To be honest, Larks we just too consistent for us tonight, although we had 3 of the 4 highest legs, we still lost 5-3. Larks were already one place above us in the league, so nothing much will change.
Larks took the full 8 points and Housing Admin took a lowly 3.
Despite forecasts of rain for Easter Monday it actually turned out to be nice and dry, and better weather than Good Friday. Ian rang about 9:40 and suggested another trip to Chew Valley, so about 10:30ish I finally headed out of the door. We took the same route down to the lake as normal, but this time I’d worked out where we went wrong on Friday and had plotted a better route back. After the usual cake and pot of tea we headed home, the new route back was almost perfect, a lot less climbing than the old route, and actually a mile or two shorter for me. 33.5 miles in almost perfect riding weather.
I’m still very impressed with the Lemond, the last two longer rides on it have been very good, I’ve been able to get off the bike after 40 miles or so with no aches at all other than tired legs.
Easter passed relatively quietly. Saturday was spent chopping down a 20′ tree in my parents garden, and Sunday mainly revolved around lunch at my parents and an easter egg hunt for Ethan. The only downside is I have to go back to work tomorrow after 10 days off, no doubt that’ll be a major shock to the system as I’ve got quite used to leading a life of leisure over the last week or so.
Today was the first Chew Valley Lake ride of the year. I left the house about 9:15 and headed out to Timsbury to collect Ian. By 10am we were on our way out of Timsbury on almost matching Lemond bikes, and 45 minutes later were sat down at Chew Valley tucking into tea and cakes. We decided to take a slighlty different route home and followed National Cycle Route 3 which in theory should have led us back to Saltford, however there must be more than one route 3 as we ended up in Bristol. To be honest it was actually a better route back as it missed out a couple of steep hills, replacing them with a couple of more gentle ones.
The weather was almost perfect for riding, starting out nice and cool, but warming nicely by the time I got back into Bath after 40 miles.
Yet another nice relaxing day today. I just pottered around doing a few odd jobs like cleaning and relubing the chain on a couple of bikes, cleaning the front and rear house windows and doors (they are now white instead of black), and most important of all, sorting out my innertube collection into boxes labelled "road", "crosser", "mtb", and "punctured". I discovered that for the last couple of months worth of road rides I’d been carrying a tube with a nice big hole in it. Not the most useful of things to carry, but at least I’ve got about 10 new ones to work through now.
Partly prompted by The DVD Collection on BBC4, I finally got around to ordering a couple of DVDs I’d been after for a while. They arrived today and I sat down and watched them back-to-back aided by a nice bottle of red.
The films in question: Smoke and it’s follow-up Blue in the Face. Highly recommended if you like that sort of thing.
All good things must come to an end, and so our run of unbeaten matches finally finishes. We didn’t have a particularly good match tonight, everyone had at least one bad leg if not more. We eventually lost 5-3.
Housing Admin took 3 points, Larks took the maximum 8.
The big advantage of being off work is that you can get up when you want, don’t need to get dressed properly, and can go riding when the mood takes you. After a late breakfast and plenty of lounging around I headed out on the cross bike and decided to ride up a few hills. I did a route I’ve not done for quite a long time and part way round had a potter round some woods looking for anything interesting, there seems to be plenty of potential in there for fun. I ended up doing 19 miles in the end.
Local newspapers usually dredge the bottom of the barrel to find so-called "news" with which to fill their pages. One of the stories in todays local paper is about how Bath is attracting a record number of requests to film in the city. Apparently there are usually 250 requests per year, and so far this year there have been 55 request. A quick bit of maths reveals that if the requests continue at the same rate for the rest of the year, they’ll hit the dizzy heights of 251. So where was the news then?
A few pictures from yesterdays Bath Half Marathon.
It was an unseasonally nice day today, so I took the opportunity to fit in a quick hour on the road bike before lunch. The more I ride the Lemond, the more I’m impressed with it. The cranks and bottom bracket area are fantastically stiff giving an almost perfect pedalling platform, but the frame is still nice and compliant and does a fantastic job of smoothing out the numerous imperfections of the local roads. Admittedly it’s the only "decent" road bike I’ve ridden for more than a couple of miles, but I can’t really fault it at the moment. I’m toying with getting some proper road pedals for the bike to replace the MTB ones on there at the moment, but my propensity for walking up steep hills means the MTB pedals are probably a better choice as the cleats tend to be recessed on the shoes making engaging the 24" gear a more comfortable proposition. I shall no doubt get disowned for even contemplating walking up a hill when riding a road bike, but as I already wear MTB-style kit while riding I’m used to being shunned.
Tomorrow I’ll be handing out Lucozade to the participants of the Bath Half-Marathon, and trying not to get drenched in the stuff. It’s also Dad’s birthday, so happy birthday to him for tomorrow.
Combe Down RFC isn’t a particularly high-scoring alley, so after two legs in the mid-thirties it was 1-1. We soon picked up into the mid to low forties, and eventually took the match 5-2 with a 12-spare in the last leg by yours truely.
Treasurers took 2 points, Housing Admin took 8.
So far this season we have played 20 games, won 14 and lost 6.
It’s almost light enough in the evenings now to get most of a ride in without needing lights. I didn’t really need to turn my front light on tonight until I was nearly halfway home on my 25 mile loop.
In other non-news, the server hosting this website and a few others is on it’s last legs, so if things disappear at some point don’t panic as they’ll probably reappear at some point once I find time to move things around a bit.
The aim was to go for a gentle spin tonight just to get the legs moving, and for the first 12 miles, that was what we did. Then as we headed back towards town it seemed like a good idea to do some impromptu sprints. Six miles later my legs had turned to jelly and it was time to head home.
So much for easy rest rides on a Thursday, looks like they’ll be interval training now.
As this was a semi-final match it was to be played on a neutral alley., therefore we had to travel all the way south to Combe Down RFC. Parks were the nominal home team so threw first. They quickly took the first three legs quite convincingly, then we got into the swing of things and started to play properly. The next five legs all went our way leading us to a nice 5-3 victory and a place in the final.
Next match involves another trip to Combe Down RFC next Wednesday night.
The crossbike now has some nice shiney new TA chainrings, shame they are so expensive really. Hopefully they’ll last a nice long time to make up for it. There are some new brake pads to fit at some point, and the rear wheel needs truing slightly at some point, probably this weekend.
Happy birthday to Matt.
A mixed game tonight, some low legs in the mid-thirties, and some high legs in the upper-fifties. After swapping a few legs, Housing finally won 5-3.
Housing took 8 points, Treasures took 3.
Next game is the semi-final of the Nomination Cup tomorrow night.
Twenty minutes with some sandpaper and my P2 forks now fit the cross bike properly. After removing the thick layer of paint from 2/3 of the steerer tube all the headset spacers and the cable hanger now fit properly, and I can correctly preload the headset. Should make it slightly easier to change direction on the next ride.
This year saw Andy A hosting the inaugural Cumfest, the successor to N’Fest. As with last year the weather didn’t dissappoint and the Saturday ride/walk saw us clambering through a couple of feet of snow. We only manage about 3 miles, but I don’t think I’ve had so much fun on a bike for ages. That was pretty much all the riding that we did over the weekend, although a few hardy riders did compete in the Tour de Garrigill on the Sunday morning, the winner was MikeD.
Thanks to Andy for hosting the weekend, MikeD for all the driving, and Matt for being "mum" and providing food and mugs of tea.
My main workstation now has a full 1GB of faster memory which makes a noticable difference, and my main FreeBSD workstation has moved from a dual-500MHz Celeron, to a speedy Athlon 2000 with 1GB memory. There were a few problems with it overheating at first, but a quick trip to PC World, and some stealing of bits from other machines has hopefully solved that problem. The next job is to move the webserver onto the old dual-Celeron box and find some more disk space for it, that can wait for a week or so though.
Not my favourite alley in the world, but it feels a lot better now that they’ve taken the bar out. Not a bad game tonight, Parks took one leg with a rather stunning 59, however we still beat the, 5-1.
Parks took 1 point, Housing Admin took the full 8.
We meet Parks again next week in the Nomination Cup on a neutral alley.