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During a recent walk I noticed that I could hear birds chirping, that the sun was shining and that spring seemed to be booting up. The weather held until Saturday so the conditions were ideal for a nice bike ride. The ride started at around 0840, with frost on the ground and an Outdoor Air Temperature (OAT) of around 1°c.

Usually I ride alone but for once I met with a Strava user and we rode at his pace rather than mine. This is a rare luxury. Usually I push myself for the duration of the ride. I try to ride at threshold for as much of the ride as possible. This ride was at a more leisurely pace.

When you’re hiking, cycling, climbing or doing other sporting activities it is easy to forget to stop tracking an activity. When you’re at home or static this is less critical. When you get into a car after a hike or other activity that mistake will screw up your average speed and other data.

Yesterday I realised that I had forgotten to stop tracking on my Suunto device and on my apple watch. With the Apple watch this was less important because it logs individual climbs. With the Suunto device however it tracks the speed of the drive as well as the increase and decrease in altitude.

I have had a meetup.com account since I was using yahoo as my primary e-mail provider. For years my account was dormant because activities that I were interested in were either in another country or at a time when I could not participate. Recently I have found that activities are at times when I can participate. As a result of this I am building a new network of people to climb with.

Recently I bought a Training band and a rubber egg (otherwise known as a Pilates Stretching Hand Rehabilitation Ball) instead of a Fingerboard. I want to strengthen my fingers to progress as a climber. I often know what to do but finger strength is the limiting factor.

Ever since I saw fingerboards in web videos and in person I have wanted to get one but at first didn’t know where to get one and then didn’t find one at an acceptable price. When I saw it at one of the climbing gyms where I go the price was unreasonable so I lost interest. The one at Décathlon is at a better price so I was tempted. For the fingerboard I need to buy a drill, some screws, and place it. This is easy to do but the costs mount up.

This morning I completed Stage 9 of the Tour de Zwift. I have now finished the challenge. In the process I went from riding on the shorter events during the first stages to taking the long options for at least the last two stages.

A slow start before ramping up.

I don’t start the stage as fast as others. It takes me a few minutes to warm up and I have a psychological need to know that I’m over half way through a stage before I start pushing. I got two personal records on the last stage, personal record for at least one lap and although I was down to 420th place at the end of the first lap I was able to gain on other riders. I finished in the early to mid 300s so a gain of at least 50 places.

Activity trackers are designed for walking, running, canoeing and activities where you move your arms. Cycling is not one of those sports. Unless you’re cycling on a specialist bike that has handles you’ll be using your legs and your upper body will move very little. I have a workaround.

My workaround is to put the activity tracker in a pocket. In so doing it counts how many times a leg “steps” and your goal for the day is not missed. This is especially true when your goal is to take several thousand steps. Some would call it cheating but I call it thinking laterally.

Marie Kondo’s rule that you should only keep thirty books, that you should only keep those that you personally want to read or enjoy is a silly rule because it encourages people to limit their scope and perspective on the world.

People studying at the British Library with a small selection of books behind them

Childhood

One memory of my childhood is being surrounded by books and being able to look through hundreds of books, whether at home, in libraries or even mail order catalogues. As a child I loved the opportunities that books represented. One of my favourite shops in London is Waterstone’s near Piccadilly Circus. I loved browsing the current affairs sections, the documentary film section and others. I often wanted to buy entire sections but I had to limit myself to what I thought I would read.

The more often you boulder and climb, the stronger the muscles that pull the tendons to your fingers become, and the stronger those muscles become, the higher the grade of your climbs. Hand holds are not the rungs of a ladder or via ferrata. Sometimes you can use your entire hand but at other moments you will use just the fingertips of one hand.

On a climb such as this one I managed to get up two thirds to three fifths of the way up before my fear of falling took over. In this context it wasn’t that I was afraid of falling, after all I had “fallen on an easier route half an hour earlier. It’s that I could see what move I wanted to do, but my finger muscles would not allow it.

The Seventh stage of the Tour De Zwift was Innsbruck, a course that some people can do in about 388 minutes. It takes me around 54 minutes. As I have not ridden this course frequently enough I decided to try to keep up with others and that meant a 20 minute best of 197 watts.

My lack of familiarity with the course meant that when the climbs came up I did not push as hard or as long as I would have if I did know the course. I went up faster than some but was easily overtaken by others. On the Alpe de Zwift during my PR I did not have this issue.

I have ascended the Alpe de Zwift 5 times since i started using Zwift. My first climb took about one and a half hours, and then about one hour and sixteen minutes and finally just 57 minutes. I managed to get down to 57 minutes because I participated in Stage 6 of the Tour De Zwift event.

On previous rides I had ridden up the Alpe de Zwift alone. The first time I took it slow. My goal was simply to get to the top without worrying about how fast I did it. When that goal was achieved I went up once more alone and managed.