If I drove four hundred and thirty kilometres I would either be going on holidays or wasteful with petrol. To do the same thing on a bike is much better for the health of the planet and my own. The reason for this is simple. Good cardiovascular health.
Normally I would not consider riding this many times in a week. My rule was to ride twice per week, not more. If I ride more than twice per week, especially alone, I find car driver behaviour to be toxic.
Yesterday I went for an evening bike ride in Geneva and I chose to take the train home, rather than cycle. In the process I saw that trains are not that convenient later at night. The reason for this is that they’re smaller, so the space for bikes is restricted.
A person boarded before me so he was able to put his bike down and go and sit. I was after him so I was stuck standing with my bike.
For seasons, or even years I saw the Strava Elevation Challenge and I thought “I won’t even try this challenge, because I will fail”. This month I tried it, and I succeeded. Not only did I succeed to climb the 7000m suggested by the challenge but I got to 10,415m. I overshot by 4000m so far and I have a ride planned for this afternoon.
The ride I went on yesterday was 89 kilometres with over 700m of climbing.
Cyclists like to be lean and clean when they ride. They don’t like to ride with bags. They prefer to keep spares in the rear pockets of jerseys rather than carry a bag. As a hiker I don’t mind carrying a bag but I decided to try minimalism.
Top Tube Bag and Backpack When going for solo rides I was often happy to carry a backpack and use a bag under the top tube.
Today I tried route 473 which goes from the Morges Train Station towards Montricher and across, before heading back down to the lake side. This is a 57 or so kilometre loop along roads that were quite quiet. I don’t know whether that was because of the rain forecast or because people are on holiday.
The route from Morges up and out of Morges goes along a short voie verte where there are parts that are not tarmacced so be ready for that.
Yesterday I didn’t dress for cycling. My plan was to see if I could get the power meter to work and then go for a short ride. In the end I found that as one device failed to detect them I would try a second. The second worked after a few seconds. I calibrated the pedal, and then I went for a short ride.
The short ride I speak of became a longer ride.
Yesterday I was playing with Strava Flyoveers and I tried to share the videos of flyovers but rather than sharing the video as I had wanted to do it shared a hyperlink to the activities that were already shared. I then tried to share via Instagram but the result was a pixelated mess with a line.
What is a Flyover? A video flyover is a 3d video of the ride, hike or other sport that you have just completed in the same style as you see ahead of Tour De France Stages and others.
Yesterday we were cycling up towards Marchissy when a combine harvester began to follow us quite close. The experience of being followed, while cycling is quite something. These machines are large, with big tyres, and the driver is centred rather than to the left as with other vehicles. Luckily the gradient of the climb was not too steep.
After riding in two groups in a single day I expected yesterday evening to be relaxed.
Yesterday I went with a morning ride with TDC, which felt relaxed, before going for a ride with LeCercle in the evening. This group has a high level with many of the cyclists riding thousands of kilometres per year.
Yesterday I wrote about how groups that are large enough can cater to fast, and slow people. LeCercle feels like a smaller group of highly engaged cyclists who ride regularly.
Until Genolier I was able to stay with the group comfortably.
Meetup and Strava are two sites filling specific niches. Meetup is a dinosaur of the web. It dates back to 2005 when the web was still looking for a way to be sustainable, and thus, more fun. Meetup was good for people in big US cities, London and other metropolitain cities. If you lived in Bumbleduck nowhere it was not. (Intentional spelling)
Strava in contrast is a young company. It was created in 2009 and became popular among the cycling community for a while, before eventually including running, hiking and then climbing and many other sports.