Countdown

My preparation for Pedal for Scotland has so far involved riding more miles on my way home from work each day; about three times as many actually. I also went on a sort of training ride with the people from work with whom I'm doing the event, and that came to about 46 miles altogether. I rode the little Helios for that, and I was very uncomfortable after 30 miles or so. I think it might have been as much the baggy shorts I was wearing over my lycra shorts, as the saddle on the bike which is not bad as saddles go, but it's not a Flite. When I was in Brighton and London three weeks ago, riding around the latter with Charlotte from ACF, I did about 40 miles on the first day and 20 the next, and managed ok, but the comfort issues remained. So, I think that I'll bring the Stealthmachine to Glasgow and ride that. I've found that if I jump between bikes day to day or maybe week to week, my legs never really get in tune with whatever I'm riding and my performance suffers. So it's been pretty much the Stealthmachine for all my activities so far, until this past week when I managed to hurt both my legs by riding too enthusiastically / aggressively / hard / fast / etc. Recuperating by riding my very lightest bike, the Helios, has probably put me out of shape again! But my legs are feeling better.

The good news is that the seatpost on the Helios, despite the bike being folded and unfolded a lot during the weekend down south, has remained blissfully silent. The bad news is that the new creak is still there and I simply cannot work out where it's coming from.

With my weekends of late being swallowed up with other things, I haven't done much of the promotional and fun stuff. I missed out on the Edinburgh Festival Cavalcade for one thing: I really wanted to join in this time around and boost the recumbent numbers. I missed out on the Tallbikes while they were in Edinburgh because I was at work. I missed out putting in a presence at the TryCycling stand in the Meadows on Fringe Sunday too.

But I went on the latest Laid Back ride at the weekend, where we had a good showing of the silly bikes, Kevin on his Fujin, David on his trusty Focus and his wee one on a Bevo, Martin on a hired Nazca, me on Speedy - and Graeme on his Speedy, having come all the way from somewhere near the border. It's been about two years since I had the chance to ride with another Windcheetah rider, Liz at Cyclefest and Mark at the EIHPF. With the numbers on bikes and the split of abilities, I led "the Spud Crew" [2] out of the city and to Heriot-Watt university and to Johnsburn for lunch. I hadn't led a group before (even just three people), and I was nervous. I rode probably rather faster than I ought to have done, but I was afraid of holding the fast guys up! Still, it was fun to blast along for a while, while David led the less experienced riders in his group. Lunch was good as ever at the Inn, and us fast ones rode a circuitous route back to Heriot-Watt while the others went more directly. Graeme left in town, and Kevin and I went to the Meadows to see what was happening. A lot was happening but no TryCycling and no Tallbikes, so we went our separate ways. My total for that ride was about 35 miles. Next time I shall try to eat mid-morning to stop me going wobbly just after lunchtime.

[2] Spud, as in SPD pedals. You could tell the fast recumbenteers because they were all riding clipless.

Surely I've done some modifications too? I'm afraid so. This time it was necessary however; the rear gear lever on Speedy was quite old and although it's indexed, it was getting rather vague and it would slip out of one gear and into the next by itself. So I finally bought some new levers and while I was at it, a replacement rear derailleur. The original one of course had been put in the bin after it went very wobbly, and the replacement was only temporary since it was bent, apparently. And of course, you can't have a machine like a Windcheetah with cheap components, can you? So I've put a second-hand Shimano XTR unit on and the gear changing is feeling much better. So, just the rear wheel to retrue now!