cycling and century rides -

[Cactus Wings]

Been too busy to really bike but gave it a whirl once in a reasonable weather. Dear lord did it steal away my motivation to keep living. As much fun as chilly summer rides between fields are, they certainly aren't in freezing temperatures being blasted from both sides due to lack of cover.

I've probably lost all condition from summer at this point, but considering I mostly just do it for the fun of it, it shouldn't matter much. 50-60km rides are pretty daunting now though, whereas they used to be the default. I can tell I really need some sort of indoors setup for next winter. If I just had to put on tights to be able to ride 90 mins inside, I'd do it daily.

Then again, I'm really pressing what my wallet contains being a semi-broke student, and not like I can even buy anything more for my bike at this point but an indoor setup.

 

[Diet Coke 4 Life]

Just google 'cheap bicycle rollers for sale' then sort your shopping tab from low to high. Within a few moments I found plenty like this:

Those're nice. Just a 'dumb trainer'. While I'd love to say 'get a PowerTap PowerCal to Zwift with it', those things are nearly impossible to find these days. Plus they're not the most reliable. I can't race with one, but after about a 5 minute warmup it lets me put out my steady power pretty damned well. Compared using just regular feel and Zwift calculated speed over a course, it's accurate within 5-10 watts (PowerCal is usually a smidge high).

You can Zwift with a speed and cadence sensor on your bike, though! So a speed sensor on your rear wheel with the cadence magnet on your crank will let you have some virtual fun while you spin on a 'dumb' trainer.

And if you feel like really testing your sense of balance, I'd check eBay for something like this:

Of course, I mean the death trap at the top of that image. I am riding on a higher quality, all metal set of those that's outrageously quiet (a CycleOps set I found by a stroke of luck for $65 on eBay with free shipping). That's my go-to in my current living situation, and they're challenging as hell when you're a decrepit drunk but a hell of a lot of fun.

ETA: Those back-wheel only trainers are fantastic, but they will eat your fucking rear tire for breakfast. Don't fall for getting the trainer tires - they fall apart within a few hundred miles. Get a higher quality road tire. Yes, it'll get eaten apart, but it'll last longer before it does.

 

[Safir]

I have the Kreitler alloy version of the deathtrap. It's awesome but very expensive (I signed up for amazon discount alerts and eventually got it for $500 with the fan). There's a narrow storage enclosure in my apartment, so I stuck it there while I was learning to keep my balance.

 

[Slime Tube]

If you're riding in the cold, buy some good quality gloves. Getting frostnip in your hands stinks.

Here's Zwift's list of supported wheel on trainers. If you want to zwift, you should buy one of those trainers to get the most out of it. Vittoria Zaffiro's are very cheap and exceedingly tough road tires that last for months on the trainer.

 

[Harlay de Champvallon]

I sorta need a slighter bike, but Dublin roads are too shitty for a road bike, and I want to keep my near 100% record of never falling off a bike, barring a time when brakes on a Walmart bike locked up. Mountain bikes are well planted, but usually too heavy, so I see a cross bike as an idea.

@Slime Tube yes gloves are absolutely necessary.

 

[Diet Coke 4 Life]

I sorta need a slighter bike, but Dublin roads are too shitty for a road bike, and I want to keep my near 100% record of never falling off a bike, barring a time when brakes on a Walmart bike locked up. Mountain bikes are well planted, but usually too heavy, so I see a cross bike as an idea.

@Slime Tube yes gloves are absolutely necessary.

Cross bike's a good go-to, but have you looked at a gravel bike, which is sometimes marketed as an adventure bike? Because it's not following UCI regulations for cross bikes and doesn't have quite as aggressive of geometry, they're generally much cheaper. Plus they're rugged as fuck.

I am totally shilling gravel bikes now. Sure, my gravel bike's a goodly bit slower than my skinny little 1980s race bike, but it's still a goodly amount of fun on the road, spritely when I need it to be, and hardy enough to handle me being a fucking idiot and putting it down hard on mountain bike trails.

 

[XYZpdq]

thinking about it I don't really know how I'd go back to not biking to work each day now that I've gotten used to just eating whatever I damn well please

 

[World's Smallest Violin]

If you're riding in the cold, buy some good quality gloves. Getting frostnip in your hands stinks.

Purple, stinging hands after cold rides, we all been there.

 

[XYZpdq]

dug out my exercise bike and this is so not biking in any way holy shit

 

[XYZpdq]

2x posting eat dongs
>tfw you have to explain that it's not so bad it just looks bad you're bleeding all over place and it's just a bad scrape

 

[Diet Coke 4 Life]

Or tfw you're bleeding and in a destroyed kit, and you suffer through looks of utter disbelief from your group ride buddies when the first words out of your mouth are 'is my bike okay?'

Hope that isn't too recent, dude!

 

[That Ho Over Here]

Man this takes me back, I used to to do centuries on the reg in Europe on my fixie and it was great.
It was a 20km round trip just to see my horses and I miss it cause it was a flat, straight shot with nothing but the wind and tunes.

Problem with Britannia is nothing is fucking flat, and I'm currently banned from cycling under doctors' orders, ugh. Got a sweet mountain bike and I feel bad neglecting her, especially cause some of the trails here are wild.

 

[Cedric_Eff]

I’ve been thinking about buying an stationary bicycle so I can ride while I’m watching TV.

 

[XYZpdq]

I’ve been thinking about buying an stationary bicycle so I can ride while I’m watching TV.

I got a cheap one from walmart a while back, hundred bucks, no electricity or anything. It's not bad, worked out well when I ended up bicycling around for real to have a lot of those muscles already broken in.

 

[Diet Coke 4 Life]

I just have a pair of rollers that I take my normal bike onto and try not to tumble off of.

There's also rear-wheel trainers you can pick up for under $50, but they'll eat your rear tire for breakfast. Still, not a bad deal.

Personally I enjoy my rollers because it wears both front and back wheels evenly, isn't much worse on the bike than riding it on the road, and has really improved my ability to maintain a straight line (because otherwise you suddenly slip right off the rollers, and as comedic as it is to watch youtube videos of people doing this, doing it yourself isn't very fun).

Plus with rollers, I can take whatever bike I want onto it - my road bike when I'm around it, my gravel bike when I'm elsewhere... hell, some people throw mountain bikes onto them. I'd like to experiment with them and a cruiser just for the lolz.

 

[Slime Tube]

You can't operate the coffee machine on rollers, though.

 

[Wonderful Id]

Finally good enough weather to go riding in. Got a good 19mile route that mostly avoids all traffic except for one road crossing and I do it all the time. Feels fantastic.

 

[Diet Coke 4 Life]

Rained all day today. Doesn't much matter, as I'm on a nights schedule at work. Going to do a century in Zwift tonight - the PRL Full is 107.5 miles, and London is one of the maps available tonight. Ahhhh, the joy of riding rollers for hours on end - wish me luck in not falling and killing myself.

 

[Cactus Wings]

Hit 62F here, but for the first time in a few of those over the last month, it actually had heated winds too. I already retired my shoddy winter extras; gloves, tights etc, which is a bit of a shame after just one trip. But hey, it'll help those 2-3 months before it becomes winter next year.

I've also been obsessing over a rearwheel trainer. I've been itching to tear my ass up for a while now, because it truly does suck to go from 0 again every summer when I can get out again. I'd love to be able to put on something on my 27" and just bike away for an hour. My only real problem would be the noise (and the fact I'm about to move out), but it truly would help me with biking enthusiasm to be relatively fit from indoor cycling, and not just dump out on my fat ass every summer.

I'm already getting "this time last year" notifications on my phone from sunny rides..

 

[Angry Shoes]

I have an old steel Miyata for street riding but I finally got a really nice full-suspension mountain bike last week. Pavement riding is fun (and functional if you commute) but there's something special about blasting through the woods on a nice day. Anyone else mountain bike?