Category: Cycling

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Spring in the air

Another bonkers start to the week (5 hours of continuous chairing of meetings) and I was shattered when I got home. In the past I would use getting out on the bike to de-stress and recharge those mental batterys but for the last few months a 20 minute turbo session is about all I could muster due to my back. Sitting in the rear of the garage in front of a 6 year old episode of Top Gear didn’t really appeal when the sun was shining over a Cannock Chase waking from its winter slumber.

In the end I went for a 35 min pootle out through the lanes to the Haywood villages and then back over the major tracks on The Chase. Though a bit headwindy on the way out it was great to get the wind in my lack of hair again and it was another chance to get used to the E5 which I can now categorically say is much comfier over speed bumps. I even had a touch of hay fever (Silver Birch Pollen gets me) when I got home which was a positive for a change!

Now time for some core stability exercises, lumbar traction and ibuprofen as payback….

2 weeks to my consultant appointment now….

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Matt Browning – Unicycle C2C

A chap I met at a BIM seminar last week is doing the C2C for charity over the June bank holiday weekend, as perhaps many will be. However he is doing it on a Unicycle – yes 170 miles on a unicycle. He is raising money  for Round Table Childrens Wish and has banked over £1500 so far. It is a national charity granting wishes for children between the ages of 4-17 years of age who are suffering from life-threatening illnesses.

Please join me in wishing him good luck and give him a bit of spare cash if you can – good luck Matt http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/mattbrowning

 

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Sorry for the lack of Postings !

Apologies to my avid readers for my lack of posting, life has been rather hectic. The area of Architecture and IT I work in (BIM or Building Information Modelling) has become an extremely hot topic over the last few months and I am stretched somewhat dealing with it all. I seem to be giving presentations up and down the country every other day! I have also started tweeting a fair bit possibly some of the stuff I might normally do little mini blog postings about.

For those on twitter I am @stodgeblog

So hopefully this will be the first of a flurry of small blog postings but expect a few things slightly different from the norm as I am still not back on the bike so am up to other stuff !

I have cleared out the garage recently (didn’t do my back much good) so as to make easier access for all Orienteering kit we look after for the club but also for access to my Spitfire, a new turbo trainer setup and even a workbench which will make bike maintenance easier. Cath has commented recently that a side effect of my injury is the poor state of service of her bike (that’s me told).

With getting the spitfire on the road I obviously addressed the most important item before bothering with the MOT, that of carrying a bike. It really does show quite how small the spitfire is. I am looking forward to getting to a few of the later Dark and White events if my back gets fixed in time using the spitfire to enjoy the White Peak views.

 

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Erik rides Cape Epic

MTBO superstar Erik Skovgaard Knudsen is currently down in South Africa competing for http://www.racing29ers.com/ and doing well against some awesome competition including the God of mountain bike racing CHRISTOPH SAUSER. It would be amazing just to be in the same race as the flying Swiss but Erik and his partner Thomas Bundgaard are keeping up and are currently lying in 9th place after the first day proper.

The 8 day 800 kilometre race with over 14,000 metres of climb winds its way around some fantastic scenery around the Cape.

You can follow Erik’s progress (in Danish so go for Google translate) at the racing 29s website or on facebook here http://www.facebook.com/pages/Racing29ers/218610998214939

Full Cape Epic details and daily results are here http://www.cape-epic.com/live/

I wonder if the winter beard has come off in the heat!

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Holly’s 3rd Isla Bike!

Holly has been struggling with 20 inch wheels not rolling smoothly over bumps for a while, but her legs have been too short for a 24 inch wheeled bike. Luckily, a growth spurt over the last couple of months has coincided with her birthday and she has taken delivery of a very purple new Beinn 24 Isla bike.

For those not in the know, Isla make ‘proper’ kids bikes: lightweight, kid-sized adult-style components and no daft cheapo suspension which never seems to work on kids bikes anyway….

Based out of Ludlow in Shropshire, they even have a test track your kids can zoom around to get the feel of the right size http://www.islabikes.co.uk/

Hopefully, her next bike she will be a full-sized 26 inch, so this one should keep her going for a while. Today it had its first mud splatters, getting ridden around Gentleshaw. Tomorrow it will do the first leg of her Sport Relief Challenge, and next weekend its first MTBO!