The Isle of Wight

Last weekend was the inaugural 'Lad's Cycling Weekend'. To say it was a blast doesn't really do it justice. It was the most fun I've had since I've been in the UK and that's saying something. I'm late to posting, so I don't want to repeat everything that Rob's written about the weekend. If you haven't already done so, go there and read about it. What I do want to do is show some of my favorite pictures and in the next post show off some of the stats. If you'd rather see the entire photo set click here.

I was really impressed that the ferry we rode over on had a bike shed on it (the yellow bit). You knew that this was going to be a bike friendly island when you saw that.


Every time we stopped we were like a little gang. We'd lay out our bikes and sort of occupy the site. This picture is from our scone stop and you can see what a motley crew we were.


A huge thanks has to go out to Sally for booking one of the most amazing hotels we could have found. The climb back up the cliff the next morning wasn't great, but when you look out your window and see the sea, it's a good thing.


Dinner was an interesting experience. Good seafood all around, and this was the prawn genocide that Sam committed. It was amazing how many he got to start, but then he stacked the carcasses so that they were staring at you. That was just creepy.


One of the things that we didn't realize after the hour long ferry and the day full of riding was that we hadn't really gone that far. Only 40km? Heck that's a 90 minute ride on the road bike.


If I had to choose, I'd say that the length of the days is the hardest thing for me to come to grips with in the UK. This picture was taken at 9.30pm! And it's this light at 5.00am too.



Being a Floridan and near the sea I couldn't resist taking a dip. At some point I should think that the coast of the UK is a bit colder than the coast of Florida.


The next morning, we had a great breakfast that restored our energy and set us up well for a full day of riding


Well for about 10 seconds until we hit the 25% grade!


After about an hour of riding we got to a nice peak at the southern tip of the island. If you blow up the picture you can see the chalk cliffs of Freshwater and Needles at the end. This is probably my second favorite picture of the weekend.



One of the things that I really liked about the island (and that will draw my father) is that they've really kept the rustic feel of the place. One of the biggest things was there are an amazing number of thatched roof houses on the trip. This is just one example, and by no means the most impressive.


This is my favorite picture. As we approached Freshwater and lunch on the second day, we were all really exhausted. It'd been up and down and after the previous day everyone was feeling it. Unfortunately we had to climb a serious hill right before we entered town. At the top everyone stopped and waited for the stragglers and generally had a good look. As we don't really have chalk cliffs, or cliffs at all for that matter in Florida, this was absolutely stunning.



That's it for my favorite photos from my set, but I encourage you to take a look at Rob's post and photo set as well. Part 2 will include cycling stats tomorrow.

The London Eye

After a crazy couple of weeks here in the Southampton, I'm finally getting around to posting about a couple of things I've been doing.


Early last month, I had the pleasure of doing a training course in London. Now, I'm not one for doing training much any more, but it was an opportunity to stay in the heart of London, ride the underground and doing a lot of sightseeing. Probably my favorite part though was finally getting to go on the London Eye.

Now I know it's a bit kitschy to go here, but I actually really enjoyed it. I saw things like London Bridge and the Houses of Parliament.


And the tremendous views down the Thames.


For more (similarly mediocre pictures), check out the full set.

But How's My Bike?!

As Sally rightly points out, this just isn't a good week to be on a bicycle. Rob and I set off for our weekly Sunday morning ride which was to be my last long ride before the Test Valley Tour. I was really excited about this one as it would be a whole week until I rode again (spending next week in London) and it was going to be a nice short 60km ride.

We'd gone just over half way on the ride and were descending a windy road. I'd been descending pretty fast all morning but on this stretch, I felt that there were just too many blind corners. I'd been going slowly (although slowly is obviously relative on a bicycle going downhill) and I came around a bend. Rob had thankfully dropped a bit back on me because all I saw was a car in my lane. A damn driver had chosen a blind curve (WTF?!) to pass another group of cyclists coming uphill. This was a farm road so there already weren't two full lanes, and she was all the way to the edge of the asphalt on my side.


So the second to last reading on my GPS had me going 53.3kph (33mph) and the last reading had me going 43.3kph (27mph). I remember slamming on the brakes and the back end starting to come around on me. I also remember thinking that I was way too close to stop and deciding that the berm on the side of the road seemed to be softer than the car. After that I don't remember much until I came to a stop. Rob said his first worry was that I was actually dead. But really, it's the second serious crash he's seen me in, so he should know better than that. ;)

When I finally came to a stop, there was a stabbing pain in my back and a burning sensation on my face. Probably the only saving grace of this particular accident is that I had to go so far off-road on my bike that I couldn't fall on asphalt. I got up made sure that no new cars were going to hit me and started checking things out. It turns out that the stabbing pain in my back was a dried wild-rose stem with huge thorns sticking into my skin. The burning on my face was due to fact that I'd gone face first through a patch of stinging-nettles. There were my only injuries. In fact, as far as I could tell I didn't even have any dirt on me. It was truly amazing.

About this time, the cyclists being passed made it up to where I was and asked if I was alright. I told them that I was, and they pointed out that the driver hadn't even stopped. It was at this point I started becoming a bit enraged. How do you run someone off the road and not stop to see if they're OK? Especially since I crashed right next to her driver-side window? She had to have seen it.

Since my body was in good shape, I went about checking on the bike. I mean I felt so good, I would have continued going :) On inspection though, that was just not to be.


Talk about really wanting to stop, right? I've slid the back of the bike before, but this one was more than just a flat spot. I'd gone completely through the carcass and you can see the puncture protection. In addition to this, both the front and rear tires had lateral slices in them from where I'd slide sideways through sharp gravel.


Worse though was the front of the bike. It appears that when I went off-road and fell the handlebars turned to the left and dug in. There was a good bit of dirt in the brake/shifters, but since it was dry most if fell out.

After getting our act together, Rob and I called Sally (who couldn't come pick us up due to her injuries) and she tried Adrian. No dice. We called Andy and no luck there either. Since it was clear that I couldn't ride the bike, Rob rode the 14 miles still to go on his own to get a car. 90 minutes later he was back to pick me up. Class that. One of the funniest parts of this whole thing is that during that 90 minute wait on the side of the road, an entire road race of cyclists passed by. There must have been at least 200 of them during my time and about 1 in 5 asked me if I was all right. I loved the concern, just hated having to tell everyone I was OK. I even had a friend at one point when one of the racers got a puncture right in front of me and had to change an inner tube.

After being collected by Rob, we drove straight on to the bike shop. With the race next week, there was no time to spare. And it was very cool being able to walk in and when asked how I was respond, "I've just come from the scene of an accident". :) The bike shop looked it over (the wheels were perfectly true still!) and with needed maintenance, cleaning, and repair the bill came to less than £100. Fine work I say.

At any rate, I'm home now safe, and looking forward to my next ride. I may however, need to get another bike. Rob says that there aren't any cars on the Mountain Bike trails. ;)

But How's the Bike?!

I just found out that my dear friend Sally (who just became a new cyclist) was involved in an incident this morning.

After safely crossing an intersection on her way to work, a car sped around the corner and clipped her rear tire knocking her off the bike. It doesn't appear that she sustained any scratches or road-rash, but does have a banged up ankle. After getting the call, Rob whisked her off to A&E like a knight in shining armor. If you get a moment, send her an email letting her know that you're thinking of her.

It does sort of shake the feeling of invincibility that I have. Sally is the most courteous, safe, and diligent cyclist I've ever seen (she's not a fan of riding down the center lane of the road like I am) and yet she gets clipped in her first 100 kilometers while I ride 2000 without an incident.

On a lighter note, her bike sustained no damage at all, so it'll be waiting in the bike shed garage when she's ready to start commuting again.

No Cricket

I was all excited to go see my first Cricket match up at the Rose Bowl today, but alas the weather didn't cooperate. It was chucking down all morning and eventually the match was called. I guess I'll just have to wait a while more for my first Cricket experience.

Let the Countdown Begin

Important news for those who haven't heard it, Jill's application has finally posted to the UK home office, so we're now in a 5-14 week hold until her visa comes through. Check Jill's blog for (sporadic) updates.

My First Century (Metric)

I know it's been a while since I posted and many things have happened in that time (a visit from Jill, a product released). I'll get around to posting about those later this week hopefully, but before I do I want to talk about a pretty major milestone for me.

Coming up in June, a number of members of the SpringSource team are going to be entering the Test Valley Tour When I signed up, I noticed that you actually chose the 50km/100km or the 150km versions. I registered for the first which meant that I could chose on the day of how far I really wanted to go. With all of the Sunday rides that I've done, I'd never made it beyond 50km before, so I sort of assumed that would be what I rode.

Rewind to last weekend. Adrian was spending time with his kids, so Rob and I went on our Sunday ride alone and we wanted to head down to Gosport. I was designated as navigator and to put it bluntly, I seriously messed it up. After an hour, we'd gone 13 miles and we're only 5 miles from where we started. Clearly not a good ride. We aborted and slowly made our way home.

Over the last week, Rob and Adrian were in San Francisco (trying to dodge disease). During that time, I tried to redeem myself and do some better cycle route planning. Everyday last week I went on a lunch ride that eventually stretched to a full hour 25km ride including a loop around Hursley Park, IBM's UK research facility.


I felt confident enough that I could now pick the proper road types on a map that I rerouted the previous trip to Gosport and was all ready to try it this weekend. Rob thought he might be able to make the ride today (he got in Saturday afternoon), but when he hadn't called by 11.00 I decided that I was going to go without him. After a bit more putzing around, I finally made it out the door around noon. Now this is important for later, as it means I ate breakfast at 8am and departed without lunch.


I'll say now, that the ride was awesome. It was warm and sunny the whole way and I don't think I really ever broke a full sweat. Hills in the beginning and flat as I approached the coast. Once I got to the coast, I saw hundreds (and not small hundreds, like 500 hundred or more!) sail boats all out on the Solent. This was the first warm weekend this year and you could tell. You could nearly walk from Gosport to the Isle of Wight without getting wet there were so many boats out. At one point traffic stopped because the public boat launch was jammed with 20 trailers of Lasers trying to put in. The beaches were packed and as I rode along the parade (think the boardwalk in Ft. Lauderdale) I even got to flirt with 4 girls wearing bikinis in a car for a while. Needless to say, it was an amazing ride.

My one mistake came as I was nearing the end of my journey. I'd just passed the 60km mark of a 72km planned distance and thought to myself 'What's another 28km, when I've come this far?' I do have to say that I was pretty sure that Rob hadn't done a 100km ride yet and that played into my decision making process. So at my 2nd hour stop I finished the little food that I'd brought with me and downed another swig of water and set out on my way. The final 28km were a nightmare.

I'd finished the one granola bar that I'd brought with me at 60km. I finished my water supply at 75km (hey, I thought I'd only be out for 72km!) but I couldn't quit. As the afternoon wore on, I started getting thirstier and thirstier. Then at about 80km I bonked. But still I kept going. I kept telling myself that I'd hate it if I'd come this far and missed my distance. Clearly though, I wasn't thinking straight through the dehydration and glycogen depletion.

The story does end well though and after a longish detour based on my evening 20km rides from the house and a couple of laps between my house and Sally and Rob's I hit 100km, my first century (metric, as I think it typically means 100 miles). I arrived home at 16.00 having eaten only a granola bar during the preceding 8 hours (I actually had to sit on the stairwell to gather enough coordination to get to my flat).



Now this is pretty important because it shows that even in a bad situation I can do 100km and it means that I'll be doing it at the Test Valley Tour. This was a relatively flat 100km (I think I did 572m of ascent and I'll need about 1000m) but it's a great start for training. All in all this was a great ending to a week that saw me breaking all sorts of personal records. 309.19km total distance, 11:27:55 in the saddle, 2214.9m of ascent, and 12,224 calories burned. Not too shabby I say.



P.S. As I was doing the screenshots and research for this post I noticed that at 12,782.3m of ascent I've climbed the height of Mount Everest (8,848m) nearly one and a half times on my bike! I wonder if I could have actually done the climb on foot ;)