Random thoughts mainly about bikes, beer and photography.
Rory O’Brien track bike
Started riding fixed again, currently using 48×20 which is fine for the uphills round here but I am still having to brake on some of the downhills. Comfortable pedalling at 120rpm (22mph), but finding it tough at the moment to go over 27mph (144rpm).
Arthur Stanley Eddington
The stimulus to go through my training diaries was to calculate my Eddington number. Named after the astrophysicist Arthur Eddington who invented the concept, your Eddington number is the number of days you have cycled at least that many miles, e.g I had ridden at least 56 miles in a day on 56 days in my life, therefore for me E=56. However, to get to E=57, I am going to need another 7 rides of 57+ miles because six of the rides counting for E=56 are of 56 miles and therefore will not count for E=57!
UPDATE: July 2014 E=62, target is to get to 70 before the end of the year.
At the beginning of the year I spent the best part of a day going through my old training diaries to try to create a complete lifetime cycling record! Obviously some gaps, but it’s likely that for those years I didn’t keep records I probably wasn’t cycling much (apart from the 3 years I did a 16 mile commute).
Highlights are:
22,718 recorded miles, 821 days riding, longest day 180 miles, but only 7 other 100+ mile rides. Biggest annual mileage was 1990 with 3089 miles, although the three unrecorded commuting years were probably around the 3000 mile mark.