Category: Cycling

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Carsington Christmas MBO Score

carsington1My back has been getting better week on week recently. Is it the 4 months of Pilates? Is it the fact I am not driving 32 thousand miles a year in a worn out car seat? Or just time? No idea, but it means I am feeling confident enough to ride for a little longer and up steeper hills and, for the first time in 2 years, have been thinking about Mountain Bike Orienteering again.

I had originally intended to do the Military Challenge but this year it doesn’t seem to be taking place. A quick look at the BMBO website showed a fun Dark and White Christmas event on the Friday before, just up the road from me at Carsington Water adventure centre – perfect.

The weather forecast was terrible and, to be honest, I felt terrible too, with what I know now to be a good dose of man-flu.

Rocking up in the cold and dark, it was great to see Adrian and the Dark and White team again after so long and it was great to be finally doing my first event as a Vet, two years in!

I got some advice from Adrian about bumpy tracks to avoid, strapped on my long unused hope vision 4 ( now 4 years old and still going strong), Orifix mapboard and compass and headed out into a vicious head wind, intending to stay on the roads.

I’d decided I wouldn’t push my luck and go out for the full two hours allowed and the combination of my man-flu and my sensible head brought me in nice and early in time to catch up with a few old friends over some coffee and cakes. There were some serial comedy moments as people tried to make coffee and tea with the tea urn that actually contained mulled wine….

Lets hope this is the start of a recovery season!

Results available here

 

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Brompton

brompton2I started a new job at the start of September – I now work for BIM Academy – a Building Information Modelling and Project Technologies consultancy based in Newcastle (upon Tyne).

In my new role, although I am travelling a fair bit, I am based from home and the train links from Stafford and Derby on the West and East Coast main lines are great to get to nearly everywhere I need to go. One of the drivers for a career crossroads was my old bonkers commute which was only sensible by road. Well I am glad to report that although I have, in my first 6 weeks been to Switzerland and Hong Kong, Manchester, Newcastle, London and …. Uttoxeter… my annual car mileage looks to have reduced by at least 16,000 a year!

With so much train travel it seems a little mad to be driving the 4 miles to the station and then catching taxi’s, tubes or leaving extra early for long walks at my destination so I looked into folding bikes.

After looking at Dahon’s and other makes I kept coming back to the British Brompton – practical yet very cool. I kept an eye on ebay and luckily I got one for a snip and on delivery realised I had bought one that had obviously hardly been used. Its a 2 speed apple green with brooks saddle and grips and the flat bar. Not for the shy!

I could talk about the fact that its light and folds down small, has 4 ickle wheels to push it about at stations but that’s boring! whats it like to ride?

brompton1Well small wheels are definitely twitchy and getting back onto a 26 inch wheel afterwards , you can really feel the heaviness of the handling. With only two highish gears it needs some grunt up the hills and steep slopes are a real challenge but the higher of the two means you can really fly on the flats and downs. Ill put a GPS on at some point and get some stats but it feels really fast. At those speeds its not for the faint hearted but great fun.

The rim brakes are excellent, and as long as the rear bushes are done tight the frame quite stiff and responsive.

I am keeping a log on the number of car miles I am saving and how much I am saving in car parking fees for the year but I have to balance it a little with safety and comfort and the practicalities of turning up at a client site soaked to the skin as the winter quickly approaches.

 

 

 

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Arran

For those that don’t know Arran is imagethe closest Scottish West Coast island to England, being south of even Glasgow. Over the years we have been to most of the inner Hebredian islands, Mull, Jura, Isla, Sky and even Colonsay but this time were looking for a holiday without quite the normal epic drive North.

The ferry from Ardrossan over to Arran is less that an hour and the moment you disembark life seems to go a bit slow mo, nobody rushing, the stress seeming to flow out of you.

Arran has everything, big mountains, forests, sandy beaches, cliffs, wildlife, whiskey, and great food, and is now our new favorite Scottish Island.

Riding a bike on the roads on Arran is generally a great experience with quiet roads and good surfaces. There is a fair bit of climb if you intend to circum-navigate though, however currently it isn’t possible due to some major roadworks half way round. There are Tea shops and cafés at far too regular intervals though and we unfortunately gained a 2 cakes a day + lunch habit, just driving round that we now need counselling to wean our selves off of!

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We only had a day and a half on the bike as we had other things to do. We rode on some great sweeping singletracks up from Lamlash over the saddle and down into Brodick before exploring the trails above Brodick castle in the forests. There are trails everywhere but unfortunately they are not waymarked and the OS map is non too up to date but you can pick your way around and I am sure those with GPS’s wouldn’t have any trouble at all. Fantastic views of the coastal bays, mountains, moorland and pretty villages jump out at you constantly changing, taking your breath away and of course being a mountainous island after the long climbs come very long grin inducing descents.

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There is even a Mountain Bike Orienteering map available from the offices of Arran Adventure, but a word of caution on the map as it is now fairly out of date.

The other rides we did were along the coastal paths, one from Lamlash out to the point and one from Sannox out towards Lochranza. On both rides unfortunately because of my back we had to turn back when the track became rough but the views and wildlife along the coast are amazing.

I look forward to a re-visit to Arran when my back is fixed to enjoy the many miles of mountain bike trails with their spectacular vistas.

 

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Rise and rise of Cannock Chase roadbiking!

10 years ago when we moved into our house we were plagued by weekender bikers, neeeeow neeow, all afternoon, particularly on sunny summer Sundays. They were generally on their way back to the Black Country after spending the day hooning around the Peak District, stopping for ice creams in Matlock Bath, admiring their middle aged crisis purchases, comparing specs and paint jobs. Luckily some strategically applied 50mph speed limits a few years back has meant that they don’t come our way any more. However, we have a new plague on summer Sunday’s now, but they are slower, quieter and I no longer curse every time they zoom past – roadies!

This summer The Tour of Britain came through the Staffordshire villages of Milford and Brocton and so did the following ‘Tour Ride’ a mass participation event that gives amateurs and enthusiasts the chance to ride the Day 5 route of the race. This and the addition of two ‘Strava’ king of the mountains climbs has made the road past my house a bit of a mecca for local road cyclists of all shapes and sizes.

Cannock Chase AONB in the Midlands is a hidden gem; it’s the rolling hills of forest and heath-land with the BT tower on top you can see on the right as you sit on the northbound M6, normally in a traffic jam, just past Birmingham before you hit Stoke on Trent. Of course its main attraction for cyclists in the past has been the excellent mountain biking of the ‘Follow the Dog’ and ‘Monkey’ trails of the Birches Valley forest centre but more and more it is starting to attract roadies, particularly the ones without the thighs needed to get up into the Peak District where the serious climbs are.

The area is also now sprinkled with the high-end bike shops and the cafes that are needed to sustain those taking in the long vistas out towards the Shropshire hills in the West and National Forest in the East. Once struggling countryside cafes are now busy, rows of shiny carbon road bikes leant up outside as their owners munch on cake, drink coffee and admire their steeds, comparing specs and weights. I sometimes wonder if some of them are the same ones who used to frequent Matlock Bath a few years ago!

For more information about Cannock Chase http://www.visitcannockchase.co.uk/

Strava segment http://app.strava.com/segments/891928

   

 

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A year on!

Well its now a year since I jumped off a garage roof in Russia. The view of my training diary  says it all 🙁

A quick update – my back continued to get better over the last 6-8 weeks and I have been able to do a little turbo trainer and road rides (on a full sus mountain bike) though only for up to 90 mins but it has plateaued again and I can easily over do it. What really still gets me is impacts and standing still for any period of time, I have to avoid them completely.

I had an MRI scan 2 weeks ago and see the Consultant and Surgeon together in two weeks. We will then make a decision as to whether I try another lumbar injection or if its under the knife time to get in there and see what the problem is…..

In the mean time I am under orders to get some aerobic fitness back and get rid of some weight (lost nearly 3 kgs already) so I am in the best possible state to have an operation. Fingers crossed!

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Be2Awards & Talks 2012

photo by Paul Wilkinson

Last Wednesday I found myself underground at the Building Centre in London with a select group of people for the BE2Awards / Talks. (Built Environment Web 2.0 and Social Media) chaired by Bernie Mitchell

http://www.be2awards.com/2012-be2talks/

I’d been invited to speak about “BIM, Bikes, Blogs and Pozzoni”, particularly how BIM and social media go together like “ipads & skinny latte” and how I had used social media to promote Pozzoni’s BIM credentials since the 2011 Government Construction strategy mandated the use of BIM. I was sharing the platform with some other speakers and the awards were given out between the talks.

I was on after the interval so nervously fumbled my notes with thumbs dancing on my phone tweeting away as I watched the other speakers before me.

There was a definite biking and outdoors twist to the talks and I found them engaging and entertaining. There were about 40 in the room and many more watching online as it was held as part of London Social Media week.

Richard Saxon, the UK’s BIMbassador was up first talking about Growth through BIM, selling UK PLC BIM skills to the rest of the world and gave us the news we are now 2nd behind Finland in our BIM maturity. (he also told me during coffee that the Pozzoni / Kier scheme Poynton High School was shown in Brussels the day before!)

Cycling Journalist Carlton Reid then spoke about the UK bike scene which was well received before a great presentation by Phil Sorrel on GeoBlogging, a few of us in the room immediately seeing possible practical applications for this technology on Construction sites.

Nick Katz talked about Honest Buildings, a crowd sourced platform for connecting business opportunities and building data and Tim Oldman spoke on the Leesman index, a measurement of workplace productivity to feed into evidence based design.

The closing address was by Liz Male, chair of Trustmark who spoke about the Green Deal and the implications of a recent omission to the legislation regarding ancillary works.

My piece seemed to go down well, I used my normal style of big images, trying to lighten the tone of what can normally be a fairly dry subject as I bounced around BIM, Bikes and Blogs, ending with a call for more use of project collaboration extranets and use of open IDs and encourage this.

Of course every awards ceremony has a party and we all trooped across the road to the College Arms for a Beer or 3 of course all checking in with Four Square as we crossed the street!

 

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Tour of Britain – Brocton

We managed to get Holly out of school for a couple of hours and rode up the road to Brocton to watch the Skoda King of the Mountains Climb from Brocton Green up to Glacial Boulder.

Originally we were just going to ride up to where we were going to watch but Holly got a good reception form the crowds lining the climb so we carried on up to the Skoda finish line where she got a really big cheer. Hopefully the feeling will inspire her for the future.

We came back down and watched on a slightly up hill section without too many others with good views down the road. we scribbled on the road with chalk, met up with more friends and started the wait. After what seemed like hundreds of police motorbikes, sirens blaring, through came the tour. All over in 30 seconds but we got to see our heroes close up.

      

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The @Be2Talks + Be2awards – London 26 Sept

 

I started blogging as a way of increasing my profile, to attract sponsors, to help with the costs of racing, particularly internationally. I joined twitter I seem to remember to try and get some more publicity to win the Doreset Cereals little blog awards. I then realised that twitter was huge in my area of work (Building Information Modelling and IT in the Construction Industry) and I have jumped in with two feet becoming a big user of twitter and ausing it to network effectively amongst my piers and promote the company I work for, Pozzoni (www.pozzoni.co.uk).

I have just been invited to speak at the Built Environment Social Networking awards next week in London, the Be2 Awards and Talks ! Ill be sharing a platform with a few Built environment types giving 20 minute presentations amongst the awards, but also Carlton Reid who will be the Be2Bike Keynote on the growing application and importance of social media in the world of cycling. I am honored to be in the same lineup as Carlton @carltonreid who has been writing about bicycles and travel for 20 years. He has written for many cycling and travel magazines and UK newspapers including The Guardian and The Independent, and is the author of several books on travel and cycling. He is executive editor of BikeBiz.com, editor of Bikehub.co.uk, Quickrelease.tv and iPayRoadTax.com. Author of the acclaimed Bike to Work Book, his latest project is Roads were not built for Cars

Be2 talks and awards are not just about the built environment but are about promoting the use of social networking across sectors. If you are in London on Wednesday afternoon why not come along. Cost £15.00

 

The @Be2Talks + Be2awards – London, 26 September 2012

http://www.be2awards.com/2012-be2talks/ for more details