A big thank you to all who have donated to date – I have now passed the minimum fundraising commitment of £1200, but hope to secure many £1000s more for the William Wates Memorial Trust over the next few months. Especially as I’ve only sent emails to about 25% of my target list and only about 25% of those have responded at this early stage.
So this week I spent many enjoyable hours looking at the myriad of available wheel deals on the internet and cross-referencing to the huge number of very helpful reviews written by both cycling experts and mere mortals like me. However, in reality I was only going to consider either Campagnolo, which I know and like, or Mavic Kysrium, which I know several other people have and like. Clearly if money was not a limiting factor, I’d also be looking at Zipp wheels, which are generally thought to be pretty special – but being carbon are less resilient to potholes (and dogs – ask Marcus Burghardt, Tour de France 2007!) and are ridiculously expensive. In the end I decided on some Campaganolo Shamal Ultras after finding a very good price from an ebay merchant that was over £150 cheaper than the next best – they are 2 steps up in the product range from the ones I am replacing, so should deliver a better ride. Visually there is little difference other than being titanium coloured instead of the black on my current Zondas.
Very excited to receive the new wheels inside two days – thank you High On Bikes for an excellent service. They look and feel amazing. But I had a brief moment of panic when I saw the wheel size was 622x15c instead of the 700x23c that I’d been expecting – was that the reason they’d been such a good price? Feeling like a prize idiot I looked online to discover, to my great relief, that the former measurement is the newer international coding and the latter the older French version. Phew!
As the bike shop is still waiting for my new rim to be delivered for my commute bike, I had to ride into work on my new wheels. I thought initially that I was imagining that the Shamals are more smooth than the Zondas. But after a few rides on them, that is exactly what feels different about them – they are super smooth. Must be higher quality bearings used in the hub I suppose. Very pleased with them.
Took the afternoon off on Thursday to watch Molly in a school hockey tournament. They played 7 games in a round-robin format and did brilliantly, with a couple of crushing wins and some very tight games elsewhere that could have gone either way. I was really proud and impressed by Molly’s play and their team ended up with the bronze medal, very close to silver – a thoroughly enjoyable and exciting afternoon. I never really played hockey, but it’s a good spectator sport, although it looks quite vicious to play with sticks flying around the ankles, hands and head - almost makes road cycling look safe!
So all was going really well, and I was desperately looking forward to trying the new wheels out on a long ride on Sunday. But then, disaster! Sitting at my desk at work on Friday I could feel my left knee starting to get painful. Which was all very strange as I could not remember twisting it awkwardly or banging it on anything – I had moved my saddle forward by about 3 or 4 mm, but surely that couldn’t be the cause. By the time I got changed to go home at the end of the day, it was feeling exceedingly sore around the top of the knee, just where the quads join the knee above the patella - especially when flexing the leg at the knee. I had an uncomfortable and increasingly concerned ride home, and then the pain got worse over the rest of the evening to the point at which I could barely flex it. Now I was really worried – could this be the start of a really long lay-off the training, or worse jeopardise my entire participation in the event itself? How was my knee going to cope with repeated daily 110+ mileage over mountainous terrain if it broke down on a 15 mile commute?
As is the way these days, I attempted to undertake some self-diagnosis online. But there’s so much unqualified information and recommendation that it’s difficult to know I’d be following the right advice and not making it worse. However, the most likely causes looked like poor inner quad strength, pushing too-big gears, or just overtraining - but to me most of these would have involved a more gradual increase in pain compared to the sudden escalation I had experienced, apparently without specific trauma. I felt hugely frustrated and deflated, worrying about the worst-case scenario of how to break it to all those generous donors that I was no longer able to complete the TdF. But more out of desperation than expectation, I emptied the freezer of ice and sat with an ice pack over my knee for about 2 hours. Then went to bed.
Saturday morning I woke at around 7am and tentatively moved my leg – to my delight, although a bit sceptical initially, there appeared to have been a rapid improvement. I repeated the ice treatment on Saturday evening and by Sunday morning I was feeling no pain. Hugely tempted to go for long ride, I resisted in case I aggravated the injury and settled for a single lap of Richmond Park with Clare, at a fairly sedate pace, having reset my saddle to the previous position. No pain or other issues at all – all a bit mystifying and have booked in to see a physio next week to discuss /diagnose/treat. Talk about highs and lows!
Weekly totals
Commute – 83 miles
Other rides – 17 miles
Turbo – 1 hour
So this week I spent many enjoyable hours looking at the myriad of available wheel deals on the internet and cross-referencing to the huge number of very helpful reviews written by both cycling experts and mere mortals like me. However, in reality I was only going to consider either Campagnolo, which I know and like, or Mavic Kysrium, which I know several other people have and like. Clearly if money was not a limiting factor, I’d also be looking at Zipp wheels, which are generally thought to be pretty special – but being carbon are less resilient to potholes (and dogs – ask Marcus Burghardt, Tour de France 2007!) and are ridiculously expensive. In the end I decided on some Campaganolo Shamal Ultras after finding a very good price from an ebay merchant that was over £150 cheaper than the next best – they are 2 steps up in the product range from the ones I am replacing, so should deliver a better ride. Visually there is little difference other than being titanium coloured instead of the black on my current Zondas.
Very excited to receive the new wheels inside two days – thank you High On Bikes for an excellent service. They look and feel amazing. But I had a brief moment of panic when I saw the wheel size was 622x15c instead of the 700x23c that I’d been expecting – was that the reason they’d been such a good price? Feeling like a prize idiot I looked online to discover, to my great relief, that the former measurement is the newer international coding and the latter the older French version. Phew!
As the bike shop is still waiting for my new rim to be delivered for my commute bike, I had to ride into work on my new wheels. I thought initially that I was imagining that the Shamals are more smooth than the Zondas. But after a few rides on them, that is exactly what feels different about them – they are super smooth. Must be higher quality bearings used in the hub I suppose. Very pleased with them.
Took the afternoon off on Thursday to watch Molly in a school hockey tournament. They played 7 games in a round-robin format and did brilliantly, with a couple of crushing wins and some very tight games elsewhere that could have gone either way. I was really proud and impressed by Molly’s play and their team ended up with the bronze medal, very close to silver – a thoroughly enjoyable and exciting afternoon. I never really played hockey, but it’s a good spectator sport, although it looks quite vicious to play with sticks flying around the ankles, hands and head - almost makes road cycling look safe!
So all was going really well, and I was desperately looking forward to trying the new wheels out on a long ride on Sunday. But then, disaster! Sitting at my desk at work on Friday I could feel my left knee starting to get painful. Which was all very strange as I could not remember twisting it awkwardly or banging it on anything – I had moved my saddle forward by about 3 or 4 mm, but surely that couldn’t be the cause. By the time I got changed to go home at the end of the day, it was feeling exceedingly sore around the top of the knee, just where the quads join the knee above the patella - especially when flexing the leg at the knee. I had an uncomfortable and increasingly concerned ride home, and then the pain got worse over the rest of the evening to the point at which I could barely flex it. Now I was really worried – could this be the start of a really long lay-off the training, or worse jeopardise my entire participation in the event itself? How was my knee going to cope with repeated daily 110+ mileage over mountainous terrain if it broke down on a 15 mile commute?
As is the way these days, I attempted to undertake some self-diagnosis online. But there’s so much unqualified information and recommendation that it’s difficult to know I’d be following the right advice and not making it worse. However, the most likely causes looked like poor inner quad strength, pushing too-big gears, or just overtraining - but to me most of these would have involved a more gradual increase in pain compared to the sudden escalation I had experienced, apparently without specific trauma. I felt hugely frustrated and deflated, worrying about the worst-case scenario of how to break it to all those generous donors that I was no longer able to complete the TdF. But more out of desperation than expectation, I emptied the freezer of ice and sat with an ice pack over my knee for about 2 hours. Then went to bed.
Saturday morning I woke at around 7am and tentatively moved my leg – to my delight, although a bit sceptical initially, there appeared to have been a rapid improvement. I repeated the ice treatment on Saturday evening and by Sunday morning I was feeling no pain. Hugely tempted to go for long ride, I resisted in case I aggravated the injury and settled for a single lap of Richmond Park with Clare, at a fairly sedate pace, having reset my saddle to the previous position. No pain or other issues at all – all a bit mystifying and have booked in to see a physio next week to discuss /diagnose/treat. Talk about highs and lows!
Weekly totals
Commute – 83 miles
Other rides – 17 miles
Turbo – 1 hour
Funds raised to date £1403
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