First ride under 40m!

Wooooh, things went very well back on Wednesday. The ride to work was ok, but the ride home I was in the zone and pushing hard. Made it home in 39m 26sec - and that ain't too bad if I do say so myself!

My average speed over the whole ride was 15.9km/h, my slowest speed was 16.5km/h and my fastest speed was 30.1km/h. And this isn't peak speeds (my slowest would have been zero when I stopped for traffic), this is the average recorded over a kilometer by my tracking app. It doesn't record peak speeds, so there would have to have been either a flat bit of ground or a downhill section where I was pedaling hard across the whole km to record that best speed.

Pretty happy with that time, I thought it would take me longer to decrease my time from my original hour and a quarter times. I was quite happy with my first under an hour time, and then again for my first under 50 minute time. Now I've managed to break the 40 minute barrier, so quite chuffed about that.

Mind you, that was also pushing hard the whole time, my average ride time is still around the 50-55 minute mark, it'll be a while yet until I can consistently get sub-40 minute times.

Next major goal is to ride into the city - which is around the same distance, but this is to help out my better half who has this as her goal. Just takes a bit of time to get used to riding the bike - especially when it's been a few years since the last time riding any decent distance.

Straight edge razor

Nice, finally a non-bicycle post!

So, I've been thinking about getting a straight edge razor for ... at least fifteen if not twenty years. Not because it's "manly" or any of that slop, but it's something I've been thinking about for a long time. I've always been indecisive about it because the list of positives and negatives were about the same length, so it cancelled out.

With the price of my preferred cheap disposables going up, the price balance tipped over to making the straight edge a better option - when I'm not in a rush! Basically, buying double edge razors online in bulk (packs of like 100) and dividing them in half means that each shave would be about 4c or so. As opposed to getting close to a dollar for the decent disposables.

So I bought a cheapy off eBay, which uses the single-use straight edge razors. It's "stainless steel" (we'll see just how stainless $7.99 really is) and I figure it's so much better than a proper one. A good carbon steel shaver is around $300+ but needs stropping, sharpening, constant honing and maintenance and if you nick or roll the edge, it's either a write-off or an expensive repair! Much better to just replace the cutting edge.

Anyway, it arrived this week and today I gave it a go for the first time - very slow and cautious! Only cut myself four times, which I thought was a pretty good effort. Blade is good and sharp, three of the cuts nearly insta-healed, one was a good one that bled plenty and left a mark on my face.

And I can totally sympathise with Chaplin and Hitler going for that style of mo'. Trying to shave that spot under the nose? That's hard!

It's holding

 Rode to work and back today on the fixed flat. I swear it feels like the pressure is lower and gives more rolling resistance, but pressure gauge says it's holding. And I'm sure if it had a leak, I couldn't have done two 16km rides (there and back) without it getting noticeably low.

So I'm going to declare success and say it's holding. In my bag of tricks I'm now carrying a spare tube, so if I do get a flat on the way to / from work I can just swap out the whole tube and worry about repairing the one with the puncture when I'm at home.

In other non-bike news (it seems like all my posts recently have been about the bike) pretty much all my other hobbies are on hold. Not for any particular reason, but it seems like lately I haven't had any motivation to do any of my other creative outlets. It's like all I do when I get home or have some time off is sit and stare at my phone. Very not happy about that, almost getting to the point where I want to install some type of parental control app to reduce the amount of screen time I have. Or at least quantify it so I can have some hard numbers. Though "too much" should be all the data I need.

First flat

 So I didn't ride in the last few days and I was walking past my bike in the shed, checked the wheels as I walked past and the front tyre was flat.

Dang!

No biggie, at home, so a good chance to see if I can change a tyre on the side of the road if I need to!

The good news is that I can change a tyre with the simple tools that I carry, and the bike pump I've got can put enough pressure in there to get me home. So if this happens on the ride to/from work, it won't totally stop me. Took just under 30 minutes to do the change, though if I was really smart, I'd just carry a spare tube and patch the holy one at home.

Edit: turns out the patch was no good. An hour later and the tyre was dead flat again. I think I know where I may have gone wrong, so I'll have another go at it.

Edit Monday morning: second attempt was still holding pressure in the morning, yes! I'll pull out the compressor this arvo and put it to full pressure.

Another big improvement

 Still going on about the bike riding!

So, on the weekend I was able to do some more modifications on the bike. I replaced the tyres (and tubes) which were ... I have no idea how old. At least ten, possibly up to fifteen years old I think. Old and cracked rubber, the sides were breaking and I could see the reinforcement starting to poke through. Definitely on the way out, and the last thing I'd want is a tyre bursting on the way to work. A puncture I could fix, a failed tyre would be impossible. The original tubes seemed ok, so I'll hang on to those as emergency backups.

I also picked up a new (to me, got it from a second hand shop) bike seat post that was longer, so now I have the seat up a lot higher. Now I can actually extend my leg when pedaling! Much less stress on the knees, able to put much more power down and able to use higher gears. Instantly noticeable difference.

My first ride was about 1 hour 10 minutes each way (or so), my old best time was 55 minutes or so, today's ride was 44 minutes (and a few seconds). A ten minute improvement! Not sure how much of that was attributable to the tyres and how much to raising the seat, but it's good to see improvements.

New "personal best"

Ride in to work today, time was 59 minutes flat. Nice improvement over last weeks 1 hour 7 seconds....

But, today I "cheated" and had my id ready. All my previous rides I'd had it in my bag, as it gave me an excuse to stop and get off the bike, rummage around in my bag and fish it out. Then drink some water as well. To me it felt like I was stopping from 2 up to 5 minutes there - something I didn't need to do on the way out which gave my rides home a few minutes bonus.

This morning I prepped and put my id in my pocket instead, so as I approached I was able to pull it out and was waved through almost without stopping. Assuming that was the only difference between my last ride and this morning, I saved 67 seconds by having it ready. Guess the pause just felt longer when I'd stop to rest.

I think it'll be a while before I beat 59 minutes, but it's good that I'm now under an hour. And already shaved 15 minutes off my first ride!

New personal best

 Nice! Rode to work again today (didn't yesterday) and managed to get there in one hour and seven seconds. I thought it would take me longer to get my times down.

First day's ride was 1h11m / 1h/18m, second day was 1h14m both ways. So from an average of 1h14m down to a hair over an hour, that's a big improvement! I had made it a goal to get my time down under an hour, but didn't think I'd be able to do it this soon! Pretty sure the alterations I've been making to the bike helped - still want to get the seat higher.

The ride home was a bit slower - 1h8m. But that's a Friday afternoon in the heat with the extra traffic plus some extra humidity due to the afternoon rains we'd had.