Category: Cycling

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Android bike computer – IpBike

Many UK riders have seen in the past few years British Mountain Bike Orienteer Ifor Powell riding around with a small box on this handlebars, a home made cycle computer. (he is a electronic engineer and programmer) This development has culminated with an android phone based bike computer which in my opinion ticks every box. I have been using it for a while and recommend trying it if you have an android phone. ( I use a sony Xpeira Ray though the Active model would be perfect)

IpBike is an Android bike computer app. It does everything you would expect of high end bike computer plus a bit more with the extra capabilities of a phone. There are a good number of Android bike computer apps but most of them just use the GPS. IpBike also gets data from ANT+ based sensors, e.g. bike speed and cadence sensors as well as heart rate and also ANT+ power meters. For this to work you either need a phone with built in ANT support, like various members of the Sony range or with a modern phone you can plug in a USB ANT stick to add ANT support as detailed here. This of course allows you to use it to log your turbo trainer sessions as well as outdoor rides.

As well as supporting ANT+ sensors if your phone has a pressure sensor IpBike uses it to give you high quality altitude information and thus those interesting incline and rate of climb numbers. The display is optimised for use on the bike, with b
IpBike is free to download from Google Play but there is a 1,000,000 wheel revolution limit to let you try it out after which you you need to buy IpBikeKey to unlock the limit.ig clear text you can read at a glance for the main sensor data. There is mapping data from Open Street Map sources that can either be directly downloaded or pre loaded on the phone as described here. You can upload a .gpx route files to follow, the map will show the route with your position on it and automatically rotate the map to keep it aligned as you go. Post ride there are all the stats you want from the ride as well as a map of the route and a plot you can pan and zoom over to take a closer look at the climbs with. The feature it has you don’t get with a stand alone bike computer is direct upload to various websites like Strava, RunKeeper, TrainingPeaks and Attackpoint so no need to have your PC around. Once you have a good bit of data recorded you can query it to say find out how many race miles you did in the year or your total stats for the month.

http://www.iforpowell.com/cms/

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iforpowell.android.ipbike

 

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New Bridge for Cannock Chase Mountain Bikers

Last night, planners at Cannock Chase gave their unanimous approval to the  construction at Moors Gorse, off Marquis Drive
This is great news as the crossing has been an accident waiting to happen for a couple of years now.

However the danger of the main road crossing where cars regularly exceed the 60mph speed limit is still a problem.

Read more:  http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2012/09/13/new-cannock-chase-bridge-to-be-built-in-months/

 

 

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Tour of Britain – Brocton KOM preview

This year stage 5 of The 2012 Tour of Britain (the Stoke on Trent stage) will be passing through Stafford and more importantly my village of Brocton.

The race route comes out of Stafford on the A34 before turning left into Brocton and then turning right for a short sharp Cat 2 Skoda King of the Mountains climb up towards Brocton Coppice and Glacial Boulder after 29km of racing (expected time of arrival 11.20am).

This climb is a favourite haunt of mine for hill sessions being a nice 5 minute warm up ride from home and the steepest bit of road around. I will be there on Thursday together with a gaggle of kids from Berkswich Primary School to scribble on the road in chalk and cheer on Cav, Wiggo and all the other riders.

As I know the hill intimately from many reps up and down it I thought I would preview it and give my thoughts for tactics.

Firstly the entrance to the hill off of the village green is approached after a very fast series of tight right, left and right hand bends and becomes extremely narrow as soon as you get on to the hill which immediately becomes very steep. I’ve marked steep section on the map with blue. (green is fast and more or less flat or downhill and orange is a slight gradient (more or less flat to a proff cyclist)

The steep section is only 300metres or so in length before it levels off and becomes a gradual gradient or flat for another 800m to the entrance to the Brocton Coppice Carpark. A key feature here is the danger from deer who constantly run across the road. There are also some mild speed bumps to overcome.

From Brocton Coppice to the KOM summit at Glacial Boulder, the 800 metres of road is essentially flat and very fast with the exception of some fairly rounded but sizeable speed bumps which will make the sprint for the line a challenge.

So in summary the Brocton climb is half climb half sprint. The narrowness of the access meaning a there will be real advantage to being on the front of the peloton coming into the village, though the finish at Glacial Boulder really suits the sprinter rather than the climber. There is time to attack the steep section, sit on a wheel and recover somewhat and then attack again on the last 800 meters – one for Cav perhaps or one for an early breakaway?

On Sunday my 9 year old daughter Holly and I went to ride the climb ahead of the race to let her get a feel of what it would be like. I didn’t think for a minute she would manage it on her Isla bike but to her credit she got stuck in and rode it all and even practiced a hands up winning celebration when we got to Glacial Boulder after she beat me in our sprint finish on this normally fairly quiet slow road.

The views out over the Sherbrook valley out towards the Peak District are spectacular from the Glacial Boulder trig point so be sure to take in the view after you have watched the tour wiz past. For those wanting to watch the action on Tuesday there is limited car parking on the cross chase road and several small car parks along it but there is no parking at all in Brocton. See you there!

Photos of the climb below from bottom to the top

 

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Epic Bleed Solutions

Although sounding like a mountain bike accessory for inclusion in a first aid kit for downhillers, Epic are a Stoke on Trent company producing after market hydraulic Brake bleeding systems. Anyone who has looked up the price of an Avid brake bleeding kit to baulk at the price and then continued to suffer with spongy brakes will jump for one of these kits which are up to 80% cheaper than originals.

They have kindly sent me a couple of kits and some frame protection tape to try and as soon as I get a Torex key small enough for Caths old Magura Julies Ill be giving them a go and posting a full review here. They are available online together with some useful ‘how to do it’ videos at

http://www.epicbleedsolutions.com

   

 

 

 

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Olympic Mountain Biking Tickets – Thanks Acer!

Like many families in the UK we failed to get tickets for any of the Olympic events due to the huge demand and, to be honest, we had given up and decided to go to the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. However as Olympic fever has gripped the country we started to feel a little left out….. I started following the now famous twitter feed @2012ticketalert to see if I could get some random event just to get the atmosphere, although I decided I would draw the line at the horse dancing!

I saw on ticket alert that Acer had lots of tickets to give away for competitions including the Mountain Biking on the last weekend of the games, so on a whim decided to give it a go.  http://www.facebook.com/#!/AcerUK

 

The competition was on Facebook and involved submitting a photo showing family sport or Olympic fever. I sent in a collage of Holly’s Sport Relief Challenge of earlier this year and yesterday found out we had won !

4 tickets to both days of the Olympic mountain biking, travel cards and a night’s stay in the Radisson in nearby Southend on Sea – result !

Now the logistics have started. Unfortunately Holly can’t go to the Saturday’s racing as she is on stage until 10pm at Stafford’s Gatehouse Theatre in the final showing of the summer school youth theatre’s production of Peter Pan so we are going to spread some Olympic love and take two budding Mountain Bike Orienteers aged 9 and 14 years old to watch the women’s race. I’ve then got to come half way home to pick up Holly at midnight on the M1 to get her back to the Hotel ready for the Sunday. We have also given 2 of the tickets to another bike mad family with a 6 year old.

We are all very excited to be given the opportunity to go to the event we really wanted to go to when we first applied for tickets over a year ago. Thank you Acer what a fantastic prize.

We will be cheering on Great Britain’s Liam Killeen and Annie Last but especially Liam as we have met him a few times when he used to hangout in our local bike shop Mammoth when being coached by local mountain bike legend Gary Foord.

To top it all Holly’s favourite presenter who inspired her to do her sport relief challenge is one of the anchors for BBC at the Mountain Biking

 

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The Cycle Show – ITV4 #2

After the general negative feedback of the first ITV Cycle show last week I was a little worried that if it wasn’t any better it’s future would be in jeopardy.

However…. they delivered in spades. Gone were the sound issues, they introduced the guests properly and they didnt cram too much in.

I loved the coverage of the crowds at the weekend’s road races, great guests, great features on bike fit, mega avalanche and I liked the club slot too.

Well done The Cycle Show, you listened, good luck for what I am sure will now be a successful season of shows.

2nd show here on ITV player http://www.itv.com/itvplayer/video/?Filter=thecycleshow