12 Month Review

On this blog a year ago I wrote:  Plenty of people have been writing about the uselessness of resolutions. Here is why I probably need to find some lifestyle change in 2012. (a graph was  included at this point, same as below but not including 2012 data). If I can keep the km going up, the mass will come down.

As can be seen from the new chart there has been a modest increase in the number of k’s, but a significant move in mass.

To drop 10kg in a year means that I must have found some lifestyle change. And I did. But I don’t think this chart tells the real story. I’ll zoom in on the last year, on a monthly basis. It looks like this:

 

I think this more accurately shows what has happened. Since the end of July I have not consumed alcohol. I was tired of feeling overweight and underpowered, and knew that I had to change something to make a difference. (Teachers say that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect a different answer). Everyone is different and there are different triggers to starting renewal in life, but for me, at this time, this is what worked.

 

For fitness and weight loss there is an obvious reciprocal benefit, weight loss = feeling like and being able to exercise more. For a time there is a compounding effect and it is a fun wave to ride. Motivation is high as benefits are tangible. People notice the change and I feel like I have more self-respect. Part of the compounding effect is that achieving small goals gives motivation to set larger ones. As cycling is my exercise of choice (more to do with who I do it with than what it is) I decided to put my name down for the Grafton to Inverell Cycle Sportif this coming February. It is a long hard ride. I did it once before and although I had trained for it, I found it a real killer and I could not keep up with my group. My goal is to complete the ride with the bunch in 2013. As the monthly graph above shows, I am clocking up some k’s looking for fitness and strength. At 93kg I am still a slow climber. I’m not sure if this is just physics, a mental problem, or that I need to wait longer for the benefits of my increased efforts to kick in (yes, it is probably all three).

The Grafton to Inverell ride is in late February, about 6 weeks away. Some time ago I set the goal of riding it at 85kg. Still heavy for a person my height but realistic in terms of what I believe I am capable of. I do not want to do the ride at 90kg+.

There will be readers of this who know how I can achieve this goal. There are obvious changes to the balance of products that I eat that would help, but this must be embedded in the ecosystem of our household and my ingrained attitude towards eating. For now, what I am doing is working and for the next 6 weeks I will be maintaining current habits.

I don’t believe in resolutions but occasionally we need a revolution. I seem to be having one now. It is difficult to conjure and sometimes it requires the perfect storm of events in our life to set us on the path. This may sound fatalistic but it’s not meant to.  Specific outcomes are achieved only by having a realistic goal, having a strategy to get there, and finding the determination to implement that strategy. Support of my wife and friends has been vital to me in this. So thanks!

I’m not there, I don’t know if I’ll ever get there, but I’m enjoying this ride. Life is about the journey, isn’t it?

Healthy Pizza?

Tonight I was on duty for cooking, and pizza was on the menu. I have been trying to watch my food intake in order to lose some weight, so I wondered if I could significantly reduce the joules of a homemade pizza and still have it taste good and fill me up.

I figured that the easy way to reduce the energy would be to have a very thin base and cut down on the cheese. To keep up the flavour I included some reduced fat hot salami. See the table below for its energy effect. To make it filling I used more mushroom, capsicum and onion than might normally be seen on an Italian style pizza.

Ingredients and kilojoules   Mass (grams) kJ Base 150 1120 Sauce 25 65 Mushroom 40 40 Capsicum 63 63 Ham 24 200 Mozzarella 50 650 Hot Salami 20 200 Red Onion 20 80 Total 392 2418

I made the base with flour, water, yeast, a tad of salt and sugar, milk and a little olive oil. I made enough for 3 pizzas, 150 grams for mine, and 2 lots of 300 grams for the family pizzas. With some research I totalled up 1120kJ for my 150 gram base.

I was able to roll the base out enough to almost cover my standard sized dish. Leggo’s pizza sauce was used. As can be seen from the table, of the toppings the ham and the salami were the next highest energy source after the cheese. I guess what I take from this is that a lot of vegetables can be used without significantly increasing the energy but I need to go easy with the meats. I think that 50gms of Mozzarella cheese is about as low as you can go and still call it a pizza. I was surprised that the Mozzarella had a lower energy count than the “light” tasty cheese that I was considering as an alternative.

I did not use olive oil or seasoning, figuring that there would be enough of these flavours provided by the processed meat. On removing the pizza from the oven I found it to be still reasonably “moist”, the moistness being provided by the vegetables rather than oily products that I more typically use as toppings. (Extra cheese, pepperoni, olive oil.) I found the eating to be very satisfying. There was plenty of flavour; it was reasonably filling and contained less than 600 calories. It did an excellent job as my main meal for the day.

 

 

A day spent mucking around with bikes

isn't always wasted.

I've had this idea for a while. The older mountain bike doesn't get much use, and I've wanted to turn it into some kind of any day any ride bike, if that makes sense...

I want to ride it to the shops or on an adventure like this. Or round the river, or up a very big hill.




The old Norco at 10am.

I think the suspension forks are a waste of time and energy for road riding, so changing them out to rigid forks was the main focus. The bike will be needed next week to tow Stuart around at Caloundra (I'm not sure why his tag along even has a chain, I've never seen him pedal!) so I needed to attach a bracket to the seat post. And the bike needs a new seat, it seems to have picked up the oldest and most uncomfortable seat that circulates the Lanham bike shed.




The aluminium frame is built like a brick out-house.

I have a pair of 26x1.25 road tyres that should make the bike roll along quite well.

So. The forks. A quick online search and ringing a few bike shops left me thinking this could get expensive, and so I gave Bicycle Revolution a call. "Ya, youse should comes on in, I tink you find sumptink out-der-bach" I went in, to be told by another cheery fellow that they didn't have what I wanted, but I could look around anyway. And as luck would have it I found one set of forks that was suitable. So I bought them, and the frame they were attached to, and the stem which looked a better length and angle than my original, all for $50. Sweet.




Frankenstein in the making.

The forks were off a cruiser style bike, with a very long head tube. I cut the forks down to size and fiddled around for ages getting the headset right. I wacked on a new seat and reassembled the rest of the bike.

I had a few ideas about inverting the (almost flat) handlebars to give me a more racer style seating position, but this didn't really work. I also intended to cut the handle bars down a bit, but decided not to do this yet. Once cut cannot be uncut. I was aware that the suspension forks made the frame higher than  the rigid forks and as the rebuild continued I started to worry that the pedals might be getting too close to the ground for cornering.

A quick lap of the block, no suspension to be seen.

A test ride proved that this wasn't really an issue, and if I am really worried about it in the future I guess I can look into shorter cranks. The bike is quiet and smooth to ride. At 19" the frame is large for a MTB, but feels very compact on the road. I found it very controllable.



The finished (for now) product. Anybody want to paint my bike?

So after clocking up a few klicks on it tonight it gets a run around the river for a W50 tomorrow! Should be an adventure.

Footnote: The bike survived the river ride, it seemed a little down on power and developed an annoying ticlunk about 3/4 way through the ride, so a bit of fine tuning is required. But it does have a very comfortable set up.

New shoes?

I fell off my mountain bike a few times on the weekend. Each time it was a combination of clumsiness, exhaustion, and not being able to get my foot out of my cleat. The first two excuses cannot be fixed with money, so I immediately had an excuse to get some new shoes.

I found another set of shoes when I got home so I tried them out, they were also quite difficult to clip in and out of the pedals. So I adjusted the spring tension on the pedals. Fixed. What causes pedals that haven't been adjusted in 5 years to become tighter?

No new shoes for Brucie. A good wash of the old pair has revealed no serious wear and tear, their only crime appears to be a lack of style. A good match for their wearer. I bought these shoes from Riders in about 2004, and I used them for road riding for a few years before they were lent out to a nephew who was doing a bit of riding. Eventually they returned to the fold and they became my MTB footwear.

More riding could fix exhaustion, the clipping out problem is solved. Is there a cure for gumbiness?

Another year, another resolution?

Plenty of people have been writing about the uselessness of resolutions.

Here is why I probably need to find some lifestyle change in 2012.

If I can keep the km going up, the mass will come down.

Old bikes

Same motor different bikes, 1976-2011 cycling for fun, fitness and friendship.

Andrew Demack's post on  Briztreadley about the bikes he has owned and why he bought them has caused me to fondly reminisce  about my own bikes over the last few decades. My main criteria in buying has always been to get the most bike for my justifiable buck. Only a few of my rides have been purchased new. Maybe there will be a time in my life where I can walk into a bike shop and look at those luscious high end machines with the intention of actually purchasing one, but if that never happens then I will still feel blessed that I have had a rich bicycling life.

I was eight years old in 1969 when my cousin Greg (15 y.o.) went wide on the corner coming down from Old Daybora Rd in Petrie, and under a truck. I remember the phone call from my Aunty Jean saying he was on life support, and then later that night there was another call to say that Greg had died. To our close knit family this was an enormous tragedy. My father had been involved in a very serious motorcycle accident on Annerley Rd in the late fifties, and still bears the disability to this day. These seemingly unrelated accidents left our family wary of two wheeled transport. 

I didn't get my first bike till I turned 15. Mum and dad bought me a Malvern Star 10 speed. It was a beauty, with dynamo lights and a special lightweight frame. My brother and I did a bike tour run by an organisation called ISCF, where we rode from Ipswich up onto the Darling Downs and back to Fernvale via Toowoomba and Esk. My shining silver 10 speed was the envy of many of the school age riders. With typical teenage disrespect I managed to pretty well destroy it within 18 months, riding it off  road and endlessly practicing wheelstands that led to many Sunnybank streets being painted with blood of the Lanham. My last memories of this bike are of me riding to and from BSHS. Our home was in Sunnybank. The original rear wheel and gears were wrecked, and I had fitted a huge rusty 28" fixed wheel monstrosity from my mother’s bike from the 40's. There was no SE freeway and I battled Ipswich and Beaudesert Rd's in peak hour traffic, no brakes, no cycle lane, 16 y.o. and completely bullet proof. I could beat the buses, and on a good day (northerly) I could beat the train home to Sunnybank. Then I got a job, and of course a car.

I don't remember how many bikes I bought or built up in the next 13 years, none were expensive and few got ridden very far, the odd 25km training ride was thrown in when I thought I was getting a bit heavy (like 77kg). I do remember a 12 speed Apollo that  I had bought for about $80. In 1989 it was knicked from our carport and I made an insurance claim. I had to go to a few bike shops to get replacement quotes. At the Pinelands Shopping Centre in Sunnybank Hills was an Allan's Bike shop where they quoted me $439 for a Kojima Eagle. Unbelievably a cheque came through for this and at 28 years old I had my first ever new bike. The Kojima was highly geared and had uncompromising racing geometry. I never took riding it very seriously until my buddy and occasional riding partner (who seemed to know a lot about things like the Tour de France) and I decided that we would sign up for a  cycling tour run by the Bible society. It was called Bikes for Bibles, and we did fundraising and organised training rides for 10 weeks before the event. It was our first experience with bunch riding and there were club racers involved so we were induced into group cycling etiquette.



Andrew and Bruce at the start of the Universities Tour 1993

 The 1993 Bikes for Bibles Universities Tour. (Brisbane-Beaudesert-Warwick -Toowoomba-Dalby-Kingaroy-Kilcoy-Caboolture).

The 10 weeks training of 200km a week saw me trim down to about 75kg and I felt really fit, probably for the first time in my life. After the tour Andrew and I had a bit of an intro to racing, C grade with Kangaroo Point Club. We had a ball, but many readers of this will have been bored already with our recounts of how we went.

Cycling slipped back out of my lifestyle as I was busy with my career and roles at home and at church. Occasionally Andrew and I would organise a bit of an overnight adventure where we would travel with our bikes and a credit card. On holidays we would usually take bikes and have a few rides. My Kojima became a bit worn and I bought a cheap hybrid ($100). I rode this on a couple of our tours. Then one day in 1998 somebody knicked it out of the back of my car. I put in an insurance claim, popped in some money of my own, and suddenly and unexpectedly was the owner of the most beautiful looking cycle I am ever likely to own, an aluminium Trek7300 hybrid. 

Sorry about the shorts. The TREK 7300

This was a solid and reliable bike. I remember riding down Mt Tambourine (where my parents were living) at 83km/h and feeling as steady as a rock. At the time I had left my hard but well paid job at Bradken's Runcorn foundry and was working as a technician for CSIRO while studying engineering at QUT.  I would occasionally commute on the bike to QUT from home or work. And the inevitable happened. One night I came back to where I had chained it up and it was gone. No insurance this time. I have never mourned the loss of a material possession before that night. I experienced all the stages of grief. In fact... if you ever see a beautiful black hyb... shut up Bruce, it's gone. That was 12 years ago!

Budget for a new bike was an issue. I set myself $300. For this I managed to get another good machine. It was also a TREK hybrid, a gorgeous metallic green 730 steel framed version that was a few years older than the stolen 7300. It was in good condition, one of those bikes that had no doubt been purchased with good intentions but had then never been ridden much. This bike became my faithful commuter over the next few years.

I wasn't really doing a lot of riding for fitness. Andrew got quite keen and participated in a fund raising ride organised by the Engadine Rotary Club in 2002 (I think). I wasn't much of a companion on his training rides as he was quite fit and ripping my legs off. It sounded like a real challenge and a wonderful holiday at the same time. Andrew won a car for his fund raising efforts and was probably a bit obligated to go along in the following year. I decided to join him. Once again I committed myself to 200km a week of training, and after about a 12 week slog at it I had dropped from 98kg to 88kg. I found the ride challenging but achievable. I was on a hybrid and almost everyone else were riding racers, and Andrew and I rode in group 3 (of 5). Our daily average speeds were around 26km/h. By the end of the week I was feeling very strong and keen for some more bunch riding. I would ride to Tennyson in the morning and jump on the back of the first pack to come past and invite myself to their ride. I fixed up the old Kojima (now 14 y.o.) and found I was going about 2km/h faster on that. Time for a new road bike!



Andrew and I somewhere in NSW, 2003 Sydney to Surfers



A Kojima MTB that I had a bit of fun on in Karawatha and a family holiday in 2003. It was sold to help finance the incoming KHS.




The KHS Flite 800.

 

2003 was a watershed year. I had lost weight and gained a love of road riding. Les Hewett, a work colleague from QMI introduced me to a Star Cafe ride on Saturday mornings, and soon after a wonderful bunch doing a thing called donuts on a Tuesday and Thursday morning in West End. The final hit out up Dornoch Terrace after the 5th lap of the 6km loop eventually became my weekly focus and I recorded my performance against the other contenders to be first up the hill. This may seem a little sad but I had lots of fun. I started shopping around for a new ride. I sold the old Trek (to a mate from church who got another 7 years out of it) and my mountain bike, and a fancy guitar and I was able to buy my a serious road bike. It was a second hand 853 alloy steel framed 9 speed KHS equipped with 105 running gear. I paid $1400. It was comparatively weighty at around 11kg, and had a raked out riding position that none of my friends liked the feel of, but over the next 3 years I rode it 30 000 km and had the best form of my life. My weight averaged 85kg over these years. I did another Sydney to Surfers in 2005, with a faster bunch and our average for the whole ride was over 30km/h. I also had a brilliant around the bay experience with my Southbank Bunch friends.



My current ride, purchased in 2006



 

The KHS was becoming unreliable. I broke some handlebars on a 60km/h decent, the freewheel gave up on an important ride and the shifting gear was pretty flogged. Cycling 3 or 4 times a week had become a lifestyle for me, I had justification for a new bike. I was also earning plenty of money with my new post graduate position working at QMI. The new budget would be $3000. But to get the most bike for the buck, again I went second hand. I found a Campag 10 speed Record Equipped fully carbon Giant TCR, brought out to Australia from the US by a semi-pro racer who was working in bike shops. At least 3 kg lighter than the KHS it felt beautiful to ride, yet strangely didn't seem to go any faster. My number of k's per week was dropping off, and in direct inverse proportion my weight was going up. At a time of my life when I expected the workload at home would be diminishing, in fact it got a whole lot busier. Jenny and I had been fostering for quite a few years but embedding the Arthur sibling group into our lives brought a new dynamic to our household. Part of the motivation for a career shift into teaching was to try and give me more time at home. This hasn't really worked but I am really enjoying teaching and it brings me more satisfaction than any other job I've had. During the last few years I've also done a little mountain biking, mainly with Andrew who is really quite into it and does crazy stuff like racing. He is a good friend and always waits for me. I am finally feeling a little form coming back and am looking forward to some great cycling years ahead. Maybe a new bike soon???

 

 

 



Norco Hardtail. Bought for $100, spent $400 getting it ridable.
Still a servicable bike.

 

My curent MTB, another Norco Hardtail,
with much better brakes and forks.
A much faster bike than I am rider.





 As I have composed this epic I realise that I have done many enjoyable things on a bicycle, but the best part of it has been nothing to do with which bike I've been sitting on, how much it cost or why I bought it.  It has been almost entirely about the people who I have been with. But that is another story.





Gold Coast via Tamborine

One night this week Jenny asked me what ride the Southbank Bunch was doing. “Redcliffe”, I replied, suspicion in my voice.

“Oh”, she said. “You don’t really like that ride, do you?”

“Well actually I was looking forward to a long flat ride with my friends after the hills of Tour de Dave”

“I just thought that Saturday might be a nice day for the family to go to the coast, maybe you could ride down and meet us.”

And so a plan was formulated. I am keen to keep working on improving my form on the bike and so I wanted to clock up some km’s. I weighed up riding straight down and then later riding home, but eventually decided on a longer ride down. There are various alternatives to straight down the V1 to Southport. I elected to go via Mt Tamborine. It has a 7km climb that is steady and achievable (for me) on the road up from Tamborine Village. So even though the 91km route is significantly shorter than a “ride in-Redcliffe-ride home” SBB ride I thought I should get a pretty good workout.

This is the route from my place to Southport. it can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/62ujf2g

I left home at 6:00am, lights on and wearing arm warmers as the morning was fresh. The forecast was for a fine day with light to moderate southerly breezes in the morning. I was a little surprised at how low my average speed was for the first couple of hours on the bike (about 23km/h) as I would have thought that TdD should have given me some extra horsepower. I am often slow at the start of a ride with a hill in it, I seem to psyche myself out a bit and overdo the conserving of energy.

Between Tamborine Village and the start of the climb I had an unusual incident. I was rolling down a small hill at about 35km/h, in a world of my own, probably solving the world’s problems, when my left peripheral sensed movement. I turned my head and saw a medium sized wallaby eyeball to eyeball coming flat out straight at me. It saw me just as it was pushing off on another tremendous bound out onto the road, and it was able to adjust its trajectory enough to sail past behind me. The incident took less than a second but for me and skippy there was a whole lot of our life crammed into that instant. I was still a bit shaky 2 minutes later when a bunch of 4 fit looking cyclists called out to me as they whizzed past. I almost jumped out of my skin.

The arm warmers came off at the bottom of the climb and my heart and head did battle for the 1^st km of the climb. To me it seems that the gradient gets easier once you hit the long sweeping bends about 3km up. I settled into more of a rhythm and was able to change up a couple of gears in the second half of the climb. I was conscious of the 10.00am rendezvous with the family and so kept going once I had finished the climb. There are a couple of nasty steep bits on the Tamborine plateau, but once through them it was onto a fantastic 3 stage descent. I had a vague plan that today I would pass my personal 15 year old fastest speed on a bike (83km/h). I did this on an aluminium framed Trek hybrid riding this same descent back when my parents lived at Tamborine and I used to frequent the district more often.

I achieved speeds in the 70’s for the first 2 downhills, but cars held me up a bit. For the really big descent I checked that I had some clear road in front of me, then tucked in on the steep, rough (no holes, just heavily textured) road and hung on for grim death. I found visibility a problem as my eyes were watering. About halfway down I moved my hands to the hoods and glanced at the speedo. 84km/h. The corner was approaching and through my tears I could see brake lights. Give it a couple more seconds and then trust in the Campag Record brakes to do their thing. It is like a base jumper knowing when to pull the ‘chute.  I was behind a car for the rest of the roll down the mountain. I check of the stats showed 85km/h max. A real thrill for me but as Margie tweeted to me later it was a good job the roo didn’t jump out during that descent! No doubt more experienced downhillers could get a lot more out of that descent but on the day it was good enough for me.

From the bottom of the hill to Oxenford are some rolling hills and one mongrel 12% hillock that I had to stop on for a breather. After Oxenford it was a flat 22km around Hope Island and onto the tourist strip. Once on the flat I felt my legs come back a bit, although my backside had decided that the ride should already be over. A piece of metal through the back tyre 5km out from the finish held me up for 8 minutes and then I was at Southport, rolling around the foreshore and looking for my beloved.

Ride stats: 91km, 21.5km/h average, 6:00am start 10:30am finish. Top speed 85km/h. Tamborine climb 38 minutes.

What a beautiful day it was. The smaller kids and I had a swim, they played on the wonderful facilities in the park across from Australia Fair, we had Red Rooster for lunch at Main Beach, we went  into SeaWorld for a few hours looking at the penguins and the seal show, and also Renee and I tried out one of the new rides. Jenny did the drive home and we had a good chance to catch up with each other. All in all a top day. And at night Nick O’Donnell showed me how to make a profile chart from a google map, no Garmin or anything!