how did i enjoy the cycling

Ive felt it would be worthwhile writing a bit about how i felt about the cycling and bike stuff in general , also some of my cycling equipment to remind myself of how it went and what i would do different next time !

             I was anxious about the cycling before I set off at Malin Head because of my injuries and lack of training but it went well and in the end I enjoyed it , I now feel really proud to be able to say i have cycled the length of ireland , I’m glad I chose north to south doing the malmiz instead of peoples usual mizmal M2M , the Irish roads were very good for cyclists better than the UK ! It would be lovely to have a few months and do the whole 2500km of the wild atlantic way its such a beautiful friendly country , I never encountered any of the usual crap touring cyclists get in the uk which at times can even become violent 

     my fitness held out just ! my knee was hurting at the end from an old cartilage ski injury, I got this injury 20years ago and i now believe it is the source of the bakers cyst which is bigger now than at the start of the cycling and causing me to limp occasionally , 

      I used to cycle to work every day there and back it wasn’t far just over 2mile but it was enough to keep my cycle fitness up that on top of my running kept me fit ,But more importantly that wee bone at your bum the muscles around that stay firm when you cycle regularly  , I’ve not been cycling much the past 5 years and some days my bum got real saddle sore , so bad that I got of the bike one day and said to sheila oooo ring sting she said what does he know about cycling lol , 

 

      I really regretted not fitting tri bars so i could adopt the superman position sometimes to stretch my back and relieve my wrists and shoulders , or I could even have tried a set of butterfly handlebars just so i could take the pressure of my palms more often , because some days i felt i had gave myself HAVS ( hand arm vibration syndrome )from spending all day cycling with my hands mostly on the hoods of the brakes , this wasn’t helped with the fact my cycling gloves are old and the padding is perhaps maybe not as it should be and not providing enough cushioning  , it also wasn’t helped by me choosing to do all the cycling on my cyclocross bike which had skinny road tires on at 60bar giving no cushioning up through the frame to my hands 

          My lower back and shoulders also got sore after a few days because of the lack of cycling position movements , I found myself enjoying standing up on the pedals on steep inclines just to get into an upright position , and adjusted the seat post height and handlebars slightly a few times to help my knee and back .except for my knee the other weak muscles improved as the week went on 

          To speak of bikes i chose to take my cyclocross bike over my touring bike for nearly all of the cycling,Because this bike was more lightweight and I felt might be faster but the gear ratio on the cyclocross bike is 14 gears , It really could have been doing with a bigger ring at my feet because on the flat pushing hard I would only get a top speed of around 25mph ! I’ve been able to get more than that out my mountain bike due to the larger gearing , 

       I’ve always dreamed of treating myself to my dream touring bike a thorn expedition and originally I had planned to treat myself to this bike for this holiday but ! I really grudge the 3 grand asking price of this kind of bike . I still do especially after meeting the german cyclist on his classic raleigh frame he had customised , I’ve decided i shall do something similar with the touring bike i have , had i bought myself a good brooks saddle right at the start of my cycling life it would by now have done thousands of miles and be moulded into my shape for comfort , 

      other things i regret not taking was lights I’ve got plenty bike lights in the garage at home , i really should have put some on the bikes especially a back light , this became most apparent to me on the caha pass when i realised i had to cycle through a reasonably long unlit tunnel which i couldn’t see in the middle ! because i had no front light and if cars came in the tunnel behind me without a back light i may have been hard to spot , it also didn’t help that pass was so high up it was in the cloud so a bit misty to be cycling twisting mountain passes unlit , 

        This was the first time Ive had a supported cycling holiday and it made a huge difference not having to carry panniers full of clothes and camping equipment other things it helped with was food and drinks . i could use my platypus and carry minimal cycling tool kits with me , the downside (if there really was one) is that sometimes i couldn’t cycle to our intended destination in time and required sheila to pick me up and then in the morning drop me back off at the start/stop point ,this all wasted cycling time but it was much better than carrying all my gear , i did carry my poncho and a lightweight waterproof jacket in my platypus bag , but i never used the poncho i was really lucky with the weather 

   

     The wide verges on most of the Irish roads were ideal for cyclists , and i think in general the Irish drivers are much more courteous towards cyclists than they are in the uk , i would guess the Irish roads have less deaths than the UK without checking the stats on line I could be wrong i just felt safer, there is a lot of roadside memorials to road deaths proper stone memorials most with pictures of the dead motorist or motor-biker but i only seen one ghost bike ,

     I opted to use my garmin watch to check my milage as i went , i regret not changing the battery in my old cycle computer as that was much better for keeping note of my distances on previous cycle trips ,one of the reasons was that i would forget to take note of my garmin watch distance at lunch stops and could only update my online garmin page and strava when i was in a decent wifi area ,

           sheila has counted up the distance shown on my strava page at 676.9km which is about 420miles I’m not sure if thats right i have read its about 530mile normally and thats what it felt like ! i only forgot to switch my watch on twice for a couple of mile before i realised so if thats what strava is saying it is then my garmin watch is very accurate normally ( further investigation required ) 

         my cycling shoes shorts and gloves are all getting weary now they have all done thousands of cycle miles and take a pounding , but after going for a year and a half now without buying any clothes or shoes i decided i would just make do and they coped ok they may have some life left in them yet ! , if i ever get the time to cycle the north sea cycle route which is on my bucket list i may treat myself to some new kit for that ,or maybe even just a brooks saddle and tri bars for that bike to do the Hebway which is also on my radar ( cheers for the book bob ) 

   

  My old car cycle carrier done the job on the van but only just ! its held onto the vehicle by straps hooked on and one time when i hit a big bump two of the straps came out and the bikes nearly came off , on two other occasions one strap loosened itself entirely, its at least 15year old i bought it for my mondeo  if i done a bike trip like this again i would definitely get myself a better cycle carrier,

             Being a cynical person ive never been able to work out just who to trust about which products to buy not just bikes but anything who's opinion can you trust ? because opinions are like arseholes we all have them ! this has lead over the years to me making lots of purchasing errors as regards bikes and other equipment , now that I have had so many different types of bikes here's my honest opinion . I am just a normal working man I have not broke any cycling records or won any races I have always had to have a job and have obviously not got any sponsors its just my honest opinion ,  At present I have 4 bikes in my garage and one on the shetlands at work two racing style bikes , one of which at work the other an old Raleigh classic which hangs from hooks in the rafters of my garage , the other supposedly light weight bike is a cyclocross bike with a carbon front fork which I used for the trip along with my touring bike , and I also have a mountain bike which is in fact my fifth mountain bike they have came along way since I bought my first bike at the age of 25 it was a trek mountain bike a newish outdoor activity at the time  , like most new sports this was an expensive bike that technology quickly made redundant the sport and its equipment were growing so fast that by the time it got its first splash of mud it was an outdated design , nowadays I view that as unimportant and the bike itself was a perfectly good machine for my skill level

     

   

I am often asked by friends and family for some advice on which bike to buy! so here is my advice -There is absolutely no point in me trying to advise anyone on what kind of bike to buy until they honestly know what they wish to do with it! the amount of friends I have that have bought bikes that they have hardly/never used in their garages and huts would be impossible to guess , some people view themselves as mountain bikers and buy full on downhill spec flying V mountain bikes that are useless for going uphill or a long days road trip , others think they are going to be MAMILs ( middle aged men in lycra ) they buy super light race spec high geared road machines that are unsuitable for trails or canal paths and don’t join a cycling club, they may enter one event and decide it’s not for them , I’ve known others to buy a top of the range touring bike that they couldn’t find a friend to go touring with and didn’t want to cycle alone and never use it except for a couple of trips along the canal to Edinburgh or Glasgow and back , and other friends that buy a shops cheap highbred for canal paths that require a bit of servicing and looking after that break too easily due to lack of maintenance/use , I cannot talk I have made mistakes with bikes plenty of them ! and that’s the reason I have had around 10-12 bikes in 25years of different types of cycling, I now have 5 bikes a basic mountain bike but with front suspension and disc brakes, a classic raleigh racer a modern racer by specialised , a cyclocross and my touring bike, and TBH I could basically get away with only using two of those bikes the mountain bike and cyclocross my tourer has done thousands of miles and it’s a good work horse so I could also just use that instead of my cyclocross,

                So once you know what you want to do with a bike you can choose one that will last you a lifetime and even be an air loom to the next generation, (whilst on holiday in Copenhagen I was impressed by the amount of cycles and cycle lanes in that city it was awesome most people don’t have cars and whiole families all use the bikes locked up on the streets ), most companies will custom build a bike for you obviously at a cost or you can source one suited to your needs then swap bits and pieces to suitwhatever activity your doing that day,

                Possibly the most important thing is the frame get the correct frame size for your shape which may be different for some people whoi are the same height dependant on the inside leg and back lengh, classic touring bikes used butted Reynolds tubing , Reynolds 531 is the most sought after frame tubing ,for decades and perhaps even still today it’s been the most popular tubing for bike frames world wide , Introduced in 1935 and for many years at the forefront of alloy steel tubing technology, 531 cycle tubing has been superseded by more complex alloys and heat-treatment/cold work cycles as Reynolds continues to compete with other manufacturers of steel for the bicycle industry, 531 is the pipe spec and this pipe is lightweight strong and easily welded if you are stuck in some back country with a broken set of forks its easily repaired unlike carbon fibre or expensive alloys which are basically unrepairable  ! in these modern days though most people would choose different spec pipe for different cycle purposes for example, my touring bike is all lightweight steel my cyclocross has a lightweight steel frame with carbon fiber front forks to take the knocks, but the frame pipe spec you choose is down to what you want to use the bike for other considerations are fork width to incorporate mudguards’ and also do you want eyelets for a pannier rack front and back or even bottle holders,

                Easy to choose is the seat? well when I say easy its only easy when you know what you want, the best bicycle seat manufacturer in the world is brooks saddles and if you buy one of their leather seats in your youth it molds itself into your shape after a thousand miles or so, keep oiling it and you will have the perfect shaped seat for your life, I wish I had bought one 25 year ago I’ve always just used what the manufacturer had on the bikes that I had bought and toughed it out

                Handlebars are a difficult choice and one I want to experiment more with. classic drop bar racing handlebars are great but I wish I had bought bigger ones and possibly fitted them with tribars, I would love to try a set of butterfly style handlebars just to give them a try, my moutainbikes of course have straight handlebars and I’ve fitted little risers at the end for when I’m out on log days to get differing hand hold positions which of course also affects your shoulders neck and lower back where you spend most of your time holding your handlebars, can be the difference between sore neck sore back HAVS or good control  

     Tires I would always buy standard size wheels so you can source spare tubes easily in my opinion you are also better choosing a set of wheels that are capable of taking different tyres for example my cyclocross bike is capable of taking pure road tyres and touring/trail tyres and I swap them round , and the forks of my mountain bike are big enough to get a set of fat boy tires on it

                Gears in the early days of mountain biking nearly all mountain bikes had 21 gears with your standard 3 front wheel gears and 7 at the back you hardly used the bottom granny gears and most of the next gears say 4 to 18 where very similar which meant it was truly 21 different gears ! so the modern way is 14 gears with the front and back wheels being of much differing sizes from the old style 21 , the point of all of this is that on the flat roads you should be comfortably in the very top gear pushing between 25-30mph(no wind in your face) as soon as any incline comes along you want to be able to drop down to a gear where you can comfortably keep the bike moving forward without getting out of your seat , but gearing makes a huge difference if you are trying to keep up with a group , lance Armstrong was famously credited with using a higher cadence at a lower gear to beat his competitors on the uphill’s ,as in loads of easy pedaling as opposed to less revolutions that are harder to maintain, personnaly i would love to be able to buy a bike with a rohlof Hubb this set of ingenious internal hub gears has a good range of gears inclosed in a hub in the rear wheal and is virtually maintenance free with easy push button up and down gears , this fitted with a rubber chain would in theory make a system you wouldnt need to oil and maintain for thousands of miles cycling ,

                Pedals are easily changed around I have lots of sets of pedals and have double sided cleats single side cleat with a pedal and mountain bike pedals with cleats on one side and obviously ive also got just plain basket pedals which are outdated now and virtually useless , the big thing is you can change them easily at any time just remember left and right threads ! But if you’re buying cleats if you buy shimano for example you need to stick with shimano shoes to walk around in,

                Most people have their bike seats too low and when I say most we are talking 80-90% of cyclists have their seats too low getting your bike ergonomically set up for you can make the difference between a bad or good cycling experience , seat height affects your speed and comfort and the wrong seat height can even cause a sports injury,