The Ditchling Devil (if it’s not online did it really happen?)

Since typing up the notes form my mini tour has turned into a bit of a chore, I thought I’d write a little about another recent ride. I feel like I exerted a great deal of effort over a week on the touring bike but never really made any huge distances, which begun to grate after a while. On a whim I entered The Ditchling Devil audax, a relatively new 200km event with a start in Wimbledon common – a rare local départ for a Londoner.

After a brisk early morning ride to the start – for which I arrived a good half-hour too early – other riders started to sign on. For those unfamiliar with audaxes, they are probably the least glamorous form of organised riding. The usual participants are otherwise unremarkable white, middle-aged men, dressed in shabby mismatching club kit and worn lycra or baggy shorts, tottering around in cleats and baggy windproofs; most often seen fettling something on an unashamedly functional bike, loaded with luggage and various navigational aids bodged to the handlebars. Aside from the stale jokes, they are a humble lot, steadily racking up huge distances over successive weekends before hauling themselves back to work on a Monday, much like anyone else, with little fanfare.

The crowd for this audax was a little different. Seemingly the proximity to the mid-week mecca of Richmond Park meant that the event fell squarely within the catchment of ‘serious club rider,’ and I was a little surprised to see a more lithe crowd of (still) middle-aged men tottering even more shamelessly in road cleats and tighter, newer lycra, with high-end road bikes and a lot more carbon on show. The odd triathlete had penetrated the ranks. There were probably more women in attendance than normal, and also some people who had yet to sprout grey hair. It was different.

srs bznz.

Predictably, a group of ‘serious club riders’ shot off the front and weren’t to be seen again. Fair enough. The route was a familiar one to Brighton via Ditchling Beacon, then back up Devil’s Dyke towards Surrey and its rolling hills, before a final ascent back into London. It was colder than expected but an enjoyable day, and after twitching around on my road bike for about 50 miles I finally settled into things. I spent most of the day riding with Andrew, who I’ve ridden with before. A couple of years ago Andrew also donated the 9-speed casette I have on my bike, which I turned over the entire day. (He was riding fixed and is a braver man than I…)

From the top of Ditchling

Coombe lane, comically annotated

Audaxes often have great controls – points on the route where you can stop, and get a little stamp to prove passage – which are sometimes fully catered by volunteers. We had bacon and sausage rolls at Ardingly. Pasta at someone’s house in Upper Beeding. And very cheap cake in Chiddingfold. Andrew and I kept a fairly even pace and steadily made our way around the route. It was grey and chilly but I was very grateful for the company. It was my longest ride this year by some distance, so I was keen not to over extend myself. Even the steeper climbs didn’t feel to bad. By the time I’d fought the headwind on the way home I’d clocked up about 140 miles.

Cake

Arrivée

I try and record most of my rides with some sort of GPS. A part of me is beginning to wonder why. I’ve used my phone for this: it’s cheap, reasonably accurate, and is a device I’d be carrying anyway. It’s been failing me quite often recently as the battery can’t record over the long time spans I need it to. One solution would be to ride faster. Or ride less. Or simply not bother. I quite like turning off the phone; not feeling chained to an inbox, and I often wonder whether the act of keeping this digital gps record of everything is simply another ball and chain. It’s certainly easy to become absorbed in technical detail or in-depth statistics, although I’ve yet to see anything remotely interesting borne of such an addiction. Quite the opposite in fact – the Garmin whores are a quick to sap a conversation of merit with their dull array of power statistics, gpx waypoint advice, and moving average conundrums.

It’s something I need to think about. This very (boring) blog was a response to some strange urge to record things, write them down. For what purpose I’m still not sure. If a Garmin doesn’t shit a gpx on the internet, did it really make a ride?

[Pictures are courtesy of Edward of Scoble from the parish of LFGSS]

Slowing down

For most cyclists, the ultimate objective is greater speed, and this is overwhelmingly the metric by which most riding is judged. Sure, some people dabble with distance, elevation, and perhaps even the obscure ‘saddle time’ – the truly perverse stare intently at graphs depicting heartrate and power output – but ultimately, the goal for most is speed.

Having taking a sabbatical of sorts from riding over the cold winter months, I’m faced with the prospect of a lot of slow riding before I get going again. For quite a long time I’ve been able to chart progress in my riding, but like most, what I’ve really been focusing on is speed. The other bits have improved too, but the subconscious desire to simply go faster, at least when it comes to the dull business of looking at gps outputs and statistics, still remains.

So riding to my parent’s house this weekend on my improvised touring bike was a bit of a slap in the face. At the height of summer, I’ve been able to ride the 50-something mile route – which isn’t flat – in under 3 hours. It felt pretty good a lot of the time, having the confidence to scythe through the country lanes barely pausing to grab a snack from a jersey pocket, knowing the legs will carry you home. Clearly that kind of form has deserted me, since it doesn’t keep well in the fridge, or something. Riding a heavy steel bike with relatively fat tyres, and occasionally panniers is a new experience for me. It certainly doesn’t glide over the undulations like my road bike, and every gradient takes its toll. Those 50-something miles felt like 80-something.

Slow bikes for slow people

As the annual flurries of snow finally melt and trickle into the south London gutters, I’m reminded that the unusually snowy weather hasn’t completely destroyed any riding plans I might have had. As eager twitter ‘tweeps’ may have noticed, I’ve acquired a bargainous second hand mountain bike. The weather and the novelty of a new bike has been a surprise tonic at a time when my appetite for road riding has subsided almost completely.

I’d been after a touring bike for some time. Late last year I stumbled across what seemed to be the dream-frame, and although it was far beyond my means, it did force me to think about what I wanted from a tourer, especially considering it would become my 4^th bike. All my other bikes are road-orientated, and given the bridleway shenanigans I’ve got up in the past, off-road capabilities seemed a must. Being vertically challenged meant smaller (than 700c) wheels should probably feature. And just like that I’d entered mountain bike territory. Which was a bit scary at first. But also rather exciting. As a nodder whose riding has almost solely been on-road, the prospect of trading the tarmac for the trails feels like being let in on a dirty, dirty secret.

After browsing forums and eBay for a couple of months, I stumbled across – and promptly purchased –  this little Scott Summit.

The epic commuting possibilites frontier has just extended.

I spent a surprisingly pleasant day on the train to collect it from the wild west of Cheltenham. And it really is a lot of fun. I’ll need to be wary of being seduced by the upright position: it’s ridiculously comfortable. It also gives me the rare sensation of being able to boss the traffic from a higher viewpoint. The brakes aren’t great, but only fall short of those on my road bike, and only just.

Dusting off the fixed cobwebs

I haven’t actually done any dusting (perish the thought), nevermind the futility of doing so if cobwebs were actually fixed, as some in our household undoubtedly are. No, instead I’ve simply managed to put back together my humble fixed gear bicycle. The cockpit took a bit of damage a couple of months ago courtesy of a rather large pothole, complemented by my poor bike control skills. I managed to fall in front of a large gaggle of commuters, too, hilarious it must have been. It was one hit too many for those beleaguered and already twice owned Cinelli drops and Campag aero brake levers. A rim was also destroyed in the process, thus making for quite a costly revamp. So my French beater has been doing most of the tawdry commuting duties for the last couple of months:

One of Raymond Poulidor’s finest supermarket bicycles

Since this early incarnation it – or ‘Poulidor’ as it has affectionately come to be known  – has acquired mudguards and a rack, not to mention a good helping of brake dust and road filth, turning it into the ideal commuting bicycle, were it not for the woefully underpowered yet frightfully loud single pivot brakes, which are certainly good for waking one up in the morning.

French bicycle follies aside, the revamp got me thinking of all the terrible versions of that bicycle that came before it. I’ll spare you the full documentary, but from a flat-barred ‘trendy urban single-speed’ with two heavyweight wheel shaped doghnuts attached, my fixed steed has slowly become something approaching a versatile road machine.

The Fixieskidder, placed elegantly alongside the phallic and entirely unhumourous bollards of East Dulwich.

Clip on bottle cages and mudguards for winter. I’ve upgraded from the quill stem to an ahead set up. I’m quite happy to see the back of the quill stem, which has been replaced by a comically short oversize modern version. The bike was probably too big for me when I bought it; a mistake I’ll never make again.

Now all that remains is to ride it. I expect to be grunting and gurning and expelling all manner of expletives if I can get out to the odd hill in Kent tomrrow.