Tell us about your cycle Yesterday.

Quickpip

nilhg wrote: »

Mizen to Malin, straight through, about 800km of driving, 593km and 22hours on the bike, knackered now and heading to the bed, will put up a bit detail tomorrow if anyone is interested but a great weekend.



That is just savagery!! Would be great if you put up a bit of detail stops/food etc

Ryath

nilhg wrote: »

Mizen to Malin, straight through, about 800km of driving, 593km and 22hours on the bike, knackered now and heading to the bed, will put up a bit detail tomorrow if anyone is interested but a great weekend.


https://www.strava.com/activities/330149371

Guess it was you I saw then around midnight Saturday just outside Athlone, was wondering what it was for. Could only make out one rider with your following cars headlights. Fair play it's on my to do list maybe nest year.

nilhg

Quickpip wrote: »

nilhg wrote: »

Mizen to Malin, straight through, about 800km of driving, 593km and 22hours on the bike, knackered now and heading to the bed, will put up a bit detail tomorrow if anyone is interested but a great weekend.



That is just savagery!! Would be great if you put up a bit of detail stops/food etc

Will do later this evening

Ryath wrote: »

Guess it was you I saw then around midnight Saturday just outside Athlone, was wondering what it was for. Could only make out one rider with your following cars headlights. Fair play it's on my to do list maybe nest year.

Not us, we finished in Malin at about 10PM saturday, I was falling asleep over a pint by midnight , possibly Joe Barr on his way back up?

https://www.facebook.com/TeamJoeBarr?ref=ts&fref=ts

Bloggsie

nilhg wrote: »

Mizen to Malin, straight through, about 800km of driving, 593km and 22hours on the bike, knackered now and heading to the bed, will put up a bit detail tomorrow if anyone is interested but a great weekend.


https://www.strava.com/activities/330149371

thats fooking immense. never mind yor legs, your tradesmans must be tender!

cheerspal

iAcesHigh wrote: »

wow, this seems like a fantastic, suffer course, hope it's supported with nice panoramic views at least

Amazing event. I think we were the only Irish there. Two scots spoke to me on account of my name not being French, Polish, German etc. Loads of water and food stops, every village had a theme going on and were very friendly. We got priority starting on account of being foreign participants.

The roads were amazing, best surface I have ever cycled on. Especially the last 30km, like a racetrack. The climbs were long but nothing over 9% so manageable. The scenery was out of this world, lakes in the middle of mountains with beaches people sunbathing on.

Average age was 54 according to an event organiser and plenty of proof of that. Loads of guys 70 plus years of age.

Would totally recommend this event. 2 hours drive from Lyon airport.

Inspector Coptoor

Took a wrong turn today that took me to powerscourt waterfall, stocking road, stocking lane, cruagh road and in to Rathfarnham.
Had backed on a 50km spin, got 66.3km with a lot more climbing than I anticipated!

Stillorgan - Shankill - Bray - Greystones - Delgany - Kilmacanogue - Powercourt Waterfall - Stocking Road - Stocking Lane - Cruagh Road - Edmondstown Road - Rathfarnham - Nutgrove - Dundrum - Taney Road - Fosters Avenue.

66.3km
954m climbing
Max elevation of 478m
Avg speed of 22.5km/hr
Max speed - 70km/hr
Current weight - 98kg, down from 102kg.
Some of those climbs were just nasty

NamelessPhil

Finished the Celtic Knot 1000km in 69 hours total time. 48 hours 21 minutes riding time and with 10 hours sleep over the three days.

Hi to all the participating Boardsies, cdaly, thebouldwhacker, ford2600, flywheel and not least OleRodrigo who rode the whole event fixed!

https://www.strava.com/activities/330620164

Inspector Coptoor

NamelessPhil wrote: »

Finished the Celtic Knot 1000km in 69 hours total time. 48 hours 21 minutes riding time and with 10 hours sleep over the three days.

Hi to all the participating Boardsies, cdaly, thebouldwhacker, ford2600, flywheel and not least OleRodrigo who rode the whole event fixed!

https://www.strava.com/activities/330620164

That is absolutely insane.
Well done.

wanderer 22

NamelessPhil wrote: »

Finished the Celtic Knot 1000km in 69 hours total time. 48 hours 21 minutes riding time and with 10 hours sleep over the three days.

Hi to all the participating Boardsies, cdaly, thebouldwhacker, ford2600, flywheel and not least OleRodrigo who rode the whole event fixed!

https://www.strava.com/activities/330620164

Just amazing, congrats. I'm aiming to do 1000km over the entire month and I'm finding it tough going :pac:

NamelessPhil

It went better than expected. I had 75 hours to complete the ride and had 6 hours to spare. There was a horrible headwind across the top of Sligo/Mayo to Enniscrone on the first day (370km). I got sunburnt on day two with a fierce headwind from Gowran around to Kinnity. I was out that night to do a 100km between 9pm and 2am from Clara to Castlepollard with wind and nasty little rain showers (340km). Yesterday was windy to Enniscorthy and then the wind dropped on the way back up to Clara and cycling after sunset on the shortest night of the year meant that it never got completely dark with a glow in the northern sky (300km).

I was with a group for most of the first day. Day two I rode completely solo, and day three was with cdaly for the first 80km and then solo for the last 220.

It was an experience, that's the furthest I've ever cycled in essentially one long ride with short breaks for sleep. Paris-Brest-Paris is 1260km long in 90 hours and based on this weekend it should be very doable.

ford2600

NamelessPhil wrote: »

It went better than expected. I had 90 hours to complete the ride and had 6 hours to spare. There was a horrible headwind across the top of Sligo/Mayo to Enniscrone on the first day. I got sunburnt on day two with a fierce headwind from Gowran around to Kinnity. I was out that night to do a 100km between 9pm and 2am from Clara to Castlepollard with wind and nasty little rain showers. Yesterday was windy to Enniscorthy and then the wind dropped on the way back up to Clara and cycling after sunset on the shortest night of the year meant that it never got completely dark with a glow in the northern sky.

I was with a group for most of the first day. Day two I rode completely solo, and day three was with cdaly for the first 80km and then solo for the last 220.

It was an experience, that's the furthest I've ever cycled in essentially one long ride with short breaks for sleep. Paris-Brest-Paris is 1260km long in 90 hours and based on this weekend it should be very doable.

Well done, no fear of you for France.

It was a nice event, the central hub made it a lot more manageable and enjoyable. Was sorry to withdraw but was suprised both my wheel and knee limped back to Clara on day 1.

Bloggsie

NamelessPhil wrote: »

Finished the Celtic Knot 1000km in 69 hours total time. 48 hours 21 minutes riding time and with 10 hours sleep over the three days.

Hi to all the participating Boardsies, cdaly, thebouldwhacker, ford2600, flywheel and not least OleRodrigo who rode the whole event fixed!

https://www.strava.com/activities/330620164

your probably a nice sane person (normally) but your absolutley nucking futs for doing something like that!

I take my hat off to you(cept Im not wearing one)

NamelessPhil

Sure I was in the company of other nutters, not least the two/three guys who rode the whole thing with little or no sleep. The first one finished on Sunday morning around 10:30am. Now that's crazy!

BTW I was the only woman participating.

Bloggsie

NamelessPhil wrote: »

Sure I was in the company of other nutters, not least the two/three guys who rode the whole thing with little or no sleep. The first one finished on Sunday morning around 10:30am. Now that's crazy!

BTW I was the only woman participating.

ahh shure, dat explains it! arent all women slighty crazy?

All men 100% are!

Mercian Pro

Tough and lumpy 145k from Genoa to La Spezia with a detour to the Cinque Terre. That's Day 1 of the cycle to Rome over with no problems other than a few punctures. Weather could be better but the scenery and company are great. Just under 7 hours on the saddle with 2064m of climbing.
An easier day planned for tomorrow with one tough climb but Lucca and Pisa should make up for that.

rollingscone

https://www.strava.com/activities/330878116 Trying to be less slow despite my general purpose ****ness.

If flies keep Kamikaziing me at this rate I'll be able to quit both my jobs and open a top notch bait shop.

nilhg

nilhg wrote: »

Mizen to Malin, straight through, about 800km of driving, 593km and 22hours on the bike, knackered now and heading to the bed, will put up a bit detail tomorrow if anyone is interested but a great weekend.


https://www.strava.com/activities/330149371

Quickpip wrote: »

nilhg wrote: »

Mizen to Malin, straight through, about 800km of driving, 593km and 22hours on the bike, knackered now and heading to the bed, will put up a bit detail tomorrow if anyone is interested but a great weekend.



That is just savagery!! Would be great if you put up a bit of detail stops/food etc

Four of us did the spin as a charity ride, the intention was to try and do it in 24 hours including stops so we had enlisted as much help as we could lay our hands on. We had a couple of extra riders who would share the load at various stages and some of those same fellas also fell in as drivers when they had done their stint on the road.

At 11.30am on friday morning we had all the bikes and gear loaded in the car and van we were using for the weekend and we headed for Limerick where we had a big lunch/dinner, we then headed for Mizen following the exact route we'd be coming back up several hours later both to familiarise ourselves to the various turns and junctions and also to see in daylight any areas that might cause us a problem under lights later on, it was a good thing we did, there's an area of loose chippings at the end of a fast enough descent into Dunmanway that would have been tricky if we didn't know about it.

Our plan was to stop for 15 minutes in Milstreet, Limerick and Athlone where the new crew would take over minding us and where two fresh strong riders were coming in to help share the load, from there on we would shorten the interval between stops depending on how we were feeling, however we had an unscheduled stop when one of the lads came off the bike at the level crossing on the old main road coming up out of Limerick, he shipped a hefty bang and it took him a while to get his breath back and get going again. The changeover stop in Athlone also took longer than expected and from there on we were struggling to make the time back.

We stopped roughly every 80km after that and those stops were a little more relaxed when we accepted that the 24 hour target was unrealistic before our last push out to Malin which we reached at 9.45pm on Saturday evening, 25.75 hours on the road, 22 hours moving.

Food wise we had a mountain, all the usual stuff you'd expect on a cycling trip but plenty of extra too, loads of folk had brought various cakes and buns up but we also had a home cooked honey roast ham and a stack of hard boiled eggs which tasted gorgeous on the road outside Enniskillen, you get very fedup of bananas and energy bars 18 hours in to a spin.

Navigation was one place we ran into trouble, our plan was to have two garmin 810s with the routes on them, we tested one with our route and it seemed to work fine, unfortunately we made a few last minute cleanups to the route and the new file which we uploaded to the devices seems to have been corrupt and wouldn't load, but we didn't know that till we were on the bikes on Mizen, not our finest hour. If i were ever doing something like this again (doubtful, but you never know...) I'd have the route in several sections on the Garmin, so at least if you had trouble with one section you wouldn't lose it all, and I'd test it two or three days before. Our backup plan was the route on several phones running the ridewithgps app, it worked reasonably well when the car was with the riders but there were a few times in traffic we'd get ahead and not be sure of our next turn. At one stage we knew our next town was Ballinamore and followed road signs for it, which took us off our route and added 5 or 6 km to the total distance.

My own experience on the day was positive enough, I had a really rough patch on the road between Nenagh and Athlone, my stomach was really objecting to something or other but it came around at the stop and I felt strong afterwards, my previous distance record was 250km so the step up was fairly steep, I have a book here about long distance cycling and the author says in it that everything else being equal the only thing that changes after 300 is your need for sleep, I wasn't too sure of that for a while but found the second half OK (fair enough the two lads who came in too a lot of the load)

A few observations,

Why did nobody ever tell me about Leitrim before? The stretch of road from Drumlish to Mohill onto Ballinamore was the highlight of the spin for me, ironically it was the bit we went wrong on and shouldn't have been on.

From Strabane into Derry on the A5 was the most hateful experience in my cycling experience, every young ignorant pig in a souped up tin can must have been determined to whizz 4 inches past my elbow, not a nice experience (apparently there was a rally in Donegal somewhere)

We got great support and encouragement from folk on the road and at stops, I was surprised how many came up asking what we were doing and giving us a cheer on, when you're suffering a bit it helps.

I hope this helps anyone thinking of doing something similar, we got bits and pieces of advice from people with experience and it helps, if I can do the same for anyone just shout.

Apologies for the long post, but i might as well get it down while it's fresh in my head and might not have the chance again.

Bloggsie

rollingscone wrote: »

https://www.strava.com/activities/330878116 Trying to be less slow despite my general purpose ****ness.

If flies keep Kamikaziing me at this rate I'll be able to quit both my jobs and open a top notch bait shop.

follow the old saying of "shut mouth caught n0 flies", if anyone tries to engage you in a conversation, just smile & wave!

Bloggsie

just in from my commute, 28.45 kms 1 hour 15. 22.6 avg kph. nothing odd untill a gob****e in a 07D red seat(dont know the model) tore past me on a bend on the lower road, scared the sh1te out of me and the driver of a lexus(i think) coming the other way he nearly had all four wheels over the medium. fookin tosser, im sure in his head he was competing in the rally of the lakes while the other driver & me had a serious scare. Slow down you knob!

rant over. Happiness will take over now & it will be a great day!

smacl

rollingscone wrote: »

https://www.strava.com/activities/330878116 Trying to be less slow despite my general purpose ****ness.

If flies keep Kamikaziing me at this rate I'll be able to quit both my jobs and open a top notch bait shop.

Hit a swarm of small flies / ants coming off the sally gap yesterday evening and it felt like hail stones. When I got in my arms, face and glasses were covered in in little black smudges much to the disgust of my youngest.

Really pleased I picked up the prescription sunglasses a while back, not just for the insects, but an absolute lifesaver descending with broken low sunlight from the side.

Dades

Got home from work last night (about 9km each way) and had to go back for a small suburban spin is was so nice out there.

https://www.strava.com/activities/330849456

This was my old "training" route from when I just got the bike. All sorts of PRs falling last night.

smacl

Just back from a short lunchtime spin, Ballyboden, Glencullen, Kilternan and back. Glorious out there.

Bloggsie

smacl wrote: »

Just back from a short lunchtime spin, Ballyboden, Glencullen, Kilternan and back. Glorious out there.

backstard, Im so fooking jealous, to be able to get out on the bike during lunch.

we have some construction work going on at the moment & a number of bikes were lifted ( Im not saying it was done by consturction workers) so the bike cage is locked, to gain entry outside of the morning & evening rush hour times is a bit of an ordeal, changed into & out of gear, i'd be looking at maybe 25-30 mins only. Also to try & grab a bite to eat!

rollingscone

Bog standard pre breakfast loop to the Viewpoint and back.

Only really notable because I got to Stocking lane with no memory of doing that really steep descent into a bend on Kilakee that I hate.

Bit worrying.

http://app.strava.com/activities/331079219

Mercian Pro

Day 2 of the Hospice Cycle went from La Spezia to Pisa and should have been the easy day of the week. The extra "little" climb added in for some of us was 10k of sheer torture with gradients of between 7 and 14% with the temperature in the high 20s. Just to keep the heart rates up and the sweat flowing, lunch was at another hill- top village before a relatively easy descent to Pisa.
125k in six and a half hours with 1600m of climbing.

Gofaster

Good day today. Great weather warm and little to no wind.

84km, 27kph, 700metres climbing.

Wanted to do over 100km but had a cut in the back tyre. Vittoria open corsa very soft.

marty_crane

What a day. 43km (due to my old legs being tired from football last night) on the back roads of north Wicklow. Very happy to finish up at 30.6kmh in the end (although it was mostly flat) but more importantly WHAT A DAY!

terrydel

Did 77k yesterday, up gunny hill, turning onto stocking lane, up to the viewing point then left and up to Johnnie Foxes, turning back to viewing point and up the Military Road to Sally's Gap, return via Manor Kilbride/N81.
Average of 25.3kmph.
Probably the best I've felt on a bike in 2 years, I was flying it (by my standards).
Woke this morning with a sore throat, felt ropey all day. Fecking typical!

Daroxtar

Have had no Internet at home since last Friday so this is a bit late but anyway, Went for a short spin on Sunday evening and decided to have a good go at it on the flat.
Longwood Enfield Kilcock, gave it welly to see if my recent hill work has paid off anything on the flat. It definitely has. I was able to keep a sustained effort going much better. I was fairly shagged by the time I got to Kilcock though so I trundled on and decided to take the back road over to Newtown to have a crack the hill there. About a km down the road a big lump of a rottweiler came trotting towards me. I stopped and picked up a handful of stones and he kept coming so I threw them at him, he accelerated so i got the fk out of there fairly fast and came back the way I went.
Got home in decent time but couldn't sync the garmin so couldn't see my times on Strava and if it's not on Strava it doesn't count, right?
Finally got the hump this morning and uploaded the tcx file from Map My Ride on the phone.
Happy days, a load of PRs and a sneaky KOM too.
45km in 1:29, 30kmph https://www.strava.com/activities/331762446
Still no bloody Internet though.

Bloggsie

Daroxtar wrote: »

Have had no Internet at home since last Friday so this is a bit late but anyway, Went for a short spin on Sunday evening and decided to have a good go at it on the flat.
Longwood Enfield Kilcock, gave it welly to see if my recent hill work has paid off anything on the flat. It definitely has. I was able to keep a sustained effort going much better. I was fairly shagged by the time I got to Kilcock though so I trundled on and decided to take the back road over to Newtown to have a crack the hill there. About a km down the road a big lump of a rottweiler came trotting towards me. I stopped and picked up a handful of stones and he kept coming so I threw them at him, he accelerated so i got the fk out of there fairly fast and came back the way I went.
Got home in decent time but couldn't sync the garmin so couldn't see my times on Strava and if it's not on Strava it doesn't count, right?
Finally got the hump this morning and uploaded the tcx file from Map My Ride on the phone.
Happy days, a load of PRs and a sneaky KOM too.
45km in 1:29, 30kmph https://www.strava.com/activities/331762446
Still no bloody Internet though.

You stopped to pick up stones & throw them at a rottweiler, unless you were absolutley fooked why not just put some power down & piss past it!