ON training, and old clunkers

Cycling for me has always been a rather relaxed affair until now. Sure I've raced and been serious about doing my best in the races that I've taken part in, but I've never really trained. I've just gone out for rides and ridden to work and wherever else I go during the week and that has been my "training." This will have to change fairly soon however, since I signed up for a race that will force me to show up in decent shape or I'll get a DidNotFinish. Yes, I've signed up for the Test of Metal this year and will be racing in Squamish this june. I've always been interested in doing this race and now I'm finally doing it. It's a 67km point to point XC race with 1200m of climbing and 35km of singletrack. So I better buck up and start some sort of a training routine. Problem is that I have no idea how to go about this so I'll have to seek advise from friends. I understand that building a "base" fitness is essential and this is achieved by steady, long rides. Therefore the Frankencross will go through a bit of a morphing in the next few weeks. Lime Green Vittoria Rubinos, 50t chainring, left hand bar-con, new bars and front derailleur will go on the bike along with donated gold SKS full wrap fenders (for group rides). So Frankencross will become a winter road machine for a bit. I also plan to take a longer route to work a couple of days a week to give me about an hours ride there in stead of 20 minutes. That should help a bit. The dilemma is what bike I'll be racing. I'm kind of on the fence now, on whether or not to get a new bike. On one hand, the Trek Fuel EX-8 that I currently have would make a nice Test of Metal race bike, if I got rid of the Rock Shox Lyric 2-step for something a bit lighter. On the other hand, The Test of Metal will most likely be one of two XC races that I'll do this season. The rest being Super D and depending on if I get a bike or not, Downhill. The problem is I can't afford to have two bikes and the bikes I'm looking at are six to seven inch bikes more meant for All mountain/Freeride and would be horrible for a XC race. So I have a big decision to make. However, I think I might just get a freeride rig and deal with the TOM when I get to it. Perhaps I can build something up in those 5 months ahead. We'll find out I suppose.

This is one of the Raleighs I'm working on now.

I sometimes buy old bikes when I come across them, either in the shop or somewhere else. I like fixing them up and selling them again to make a little extra money. Since we don't really sell used bikes at Rider's, there's not any conflicting interest there, so the owner does not have a problem with me doing this to supplement my meager income. Right now I've got two Raleighs in the works and an old Columbia built Goodyear Hi-Way Patrol. The Raleighs are usually easy to date since the year of manufacture is often engraved in the Sturmey Archer rear hub of the bikes but in my case neither hubs have a year on them. So I've been trying to narrow down the age of the bikes using incomplete serial number charts and other resources, but I have not yet been able to pinpoint the age. I did find the coaster hub that is on one of them, to give me an estimated year of manufacture to be in the late sixties to early seventies. Not a bad hub if they used it unchanged for 15 years!

Sturmey Coaster 1963-1978!

Sturmey has a great "heritage" site that's fun to check out. Pretty nerdy stuff but I like it: http://www.sturmey-archerheritage.com/history.php Managed to estimate the age of my Raleighs to be between 1963 and 1978. Not super accurate but I'm getting closer.

On getting back on the horse, and SunRace/Sturmey Archer's three speed fixed

I had my first "post crash" ride into work on Friday. What a great feeling! Even though I have to take it slow and look extra carefully for bumps or potholes in the road. I wouldn't say that I was getting fat by not being allowed to ride like Jehuda at the Kickstand when he lost his bet with Joe and had to drive to work for a week: But I was definitely getting cranky...Oh yes, there's some serious crankiness going on, I don't only feel like an old man, I think I'm morphing into one. Old and bitter. I bitch at the television, people in traffic and at mostly innocent people in the service industry that the old man feels should rather work in dish washing or somewhere their stupidity is not forced upon the innocent public. So far this has not caused any serious collisions in my day to day life, but those close to me keep a safe distance, as ironic as that may sound. There's nothing on this earth that's more relaxing to me than a few hours of riding hard in the woods. Except for Morphine perhaps or other strong opiates, but we're talking legal and socially acceptable here. Anyway, without the bike riding, my mind goes bonkers and the mood turns sour. But now that I can at least ride Basil to work I feel much better. On a different note, I stumbled across this hub the other day on the internet and I have to say I'm quite excited about it. Three speed fixed seems like a fun idea, albeit not a new one. I'm going to try to get my hands on one of these when they'll be released and use it on the Bianchi. In the meantime I'm ordering a Surly flip flop hub and I'll be riding that whenever I'm feeling like I don't want to think about gears. This hub is a new version of the venerable ASC hub made by Sturmey Archer somewhere close to the middle of the last century. This one is made by SunRace/Sturmey-Archer, but SunRace bought the ailing Sturmey in 2001, I believe. The fact that Sturmey is now made by a Taiwanese company upsets some people, but it has been said that SunRace is creating better products than Sturmey was towards the end. The fact that they're bringing back such a unique hub is also encouraging and hopefully we'll see a lot of interesting stuff from SunRace/Sturmey in the future.

on ironic injuries, stupidity and new projects

It's ironic that I injure myself just over a week after I write about commuting safely to work. It's the kind of thing I always worry about. I'll say things like, yeah I haven't had a fall in ages and then I have a yard sale on the next ride. Or I'll say that I don't get sick very often, and then I come down with pneumonia. I didn't think karma was after me since I had a spill on one of the night rides recently, but riding home after a few drinks with no front light is just stupid, and a prime example of what pushing your luck can bring you. Not only was I a bike ninja, but an inebriated one at that. This is very dangerous and I soon found out. A silver sedan cut me off two blocks away from home (he probably never even saw me), I slammed on the brakes, slid into the curb and flew over the handlebars. Half an hour later I was at the hospital.

I'd like to state here that I generally don't ride after a few drinks. In fact, I'm a bit bothered by the prevalence of posts and articles on the net that endorse that sort of thing. This time however, I took a risk, and paid the price. My excuse was that I needed the bike for the Cyclocross race on the following day, and that I did not want to go through the hassle of getting a cab and stuffing the bike in the trunk. Yeah well, instead I have to deal with the maddening hassle of missing the rest of the Cyclocross season and not being able to ride a bike for at least a month. Common sense sometimes abandons me in the times of need. It's a personality flaw.

Not all is bad though, and recently I acquired this elegant Raleigh that will be my commuter once I've healed up. It's a 1987 Raleigh Record that's actually made in Canada. Or so it says on a sticker on the frame anyway. Perhaps it means that it was assembled here, like is the case with so many of the Canadian brands. On a side note, Raleigh has seen better days as a bike company and nowadays they seem to be mostly making department store bikes which are soooo not worth the Raleigh badge. It's interesting to see that the Canadian and UK websites advertise themselves as junk mongers, whereas the US one seems to have a bit more ambition. But I degress, the bike is a nice old 10-speed, well not nice maybe since the Record was sort of the entry level road bike and as such, does not sport very nice components at all. However the frame is nice and it's barely been used at all. The guy I bought it from claims he bought it new in 1987 but never really rode it much. I'm inclined to believe him. The frame is ridiculously big at 65cm bb to top of seat tube, but not very long at 61cm c/c top tube. It rides nicely and I love the forgiving flex of steel on the road. I have an old 7 speed road gruppo that I think I'll throw on this one along with some aluminum rims, longer cranks, nicer hubs, wider bars and some full wrap plastic fenders instead of the heavy steel ones that are on there now. That should drop the weight a little bit and I'll have a nice winter commuter. It will be called Basil, as in Fawlty, and I look forward to fixing this one up. The Bianchi which coincidentally is also a 1987 model will get a different treatment as that one will receive the Sugino Messenger cranks I bought for a bottle of Crown Royal, and will be my singlespeed/fixed stupid fun bike.