This is Fausto Coppi’s 1952 World Championship winning Bianchi Specialissima complete with insulated bottle covers, Campagnolo derailleurs, Ambrosio forged aluminium stem and Universal brakes. The frame was a huge advance on the bikes of the time…
Whenever I look at black and white photographs of cycling heroes, at any time from the inaugural Tour de France in 1903 to Tom Simpson’s heyday in the 60s, I am awed by their achievements. I mean, just look at their legs, their faces, their brutal bikes.
Fausto Coppi’s full-steel bike must weigh about 30 pounds, as much as a hefty budget mountain bike today. Look at the un-ergonomic bars, the single chainring, the tiny cassette. Then imagine climbing big mountains on it, trying to get comfortable on the leather saddle, wrestling with the tyre wrapped in a figure-eight around your shoulders and back.
Coppi won the Tour twice, the Giro five times, and the Paris-Roubaix in 1953. Here is one of cycling’s true legends in action:
On Saturday I’ll be catching a train down to Plymouth in advance of the Dartmoor Classic, a 100-mile sportive. It’s looking pretty hilly:
The Dartmoor Classic route and elevation chart.
If you’re hitting this from Google you may also be interested in this Mapometer map.
I’ll be riding with Jamie and Duncan. Based on my outing with them a fortnight ago, they’re both on pretty useful form. Jamie, in particular, is capable of pushing his body to the limits and beyond, as evidenced by his serious accident in the 2007 London Marathon, where he collapsed from heat exhaustion a few hundred yards before the finish. He still blames a spectator’s food bag, a la Armstrong on the 2003 Tour.
So, even though I’m not supposed to be hammering it 6 days before the Marmotte, I am expecting a decent ride. It should give my legs the shock they need to regain Reigate-like form.
Another big ride project not dissimilar to this one. Mike Beauchamp rode 7000km across Canada, which is an outrageously long way. His video (which is 1 hour long by the way, the above is just a trailer) makes use of an ingenious wing mount for the camera. Perhaps I’ll be able to catch the full movie at the next Bicycle Film Festival.
Thinking about it, maybe my creaking bike vid is worthy of submission. He who dares wins.
Just back from a 2-hour Regent’s Park / Swain’s Lane session in the warm sunshine. Nice to have it back after quite a few cloud-covered outings.
My technique in the park today was, rather than ride at threshold for 5 minutes, start from the same corner but go all-out to the traffic lights, then recover. On my first one of these I hit 193 bpm, which I think must be close to my maximum. Needless to say the 2 boys attempting to follow me were toasted, burned, then binned.
Ignore (again) the ridiculous 240bpm peak in the first 5 minutes.
I’ve identified a definite bug in my Garmin heart-rate monitor, reviewed earlier on this blog. Occasionally, in the first few minutes of a workout, the monitor will display a massively erratic reading, e.g. 240 bpm, while I’m coasting downhill. This is kind of annoying, because it throws my nice heart-rate graph out of whack.
On the subject of Garmin, it’s great to see continual enhancements to the user interface on the Connect website. The whole Garmin project feels fresh and innovative – I will certainly be investing further.
Here’s one example: the ‘Player’ workout playback function, with variable speeds and micro-controls to view exactly when and how hard you were training. However, I guess it’s supposed to show a graph in the middle – my version didn’t.
I’ve recently set up a new fundraising page with Justgiving in advance of La Marmotte. On a serious note, please do head over and drop some coins in the box. Appreciate.
JustGiving have recently relaunched their website, and if my personal experience is anything to go by, it has been a very painful week for them. Somehow (and coincidentally on the morning after I set up my new fundraising page via the old site), JG rolled out a completely new platform and user interface without, apparently, testing any of it.
Some stuff that went wrong:
The login functions broke, so that when I tried to log in I was redirected to… the login page.
My fundraising page went down to be replaced by an ‘oops’ error message.
Lots of friends are still complaining they can’t access the page.
The flash widget doesn’t work.
The badge image link is broken (see the sidebar – I’m leaving it there as a protest).
This is what I get on pretty much every other page on the JG site.
Problems aside, I think the redesign looks great – but the implementation really has been disastrous.
At a weigh-in last Wednesday my weight was 10st 10, a new – and probably ultimate – low. On Saturday I was 10st 12, on the same scales as I used just before Christmas, when I was a hefty 11st 12 (who ate all the mince pies, etc.). I haven’t weighed this little since I was a malnourished student surviving on espressos and rollies. (more…)
I rode this hilly 60-mile loop from Denham yesterday. It goes up Whiteleaf (double chevron) then cuts back round to take in another couple of chevron ascents to Dunsmore:
Denham is 25 mins from Marylebone, is just further west than South Ruislip, and is pretty much the quickest way to bypass the traffic out west of the smoke. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth the hassle and extra time, but actually it’s much more pleasant to sit with a latte on the train then ride straight into the countryside, than to sweat through traffic lights and exhaust for 90 mins to reach the same spot.
My workmate Felipe sent me a link to an article about biking the ‘World’s Most Dangerous Road’ – which turns out to be in Bolivia, not at Elephant & Castle, as I previously thought. It’s added to the ‘I will ride this before I’m 60′ list.
