Progression ... or lack of

I made a widget in my Google Sheets-based Strava API-calling stats cruncher to help me more easily keep track of my progress (or lack of) against the goals I set myself for 2024. Here 'tis.

The first four bars show progress (blue) a a percentage of target (orange). The last bar shows how much of the year has been ticked off (green) against how little is left (red). As you can see, at this moment in time I am behind on everything... And as you can imagine, I will update the graph (and this blog) at various points throughout the year. I know, it's hard to contain your excitement...

Goals

I'm not one for making new year's resolutions, but I have set myself some goals for this year. Now that 2024 is a quarter of the way through (already!), it seems like a reasonable time to share those goals, and check progress (or lack of). So here goes.

Goal 1: 2,000 miles in a year
This is going to be hard. I've only done more than 2,000 miles in a year twice before, once when I was cycling my commute every day (pre COVID) and once when I was training for LEJOG. By contrast, in each of the last two years I've done less than 1,500 miles. So this is going to be a stretch. In the first quarter of this year, I've notched 356 miles so, assuming an even distribution of mileage, I'm already 144 miles behind schedule...

Goal 2: 56,000 feet of elevation in a year
Again, this will be hard, and again I've only managed this amount twice before (as above, the commuter and LEJOG years). Last year I managed ~49,000ft. Oh, and I live in a relatively flat part of the country. Sigh. Assuming an even distribution of elevation, I'm already 4,000 feet behind schedule...

Goal 3: annual Eddington of 16 miles
You know the drill by now - this is going to be hard. I base that on the simple fact that I've only managed an Eddington of 14 in each of the last two years. But 16 would be a step back towards pre-COVID levels, so it's got to be a goal. My YTD Eddington so far is 10 miles...

Goal 4: increase lifetime Eddington to 43 miles
I started the year with a lifetime Eddington of 40 miles and, due to the perverse and excellent way Eddington numbers are calculated, need to notch at least eight days of more than 43 miles ths year to increase my number to 43. I currently have three sportive days booked, but I don't know where the other five days are coming from. So, it's going to be hard. Currently, I'm still on 40...

As ever, my stats, including YTD, Annual and lifetime firgures, can be found here.

Almost good

A new store has opened in the village. It's not the biggest, it's not the smallest. But it has a shiny new free bike repair station, as shown left.

As you can see, it's so new and unused that the handle of the stirrup pump still has the wrapping around it...

What else? Well, there are tyre levers, a set of Allen keys, a variety of spanners, and more, plus even a basic service stand, enabling you to life the bike up off the ground onto those two black brackets shown. It's probably not something or somewhere you'd want to do anything too serious on, but if you broke down and needed something, somewhere, well, this is brilliant... isn't it?

I hope so, obviously. But if you were cycling in the area and had a mechanical, how would you know this facility is close by? I note from the sign on the wall here that this is namechecking Sustrans and the National Cycle Network ... so maybe they have an app or a map that shows all such repair stations...?

...and maybe they do, but I'll be damned if I can find where? Anyone?

In praise of Eddington numbers...

Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington OM FRS (28 December 1882 – 22 November 1944) was an English astronomer, physicist, mathematician, philosopher and populariser of science. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the luminosity of stars, or the radiation generated by accretion onto a compact object, is named in his honour. So says Wikipedia, whence I have more or less directly lifted the preceding lines. He also wrote a number of articles that announced and explained Einstein's theory of general relativity to the English-speaking world, and the Eddington number is named for him, being the number of protons in the observable universe.

All very interesting, but what do he and the numbers that bear his name have to do with cycling?

Well, Eddington is also credited with devising the other Eddington number, a measure of a cyclist's long-distance riding achievements. An Eddington number in the context of cycling, as opposed to astrophysics, is defined as the maximum number E such that the cyclist has cycled at least E miles on at least E days. It can be calculated over any period, and also over a cyclist's lifetime. Wikipedia goes on to explain that "an Eddington number of 70 would imply that the cyclist has cycled at least 70 miles in a day on at least 70 occasions. Achieving a high Eddington number is difficult, since moving from, say, 70 to 75 will (probably) require more than five new long-distance rides, since any rides shorter than 75 miles will no longer be included in the reckoning." In other words, the reason you'd probably need more than five rides to go from 70 to 75 is that some of the rides that got you above 70 may not already be above 75. Got that? The net consequence of all this is that improving your Eddington number gets progressively harder and harder...

But it's also exactly the performance measure I need. As someone whose work and life mean I do a lot of quite short rides, trying to increasing my average ride length is a depressingly futile exercise. But increasing my E number... that's do-able, I think. Not least because it is concerned with the miles ridden in a day, rather than the length of individual rides. In other words, if I ride four miles each way to work and back in a day that counts as eight miles towards my E number. Happy days.

The flip side of this "distance in a day, not distance in a ride" stipulation is that E numbers can be quite hard to calculate. I first saw it being offered on VeloViewer, and this website also offers to calculate it for you, based on your Strava activities. Me, I've already got my own Strava analysis tool, built using Google Sheets automation and the Strava API, so with a bit of trial and error I was able to add E number calculation into that. Eddington's own life-time E-number was 84. Mine, so far, is 40 ... but I'm not dead yet.

Pictured: Sir Arthur Eddington - physicist and cycling nerd. Not pictured: the man's bike...

Wrapped

"Wrapping" at year end is a big thing now, isn't it? So although the year is not quite over, with eleven days of possible activity left, here are some highlights from my Strava "year in sport" to date.

This includes anything and everything I've recorded on Strava, not just cycling, but even so a couple of things stand out. It's flat where I live: in the whole year I've only managed just over 93,000ft of elevation ... and a big chunk of that was climbing a very high mountain overseas. Astonishing, really, when you consider I notched the best part of 56,000ft in nine days doing LEJOG. And how is lazy, unfit old me in the top 4% of most active users by time recorded? Because I record nearly everything, even one-mile round trips to the village shop, that's how.

Actual cycling-only figures for the year to date include:

• 1,436 miles covered (a whisker up on last year)
• 47,648 ft elevation climbed (so a lot more than an Everest but still less than one LEJOG)
• A longest ride of 149.55 miles, a lifetime PR ...
• ... but an annual Eddington of just 14 miles
• Over 122 hours in the saddle, probably 123 by the time I cycle home tonight
• About half of this year's miles were done on The Tank^TM, just over a quarter on Old Faithful and just under a quarter on the Project Bike

I might write some more about Eddington numbers in the new year, we'll see. My lifetime Eddington is currently 40 miles. In the meantime, more of my cycling stats are always available here.

Insane in the membrane

I'm not big on posting photos of myself, but this is during and after the 150 mile Insanity Sportive today.

Proof, if proof were needed, that the focus of my bike weight reduction strategy should really be to reduce my belly...

Here endeth the Bargain Bike Challenge

You remember my Bargain Bike Challenge? The task was basically this: could I buy a cheap secondhand bike and turn it into something decent, rather than spend thousands on a fancy new road bike?

It all started with me spending £200 on a 2016 Giant Defy 2 in mostly original condition. I wrote my intial assessment of it here if you're interested but in a nutshell, the brakes weren't very good, the wheels felt heavy and I wasn't convinced about the Tiagra 10-speed chainset. As bought, the bike weighed 9.6kg and looked more or less like this:

Sixteen months later, I'm bringing the Bargain Bike Challenge to an end, with the Defy weighing 8.25kg and looking like this:

The changes, highlighted in green above, are as follows. Any costs shown exclude things that I would have bought for any bike (like a Wahoo mount, tyres, inner tubes, and so on) and any items that I already had somewhere in the shed...

• Saddle: replaced Giant Performance Road with secondhand Selle Italia SLR Kit Carbonio Flow (£78.34)
• Brake calipers: replaced unbranded short-reach with a spare set of Shimano Ultegra R8000 I had knocking about
• Wheelset: replaced Giant SR-2 with secondhand Mavic Aksium Elite (£100)
• Pedals: put my Shimano Ultegra R8000 SPD-SL set on
• Tyres: put new Continental Gatorskins on
• Tubes: fitted new Schwalbe Extra Light inner tubes
• Bottle holder: fitted secondhand Elite Vico Carbon bottle cage (£24.45 for two)
• Cockpit: fitted Wahoo Aero mount
• Handlebar: fitted new bar tape (£20)
• Bling: fitted Lifeline Professional carbon and titanium QR skewers (£18.99)

So excluding wear and tear items, things I would have bought for any bike and the sunk cost of items I had laying about in the shed, I spent a total of £441.78 on the project bike. But then I sold the old SR-2 wheelset for £40, so the net cost of the Bargain Bike Challenge was £401.78 - 400 quid for a road bike that is very comfortable, reasonably light and (with a better engine sat on it, rather than me) pretty swift, whilst also being an all-day endurance road-eater. All that, and without spending the couple of grand I was originally considering. Job done, right?

Well, maybe. For whilst I'm very happy with the results, and I don't have the budget to spend more, there are some niggles that I'd like to address. I'd like an Ultegra 11-speed chainset and I'd like 11-34 on the back. The Aksium Elite would take that, as would the long cage that's currently fitted, so who knows what the future will bring? Or what the future can afford?

For now, though, here endeth the Bargain Bike Challenge. It's been fun. You can review other posts in the series, including lots more detail about the various upgrades, with this link. Me, I'm off to do my first sportive on the project bike this weekend: 150 miles in a day on a "new" bike. What could go wrong?

Swarm

Finishing the Cycle Swarm 2023 25-mile sportive.

The weigh-in

I still don't have a fancy bike scale like the one pictured left. Until now, every time I wanted to weigh my bike or any large component all I could do was stand on my bathroom scale with and without the bike, and compare the difference. Not the most accurate method, I'm sure you'll agree. But the fancy bike scale currently costs in excess of £77 over at Jeff Bezos's place ... so what's a cyclist to do?

Well, what this cyclist has done is buy a hand-held luggage scale, that's what. Specifically, one with a strap rather than a hook, so I can easily hang a bike frame from it. And you know what, it works pretty well; a bit of experimentation is required to find the bike's centre of gravity, to get a nice, reproducible weight reading, but once you've done that, weighing a bike with a hand-held luggage scale is a doddle.

What's more, the scale I found, also at Amazon, costs £7. Yep, one eleventh of the Park Tools super scale. Yes, PT is undoubtedly superior ... but eleven times as good? I doubt it.

Anyway, you know what's coming next, don't you? The big weigh-in! First up, it's the Blue Steed, Old Faithful, the flat-bar road bike I did LEJOG on. According to my luggage scale, it is currently running (no bags, no lights, no bottle) at ... drumroll please...

Not bad for a bike that rolled out of the factory at 9.8 KG, OEM.

Next up, the Project Bike, the bargain bike challenge that is very nearly finished (photos and final spec to follow soon). This currently tips the (luggage) scale at a slightly disappointing:

I might be able to shave a bit more off that, but I should probably concentrate on my belly first as the best place to lose a few grammes.

And finally, for a laugh, The Tank™, a steel-framed mountain bike that is nearly 30 years old yet remains indestructable. Unsurprisingly, it is the fat boy of my bike rack:

So, the moral of this story seems to be, you can weigh your bikes quickly easily, without jumping on and off bathroom scales, and without blowing nearly 80 quid. And as a bonus you can also weigh your hand luggage before your next flight too...

P.S. Feel free to tell me how much lighter your bikes are than mine in the comments. I promise to be grudgingly envious :)

More of this kind of thing please! (Or, "re-cycling")

Spotted on LinkedIn - wind turbines recycled into bike shelters.

Pretty slick! pic.twitter.com/hKrFhrGzpl

— Max Wilson (@waxwellmilson) May 4, 2023