Out Out Finally

I got back from a 55km 2hr ride this morning and then looked at what I’ve been doing on the bike for the past month and was shocked to see I hadn’t been outside on a bike for 4 weeks. The last time I rode outside was the North Wales Gravel Epic back on 7 Oct. Rubbish! Since then I’ve just been training indoors and it’s not been much fun to be honest.

My new Elite Direto XR trainer arrived and promptly played up out the box. I was trying to do a workout in Zwift and the ERG function that controls the required power just didn’t work. It wouldn’t ease off if you pushed too hard, instead it just let you put out too many watts. After googling the issue I found out it was a known problem for a long time (years!) and thought I’d bought a dud. Then by chance I checked the firmware version and literally a couple of days before, a new version had been released which fixed the problem! I’ve ridden quite a few sessions on it now and although it probably isn’t as instantaneous at reacting to power changes its fine and does the job and when it’s going at speed I think it actually rides a lot smoother than the Wahoo. Fine for what I need. I’ll be selling my Wahoo Kickr Core soon dirt cheap, so if you’re in the market stay tuned.

My on/off love affair with Zwift came to an abrupt halt (again) this month. Despite new roads been released I just can’t get excited about it. I think I think I should like it but the reality is I don’t so I’ve paused my subs till Christmas by which time I’ll be bored with Wahoo SYSTM, which I’m back in bed with, and we can rekindle our friendship again but for now, I’m not interested.

October’s Gravelton ride The FoD Plod didn’t happen for me. I think a combination of stress from work, a lack of getting out on the bike, not enjoying the indoor riding and a run of poor sleep came to a head and the night before I had a particularly rough one and just couldn’t face it. The weather had been pretty poor and has continued to be with a couple of storms passing through. I’m sure offroad is pretty moist at the moment.

Halloween came and went with a party at my gym last weekend. It got a bit messy so Sunday was a duvet day. It was a good turn out with some great costumes on show though.

Then today I finally got out for a couple of hours on the road. I’d refitted my guards on Friday which motivated me to do something this weekend. Yesterday was a washout so today was the day. A nice, sunny and fresh 55km around mucky lanes I expected to be a whole lot worse with debris given the amount of rain we’ve had but apart from the odd puddle, ok.

I’ve made a pledge to myself now to try and get out 3 times a week before work. Lets see how long that lasts

Adios