WELLAND VALLEY CYCLING CLUB NEWSLETTER
MAY 2007
Club News by Email
If you are reading a paper copy of this newsletter it implies that you have not chosen to receive news by email. If you wish to change the arrangement and at the same time save the club time, expense as well as saving a forest or two, please indicate by emailing accordingly to the Club Secretary, Paul Bramford, paul@bramford.com
New members
We welcome Cory Bemis, Chris Hawley, Katie Bowen, Nik Kershaw, Rob Langley, Liam Malone, and welcome back Hans van Nierop.
Marshalling rota
Thanks very much to the vast majority of members who have turned up and marshalled on their appointed day and to those who have let me know that they need to change their day.
Sadly there have been one or two members who have had memory problems and have neither arrived to marshal nor let me know that they can’t make it.
If you have lost your hard copy of the rota, or never had one, the current marshalling rota is on the club website.
Please note that there are quite a number of club members who are not on the rota (so haven’t been sent a hard copy) – I had to complete it before the start of the season when the membership list was slightly different. If you’re one of those lucky people I don’t want you to feel guilty – I know where you live and I’ll pick you off before the end of the season – I’ve started already! – though if you live in the wilds of Cambridgeshire or Somerset you should be pretty safe.
Performance
George Atkins has been performing with great success in the international arena riding for the British Cycling East Midlands youth team. He achieved a high position in a race in Belgium followed by third place in the Isle of Man International youth tour.
Closer to home Phil Rayner has been having a wonderful road racing season both in LVRC and British Cycling races. Phil, a modest man by nature, is getting so many points in BC races, that he’s afraid that he’ll be moved up to 1st Category by the end of the season.
Colin Griffiths, as well as producing a superb blog, is time trialling at a great pace and is also getting high positions in LVRC races. Read the blog on www.colinsbikingbits.blogspot.com and you’ll see why he and Phil are riding so well!
Robin Townsend took third place in the NCRA handicap race at Southwick and Jill Postlethwaite won the women’s overall prize in that series.
Jill has also been performing with distinction in women’s road races and posted a personal best in gaining 20th place in the women’s section of the National Ten Mile Championship at Sawtry last Sunday. Jill, along with Sara Frost and Barbara Etoe made up a women’s team in the National Ten, only the second time in my 22 years at the club that we’ve had a team in a national time trial championship. (I’m sure someone will remind me of a men’s team in a 100km 4Up time trial, but I guess that’s something the participants will want to forget!)
Paul Tomlinson gained 3rd place in the 45-50 category in the National Ten on Sunday then followed this with a course record on the Sulby circuit on Tuesday.
Needless to say, Vic Barnett is at the top of the leader board again in the National Mountain Bike Cross Country Series Super Vet category.
In club events, Matt Plews has had an excellent start to the season and was a worthy winner of the Clipston circuit series.
Perhaps the one to watch though is Ian Waterfield – he seems to do a PB for ten miles most weeks and I’m sure he’ll soon get twenty fives sorted out.
Sportive spot
You will probably have heard of the Ten Tors Expedition – for groups of young people yomping over Dartmoor, invariably in appalling weather. This year it was worse than appalling and had to be abandoned. Not so the Dartmoor Cyclosportive which continued in pouring rain and this year featuring the intrepid Andy Blake. Andy was one of 100 starters and reached the first marshalling point at 30 miles in around 2 hours, by which time he was freezing cold and wet through! His plan had been to complete the 100 mile route but at 30 miles, decided to plump for the alternative 100km route – still a brave effort – a further 36 miles is a long way when you’re drenched and shivering especially as the route included the formidable climb past Haytor.
Nearer to home, eight club members rode the Rutland/Melton Classic Sportive. Although the weather was favourable, it was hardly a soft touch with hilly roads and a 10 mile off-road section. Bill Barrie, Paul Bramford, Kim Lewington and Julian Middleton completed the full 160km route, which Paul described as ‘very stressful’ and Linda Yarnold, Steve Alden, Stuart Dawkins and Nik Kershaw made short work of the 100km route.
Please give me a short report when you’ve ridden a sportive or a century ride – I would like to make this a regular spot. At the very least I hope for a report from Bill Barrie and Julian Middleton on their experiences in the Etape du Tour.
Mountain bikers – Friday night series
Track riding – fancy a try?
The club has the option of a track session at Newport velodrome on Sunday 4th November. The cost is £30 per person for a 3 hr session and we need a minimum of 15 to have our own session, the maximum being 25. This session is open to first time and experienced track riders. Track bikes will be available for hire and basic coaching will be provided by a qualified track coach. The down side is that the session starts at 9am through to 12noon. At that time of day there should be no problems with hold-ups, so the journey is about 2.5 hrs or, put another way, on the road for 6.30AM!! An up side is that there is a good pub for a group lunch nearby. We need to know who may be interested asap so we can book the slot.
Supplements from Allsports
Trevor Wise is able to obtain a significant discount on energy drinks, energy bars, amino load etc. from Allsports based on orders of £100 in total. If you want to place an order please contact Trevor as soon as possible (phone no. and e-mail above) and he will send it off as soon as he reaches the magic £100.
Sunday club runs
First of all a big thank you to Wayne Holton and Alf Marlow for the excellent work they done for several years as club captain and vice captain respectively. They’ve both decided to call it a day, Wayne because he fancies a break, and good luck to him – he deserves it, and Alf because he’s working very hard on graduating from being a darts superstar to being a darts megastar – read the Harborough Mail darts reports – Alf’s there with 180’s most weeks. Soon it will be every week!
Matt Plews and Carol Birch are now organising the Sunday club runs.
Volunteers are needed to lead some of the club runs in July. These are runs that cater for whoever turns up, including new and prospective members. They are not training or fast rides. The leader chooses the route and the café stop (about 25 miles to the café) .
If you would be willing to lead on one of the dates below please contact Carol Birch on 0116 2792756 or e-mail cbirch@betula5.freeserve.co.uk . Dates 1, 8, 15, 22 July.
New ventures
This season we are organising 4 national events swhich give us an excellent opportunity to showcase Welland Valley CC.
On August 5th, as well as organising the usual Duncan Murray/AA Brown Races, Jill Postlethwaite and Paul Tomlinson are staging a round of the National Women’s Team Road Race Series.
On August 19th Nick Barnett is taking on the LVRC 40-45 and 45-50 National Road Race Championships – and in Phil Rayner and Colin Griffiths, we’ve form horses in both of these races.
On September 29th Wayne Holton is running a round of the Rudy Project Time Trial Series at Naseby.
On November 4th (note change of date from December 2nd) Nick Barnett is once again in promoter mode, this time with the Inter-Area Cyclo-Cross Championship.
We’ll need lots of helpers for all of these events (and for our round of the NCRA handicaps on July 5th). We organisers all know that club members are willing to help, but we also know that you like to be asked rather than to approach us with an offer of help. Please make our days by offering us your help rather than waiting to be called – we hate begging!
New trophies
Many members will be aware of the recent premature deaths from cancer of Lee Scampton and Barry Marshall, two long time club members from yesteryear. In their memory, two new trophies will be presented, the Barry Marshall trophy for the winner of the Tuesday night ten mile time trial series and the Lee Scampton trophy for outstanding performance in a Sportive. Graham Goode, another former club member will be donating the Barry Marshall trophy. Members past and present are being invited to make a donation towards the Lee Scampton trophy. Please give donations to Gavin Hinxman, George Barnett or me.
Coaching bits
In the 2006 May edition of the newsletter I was waxing lyrical about the advantages of measuring rate of exertion by power output rather than by heart rate but was bemoaning the fact that SRM cranks, Powertap and Ergomo systems cost as much as a small family house.
You may have noticed recently a product review of the Ibike in Cycling Weekly, price £299 with a further £70 for a fixing kit – which brings measurement of power within the range of many if not most club members. While I was in Mallorca over Easter, one of the training group was using an Ibike and was very pleased with it. He’d also bought it on the Internet from a USA company and had got it for much less than the UK price. I decided to buy one – I got it from Aspire Velotech and it cost me £230 ($448), post and packing included, for the Ibike and fixing kit.
So what does it look like and what does it do?
It is llcms x 5cms, is very light and sits on your handlebars. There are sensors on forks and chain stay and magnets on front wheel and crank – for speed and cadence. The sensors are wired to the main unit. You can get a slightly cheaper fixing kit which doesn’t measure cadence.
It computes wattage but doesn’t measure it directly as do the more expensive systems. It takes into account gradient, speed, frictional drag, wind speed, weight of rider and bike and from these comes up with wattage generated. While it measures cadence, this doesn’t form part of the calculation.
It can be set up to facilitate interval training based on wattage and as with most bike computers, calculates maxima and averages of the parameters measured as well as giving trip time and distance.
The accompanying software and USB lead enables downloading of data to a computer. For each ride it graphs wind speed, bike speed, elevation, power and gradient. They can be shown all together, separately or two, three or four at a time and you can zoom in or out to analyse particular parts of the ride. At any point in the ride it shows how much of your energy is expended on overcoming friction, accelerating, overcoming gravity (i.e. going uphill at steady speed) and overcoming air resistance.
Is it accurate? I don’t know, because I haven’t ridden beside anyone with SRM cranks (apparently the most accurate system) to check it out. The readings seem to be ‘about right’and it appears to be consistent, which is the main thing. As you have to feed a lot of data in before you start using the Ibike, you do have to be sure that you’ve fed in accurate data – which isn’t difficult.
So what are its limitations? If you wanted to switch it between two or more bikes, you’d need to upload different data into your Ibike every time you switch, which would be a bit of a drag. For this reason I’ve just bought a second one to put on my time trial bike.
Wind speed is measured by air going into a vent at the from of the Ibike. This needs to be located so that your arms and break levers aren’t close enough to set up wind eddies near the vent. I’ve yet to go out with it in heavy rain – whether rain gets up the vent and what its effect would be have yet to be seen – the makers claim that there is no problem.
As cadence measurement is an ‘add on’, cadence isn’t shown on the graphs.
Unlike the SRM software, heart rate can’t be shown on the graphs and I think this is a significant omission. However, as I have a Polar heart monitor from which data can be downloaded to Polar software, it’s easy to switch between the Ibike and Polar screens. There is a second piece of software included called ‘Training Peaks’ which I’ve read about and may be able to combine the two downloads but I don’t know yet – I’m afraid I have the mental agility of a garden slug when it comes to using new software.
What have I learned from it so far?
I’ve been surprised how few watts I actually produce going downhill, even on gentle gradients – in other words, I’m adding little to what would be achieved by freewheeling. In contrast I’ve been surprised by how many watts are needed to ride uphill. So if you want to take 30secs off your time over a ‘ten’, which is easier - faster down hill or faster up hill? It’s a no-brainer, even for a featherweight like me.
Also it’s obvious when you think about it, but on a downhill section, a tremendous amount of power goes into overcoming air resistance, so the importance of an aerodynamic position can’t be overestimated.
I’ve yet to use the Ibike in a time trial – this Saturday in the N&DCA 25 will be the first time. I shall probably be so busy looking at it that I’ll leave the road and end up in a hedge bottom – again!
I’m aware that I’ve a tremendous amount yet to learn about how to use the equipment to best effect – I’ve just bought a copy of ‘Training and Racing with a Power Meter’ by Allen and Coggan to get more of an idea. Hopefully I’ll have learned enough to impart lots of wisdom by the time I write the August newsletter.
I would definitely recommend the Ibike – despite the limitations I’ve mentioned, it’s very good value for money. Interestingly, it’s the same price as two pairs of Rapha limited edition mitts plus a Rapha/Paul Smith tweed and houndstooth cap!
One last thing – if you’re concerned about what happens if the goods are faulty and you bought them in the USA, let me reassure you. My USB cable was faulty – I e-mailed the manufacturer (in Dallas) who duly sent me over a replacement under warranty.
Dave Birch 24.05.07