I left home at just after 4pm on Tuesday and finally arrived at my hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka at 2pm (UK time) the next day! Pretty quick I guess since I’m now over 5,400 miles from home according to Find Friends.
The journey went smoothly and Qatar Air seems a decent airline with a 30kg bag limit (the bike and box with tools came to 25kg and my clothes etc at 5kg my ‘carryon’ was 7kg full of electronics). Although the flight from Doha to Colombo was in one of their oldest planes I guess. I liked the way the app updated to let me know when the bags were on the plane.
I didn’t get much sleep as I started to read “Rides around Sri Lanka” by Richard Cook a fact filled book (actually more like a blog) which I probably should have read at home before departing 🙁
In the rather dispiriting Doha airport I met a couple of brexiteers from Manchester who are staying for 3 weeks down south here. Will be interesting if I bump into them again like John & Charlotte who I met when biking around Cuba.
The bike box arrived intact and the hotel had arranged a taxi (3300 rupees) to take me the 23 miles to the West Inn. Maybe I should have booked an hotel closer to the airport 🙂
I slept like the proverbial log totally shattered. The bike is now back together ready for an action packed day exploring Colombo.
Before I disappear on my next adventure I thought I would do a bit of an overview on last year, 2016.
Veloviewer chart of my cycling taken from Strava data
Strava with the Veloviewer plugin produces this rather elegant chart (now if only Fitbit would get one instead of hoarding your data).
As you can see I did 7,055 miles on the bikes compared to the 3,750 in 2015 mainly due to my HoLep op lin May 2015. The two main trips in 2016 was a tour of Southern Africa about 2,000 miles and my wanderings from Cambridge to Morocco at about 2,200 miles. Which still leaves 2,800 miles riding in England, mainly with Sally 🙂
Interestingly the Moves App makes it a tad under 7,000 miles so a pretty good correlation there. Moves also says I walked over four million steps (4,196,851). Whereas Fitbit reckons I walked over six million steps (6,020,645). That’s because Fitbit still clocks up even when riding a bike which is one of the reasons I’m moving away from them. I now use the Pedometer App on my iwatch2 .
Weight wise I started the year at just over 81kg and finished it at just under 80kg so not much change given the millions of calories burnt and consumed, isn’t the body amazing.
Apple Photo says I took 20,600 pics in 2016, although there are probably certainly quite a few duplicates there.
On Sunday I went out for the day with Sally’s group, Sandringham & West Norfolk Cyclists for their Christmas run to Holkham Hall. In my case mainly to see if the Gorilla Guru bikefit had made any difference to my riding.
I did the 54 miles and 1,381 feet of ascent at an average speed of 15.1mph which for me is VERY good! the previous week I had only managed 14.5mph on a flatter circuit. The biggest difference seemed to be in the climbing (TonyM stop laughing – I don’t live in The Rockies).
Here’s a Strava record of my 10 attempts at The Welcome To The Jungle 68 feet monster hill with a gradient of 5.2% As you can see I demolished my previous attempts 🙂
So, yes, I think the fit has made a difference. The pain in my quads has largely gone, to be replaced by an overall aching which is probably due to my legs getting an additional 1″ of stretch each revolution.
Now the question is should I splash out on a new bike….
After biking for over 62 years I thought it was time to go and get measured up, for the first time, at Gorilla Bikes with a super duper Guru bike fit.
I was recommended to visit by Mike of Sally’s cycling group SWNC to try Gorilla Bikes as they use the Guru Fit System fully automated bike fitting system rather than relying on the rather hit & miss manual system where changing bits is so difficult. Plus I love electro mechanical stuff so much. In fact I kept thinking with its galaxy of stepper motor driven slides we could have made one in my Cortex Controller days 🙂
First stage of Guru BikeFit – measuring the bike
The first job was to measure up my Specalized Secteur & Dawes Galaxy bikes that I had lugged up to their shop in Oundle via a hire van.
The measurements were made a hell of a lot easier and more accurate by using a cheap laser crosswire generator, with the cross centred on the bottom bracket. This made it very easy to take the measurements required using a rule with the laser line easily showing on the rule. Wonderful, I need to get one at home for my crooked shelves 🙂 Of course, my mind immediately whizzed back to my Cortex days and thinking how all the measurements could be taken with a video or even iPhone camera and directly inputted into the Guru system 🙂
Once measured it was upstairs to face the Gorilla Guru machine leaving the bikes downstairs. All the measurements were inputted in for both bikes. I then at to stand barefoot so the Guru could measure me. Turns out I’m still 1,814mm (5′ 11′) tall with a shoulder width of 413mm (16.3″) and an inseam of 807mm.(32″) 🙂
Guru BikeFit sans handlebars and seat
Once measured, onto The Guru I went with handlebars and saddle chosen to match the Specalized and away I pedalled. First thing was to inspect the cleats where it was immediately found I had them fitted too far back, Apparently the cleat has to be under the ball of your foot. So with new cleats fitted in the correct position, I was of again only to find after a short while my left knee was hurting. So the left cleats ‘float’ was changed slightly. Just small changes such big effects.
Then for the bike fit itself! the Guru saddle moves forward and up and down on electric slides as do the handlebars/ Totally amazing to feel the change as the saddle went up by nearly an inch and forward by nearly an inch. Incredible to watch the power meter zoom up for no increase in apparent effort 🙂 🙂 Jimmy decided to swap out the handlebars for a narrower pair and twist the hoods in a little, big increase in comfort levels plus bringing the bars in a bit helped. Not convinced about lowering them as I could detect an increase in back pain although that could be I’ve been that I’m so used to my sit up and beg position after all these years.
Bike setup info from the Guru
A very worthwhile morning (3.5hrs) and for £200 pretty good value especially for a techie like me 🙂 Here is the pdf Geoff Jones GuruReport of all the measurements and angles etc etc. Absolutely no attempt to flog me a new bike 🙂 although I’ve commissioned them to set the Specalized up with new narrower handlebars / shorter stem / rotate the hoods and to obviously move the saddle to its new higher and forward position with collection tomorrow. It will be interesting to see how I perform on this Sunday’s SWNC Xmas ride.
The Dawes couldn’t, at this time, be adjusted as they don’t deal in antiques so they couldn’t help with a shorter quill stem although interestingly the Dawes already has a shorter crank which I found more comfortable when I tried the 170mm crank setting on The Guru BikeFit
Update September 2017 After doing a couple of 200km Audaxes I’ve now raised the handlebars to alleviate shoulder pain. The BikeFit said 41mm drop it is now only 15mm drop. Other measurements stayed the same. However hands still tend to go numb 🙁
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