When you rely on bike and body to get to work it’s handy to have a backup for any unforeseen problems. I don’t own a car and have been cycle-commuting for almost six months. Touch wood, I haven’t had any injury serious enough to prevent me from riding. I have however had a few problems with the commuter bike. Recently the rear wheel has been showing its age – I’ve taken the insides apart to clean and grease them on numerous occasions but it only ever seems to be a short term solution. Last night on my ride home I heard the nasty sound of a snapped spoke – the third time it’s happened to my rear wheel. For the last 20 minutes I limped home with the wheel gently rubbing the brake pad on each of its revolutions. Enough’s enough, I thought. It’s time for a new wheel.
This puts my commuter bike out of action. Fortunately I own a second bike usually reserved for ‘Sunday Best’, but last night I prepared the show-pony for some work-horse duties. It’s a bit like driving a Ford Fiesta every day, but having a Porsche in the garage – you’re not going to be too distraught if the Fiesta breaks down.
In 2 weeks’ time I will be riding my first ever competitive race – a 20km time-trial. For this occasion I bought myself a set of TT extension bars which were already attached to the bike. Rather than remove the cow-horns I decided to put them and myself to the test and participate in a personal commuter grand-prix this morning.
On the starting grid for the commuter grand prix
I have been riding my current route to work for about 2 months. My average time on the commuter bike is typically around 55 minutes, although I had managed to beat the 50 minute mark on one occasion about 3 weeks ago, requiring such a monumental effort that I hadn’t attempted to better it since.
This morning I set off motivated to conquer the 16 mile route. Recently I have been trying to pedal with a more efficient technique, however ten minutes in I realised that my over-exuberance was putting me in danger of stomping the pedals to smithereens and ripping the TT extensions off the handlebars. For the next couple of minutes I was exhausted and so decided to try and regulate my effort levels more evenly for the rest of the ride. I ended up completing the route in a time of 45 minutes and 15 seconds at an average speed of 34.1kph (21.3mph). This is another massive improvement and gives me good confidence going into my first time-trial in a couple of weeks. It’s also reassuring to see the big difference in performance between my two bikes. It will however probably be at least another 3 weeks before I try to beat the 45 minute mark …
After a couple of sharp ‘warm-up’ hills the route lends itself well to going fast
I recommend a pair of stick on wiggo sideburns for the time trial unless of course you can grow some in time for the race.
Apparently that’s the secret to his success – his mutton chops create a turbulent boundary layer, smoothing the airflow past his ears
Well done on the speedy ride 🙂 The TT bars look great BTW. Will make you fast and also look the part for your TT. I look forward to reading about how it goes.
Thanks. It felt good to be riding on them, but the rest of my commute this week was hard work after pushing myself so hard on Wednesday.