into the shelters the Tarahumara had prepared.

Time for a quick banana or two, a change of shirt, fantasy about naughty things and we’re off again! Old favourites (including a mad mix of Another brick in the wall, part 2 into a storming dance track [I think it’s by the Pink Boyz] and the ever-wonderful emotion-churning of Comfortably Numb), combined with a reggae mix of One of these days, culminating in the love-space-opera-rock mayhem of Echoes – a audio-visual trip through the career of Messrs Barrett, Gilmour, Mason, Waters and Wright. All of this the background to jumps, sprints, runs, dripping sweat, emotions flying out through the legs, into the pedals and emptying us mere mortals!

I think this was one of the quickest hours I’ve ever experienced. After cycling home, I sat in a drained trance. I think this is the appeal of spinning. What else would get a slob like me who naturally sits in front of a mac (almost always with graphics-tablet stylus in one one hand, mug of tea in the other), working his flab and making his clothes absolutely sodden?

I’ve been doing Cycling Scotland’s Cycle Trainer course. Great experience for learning how to teach, and it’s improving my own road skills. Assuming I pass the course, I’ll be qualified to teach your children. You have been warned!

Here’s cyclemeter maps of getting there and back:

• Going there yesterday
• Coming back yesterday
• Coming back today

In Worcester for mum’s birthday (yesterday). Some cycling was involved…

15 September

Broadheath to Malvern
part of the return journey
Sprint from digs to Worcester: average 18·84 mph over 2·24 miles
Returning in pitch black
31·38 miles

16 September

Visiting Ian’s new house
10·25 miles

17 September

Worcester to Worcester station, again fully laden
4·66 miles

Total 41·63 miles

We’ve just done the ‘Pedal for Scotland’ Glasgow to Edinburgh run. It’s just under 48 miles, and we did it in 4 hours 16 minutes of pedalling. I’m going to call that 4 hours because of the many stops and delays. So that’s an average of 12 mph as far as I’m concerned.

I’m happy to count the two miles from our hotel near the SECC to the start at Glasgow Green and another couple of miles getting home from the finish-point at Murrayfield. So I think that’s 52 miles: Elly and Fidel’s first over-50 mile trip and I’m sure it’s not the last. It’s a big event and very well marshalled. I do have a couple of gripes:

• We were at the start area for 8am but queued for ages to actually start.
• People were started in groups of around 40, with no sorting by speed. I’d have preferred the event to have been arranged so that the people likely to take the shortest times were started first. Starting people ‘first come first served’ had several disadvantages:
  • Riders became bunched and boxed in behind slower riders ahead of them.
  • This led to impatient riders breaking out of the lanes set aside for them, and to at least one crash en route. (This rider wasn’t wearing a helmet so I don’t have that much sympathy.)
  • Big queues at feeding stations and to restart after feeding stations.
  • A big bunch at a hill about 5 miles into the ride: everyone was told to dismount and walk.
  • On other hills, less competent riders stopping suddenly as they found they couldn’t achieve these hills – causing emergency stops and other panics behind them. Not fun for those of us using SPDs or toe-cages.
  • My right knee is slightly sore from lots of stopping and starting.
• A couple of miles of road where all the tarmac had been removed.

But these are minor, tiny gripes. The event was very well organised, marshalled and signed. I’m sincerely grateful to the many people involved in organising and staffing it. This gratitude naturally extends to all the sponsors apart from the Sun newspaper (do I need to say why?) and a private hospital. (I’m happy to explain why elsewhere.)

For most of the ride, Radio Bruce was playing the Manics’ Sleepflower. Radio Elly was a bit more genteel. I’m also pleased that jPhone lasted from leaving the hotel. (Here’s one solution to that problem: very unsubtle hint.) It was also very pleasing to catch up with yesterday. And finally I repeat how proud I am that Elly did this ride, powering up hills, using her momentum, even overtaking while going uphill, being stable enough to be passed energy bars without stopping, not being upset by roadents overtaking her, and showing she is a cyclist.

Photos are © someone else, so please don’t pinch them.

Passing through Murrayfield	Close-up

By the way, the post title is a slight knock at the main sponsors, purveyors of cow milk. But I’m sure you guessed that already. Can any vegan company replace them? Are there any other vegan cyclists out there?

I appear to have been published, sort of. The initial paragraph seems fair enough in that I’ve done the grunt-work while Spartakan has provided the brains.

After a pleasant day and evening, I realised I’d not been on Lev for several days, let along donned the lycra. So I invited Elly to join me in a ‘midnight miles’ run (from Servants’s Quarters, along the A8 to Edinburgh Airport and back).

Here’s the usual cyclemeter map. Please note that our path goes both sides of Gogar Roundabout. Elly was under the impression that I eschew all cycle-paths on such runs. However, previously I’ve taken the right turn at the Edinburgh Marriott hotel onto Maybury Road, then jumped onto the cycle-path at Turnhouse Road and followed it anti-clockwise around this roundabout. I’ve then crossed the A8 at the RBS bridge and got back onto the A8 as soon as possible after that.

Elly wasn’t keen to risk the lumps and bumps and so suggested staying on the A8, using the underpass to stay on the shortest, fastest route. I’d not heard her – we still need to obtain some in-helmet comms devices so we ended up going around Gogar Roundabout the way a car would.

I’m incredibly proud of her being a ‘cyclo-path’ – I would never have dreamed going this way. She and Fidel are just such a match! So next time, I or we will use the underpass. There are two lanes each way and the motorised traffic is only (supposed to be) doign 40pmh there. It passes us a lot faster on other parts of the A8 and that’s usually no problem.