Under 10 mph on the way to Napier
Only 13 mph on the way home

Not pleased with either.

or not, as the case may be. Spinning tonight was hard. I’d not slept well (you can guess why) and my legs were feeling the after-effects of pushing hard in Josh’s class last night. I got through this class, nowhere near the cadences I wanted, by gritting my teeth so hard that 3 hours later my rear molars are complaining.

I hope no-one overheard me cussing my thighs to move faster and swearing at the sensations in my hips. On the way home, Elly pulled ahead of me up Orchard Brae – I had no power to keep up with her.  jPhone ran out of charge so I didn’t log times and speeds and I’m rather glad.

Ah well, 6 months ago I’d get home after my sole weekly spinning class too drained to even stand up, let alone speak. Now I’m able to get on with stuff, even after spinning 3 nights in a row. All the same, I’m not looking forward to getting up for tomorrow’s 9am lecture.

(Music to sympathise with Elly’s sore neck: the tram tracks attacked her and Fidel last Monday and she’s still suffering.)

There and back again

One of the many appealing things about spinning at Lifescycle is the journey there: it’s only 3·5 miles and is mostly downhill on good tarmac*, a fast road with not too many traffic lights. There’s only one hill (Crewe Road, past the Western General hospital) and I can usually keep above 10 mph there. Tonight I took 13 minutes 50 seconds to travel 3·48 miles (average speed 15·09 mph, fastest speed 28·71 mph), so not as fast as last night.

*that is, good compared to many other areas of Edinburgh where the tarmac has been chewed by teamwork-induced over-use, bus-wheel torque and lack of decent maintenance.

The journey home wasn’t anything like fun – wind and rain in my face, in addition to quite, er, exercised legs, contributed to an average speed of 8·47 mph and a fastest speed of only 18·19 mph.

Stand by to repel borders!

Tonight was the first session designed to prepare us for April 2013’s Tour o’ the Borders, a ‘sportive’ over 50 or 80 miles starting and finishing at Peebles, and taking in 5 or 8 hills. Josh and Zara shared the instruction/demo roles, modelling and inspiring ‘jogs’ and ‘runs’. There were no visuals or ‘jumps’*, just 3- or 4- minute tracks at fast but constant cadences, increasing the resistance every 30 seconds or so – with clear instructions about what was to be down, and a lot of encouragement to do it. There were also choices during the standing sections – Josh would demo/inspire running, while Zara did the same for jogging, then they’d swap to give themselves a break and us fresh energy.

*stand on the pedals for 4, 2 or one complete revolution(s), sit for the same amount: repeat many times – I think the idea is that standing is slightly easier because you can use your body-weight, while sitting doesn’t allow this. So the effort required varies on and off. Forcing oneself to stand can be mentally challenging too.

This was a testing but inspiring session – I think I did more jogging than running, and I know I had to back off the resistance after each track or effort, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t achieving the cadences of those around me, let alone the instructors’ paces. Nonetheless, I’m faintly glowing from Josh’s and Jeannie’s encouraging comments after the session. (I think I heard Josh call to check me out about 40 minutes into the session – I was flagging a bit but I was also getting into the exercise-high zone mentally, which is quite were pleasing.)

So I’m looking forward to tomorrow night’s audio-visual back class with Andy (yes, spinning three nights in a row from now until April) and really looking forward to outdoors training and the event itself. I’ve promised myself I’ll do a 100-mile event in 2013, so this will be a good warm-up. I’m even dreaming of doing a triathlon, if and when my shoulder is fixed.

On the way to an appointment this morning, I broke 30mph (fastest speed 31·95 mph) going down Cramond Road South. Exhilarating stuff – if only I could achieve this on flat and uphill stretches. My return journey was almost pedestrian by comparison – as slow as 5mph in places and a pathetic 11·65 mph average speed.

I need to drag Lev and my sorry arse into a velodrome and see what we can do, always assuming they’ll let a road bike sully their surfaces. Failing that, a rolling-road trainer and a handlebar mount for my MacBook would be needed.

On the way to spinning tonight, I did 3·63 miles at an average speed of 15·77 mph (details here).
On the way home, I did 3·71 miles at an average speed of 10·58 mph (details here).

Apart from having spun for an hour, followed by an hour’s attempting to do yoga (I have very little flexibility and can’t take my body-weight on my sit-bones), what caused the differences?

• It’s downhill most of the way to spinning, especially Orchard Brae.
• I’m keen to get there on time.
• The wind didn’t hinder most of the journey to spinning – it was in my face most of the way home.

I’d rather like to get my average speed on the way there over 20 mph and on the way back to over 15mph.

My fastest speed on the way was 24·4 mph, while on the way home I peaked at 20·4 mph. I suspect both of these peaks were achieved on steep downhill sections [Orchard Brae and Crew Road, I guess]. Unfortunately, Cycelmeter doesn’t pinpoint where these peaks are – time for a feature request, I think!

We’ll see what happens tomorrow – I’m going to spinning earlier in the evening, so the traffic may make a difference.

I’m in Walkabout, an Australian pub on Broad Street, Birmingham. No Tooheys so I’m sipping a very welcome cold Victoria Bitter. My attempt to cycle from the 73-ring circus to the National Indoor Arena has been, ahem, paused by central Birmingham roads. There’s some right turns on dual carriageways in concrete tunnels that I didn’t dare try!

I’ve borrowed my brother’s mountain bike: the gears are great for some of the nasty hills north of Bromsgrove but it lacks Lev Davidovitch’s flat-out speed. (Not that my legs can push Lev to his full potential – yet!), so I’ve done 28 miles in 1 hour 50 minutes. (I’m taking 18 minutes off the time for traffic lights and 5 minutes re-donning my jacket: it was too cold for just a base layer and short-sleeved jacket, after all. Shame, because I’d fancied cycling through deepest Brum showing off my Lifescycle jacket.) Anyway I’m quite pleased with averaging 15 mph on a mountain bike with 26-inch wheels, knobbly tyres and the hardest saddle it’s ever been my misfortune to bruise my arse upon.

There appears to be English Premier League football all over this pub. Why no cricket or rugby or other real sport (i.e. ones that interest an okker)? OK, it’s 16:39 and my VB is finished. I won’t have another, it’s time to remount the mountain bike and see if I can get to the NIA without being flattened!

And in case you’re wondering why I’m going to the NIA, it’s because Elly and my sister are there watching Viennese/Slovenian/Spanish horses doing tricks.

Route map and notes

Here’s the map: I left the 73-ring circus at 1pm, intending to take the A38 from the centre of Worcester to central Birmingham. Thanks to being on a mountain bike, I has happy to take the Sabrina footbridge across the Severn and the muddy track across Pitchcroft. After this, I took the standard road route to Droitwich. I didn’t use the bypass – I’ve done so when cycling from Birmingham to Worcester but that was the downhill direction and I was riding Lev.

My first stop was just after 10 miles, next to the Travelodge north of Droitwich. I then tried cycling wearing just a base layer and my Lifescycle jacket but it was far too cold so I re-donned my full jacket just after the A38/M5 junction (junction 5).

After this, the road unwound beneath me through Bromsgrove. The road rises quite sharply after the Morrisons in Bromsgrove and very sharply in the stretch before re-meeting the M5 at its junction 4. Here, the A38 is renamed Birmingham Road – it too is noticeably uphill, especially the final push up into Rubery.

I stopped to read a text from Elly just after the A38/B4120 junction outside what used to be the Austin Rover factory at Longbridge. My dad worked here for years and this place has quite an emotional pull on me, for all that I hate cars. You can see where I stopped – there’s a break in the cyclemeter map where I forgot to restart tracking.

This part of the A38 is called Bristol Road. It passes through Bournville, Selly Oak, Edgebaston and Highgate before the city centre suddenly appears. Officially the pavements are dual-use, i.e. for pedestrians and cyclists. However, I’m not fond of the opportunity to hit pedestrians, I don’t like jumping up and down kerbs to cross side-streets, I strongly dislike the lack of views down side-streets, and I definitely hate not being able to see the surface I’m using. These pavements were covered in fallen leaves, both obscuring and lubricating the surfaces. Anyway, Bristol Road is a dual carriageway so there is room for bikes and cars to co-exist.

So I did the leapfrog shuffle with a double-decker bus most of the way along Bristol Road – it lost me just before Highgate. Here the road becomes serious – to avoid being sucked into New Street Station, I followed a lane that should have taken me closer to the NIA. Mistake! This lane went underground, underneath Holloway Circus roundabout. Concrete wall to the left of me, fast-moving cars who couldn’t be bothered to give me room to my right. Stick in the middle with a brown vapour trail.

Having re-emerged onto Suffolk Street Queensway (the Queensway is Birmingham’s innermost ring-road), there was a choice of a difficult lane change to follow the A38 uphill and to the right, or to stay in my current lane and go left onto Broad Street. I’m sorry to say I wimped out of the hard manoeuvre and stopped on Broad Street, only 0·2 miles from my destination.

The music that powered me through this was the Manic Street Preacher’s Know your enemy, especially Miss Europa Disco Dancer. Just guess which bit of that I’ve sampled as a ring-tone. (In this performance, James Dean Bradfield is playing bass while Nicky Wire provides the glamorous legs!)

I found myself outside an Australian pub – this is where I started this post. I then went on to the NIA on foot – the lovely door-bots wouldn’t let me to wait for Sue and Elly, despite it being bloody freezing by now, so I found a sit-in chippie and amused the locals with my fumble-fingered attempts to put my thicker tights on over my wild ones.

I got back to the NIA just as Sue and Elly were emerging – they’d had a great time – and we went on to explore Birmingham’s German Christmas market. As I write this I’m currently repleat with Schwartzbrot – a successful day!

By the way, cyclemeter claims 27·97 miles in 2 hours 8 minutes, hence 13·09 mph. However, I was stopped for about 15 minutes for traffic lights and re-clothing, so I’m claiming 28 miles in 1 hour 50 minutes: 15 mph!

As ever, I’m very grateful to the Lifescycle folk for helping me get fit enough to try this. I’m only sorry it was too cold to fly the flag. Long-sleeved Lifescycle winter tops would be very welcome!

This doesn’t help the vegetarian cause at all. Unless and until it can be proven that no vegetarians or vegans do bad things, and that there is a causative link, such extravagant claims are nonsense. Bah!

For any readers* who are or know people who are parents, read this.

I realise I might be kidding myself to think I have any readers at all.

For some fairly obvious reasons, I rather like this.

Parts of the USA seem to have got it – enough of them voted for Mr Obama to get him back in to the White House. (Now how about Guantamano bay and the ongoing shenanigans in Afghanistan, hmmm?)

Is there a correlation between the states supporting Mr O and those supporting medical and/or recreational use of a certain herb?

Meanwhile, my CC research is getting reactions. Here’s an interesting one. To put it in some kind of context, here’s BBC report about the levels of digital competency in the UK as a whole. My take is:

• 22% of CCs have up-to-date presences. Hence CCs are less rubbish than UK companies, by this measure.
• 10% of CCs do interactive, but 14% of companies do e-commerce. Hence CCs are slightly more rubbish, by this measure.

I also wonder how many businesses would actually benefit from online presences? Does your nearby corner shop need one? I think not – it needs to be open when you need it (i.e. for early-morning ‘we have no breakfast’ traumae, late-night ‘I can’t be arsed to cook’ scenarios), have good, friendly service and not-too-gouging prices so you don’t drive to the 24-hour supermarket when all you want is a newspaper. But that’s just my opinion…!

It’s faintly amusing that this research into online presences was done by an anti-social not-worker, i.e. me!