Month of June 2007

We seem to be live on the new blogging system. It's not especially fast; it's running SBCL on a UML instance (that's probably slightly too small for it, which doesn't really help) and something in the interaction between the two makes it run with lacrity. But it's infinitely more hackable (in a good way, I mean, and by me) than Soks was.

RSS RSN. Honest. I should probably put redirects in for all the old Soks articles first, though

It's nearly back together again ...

• a 50T round outer ring doesn't work well with a 40T Biopace inner: if the derailleur is low enough on the seat tube for the change onto the big ring, the chain scrapes on it once per revolution on the small ring. Not that I use the small ring a lot anyway
• probably need a new computer mounting kit, I managed to rip the sensor off in the spokes when it came loose
• haven't put the bar tape on yet, I want to get the lever position right first
• for no reason I can think of, the OLN axle width of the frame is 135mm. I wonder if this is crash damage (not that I can remember ever having crashed it that badly) or something, because it's an unusual size for a road bike. It springs happily to 130, though the QR isn't very.
• cost of upgrades now over half what I paid for the original bike (back in 1994)
• it's a lot shinier in the flesh metal than the cameraphone pictures show

Brief roundup of skating/training-related stuff in the last few weeks while I can still remember enough of it that I can reconstruct the order of events using a calendar and the LSST forum. It's been raining a lot, too.

• 15th May, Tatem session (rained off after about 30 minutes), bike there and back
• SWF race at Tatem, 20 May
• Really good Tatem session, 22 May. Having foolishly said not long prior that I won't be skating for "any kind of CV work, because I get that for free when cycling - does way more for my heart rate than I ever manage when skating", Adrian Wordsworth proved me wrong by subjecting us all to 2x500m, 2x1000m, 2x1500m. 1st 500m I came in way at the back, second I still came in near the back; longer distances I was generally dropping off the back after taking a turn on the front and failing to get back on again. Bike there and back.
• LFNS lead 25th May: it's summer, so was mostly pretty pedestrian. A few short sprints on the second half.
• inexplicable gap for a week or so, I think caused by having no bicycle and being too lazy to get trains to Tatem
• Having worked out I was unlikely to win anything at Preston and needn't therefore care too much about being fresh for it, LFNS bike second half, 1st June
• Preston marathon, 3rd June. Can't be bothered to write this up again, see Peter and my combined report
• LFNS bike riding 8th June, also cycled there and back. It feels like less work than it used to, but this is partly because the bike is lighter this year than it used to be. Also see above: it's summer and the skate is slow
• rest today

Dear Mr. Barlow ,

Unfortunately we are unable to charge the credit card you specified 
when booking with the fare of 38,00 GBP .The credit card company 
refused the payment.

Please send us your credit card details (complete credit card number, 
CVC code and expiry date) by 19.06.2007 so we can make sure we have 
the correct information.
[...]
Please send us the complete e-mail in your response, since our 
correspondence is dealt with by a team. 

This e-mail message is confidential and for use by the addressee only.
If the message is received by anyone other than the addressee, please 
return the message to the sender by replying to it and then delete the 
message from your computer. Internet e-mails are not necessarily 
secure. Air Berlin PLC & Co Luftverkehrs KG does not accept 
responsibility for changes made to this message after it was sent.

My emphasis. Clearly not their emphasis ...

Texticl has now reached the point of being useful to me and may be useful to others too if they don't mind getting their hands dirty and can survive a diet of zero documentation. So I've made it a cliki page describing how you can get it with darcs.

The full asdf-installable package thing will follow some day, but at the moment I'm having trouble with gpg (of the "forgot my passphrase" flavour, slightly embarrassing) which disinclines me from doing the necessary cleanup.

While attempting last night to think of a sufficiently awful pun for the title of this entry, I came up with the following joke:

Q: What does the bridge at the far end of Paddington terminus have in common with the Democratic Prawn Party Manifesto?

A: They're both 'cross station platforms

Moving swiftly on, then ...

• 12 June, presumably I went to Tatem

• 15 June, LFNS: bike first half, marshalled second, bike there and back

• 17 June: London to Brighton cycle ride skate, followed by drinking rather a lot: the wear and tear I felt the following day was entirely about the dehydration and almost not at all about the having skated 50 miles at, all told, a fairly leisurely pace. Others seemed to enjoy it more or find it more of an achievement so, fair play to them.

• 18 June: recover from hangover

• 19 June-present: recover from dodgy knee. Demonstrating once again (first time this year, actually) that though race-derived road rash may give you big scabs, require you to faff around with vaseline and melolin, and get blood and pus all over your clothes and bedclothes for a week, it's the low-speed impacts that really cause you to hobble. Yes, tripped and fell just before the last turn on L2B (though this didn't stop us from hamming up a big sprint finish with a hawk for the line, the memory of which still makes me smile). Left knee, seems better now, still isn't crackling as loud as the right knee, so I guess I probably have some synovial fluid left.

Do I sound a bit disenchanted? Maybe a bit, yes. This whole season has just seemed like a plateau - nothing (with the possible exception of various of the drills in Sardinia, but they're not translating into winning anything) that I can point to and say "look, I'm skating better than last year".

Yesterday, headed out to Victoria Park to find a short circuit that I could practice crossovers on. There's a small triangular loop right at the west end of the park that has one reasonably tight curve in it and two acute angles. Observations after half an hour or so:

• the transition from regular skating to crossover is where I thought I was weak, but actually it's not so bad. It's the transition from gliding to crossover (i.e. the acute angles, where I needed to be going slower) that's a mess: I'm leading with the right foot while I glide (natural side to scissor) and it doesn't get any better from that.

• armswing: hells' bells. It's too early to say without testing at serious speed, but this could be the answer to most of my crossover woes for sensibly-sized corners: on the skateable curve, adding a bit of rhythm to my inside arm, suddenly I found I could pick any line on the track that I wanted, and that my feet were going when I wanted without lagging my brain.

• the acute turns I was having little or no success with: I was getting them right (or at least passable) occasionally, but not often enough to be other than fluke. Failure modes; (1) coast into turn too fast with outside foot leading (and probably not enough kneebend), become seized with sudden fear of what will happen when I lift my outside leg to crossover, fail to do so; or (2) coast into turn not too fast, take single deep underpush on inside leg. Not so bad in that it gets me around the corner, but balance is too far forward and doesn't feel right laterally either: if my pushing skate were to slip, I'd be scraping tarmac again.

So, I need to go back and try again, this time resisting the temptation to hammer around the easy curve, ensuring that I keep skating right up to the entrances of the other turns, and taking many shallow steps instead of trying to get around on a few swingeing great huge ones. Yes, big deep ones are much more efficient, biut I'm not after effeiciency, I'm after manoeuvrability and a better sense of where my feet are.

Next race: Hanover-Celle, 8th July, just hope my passport (away being renewed) is returned to me before then. This race last year is still my PB (see what i mean about plateauing?) though as it's European Masters this year it might not be as much of an opportunity: rumours are that each age group is started separately, so I may not have quite the same opportunity for finding a honking great co-operative line and sticking with it for the duration.

Back in February I wrote about Citiskate and thefns.com and their slightly not-quite-in-agreement-with-everyone-else definition of what was an "official" web site with respect to the LFNS.

This week I got another mail from them (first one in a while, in fact) which says

FYI the no/go gets posted on thefns.com and any group or organisation that claims to be the 'official organiser' for an event that is not official are misinformed.

Let's pass over the minor consideration that two out of three times when I check it thefns.com is not even updated with the route, never mind an accurate weather call, but it's funny that they seem to have changed their tune about how official they are, isn't it? Wonder what caused that. They need to update their Yahoo groups page too, though, cos it still says it's the "the OFFICIAL weekly email [...] of London's three year round group skates" - which given that they've only sent 11 mails out this year (and the most recent one before today was May 4th) is obviously wrong on the "weekly" part never mind what you think about "official".

(If you are looking for a regular skating newsletter, by which we mean one that does actually send out once a week when it says weekly, I think you could do worse than the Week on Wheels - but I would say that, I write for it from time to time)

And now let's hope the rain clear up this afternoon because on the LFNS tonight I'm looking forward to riding the Firebrox. Which, if there was ever any doubt, was funded by marshals and private direct donations and if you thought your Paypal donations through Citiskate-associated web sites went anywhere near its building, rebuilding, storage or maintenance, um, sorry, no.

OK, rant over.