R O T H A R . C O M

Yay! I’m fourteen days in to the 30, which puts me a week ahead of everyone else. Felt very tired this morning but seemed to ride well tonight and it was good to be out. Only two fools tried to kill me which is the worst so far. Running around now getting ready for the weekend and my trip to Guernsey. Should get a chance to revisit some old favourites tomorrow and then I’m racing in Herm on Sunday before getting the red eye back to Manchester on Monday morning before work. Weekend round up in the updates next week.

Finally came in from tonight’s ride at 22.40. Tired, but satisfied about having managed to shoehorn this one in. Nasty south-westerly headwind made progress out to Cheadle hard work, but with the wind at my back I flew home.

I don’t know if it’s the cold, or the sudden need for them to be doing a lot more work than they’re used to but I’m getting aching knees from all this riding. Nothing painful or uncomfortable, but just that constant reminder that they’re in recovery. Back to back meetings put the pressure on tonight and I only just managed my hour. Squeezed it in as a long commute home. Totally unprepared. No tools, spares or pump. No decent front light (just the little Photon LED). Made it back 5 minutes late for my next commitment and gave apologies. Good sense of contentment at fitting in the ride. Lots of traffic lights or a completely urban route meant another ride with a poor mileage count.

Spent the day at work glancing out of the window towards the hills which have been bathed in beautiful sunlight all day. The patches of white caused by the overnight snow have melted away and it’s been frustrating to know that my riding today will once again all take place in the late evening when it’s dark and cold. It was cold, but at least it wasn’t wet riding tonight. Rode down to Didsbury, ended up getting a bit disorientated in the maze of roads, so the mileage was pretty low tonight.

After reading Simon’s account of his ride today I wasn’t really looking forward to going out tonight. The ride home tonight wasn’t just chilly, it was properly cold. Dug out the lobster claw gloves, pulled on the Buffalo, donned some other cold and wet weather gear and rode out. Brrr. Coldest ride yet and the HID lights ran out of battery on the return leg, so I had to switch to the little back up LED upfront. After my early start there are a few of us involved in this little scheme now including Steve, Dr Jon and Marty too.

When planning today’s ride I decided that I’d try to find some more bits that were new to me. Inspired by the success of getting a route to Marple worked out I thought that it was about time to explore some more trails that I’ve been riding past for a long time. Specifically the ones that you see heading off underneath the viaduct behind the fishing ponds at Reddish Vale.

<a href=”http://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united-kingdom/manchester/119620943″>9 of 31</a><br /><a href=”http://www.mapmyride.com/find-ride/united-kingdom/manchester”>Find more Bike Rides in Manchester, United Kingdom</a>
Scouring Google satellite imagery revealed that there was a network of trails but that the obvious ones just let into an effective dead end because of the bends in the river. The route taken lies on the other side of the river from where you can push through to the Stockport Road (A6017). This is in fact just an alternative to the designated Transpennine Trail (TPT) route that climbs up and over the M60 and then brings you out at the top of the hill rather than the bottom. Given the mud, it’s probably wiser to avoid this new bit of cheek in all but the driest weather.

From the Stockport Road you pick up the TPT and follow the River Tame. At the end of Gibraltar Lane the bridge takes you over to the otherside. Now this is where things went a bit awry. My OS map of the Dark Peak doesn’t quite cover this area. It’s either just off the edge of the map or obscured by the key, so quite a lot of what followed next was guess work. I knew the TPT took you up to the main road via Apethorn Lane. This is way I should have gone, riding a section of the A560, before taking Joel Lane and the Werneth Low Road.

Opted to grind up to Peak Forest Canal. Explored a bit in Gower Hey Wood, headed up into the Housing Estate on the othersiide of the railway and then gave up hope of finding a way through and crossed back over the river and took the steps up and into Dan Wood. Great bit of riding here, except that as I approached Hyde I ran into a group of Youths messing about on motorbikes. It was a bit intimidating so I didn’t hang about and once into Hyde used the compass and OS map to get back onto the TPT (which after plotting the route I’ve discovered effectively made me double back on myself).

TPT to the climb up to Mottram Old Road and then discovered a Bridleway that has recently been created (not on the OS map) heading up past the Golf Course to the crest of Werneth Low. Nice trail, bastard steep at the bottom and had to get off and push for a bit. Once at the top rode along the ridge and then down the bridleway to Compstall. Found the plan to cut through Brabyn Park and over the railway and canal scuppered by the bridge being out and then had to double back and suffer the way up the hill from Marple Bridge. Route back to home was easy once I’d tied in the section from Marple Hall Drive. Stoked to have managed to have pulled this together. It’s an ace little loop, with scope for refinement by adding in and cutting out some bits.

Left it a bit late today to go riding, but given that I slept to about 11.30am, getting out early wasn’t a likelihood. Took out the Ti Deluxe to give it a bit of a shake down ahead of the racing next weekend. Both wheels need to go in the jig, the brakes need a bit of fettling and a new section of gear outer needs to be fitted for the rear mech too. I had a grand plan of getting to Harry Halls to pick up some new inner tubes but started to hit the wall after about ten miles so throttled back and took the tarmac home at Northenden rather than push it on towards Sale in the fading light. Lots of big ring riding. Chest seems to have cleared up after yesterday completely and I avoided getting rained on. Totalled 229 miles for February. I think that figure will be significantly higher in March if all goes to plan…

The weather today has been fairly grim. It hasn’t exactly been the kind of weather that inspires you to get out and ride and last night I had trouble sleeping again. Woke up this morning with a pain in my chest. Not sure if it was because I slept funny or had over done it on the sprinting last night, but it passed during the morning.

Tonight I had to go into Manchester to drop some stuff off. I think that if I keep making reasons to go out on the bike I’m going to be able to keep this up. The ride was a city centre route with lots of traffic, drunk pedestrians and heckling. Blowing a hoolie too so spent the entire wind either trying to keep the bike from getting blown into on coming traffic, battling to make headway or getting the daddy of all tailwinds.

I’ve never been a fan of the Beetham Tower. I think it’s fair to say that it’s a hideous fucking monstrosity that is completely out of place in it’s spatial position in Manchester’s city centre and no amount of comments from the likes of Tim Johnson is going to convince me otherwise. Tonight with the wind blowing, it’s like there’s a diesel train engine at idle continually humming. Of course it’s actually the documented sound that is close to standard musical C (approximately 262 Hertz) and is caused by the tower resonating.

The root cause is believed to be the rather pointless glass and steel ‘blade’ on the roof. The fact that Ian Simpson architects were paid a lot of money to come up with a design and didn’t properly model the impact on the local urban environment is bad enough. The fact that no one seems to be doing anything about resolving the issue is a whole lot worse. Attempts to rectify the problem have failed and the humming sound can still be heard, although apparently only on certain occasions and depending on wind direction…

After a week of riding I’m feeling it now and coughing up some interesting stuff. Hope that it’s not anything that’s going to stick around.

After having used it for a few weeks I’ve decided that Map my ride is actually rather good. I’ve backdated all my riding from February and also found that you can import in routes directly from gmap-pedometer, so even if you’ve been saving stuff there or have GPS based files there’s import mechanisms for them too. So tonight’s ride wasn’t terribly exciting. I put a few sprint intervals into it, but traffic and lots of traffic lights on red seemed to limit the mileage achieved in the time again.

So went and picked up the new bearings I mentioned yesterday for the Bonty wheels. How much to do think they’ll cost then? Forty-five-friggin-quid that’s how much. That’s a lot of money for four bearings even if they’re stainless steel and finest quality. Still I suppose it’s less than 10% what the wheels would have cost new, which puts it in an acceptable context.

Took the Harry Hall out again tonight and it was a really nice evening to be out. Big ringed it up the climb to the Mottram roundabout and then had a hand-of-god tailwind all the way home meaning that the homeward leg was substantially quicker than the outward leg. I’ve found it quite hard to squeeze these rides in around other commitments during the week so far and although Fridays and Wednesdays are the two nights I should theoretically be able to extend to longer sessions, tonight meant a commitment limiting the ride to just over an hour.

Any ride of just over an hour makes me realise that the frame however is too short for me and even stretched out with a super long stem and a layback seatpost with the saddle right back it’s still not big enough. An Indy Fab road bike would really be quite a nice thing to have, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon unless I win the lottery.