Just rolling

I’ve been asked a few times what I’m thinking about when I’m spending five-plus hours a day in the saddle. I guess my thoughts fall into two categories:

1. Cycling-related
2. Completely random

On the cycling-related front, if I’m following someone’s wheel, there are three things I think about: how fast or slowly we’re travelling, how far away from their back wheel I am, and what gear they are in. When I’m leading, I tend to think about how fast I’m going and whether it’s a reasonable pace for the group, what gear I’m in, and how technically competent my pedal stroke is.

This latter point relates to an ongoing theme that seems to dog my thoughts, which is a complex trade-off between maximising energy-efficiency and maximising training benefits. I know, these two things are basically opposites, but I still find myself going between being massively over- or under-geared, or sprinting out of the saddle, or climbing in the drops, and being as smooth as possible, climbing gently in a low gear and smoothing out my pedal stroke.

I also obsess over the gear of the person in front—especially if they’re riding a different configuration to mine. I ride 30-42-52 teeth on the front, and a 12-25 block on the back. Sophie (and Ed I think) have the same block, but 26-36-46 on the front. This means that I spend a lot of time trying to match gears by multiplying numbers by 30/26 or 42/36.

When it’s raining (like it was all of today) I obsessively rehearse just how I’m going to take my bike apart and clean it when I get home. I’ll take the wheels off, give the chain a degreaser bath, expel the water with WD-40 and re-oil the chain. I’ll wipe all the crud off with a cloth soaked in dilute degreaser. I’ll replace those rusting allen bolts on my stem with shiny new ones. And so on.

My final bit of cycling-related obsession is that of bike noises. Any long-distance cyclist will know what I’m talking about. The merest hint of chain rubbing derailleur or jockey wheel squeaking is enough to trigger off thoughts of retrimming gear cables or the above “cleaning” theme respectively.

So, as you can see, there isn’t much time to think about solving the world’s problems, or even my own, come to that.

That being said, however, I do sometimes wander off and think about random things. Like:

1. How many calories are there in a fig roll?
2. What fraction of the distance from the earth to the moon have we covered? (Oops, cycling-related.)
3. Why have they never found Nessie stuck in the sluices in the locks at the end of Loch Ness?
4. What am I going to do with my life?
5. What would a world without air travel be like?
6. How do they make neoprene?

So, as you can see, I spend a lot of time absorbed in deep and very important thoughts. Which probably explains why I’ve missed seeing the Loch Ness Monster.

There is a Nessie mural in the hostel here though.

G’night.