Testing Times

A few notes on recent rides and some annoying failures. Some human, some technical.

Benjamin Allen’s March Madness, 01/03/25

A much harder ride than it looked on paper. 100km across the Welsh Marches, with 1400m of climbing. There were a couple of really stinky climbs and the general terrain in those parts is distinctly Devonian – lumpy roads, grotty lanes and endless bloody hills. I got round, but it was no jolly romp. Fitness definitely not where it should be…

I did have one interesting technical issue – my dynamo and Luxos U light will happily maintain my navigation phone at 100%. What they won’t do is charge it up if I start a ride at a much lower percentage. So there was a certain amount of anxiety about whether my nav would last. I did have a power bank, but that coughed up a scant 400mah (out of a theoretical maximum of 5000mah) before expiring. All a bit worrying and I’ve started exploring the current state of my powerbank empire and the actual capacity, vs what the labels say. All of them are a few years old, so it might just be that they’ve degraded.

Combwich Century 16/03/25

A bit of a disaster really. Rode down the afternoon before (Bristol to Honiton) and stayed with the organiser. Even though the ride was mostly across the Levels, I felt sluggish and was forced to deploy the Ancestor (37 x 42) to get up the Corfe climb. It’s not that kind of climb. It’s long, but not steep. The Ancestor is for getting up the likes of Crowcombe (25%) not long, steady efforts. And I was slow. So very, very slow.

Struggling on Corfe worried me, so I wasn’t in the best frame of mind to start the Combwich Century, which is a hilly bastard (it has AAA points) and goes up the notorious Crowcombe Combe. The climbing also starts pretty much as soon as you’ve left Honiton. An overnight flat was a further setback and by the time I’d dragged my fat arse over the horrible climb past Hembury hillfort, I’d had enough. A couple more brutal slopes beyond Cullompton settled matters and I turned for home. DNF. CBA. Yes, I could have made it round in time, but it would have been a nasty slog and I simply didn’t have one in me.

A couple of days later I rode back to Honiton and on the return, my pedal fell off. End bearing totally destroyed. Had I carried on with the Combwich, it would have failed somewhere on Exmoor, rather than in easy range of a comfy garage and a rescue from my lovely wife. A bullet dodged.

Pondering afterwards, I realised that in 2022 (when I last rode the Combwich and got up Crowcombe) I’d ridden about 1500km at this point of the year. This year? Not much over 400km. So the miles need to increase as I build up to LEL in August. That was kind of the plan, start the year slow & not burn out, but it sucks to be dragging my lardy carcass around like a hideous slug.

Mad March Up and Blackdown, 23/03/25

Another 100km, and another ride that felt harder than it looked. I seem to have lost any ability to read an elevation profile. This time there were signs that I’m starting to feel a bit livelier, but I’m still dying on hills.

My plan was to ride to the start, but that fell apart when my beloved Rivet saddle snapped a nose bolt.

That’s my LEL saddle, a tried and trusty part of my kit. Bollocks. Rode back home and managed to find a spare (Brooks) bolt which did the job. Jumped in the car and made it to the start.

I also tested my new powerbank (a Veektomx 10000mah) and a new charging strategy. Start with nav phone at 100%, powerbank at 50% and connect them in sequence. The powerbank does passthrough charging (power in and out at the same time) so I wanted to see if it would keep the phone topped up while also charging up itself. Not quite, but I finished the ride with the phone on 100% and the powerbank on the same % as it started. That at least tells me if I start with both on 100%, they should both be on 100% when the dynamo light comes on. Then I can use the bank to keep the phone topped up through the night. My next test will be to see how much doing that will take out of the bank.If, at the end of an 8hr ride, the phone is on 100% and the bank is on (let’s say) 50%, that means it’ll do a second night and I’ll be very happy.