A long-overdue week off work, during which – as predicted – I barely made a scratch on the enormous heap of queued-up chores. I did have some nice lie-ins (lies-in? Definitely not “lay-ins”) though.
I took the new carbon wheels out for a spin on Tuesday morning, then rode that bike to Felixstowe for Tuesday night training. Not sure they give me much advantage other than psychological, but they’re definitely lighter and more aerodynamic, and look nice! The whole bike pretty much has a matt black vibe now, which is obviously perfect for road safety.
I took the latest bike out for a little test ride (incorporating a couple of shop stops) on Wednesday. Not quite as smooth this time, as I had to stop and return home almost immediately after realising I’d forgotten to tighten the rear wheel nuts, then it turned out that the fancy electronic gear change battery wasn’t as charged as I thought, so I ended up doing the whole ride in one gear (fortunately something I’m pretty used to!). Nothing actually wrong with the bike though. I’m waiting for the unofficial charging cable I ordered to arrive (obviously Shimano wouldn’t just stick a USB-C port on it) before it can start its job as my daily (well, Tuesday to Thursday) commuter.
Lots of running this week, but no racing. Monday’s (easy 8 trail miles in the Fynn Valley) and Saturday (parkrun, plus commute and course checks) both felt horrendous, with my heart racing despite a very slow pace. I guess some combination of humidity and dehydration to blame. The other runs felt OK, and my heart rate was much more in keeping with the pace, so I don’t think I’m dying.
One of the few jobs I did actually get round to was cutting back the vegetation (wisteria and some other kind of climber) on the back of the house. As usual I’d left it longer than I should have, which entailed a trip up onto the roof to disconnect the bits that had wound themselves round the chimney and TV aerial mounting.
I spent an hour or two removing the spokes from the wheels from the purple bike, with the intention of reusing the rims with the new hubs I’d bought. Unfortunately after doing that, and while taking all the various measurements to figure out what size spokes to buy, I noticed that a spoke hole on one of the rims was ripped through. I’ve ended up ordering new rims too now, which means that these wheels are going to end up costing more than the (admittedly incredibly cheap) carbon ones I got for the road bike. Also that I wasted my time carefully disassembling the old ones into pieces that I’m no longer going to reuse. Still, they might come in handy one day …
This week was Robin’s 666th parkrun, so (given that it’ll be a while before the next proper milestone at 1000) he decided to run it in cut-off jeans and an Iron Maiden shirt. A few people joined in, but I decided that acquiring appropriate attire just for this one event would be a bit of a waste.
I lost my Stryd foot pod a few weeks ago, during the Stowmarket Friday 5. I was going to just do without like a normal person, but ended up caving in and buying a second-hand (but a newer model than the one I lost) replacement from eBay. One of the selling points of the newer (not latest) model is a more secure fit, so hopefully I’ll keep hold of this one!
I took a small step towards disconnection from the big surveillance capitalism giants by switching the browser on my laptop and phone from Chrome to Vivaldi. So far it’s been a pretty seamless experience (and free of any AI nonsense), although I’m yet to see how well it will work on my work laptop with their various random network blockages.