Ghent 6

         imported      Cycling · Photography · Grupetto · Belgium

I took some photos of the Ghent 6 day on the Grupetto trip out there. The full gallery is here, but some selected highlights are below:







Save Herne Hill.

         imported      Cycling · London

Save Herne Hill!
Herne Hill is looking for support, it's both historic, and a fantastic facility in London. It'd be great to see more people supporting this! Here's the campaign page.

Cycling Video

         imported      Tech · Cycling

Checking out a few videos that people have linked me to recently I thought that this piece was amazing - really great speed. It also looks like the 5D and 7D are really quite awesome at doing 60fps HD! The video presentation over at vimeo is really cool too!

PUSH PULL from Landis Fields on Vimeo.

Ride Report: Paris-Roubaix

         imported      Cycling · Route · Grupetto

"L'Enfer du Nord" ("The Hell of the North"), "The Queen of the Classics", "A Sunday in Hell" - call it what you will, Paris-Roubaix is legendary for being a tough classic race. It stands at 255km in length, with 52.8 km of rough, French pavé (cobblestones) - starting in Compiègne (60km from Paris), and ending in the velodrome in Roubaix. A long, tough day in the saddle with endless dust when it's dry, an epic, iconic mud-bath when the weather turns bad.

Paris-Roubaix Sportive 2010

         imported      Cycling · Grupetto

I’m planning to write a ride report up for this, but here’s some preliminary photos, and a link to some ride data.

Tour of Flanders Photo

         imported      Cycling · Me · Photography · Grupetto

After ordering from the official Tour of Flanders Sportive photographers, I got a photo of me on the Bosberg.

Feel the burn!

Pictures from the Ronde Van Vlaanderen

         imported      Cycling · Grupetto

A couple of weekends ago, CS Grupetto rolled out to Flanders for the Ronde van Vlaanderen sportive, and to catch the race live. The sportive was brutal, lots of “power climbs” (although I’m not so sure that I can say I ‘powered’ up most of them - the Muur and Koppenberg and I have unfinished business), in rain, hail, and gusty winds. The pavé brings a new definition to bike control, and in the wet it’s quite an experience.

The point of this post is to link to my photos, that were snapped as the pros showed us how it was done (in the dry!) on Sunday:

Grupetto Start to the Year

         imported      Cycling

A lovely, albeit slightly chilly, start to 2010 with the Grupetto this morning. About 90km out to Windsor and back to London on one of our normal training routes. Mark also kindly took some photos, a few of which feature me.



Lots more similar rides to come whilst training for Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders.

Happy New Year!

More Di2 Stuff

         imported      Geek · Cycling · rob.sh

Following getting my roadbike back out for the first time in a while (been really busy since moving to Ealing!) I figured I’d look at if there’s anything more about Di2 floating around. It seems the more I see of this system, the more I want it. Perhaps Orca with Di2 is something for 2009?



I've also started tracking my rides (mostly fixed, mostly to and from work at the moment) on this site, if there's any interest, I was pondering publishing the code/a webapp to upload other people's rides. I find that MotionBased is really tedious! Comments/emails welcome on this subject.

Why I'm excited about Di2.

         imported      Cycling · Me

There’s a bunch of stuff online about the Shimano Dura-Ace Di2. And there’s a lot of comment online, people saying that they feel electronic-shift is unnecessary, and over-complicated.

I’m mostly interested in why I might want to ride Di2, and I think there’s a bunch of reasons that I would want to, despite all the negative comments that are flying around! So, the big thing that I see as an advantage in the system is the fact that it adjusts on a per-shift basis, this is really handy for those of us that really just want to ride our bikes! Sure, I don’t mind cleaning, and tuning my bike, but there’s some periods when I just want to be riding it, it’s what I love, it’s why I own the bike - so to me, if I get auto-adjustment that means that every shift that I’m doing is accurate, between the times that I either tune my bike up myself, or get it looked over then this sounds great! Cable-stretch is pretty annoying sometimes, and does mean that I end up having some rides where my gears might feel a bit squidgy, or over-tight. This is a problem that could be solved by tuning my bike more often, of course, but really - I just want to ride.

Someone commenting on WIRED has some different thoughts to me - feeling that the battery, and motors are prone to failure - of course they are, everything is. Gear cables snap now already, and derailleurs get worn, and bent. However, I guess with cable systems, I can bend my derailleur back and adjust the tension myself to ride home - the question here is, will Di2 be this flexible? I can get over it if not, because, how often does this really happen (only once, for me)? The battery life of the system shouldn’t be difficult to get right - it should last for a while, and I don’t mind carrying a spare battery, I carry spare tubes already.

There are limitations, sure - however, there are limitations of everything. But, I quite fancy it. £1600 for a groupset isn’t what I’m going to be spending just yet - but once we’re down a bit to more suitable price, then I’d really like to give it a go. Maybe on a ‘09 Orbea Orca - the shape is just bang on: