Thursday, 29 April 2010

Badajapadlegog gets national press coverage

Clearly interest is rising in Badajapadlejog, as Cycling Weekly (almost certainly the biggest selling bike magazine) has devoted some coverage to our training. They tried to disguise it as a general article about the Cotswold Spring Classic, but why else, out of the 350 riders in the event, would they feature a picture of Jon and I?

As you can see, they even annotated it to identify me and Jon.
I think that's pretty conclusive.

Wednesday, 28 April 2010

Tuesday, 27 April 2010

I don't want to worry anyone...

But I've got some supplies. It's to help with the massages.

Honest.

Friday, 23 April 2010

Retro loveliness

We had an idea that it would be nice if we had matching bike shirts for the Lands End - John O'Groats trip. We had this idea far too late to get anything custom, so after a rambling email chain involving discussions about matching shirts to various coloured bikes we ended up chosing something classic, retro and black and while (incidently matching my bike...).

Phill went to Prendas Ciclisimo and picked up the shirts, getting £10 off each one and some free matching socks too! Thanks to Phill and Prendas too, they are very nice people.

So, without further build up, the shirts and socks:


Classy, huh? I think we'll look pretty cool, in a 70s French kind of way.

Sunday, 18 April 2010

It's General Election time, and I'm voting for...

...whoever promises a ban on road bike lycra in sizes larger than L (for men) or 16 (for women).

It's been a lovely day and I've been for a lovely ride - an 83 mile sportive with about 1000 people riding. A very small minority of these were on the larger size (nothing wrong with that, great to see people enjoying riding) and wearing tight lycra. Please don't, it offends my eyes. There is a lot of great looking "casual" cut bike wear - looser fitting tops, baggy shorts - that would mean that I don't have to have my mind imprinted with swathes of wobbly flesh looking like an overstuffed sausage sponsored by Sky or Saxo Bank. Quite frankly road bike kit looks pretty odd even on professional riders, but on the chunkier people it's a bit silly.

The event itself was excellent in almost every way. Beautiful countryside that I'd not really seen before, clear blue skies and spring sunshine, flapjack and swiss roll at the feed stops and some good team riding. I say some, because Dave managed to drop off Phill, Jon and I briefly, just enough to miss the clearly signposted turning and somehow start doing another lap of the course. We did 83 miles, he did about 95...

Note for LEJOG. Everyone needs a GPS.

Saturday, 10 April 2010

We have a winner!

Of the great saddle competition. After trying out various test saddles from the bike shop, I got fed up of waiting for the Prologo tester to come back... so I bought one. Just completed a 3 hours road ride, and thankfully I like it - a good size and shape, and a nice compromise between padding and weight. I give you the Prologo Scratch Pro TS

Now to buy a matching clip on saddle pack, just for use on those super-long rides when my pockets are full of cake.

On a more general note it's been a good training week - six and a half hours on Monday, an hour of intervals on Wednesday, three hours on Thursday, two hours yesterday and three hours today. I might do a couple more tomorrow then it's time for a rest week! Woo-hoo!

I can't believe it's only four weeks to LEJOG.

Sunday, 4 April 2010

First team ride tomorrow

An early start tomorrow to get to Cirencester for 0730 - the Cotswold Spring Classic awaits. It's our first ride together so should be interesting to see how well we work on the roads. Of course, Jon will disappear up all the climbs, I will curse him frequently, but we'll all probably finish pretty close together. Jon has handily assessed the new published route and declared it "a bit tough". Gulp. 103 miles with five or six climbs of note. Fingers crossed.