Week 69 metrics

19th April - 25th April

• Total distance: 118.31mi
• Total elevation: 4,552ft
• Longest ride: 17.57mi
• Time in saddle: 9h 41m

Disintegration

No, not me, though I do feel like I'm falling apart a bit lately.

My turbo trainer, a Bkool Smart Pro 2 that has generally been excellent, had started making a bit of a racket at certain cadences lately... a racket that I had been ignoring, because hey, it still worked as it should, and I was too time-poor to investigate.

On Tuesday night, around 11pm, I clambered on-board, with a view to notching up some elevation. I fired up Rouvy, clipped into my pedals, pushed off... and nothing happened. The pedals wouldn't turn at all. Not one inch.

To give you an idea of my tired, late-at-night problem-solving process, this is what I did: first off, I rebooted the trainer by powering off, waiting an arbitrary length of time (thirteen seconds, since you ask) and powering back on. This didn't remedy the problem. Secondly, I closed and restarted Rouvy, although I knew this to be a forlorn step, even as I did it - a failure talking to the software wouldn't completely stop the pedals turning, would it? But as I said, it was late and I was tired... Anyway, that obviously didn't work. Then I remembered that when I had first got the trainer, I'd had a problem with the flywheel locking, meaning that I couldn't turn the pedals, and that this had ultimately been resolved by updating the trainer's firmware. Despite being tired, I remembered that I needed the Bkool Toolkit app to check and update the firmware, and that I'd need location services turned on as well as wi-fi and Bluetooth... but there was no firmware update to be had. I had exhausted possible software and technical solutions. It was time to get on my hands and knees and start poking my fingers inside the trainer...

Fortunately for me the Smart Pro 2 has a series of small plastic panels that pop out of one side, allowing limited access to the mechanics therein. Health and safety notice: turn the trainer off before you start sticking your fingers in around the flywheel. Got that? Right, so the Smart Pro 2 has a seven-bladed fan attached to the side of the fly-wheel, I discovered. I don't know whether the purpose of this is cooling or to somehow dampen noise. Whatever. It seems that this had become misaligned slightly, such that blades from the fan were catching on the inside of the aforementioned plastic pop-out panels, causing them to deform and, in some cases, break off. This accounted for the new and excessive noise the trainer had been making. And what's more, one blade had passed through the gap around the edge of a plastic panel, effectively locking the whole mechanism, hence my inability to turn the pedals.

First off, I removed the fan blades that had already broken off and were lying loose at the bottom of the casing. Then I freed the blade that had locked the mechanism up, before giving the pedals an exploratory gentle turn by hand. Clatter, clatter, clatter. The blade was still catching the inside of the housing, making a hell of a racket. It would either cause another lock-up, or just break off as others had done... so I broke it off myself. The end result of all this is that the fan now turns, without clattering, but only has one blade remaining out of the original seven. Pictured right are the removed blades. If the purpose of the fan is cooling, I worry what effect this will have, especially as the weather gets warmer, but for now the trainer works properly again, which is essential for me and my current training regime. But if I'm writing about a fire in the pain cave in a couple of months time, it won't be a metaphor, that's all I'm saying.

RAB rider survey

Quick survey to find out more about the other 999 riders on RAB21. To allay any data protection concerns, there's no way of identifying who you are from your suvey responses, your email address/Google account details are not collected and the only questions that relate to protected characteristics (age and gender) have "prefer not to say" options. So you're good to go, right here - thanks. An analysis of results will appear here at some point between now and 4th September...

Week 68 metrics

12th April - 19th April

• Total distance: 121.36mi
• Total elevation: 4,490ft
• Longest ride: 30.13mi
• Time in saddle: 8h 47m

Week 67 metrics

5th April - 11th April

• Total distance: 112.27mi
• Total elevation: 5,327ft
• Longest ride: 21.48mi
• Time in saddle: 8h 46m

The appliance of science

You might not be able to tell from all the metrics posts, or the training graph summary, but I can currently running myself into the ground with LEJOG training. If my stats are to be believed, since the 9th of February there have only been four days when I haven't cycled at all. Now I'm not a young buck any more, so whilst it pains me to admit it, I cannot lie - I am finding this very hard. So hard, in fact, that I'm clutching at any straw, however fragile, that might help make things better. Specifically I've been off down the rabbit hole of trying things that give elite athletes the kind of marginal "extra 1%" gains that shouldn't really make the least bit of difference to a middle-aged plodder like me.

So, if I'm going on a long ride I won't take a bottle of water with me, but a bottle of electrolyte sports drink with a sugar-free caffeine hit (I like the caffeine as it makes up for the fact that I can't have a cup of tea on the ride). On especially long rides, I might stop and slurp an energy gel too, even though the specific benefits for me are probably negligible, and I'd much rather eat a flapjack.

Because I'm cycling pretty much every day, I don't have much recovery time between rides. You might be able to get away with this. I might have been able too, when I was younger. But I'm struggling now. Basic sports anatomy - muscles tear during exercise, and build back (stronger) during recovery time. No recovery time equals no building back and no getting stronger. So once more I've reached out a desperate hand to science, or commercialised sports "science" at least, in the hope that it can help. After a long of particularly arduous ride, I now have a surprisingly not-horrible vanilla-flavoured rapid recovery drink called Rego, because it can't hurt, right? And if my legs are particularly leaden, I'll spend my waking hours wearing a rather fetching pair of compression sleeves on my calves, exerting 20-30mmHg of pressure to stimulate blood-flow and aid recovery, apparently. I'm sceptical but, again, it can't hurt. If nothing else, they feel warm and supportive. And besides, a placebo effect is still an effect, right?

If I get to the point of having ice baths, you have my permission to give me a slap though, okay?

Week 66 metrics

29th March - 4th April:

• Total distance: 82.1mi
• Total elevation: 3,287ft
• Longest ride: 17.04mi
• Time in saddle: 6h 47m

Two days off and no long rides. Oh dear...