New bits for the 20"

Got some new bits for the Year 20" to get the gearing to pretty much the same as the Yess 24".

I am riding a 37x16 on the 24" with a 24x1.75 Tioga power block which gives as ratio of 55.54.

The 20" was with a Tioga powerblocks 20x1.60 and a gearing of 44x16 which gave a ratio of 53.59 which was much lower and explains why I was so tired racing he other week.

I am now changing to a 20x1.75 powerblock on the rear and changing the gearing to 42x15 to give a ratio slightly higher than the 24" at 55.78 which is as close as I can get it I think.

As I said I have bought a new powerblock folding 20x1.75 tyre and a new box 15 tooth sprocket. I already have a rental 42 chain ring that I will use for now although I have a new rennen 42 tooth chain ring in the post as I prefer the look of them to the rental chain rings.

I also bought a bunch of inner tubes to re-stock my parts box.

Here are before and after photos:

Picked up Dialled

I got up this morning and washed the Yess Cruiser again as I did a really bad job yesterday. I then went to Crucial and dropped off the Yess as it has a crunchy headset and picked up the Dialled.

I also got the box brake lever fitted to the dialled while I was there.

I also picked up my son's wheel ready for us to ride tomorrow.

When I got home I washed the Yess 20" as well as it was still really dirty as I only rinsed it off yesterday.

It is looking really good now.

I am taking the day off again to make sure that I am well for the weekend. 

Dialled Ready - 25/10/17

Had another rest day today as I was still feeling rough.

I did get up and wash my bikes as they were still muddy from training on Monday afternoon.

I got a call from Crucial to say that the Dialled was ready to pick up apart from needing a new brake lever.

Luckily the Box Lever that I had bought arrived so I went into work and picked it up and put it in the car ready to take to Crucial to be fitted tomorrow.

I am going to drop off the Yess 24" as the new box headset that I bought is crunching which is not good as I only bought it about 3 weeks ago!!! Not very impressed with the durability. Once the Yess is all done I am going to take it to my parents to leave it stored in their Garage for the winter as I am just going to use the Dialled and the 20" Yess for now.

Rest Day - Getting Ill

I woke up this morning feeling really tired so I went back to sleep after eating breakfast until about 12:30.

I then went out and ran some errands and went to lunch with my son.

When we got back I went to sleep again and when I woke up my stomach was bad and I had diarrhoea and was feeling sick.

I have been working all evening so far but have been having frequent trips to the bathroom which is not pleasant.

I am not sure if this has been caused by me eating an entire Dominoes Pizza last night or if I am getting tonsillitis again as I get a bad stomach a couple of days before I get ill when I have tonsillitis so I will see.

Unfortunately this meant that I was not able to ride today but that was probably for the best as my left knee was pretty sore this morning when I woke up.

Revised Training

Had training this afternoon with the Bath club coach Matt Eaton.

I used my Cruiser for most of the training and I found that I am really bad out of the gate on flats now :-) I kept lifting my feet off of the peddles all of the time!!!

It was a really good session and I have learnt that I really need to work on my manuals so I am going to spend a month focusing on manuals and then once I am better at them I will start with sprints and the other skills. We did a really good practice where we went half speed and tryed to manual the long tabletop on the 3rd straight and I was really really bad at it even though I can manual it at full speed. This showed that my technique is really off. For the rest of this week I am going to to pump laps followed by lots and lots of manual training on this tabletop followed by flat manuals in the carpark before I go home.

I am going to put flats on my 20" to use it to practice on as I am feeling more comfortable on it than the cruiser at the moment. I am going to take the Yess Cruiser to my parents house again tomorrow as I am not going to use it until next year. The Dialled is being built up with flat peddles as well so I can use this when I want to ride the cruiser for the winter.

This will also give me time to heal my ribs as they are obviously not totally healed yet and were sore again today. After a month or so I will start going hard with the sprints to get faster again.

Bristol racing

Went to Bristol track today to race in the first round of the Bristol Winter series.

Started off OK and I did a few laps to warm up then did gates. This is where it went wrong. I hit the gate on the first gate and went over the bars. Luckily all I did was graze my knee. I did 4 more gates at hit the gate every time!!!

In my first moto I hit the gate again but managed to stay on and finished second although my ribs were sore and I was knackered. The second moto I managed to gate well and won the race although I really hurt my ribs and was really tired and decided to call it a day so that I didn't agitate my ribs any more.

I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't race all the races as there were 2 national riders racing today and I finished just behind one hitting the gate in my first moto and I beat the other in my second moto. All made better by the fact that I was riding my 20" that I had only ridden for 3 days before racing.

I am resting up now as I have training tomorrow as long as my ribs are better.

In hind site it may have been better to have not raced today but you live and learn.

I had better news this afternoon when I sold my Ice Cruiser Frame so I have some cash to pay off the credit cards so the dialled may be saved to a while yet or I may seel it to pay off the credit cards a bit more :-)

The results for the racing were posted and even though I only raced 2 races I still had 4th pick for the A final and didn't finish last overall :-)

Hoping to be healed for next months race so that I can make all 4 races and then move back up to f1 for the next race in December.

Weigh in

Managed to sneak under 100kgs this morning in my weigh in at 98.85kgs.

As long as I can keep my weight dropping every week I will be happy. I can tell that I am gaining muscle too so the weight loss is a bonus.

I am a little worried as my left knee is really sore at the moment which I hope is caused by the cold wet weather and not by my knee getting worse. This knee has been a problem since I hyper extended it when I was 11 and is due to get arthritis in it about now so I may have to go to the doctors to check it out next week.

I am getting ready to go to Bristol to race this morning an am excited to be back racing but a bit apprehensive as I haven't managed a full lap of the track yet! Also the weather is crap so not really pumped to be getting out of bed of I an honest.