A rower goes cycling, part I

Firstly, I know I am rubbish. This is my first post of 2013 and it's over half way through March! So yes, it's been over three months since I last wrote anything. FUCK. ME.

Excuses:

1) I've been teaching every single student in the University some sort of maths. 

This basically entails spending all your time marking, preparing for lessons and actually teaching and thus having no time to do your PhD. For people who actually want to do their PhD, or indeed have any life at all, I DO NOT RECOMMEND IT. 
2) I've been cycling lots and thus filled in the holes in my life when I wasn't TEACHING EVERYONE with training, eating and sleeping. And tinkering with bikes. That's important. (I can now properly index a rear derailleur - PRIDE).
3) I AM A RUBBISH, LAZY PERSON.

So yes, many apologies. This is me trying to make amends, by, unsurprising WRITING A BLOG POST WOOOOOOOOO. Also, using fewer commas. Maybe.

Also, while I've been away I notice my pageviews have gone over the 250'000 limit which is like TOTALLY LOADS OF PAGEVIEWS *is smug*. But seriously. Quarter of a million. Whoa.

So, shit that's happened recently.

#1 I have made an effort to go out and meet people

 It will surprise none of you that, as a mathematician and someone who spends quite a lot of time training, I don't get out much. Like at all.

Some point around New Year I realised that I wasn't going to meet anyone turboing in my utility room (and would therefore die cold and alone) so I should probably actually make some fucking effort.  

I am honestly not the most social of people *surprised face* so this decision was kind of a big deal. I've honestly found the dating scene to just massively take it out of me emotionally (it just FUCKS with your self esteem), but on the whole I am at least slightly better at not being massively awkward meeting new people. Which can only be a good thing I suppose.

Railton tries meeting people

#2 I bought a new bike and didn't tell my parents about it and then they were cross :(

So in December I came to the conclusion that my steel, chromed-to-death track bike was probably not going to cut it forever so invested in something that was (a) very black and (b) very carbon fibre.

God, I love that chrome. SO. MUCH. FUCKING. CHROME.

 >>>>>eBay hunting>>>>>money>>>>>

CARBON ALL THE THINGS!!!!!

I then obviously didn't tell my parents about it for a while because I thought they'd judge me.

And then they found out, which was both awkward and inevitable.

What, this thing with two wheels that looks suspiciously like a bike but not like a bike you've seen before? NA, TOTALLY NOT A NEW BIKE.

But hey! New bike! And I got to do exciting stuff to it like glue on tubular tyres to wheels, change cranks and bars and stems and cool things like that! :) Also ride it round and round in circles, which is also fun. Certainly more fun that changing stems.

DEM. BARS.

#3 I have done lots of cycling

This has been quite an interesting change from my CUW days of getting up at 5am, getting the train to Ely, going rowing, coming home, dying of tiredness etc. etc. Now it's invariably just me, a training plan and a bike. I wake up a good two hours later, I get my bike out the garage and I go out cycling.

Sometimes nothing in particular happens. This is invariably A Good Thing.

Sometimes my neck is attached to the rear of my head, too. Just for shits and giggles.

Sometimes it got so cold my kit froze around me (it got down to -10 for a while in Cambridge in January).

Water bottles froze. I wore three pairs of overshoes (ROWERS: like pogies FOR FEET) and my feet still froze. I swear my Oakleys actually got frozen to my face at some point.

It was character building. Yes.

Sometimes I cycled past people who had driven into ditches for no apparent reason in the middle of the Fens.

(They were fine and this has happened twice now).

Sometimes tyre sidewalls blow out and you have to have an emergency stop at Saffron Walden to replace your utterly fucked tyre. This is after retrieving your bike which you've thrown into a hedge in rage after it blew up the second time already.

Sometimes you get your ego utterly destroyed on a ride, you blow up horribly and you have to be physically pushed home.

Later:

Sometimes you are a complete beast.

Sometimes you are shit and consider packing it in.

Sometimes it is SO FUCKING WINDY that you consider texting your housemates saying that if you don't make it home by midnight, please check ditches in the Earith area. Then you crawl home in bottom BOTTOM gear at 70 rpm and curse and swear at the FUCKING STUPID WIND for making it so hard to get home.

 
Sometimes it's just too shit outside (hey! enough of your "MTFU" chat - it happens!) and you don't fancy crashing on ice so you get your turbo or your rollers out and you get the fuck on with it.

There was a week or two in the New Year when it snowed quite a bit, so out came the rollers.

I went slightly insane.

By the time you've listened to a couple of hours of trance and stared at the same paving slab unflinchingly for just as long, your brain goes to a weird, far away place (as if to retreat away from the incessant boredom and pain) and when you emerge blinking into the real world, you're not quite right in the head.

A consequence of this is I can now however roller no handed, which makes me feel like a complete boss (even if I still can't get on them without a wall).

*BONUS IMAGE :D*

Also note the tool board. It's a NICE tool board.

Rollering has been fun - I've certainly now firmly left behind my rower-on-a-bike thing of doing everything at 80rpm and grinding round the Fens in huge gears. High cadence FTW basically! LOOK AT ALL MY CADENCE LOOK AT IT.

This foray into cycling has also occasionally been good for obliterating my ego. There's nothing quite like blowing your doors off 20 miles from Cambridge and while crying into your Garmin having to be actually *pushed* home by your ride mates. (Especially when you start the ride completely smashing it in the face, spending all the time on the front etc.) Oh god, so embarrassing.

For this reason I owe Tim Williams many coffees.

It's like I've had to learn my limitations all over again; 2K race at Nottingham? Yep, know what I'm doing. Some godforesaken hill in the Peak District somewhere? I am invariably dropped after a minute or so. 18K in a 1x? COOL. Do a 4 hour ride? I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING *FLAIL FLAIL*. It's been a pleasingly steep learning curve basically. Rowers often just assume they'll be instantly good at all other sports because WE'RE ROWERS AND WE'RE AMAZING so it's kind of good to have your arse handed to you sometimes. (Or a lot as the case has been.)

I think in these past 6 months I'm fitter than I ever have been (this is going by resting heart rate) - I've never been an aerobic monkey and I think all of the seriously long sessions over the winter (I mean, let's face it rowing sessions are usually 90' tops right?) have done me a lot of good.

I still can't climb for shit. I mean, I've lost a stone since my rowing days but I still can't climb for shit. RAILTON DOES NOT DO HILLS OH NO.

Other stuff.... erm. I still LOVE DA WEIGHTS, obviously. Such obsessions are hard to overcome. Now I have to do leg press though, which is exciting. I always objected to doing it for rowing (since there's no point making leg strength that your core can't support right? -> do some fucking squats instead) but it does seem a lot more relevant for cycling.

For months and months I did 3*20 reps of everything weights related. It was fucking horrendous. Here is how it usually transpired:

Nowadays I usually equate "good weights session" with "has religious experience in the leg press machine".

I'm also running out of plates in Fenners MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Will have to start getting some of the insistently-bicep-curling men to sit on the machine soon :D

>>> FUCKING HELL, I've left writing this too long - this is turning into a massive meandering epic as per usual. SORRY.>>>

Other cool stuff - I signed up with a cycling team, which was unexpected given that this happened in February and this sort of thing gets sorted out much earlier in the year. A team on advertised on twitter that they were looking for some female riders, so I was like

... and the rest is history.

This is me doing my first race under their colours (my first race ever actually):

(Huw Williams)

As you can see, I am really good at pulling exceptionally attractive faces while cycling.

This appears to be a good point to tell you about my first race! So, let me set the scene.

It was February. It was at the Cyclopark in Kent. And I had no idea what I was doing. There were about 15 girls in my race (the 3rd/4th Cat race - ROWERS: think IM3/Novice), about 10 in the other women's race and a metric fuckton of men in the two men's races. There must have been a good 80-100 people on the circuit - it was fairly mental out there.

So, the three other races went off ahead of us, leaving us 3/4 Women lined up ready to go.

I had my aggressive face on. The fucking-amazing-Oakleys were ON. The bike-formerly-known-as-Thor-and-now-known-as-Atreus2 was primed and ready to go. You could've eaten your dinner off my cassette it was so clean. BRING IT THE FUCK ON.

We started.

It was instantly clear that I wasn't very good at drafting people. This is BAD.

One girl fired off the front of the group in the first couple of laps and we never saw her again. The race was now on for second place. (Lesson learned: be more attentive next time!)

Another amazing Huw Williams picture! (Again showing me not drafting anyone).

We got to about 5 laps to go and the group of girls was now down to 8 or so, with only the front 4 girls doing any work (guess which group I was in). I was getting twitchy and pissed off.

So, naturally, I attacked...

...and latched onto the back of a passing men's group.

This was not cool.

I really didn't think about it at the time - I just did it. I just knew I *had* to get away and that if I got a gap I would probably keep it. I stayed hanging onto the back of the men for 3/4 of a lap before being blown out the back, then I just mashed it into the finish. I came second...

...But I came second by being a cheating arsehole. Some girls were a bit pissed off with me after the race, but I didn't really think much about it so I just went home and was like "well, that was OK. I didn't die".

As the weekend went on though I felt more and more bad so eventually just emailed the organisers, explained what happened, apologised, recommended that they DQ me and promised not to do it again. So that was my first race. A DQ :)

Race #2 them came around about a month later (I had an annoying tendency to come down with something in sync with these races, rage). But yes, on the 16th March I was down at the Cyclopark again and I had something to prove. 

A lot to prove.

The weather this time round was what is commonly known as "fucking horrendous". It was raining, it was cold and there was the mother of all headwinds down the finishing straight. That day was a day for a suicidal move. The weather was so shit that a completely batshit crazy move might just work... So that is exactly what I did.

We started. There were a surprising amount of women there - about 20 or so. And my, was it fucking cold.

The hairpin. I was about halfway down the pack. We get to the couple of switchbacks, I move up. We move onto the finishing straight of the first lap and I am fourth wheel back. The wind has dragged the speed out of everyone.

I attack.

ATTACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's just head down till I make it to the hairpin again. JUST MAKE IT ROUND THE HAIRPIN RAILTON. DON'T FUCKING CRASH NOW.

DON'T YOU DARE FUCKING CRASH.

...And no one has come with me.

I am in the big ring. That group is not going to see me again. Because fuck you, that's why.

FUCK. YOU.

It is time for courage legs. I have an hour to hold on. Then it will end. If I can hold on for an hour I will win.

I. WILL. WIN.

...I won and it was beautiful.

As you can see I have not mastered any sort of pro victory salute yet.

Honestly, it was just FUN, and I was proud to do it in ASL360 colours.

 I wanted to see if I could do it really, and a 1 hour TT with a group of girls at your heels is just a good way of learning stuff about yourself. I mean, it was fucking stupid - they were the worst tactics in the entire world - but it was my brand of fucking stupid. And it worked.

>:)

#4 I find myself being a poster girl

To finish, I would just like you all to quietly appreciate the irony of Newton (more on that + yesterday's boat race in the next post, hopefully not in three months time) picking the *most* unphotogenic, unladylike girl in last year's CUWBC squad and turning a photo of her into a motivational poster.

On *that* bombshell, I bid you good day!

Lessons in looking like a 14 year old boy

So a lots has happened since my last post (I enjoyed my foray into women-in-sport-type issues by the way and seeing how amazingly polarising it was; will probably end up talking about it again at some point).

Term started (it's nearly over now FUCK) and I went back to CUWBC as I was always intending to. I lasted a very impressive four days before throwing in the towel and going back to my bikes.

My heart just wasn't in it at all and I came to the conclusion that doing a boat race just out a sense of duty was a very bad reason to do a boat race. You have to want it and want it with all your soul, there is nothing gained by just going through the motions.

I wanted new challenges - I did after all finally win a boat race last year - and the bike would give me that. Sitting in the middle of the velodrome in Manchester with my head in my hands after getting wupped one of my friends remarked that he thought we might be witnessing the death knell of my rowing career and to a certain extent, he was right. Within a week I went back to and subsequently left CUW and was back on the bike again.

Stuff then started happening. I sold my boat, reasoning that it was a crime against Empachers to leave a nice Empacher lying around not doing anything for a couple of years. I put it on the Rowing Service Noticeboard (thanks Rachel Quarrell!), massively lucked out and it was sold and collected within 24 hours... mental.  

In a scene which was weirdly similar to when I bought it; I got it from York and there was the York Minster in the background, now the guy was trying it out in Ely in with Ely Cathedral in the background. It was also fucking freezing, because it was Ely.

This is my favourite me-and-my-boat picture. I had hair then. HAIR.

Although I did have a rather embarrassing cry and a REALLY massive sad, Atreus has gone to a good home though, to a nice lwt man whose going to take it to trials and generally race the bejesus out of it. I'm also considering renaming the-bike-currently-known-as-Thor as Atreus2 or maybe it can have a bike sex-change and become Electra (grandaughter of Atreus), then its nickname can be "Lecky" and that'd be cool.

Anyway, rambling.

I have now embarked on CYCLING ALL THE THINGS and there is well known that if you want to get good at cycling you need two things: a coach and a power meter (and training, suffering etc. but that it is a given). Therefore I've got myself a coach to (a) impart cycling knowledge and (most importantly) (b) stop me from overtraining.

I've also not got a powertap wheel which means MOAR DATA and MOAR GRAPHS which, as a mathematician, is very pleasing to me. However, it is also a tricky beast to please and most of the time my Garmin looks like this:

Occasionally you can make it look like this, but not for very long and usually resulting in you throwing up in a hedge at the side of the road.

So yes, this is now my life:

Descending is SO MUCH FUN when you are a heavy fucker :)

Climbing up the hills is *not* though. For the first time in my life I actually have to lose weight; everything is power to weight in this cycling game, and while being a bit heavy is fine in a boat where it adds a negligible amount to the surface area of boat underwater... When you are going up a hill it matters. A lot.

I have noticed something about this cycling thing though. Compare these two:

I mean, what the actual fuck? How does that even work? The other thing I've noticed is that for the first time ever I have a good reason to shave my legs. I mean, having to shave my legs because I'm a girl is just a shit reason. Shaving my legs because it makes me look more pro at cycling however (even if I'm just wearing leggings all the time anyway) is a good reason.

Yes.

Other stuff ermmmmmmmm. Oh yeah, I got some rollers. You know, these things:

They were kinda alright actually. I mean the first time I went on them (in my kitchen, holding onto a much too low kitchen surface) I got major novice death grip in the hand I was holding on with and I was basically just sweating FEAR.

The next time was much more successful. For the first 35 mins. I decided it would be a great idea to sort of move around on my saddle a bit and ended up cycling off the edge and completely stacking it and falling off in a very ungainly way. (I almost took out my housemate who was on rollers next to me... oops).

There can honestly be nothing worse than falling off something when you're techincally not really moving at all. I have been reassured it is a rite of passage, stacking it off rollers, much like falling out of a single, which makes me feel a little better.

OMFG CYCLING CAPS I MEANT TO TALK ABOUT CYCLING CAPS.

NOW, I don't know what it is about this item of clothing but I think you either have to be Italian or Eddy Merckx to pull them off. Else, you look like a massive twat.

 Let me demonstrate.

I give you "normal" Anna:

Cycling* Anna:

*Imagine bike + outdoors etc.

Cycling cap Anna:

 Look! I made a gif to show you how wearing a cycling cap can transform me from me to 14 year old boy!

(Sorry, I could not be fucked in lining up the images SO SHOOT ME)



*BONUS IMAGE OF ME LOOKING LIKE A TWAT*

Would YOU trust this 14 year old boy not to rob an off-license?

Admittedly it doesn't help that as soon as a camera is pointed at me I just pull the most stupid faces ever but I think I have proved my point; Cycling caps = you will look like a twat.

However, such is the cycling culture that we all wear them anyway. I mean, I am secretly* trying to look a bit like Robert Millar:

*not very secretly

Sure, I'm failing miserably, but it's the thought that counts right?

Now I am spending considerably more time cycling on the roads around Cambridge I have become... much less tolerant of people being fucking idiots on the roads (cars - cyclists - pedestrians inclusive).

When I have spent an entire ride being cut up by asshats and have just run out of swears to call them (it usually happens that you get an entire week of asshat driving in one ride) I start bitterly constructing award ceremonies in my head for the worst offenders. I am not sure if this is entirely normal, but I imagine getting "FUCKING ASSHAT DRIVER WHO JUST OVERTOOK ME AT 70MPH WITH AN INCH OF ROOM BEFORE TURNING LEFT IN FRONT OF ME" to some nice glitzy award ceremony. There is champagne and women are wearing sparkly dresses and shit and there are glamourous shots of the FUCKING ASSHAT DRIVER all around the place. Stephen Fry gives a little speech about FUCKING ASSHAT DRIVER and then I present him with an award.

It keeps me amused.

Of course the converse is true and I shower adulation and love in unnecessarily flowery language on people who aren't asshats too.

I think a nice friendly wave to nice people who wait for you at junctions and stuff just makes the world a better place. I also like the solidarity that appears to exist between road cyclists (the nod as you past someone else, giving people inner tubes etc.) It's just quite awesome when you are hammering it round in the Fens and it's raining and there's a fucking massive crosswind and its 3 degrees and you are sugar bonking and you accidentally dropped half your banana in the road and your arse hurts and your lungs hurt and your ears are really fucking cold even though you bought a special hat to go under your helmet and you pass someone going the other way and you give them The Nod to acknowledge that they are too suffering in this Fenland soul-destroying wasteland and we understand each other for a little moment before disappearing into the fog and your own personal hell again. It's a beautiful moment.

 ANYWAY, couple of bits of news before I sign off for the night.

NEWS ITEM #1:

I am now on Twitter! I am @rail_guns, obviously (OK, I considered @fuckinghellrage but this is a little more PC). I occasionally attempt to say amusing things, not making any promises though.

NEWS ITEM #2:

I AM MAKING MORE MUGS. If you want any bespoke ones for your longsuffering family members/coxswain/coach/dog etc. for Christmas NOW IS YOUR CHANCE. Drop me an email if you want anything, I'll put the order in mid-December probably. I'll do some more Flaily Scullers and Gorilla Fighters and that do not worry :) They'll be the bargainous sum of £8 again.

And with that, I bid you good night!