Month of May 2007

Somewhat belated race report from last weekend's marathon at Lille, borrowed from an email exchange with teammates

Pre race

• - bugger-all skating during the week: work stuff (this is ironic, as I'm not actually doing any) has left me really unmotivated to train recently. Only a day and a half of it left now :-)

• + race-day preparation was so much better than my last race (Berlin half), though: well-hydrated, thorough warmup.

• - but psychologically, pssht. Took one look at the hairpin and thought "fuck this, should have done the Open".

The Race

• - very cautious at the start, not defending my place, and everyone overtook me. Need more agility/scrummage experience to skate in a seething mass without stacking/being stacked (which is what usually happens if I do push it)

• - lost the line completely as it went around the hairpin and I went off the haybale.

• + got a big cheer on the first lap when I was skating solo, made me smile

• - cornering crap, yes, I'm well aware of it. Getting better as the race progressed, but it still shares the shit out of me. Spent a lot of energy chasing people on the way out of corners

• + but honestly, the line we were in was not that fast on the straights and I had energy to spare. No cramps, but I don't get them anyway

• + surfaces mostly not a problem (except for finding a path through the first turn after the start line, which I never really managed).

• + worked well, skating with Fred

• + not collapsing quite as much on the right foot as Berlin. Moving the frame may have helped there.

• - barefoot in Junkers is not so good in hot weather as it has been over winter: sweat makes my feet slide around. Maybe try those nylon things, or get some white boot covers to stop them soaking up the sun as much.

• - as Fred says, we were stuck behind the girls at the end. Was a very relaxed pace for the last couple of laps.

• - a sprint with a bend in the middle of it, not my idea of a good time. I'm less of a single-speed merchant than I was last year, but there's still a way to go.

• + almost forgot to add: no skinsuits were trashed during this event, so I'm doing something right that I clearly wasn't for the second half of last year...

Post-race

• + what Hans said about the touchy-feely stuff: we may not do much as a team on the track but we do make a good club in the bar ...

• - feeling it a bit in my back today (should've done a warm down lap) but basically fine.

• Overall take-home message*: learn to go quickly round corners

Discussing crossovers -

• Me: "I think there are two parts: one is that my weight needs to be more towards the inside, and the other is just a confidence thing"
• Peter: "You mean you're having trouble committing to the turn"
• Me: "Er, yeah"

Duh. Why didn't I think of that?

My second day on the track (at Birmingham) was somewhat less successful than the first.

In the first race (3k) I got a good start, slipped up and down the pack more or less at random, then with one lap to go and seeing that people were tired, went off round the outside: I was out at the front and increasing the gap when I set my foot down wrong on the banked turn and slid. Ouch. Got up again but only after everyone had passed, came in last-but-one

The second race (1000m) saw a fairly indifferent start and a lot of merging in the line. Went round and around somewhere in the middle of the pack for a while, until someone decided that they were going to join the line in the spot I was in, and managed to take me out in the process. Skating as a contact sport, not my favourite. Less than entirely clear what happened then, but it culminated with me landing on my back (I have a lovely sore spot where one of the safety pins holding my race number on has dug in) and knocking the back of my head against the ground. My helmet failed in the manner it was designed to fail: I can see the crushed polystyrene. Whether it Saved My Life(tm) - who the hell knows?

In fairness to the other guy, there had been a gap in front of me as we came out of the corner, because I was slower around the bend than the chap in front of me. It's just that it was not there any more my the time he decided to occupy it, because I had closed it in the meantime. There must be some trick to pack skating that I haven't found yet, because everybody else seems to cope.

Here's some related stuff from Eddy (scroll down, the useful bits are right at the end)

FOR THE ATTENTION OF:

George Galloway MP Bethnal Green and Bow

Thursday 10 May 2007 Daniel Barlow

Dear George Galloway,

I am writing to urge you to sign the Early Day Motion 1433 submitted by Menzies Campbell that "the alterations in the provisions of the Highway Code proposed to be made by the Secretary of State for Transport, dated 28th March 2007, a copy of which was laid before this House on 28th March, be not made."

The revision of the Highway Code currently before Parliament contains provisions which will make cycling much less safe on our road network. The DfT received over 11000 responses to their consultation last year, from cyclists describing these problems, but their revised wording actually makes the problem worse not better. Roger Geffen, campaigns manager for the Cyclists' Touring Club, has claimed that "If the new document goes through unamended it will be the single most anticycling thing that this government has done since it's been in power". John Franklin, author of the Government-approved Cyclecraft manual, adds that "One of the golden rules of cycling is never to go up the inside of lorries. The new code effectively tells you to do this."

Cycling is an important part of the solution to urban congestion, as well as being carbon-neutral and tending to promote healthy activity thus reducing the burden on the NHS. We can ill-afford measures like this that will discourage it and make it more dangerous.

Yours sincerely,

Daniel Barlow

This entry written some time after the event based on hazy recollections and stuff written on the LSST forum ...

It was not especially successful. Not until I arrived at the train station did I find out the service to Silver Street wasn't running that day, so leapt on my bike and got a really good warmup getting to the track. Then stacked on the first race (500m) for no reason that I can determine (bad body position on the turn crossing over - I think - weight too far forward turned into weight distributed horizontally along the tarmac). Spent most of the 1000m tailing the back of the pack: tried to attack about halfway around, but didn't have the speed to overtake around the outside of the bend and ended up slotting back in more or less where I'd started. In the 3000m started at the back again, got bored of that after a while and started to mess about a bit, but was still feeling weak and I knew when I went off on lap n-3 I was not going to be able to hold a lead for 750m. Which may be a realistic assessment or self-fulfilling prophecy, cos it turned out that indeed I couldn't.

Tagging this one as "skate" not "bike" so I won't go into detail about my trip home. Note, though: if you head down the A10 from Great Cambridge Junction, after about 1.5km you get to a junction where you take the left-hand lane to go left, and the right-hand lane to go right. There is a big sign to help you with this decision: it shows a left-turn symbol in the left lane and a right-turn symbol in the right lane. It doesn't, however, tell you where you might end up should you take one path or the other, and I feel this is something of a failing because if you guess wrong and turn right you may never see another sign saying "A10" ever again.

My phone has 28MB of memory free, it says (and more on the memory stick) but refuses to receive more text messages until I've deleted some.

What kind of festering idiot designs a phone that can't use all its memory? It's not rocket science. It's barely even computer science.