Twinkly Dave – Mud splattered bicycle and pizza enthusiast Growing old disgracefully

Yesterday I rode my road bike for a while…well, for 8hrs, and felt good all day. Didn’t feel tired afterwards and feel fine now. Yay. I might just be getting fitter!
I battered all the hills into submission, then hammered the flat sections…then battered some more hills into submission, just cos i could 🙂
If anything, i was riding faster, smoother and more comfortably towards the end than during the first four hours, i seemed to get into a nice fast rhythm and was secretly hoping that someone would stop me before i got home and tell me i had to take a 50 mile diversion, just so i could ride for longer!

Took the scandal out on sunday round the 3 towers route, but snapped a spoke before i got to peel tower, so just turned round and headed home with a wobbly wheel. I still kicked some roadies arses though, so it wasn’t all bad. Up until the spoke went i was riding really smoothly and “efficiently”. Ace.

Friday’s after work ride was the first road-night-ride of the year done in full on nice winter weather; ie sub zero but with starry clear skies and a moon bright enough to turn my lights off in places 🙂
Sadly my toes went numb while riding and i had to suffer the first “itchy pain” of the season as they came back to life back at home, but on the plus side my new dhb waterproof gloves from wiggle performed superbly, as did the dhb thermal tights and endura skull cap. Mmmm, toasty warm!

I like riding bikes.

*and then, occasionally, a 4th occurs.

Sunday’s ride was cold, officially the first cold ride of this winter, and quite wet. Not that it rained on us, despite the cold it was quite a nice day, and with a bit of a tailwind down the final descent to worsthorne from the top of the widdop reservoir climb we couldn’t really have asked for more.

It wasn’t until i went to fasten the waist strap on my camelback that i realised i’d slammed the car door on it when packing earlier and had wrecked the buckle. Perhaps not the worst thing to ever happen during a ride, but a bit annoying to say the least and definately Bad Thing Number 1.

Sadly, before we’d got more than about a mile from the thread holding the cleat bolts into my right shoe gave up the ghost. This left me with the super slippy combination of rigid fiberglass soled shoe skating over the polished steel arms of an eggbeater pedal, which made the descents sketchy to say the least (and made for some comedy “lifting foot off pedal” moments when riding up hill and forgetting that i wasn’t clipped in).
That was Bad Thing Number 2.

We carried on with the ride, planning to stop at Blazing Saddles in hebden bridge to see if they had a replacement part for my shoes, but by the time we got there Bad Thing Number 3 had occured. Somehow, on the last descent into the town, rich had managed to snap his rear gear cable. Thankfully it had snapped right at the mech, so with a bit of persuasion and some borrowed cable cutters (again, from blazing saddles) we managed to bodge it so he had a few gears to choose from.

With my shoe mended and rich enjoying his choice of about 3 gears we carried on with the rest of the ride being uneventfully nice. I made it home fine, left the bike in the living room, had a wash, made a brew and sat down…

PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHH

eh?!
for no apparent reason, and a good hour or so after putting the wheels down next to the frame and leaving them i got a puncture!