The love affair continues

The last couple of weeks have been marvellous, with nice weather and some great work opportunities in biomechanics and carbon fibre.

In recent months I have had increasing involvement with a group of friends who have formed the media friendly Halfwayup mountain bike club.

They have a corporate image, which is very easy to recognise on the hill, and club nights see upwards of thirty riders in attendance. Add to this their aptitude for community support and involvement and you have a club that is going to make a real and positive contribution to cycling and everything related to it.

Imagine my surprise (lump in throat) when they asked me to be patron! I don't know what I'm supposed to do but it sounds like being a grown up, doesn't it?

I have my own shirt now. It looks like this!

The boyz!

Saturday saw me standing at the front of a new shop as it was opened by female junior downhill World Champion, Manon Carpenter. It was followed by her showing all the guests at Castle Bikes an inspiring slide show of magnificent photos.

They were great for me as I could refer back to them for various parts of my own talk, "How to train for a solo."

I can bet that I didn't talk about what you think I might have.

We talked about embarrassing noises, bloating, mistakes, skills, support and all sorts.

It went down well!

ProMotionDynamics were there talking about bike fit. This too was good as they have a professional biomechanical method of checking fit rather than using anthropometric charts, which I have always disliked. I feel that they reduce the dependence on the professional bases of kinetic assessment that is required for a perfect fit. Bike fit, and the professional clinical skills that I feel are a pre-requisite, are a bit of a soap box for me, sorry.

Sunday arrived and my new shirt and I went for a ride with the Halfwayup riders.

We had a whale of a time in the Black Mountains. They have some fast guys, some crazy guys...

...and a particularly fast and crazy eejit.

Hiya Simon. You nutjob.

We had red hot brakes, saw a couple of "Over the bars" and heard lots of screaming.

Laughing a plenty...

...And that was just getting out of the cars!

The Love affair?

I'm still loving my Candy pedals. Security and stability with nice looks. I've tried going back to my other pedals for a ride, here and there, and I really do miss the Candy if I'm not using them. Result!

It's also good to see that quite a few folk in the club have them and love them.

Quite a few even have Santa Cruz bikes!

Spread the word, I say.

On that note, I may be about to start some work with a couple of companies, showing how the new tread spacers can be used to elicit max performance from the complex biomechanical machine that is the cyclist. Super simple, Super effective.

Effectively, simply, super!!

I let myself down, really.

Bike riding is fun. Period.

Friday saw me out with one of my friends, and sponsors, Simon from Loco Tuning.

It was the first time I had ridden my mountain bike in a techy situation since, err, October. I was worried that I might be a bit rusty, as I'm still struggling to get weight through my left arm whilst "gnarling it up."

But Simon, Tom (the vet) and I had some fun in our local woods for a few hours on one of the bits of singletrack that people travel miles to ride.

Read on to the end to see what this is about...

There were a few tumbly, screamy, cussing noises from behind as traction was lost, trees were hit, and bars flown elegantly over. But we had a great time!

The best bit is (selfishly) that I'm a bit rusty but am still quite a home on singletrack, even with a continually improving wonky arm.

A couple of comments on skills and one of our party nailed something that they were not able to commit to, originally. Woo hoo!

The worst bit?

I let myself down.

The bike I took out was one that I haven't ridden in ages. It's actually Jo's but fits me nicely and I've always gotten on with it. But I've been using Ergon GS2 for the last 2 years, and this bike didn't have them.

Good grief, did my hands hurt. Awful. I pride myself in the fact that I only use sponsored kit that I have previously fallen in love with, whilst I bought it and used it on my own first. I love my Ergon kit.

So whilst I still ride this bike, as my 2012 bikes are being built up, it will be having (has had) the GS2 Treatment.


Aggghhhh! That's better.

In other news...

...I've been accepted and confirmed as an Olympic Torchbearer! This incredible honour has been bestowed upon me after Rich Todd from Ergon nominated me, which sort of makes this whole post a bit more topical!

I can't quite believe it's happening, even though I've known about it since December, but had to keep quiet.

May 26th, will see me running (yes, I can run a little)in Pontypridd with the Olympic Torch.

A little tear comes to the eye each time I think of it.

Crank (Brothers) it up

Ok, so now the training starts in earnest...

...It should have started in November but I've been a waster and had various broken and burned bits. That's a typically melodramatic presentation of things from me, but at least I had to be a brave wee soldier for a while.

Winter has passed me by in a virtual flurry of running and cross training. It hasn't been a waste as I feel fit and reasonably strong, but now I need to turn myself back into a cycling bod again.

I've mentioned the rides that are coming for 2012 in recent posts and on Facebook.

They've changed in format for this year.

Instead of going long, we're going lumpy and gnarly...




... And long.

To aid in this little adventure, which will have a little twist in it too, I've gone back to a nice light pedal with a good platform: just in case I'm trying to clip in whilst I'm bricking it.

You can probably find a wee slip that gives a small insight to the "twist" in another post.

Some eye Candy

I've been using Joanne's candy and eggbeaters since July, and now I have my own, courtesy of Crank Brothers and 2pure.

In fact the new design of pedals have left me with a bit of a quandary as I have developed my own endurance and efficiency based cycling insoles. I'm proud to say that they are well ahead of the game in the biomechanics world.

I love my insoles as they helped me get my World Record without the normal ishaemic and biomechanical issues that can hit us on long rides.

The "trouble" is that the new platform means that I need much less control as it's provided without the need of my fancy insoles. My other pedals, that I used to use, just didn't provide the same level of support.

Watch this space as we reveal more news on our rides. I'm planning on doing a couple of 12 hour races but they are purely to set me up for the big 'un in September.

For now, look at these lovely pedals on my spare training bike.

Nice aren't they?

I'll tell you how to use the tread plate spacers for biomechanical problems, if you like, at some point soon.

World Cycle Race

My Mate, and uber supporter on "The Hobbit's Tale" is on a little jaunt around the world on his bike.

Mike Hall just arrived in India. Keep an eye on MH on the map, but have a look at all the other riders, too, as they are really giving it some!!

Feel free to like and share so that more people know how hard these guys are!

On the change

Not me! The website and sponsors!

Plus there is some news about 2012 and beyond (if I can persuade Jo).

I've really dropped myself in it this year as we push the technical and wilderness endurance riding thing just a bit (a lot) further. Pedaling for 24hrs with body armour sounds scary. But I have a new partner in crime in designing the route and I think he's trying to kill me.

Gulp.

We must have done something right last year as our portfolio of supporters has grown, but I will leave it until we get the website partway finished before divulging this.

However, I'm over the moon to be able to tell you that I'm still banging out the miles for Santa Cruz on a Carbon Tallboy and The North Face clothing. It'll be festooned with Hope bits and you might recognise the fact that they are in a colour that is distinctly British.

I'm also planning on continuing to use rotor rings after the edge they gave me on the last 2 years.

Best get training: once the consultant says that I don't need to stick to the turbo or running off road. I'm hoping for the good news on Monday.

I'm going to keep the running up for a couple of reasons though.
1. It hurts and I quite like it.
2. I have a feeling it might be useful when I'm tabbing up a rocky mountain with my bike on my shoulder, trying to outdo my baying pursuants.

That was a little slip.

I'm smiling but I'm nervous.

like waiting for a bus!

None for ages and then two in quick succession.

Dave's blogging...

So apart from being a waste of space for the last few weeks, I've still kept busy with work and even managed to do some good clinical consultancy work. I felt a bit of a fraud having to ask the professionals I was working with to do stuff for me; but I'm basically a lazy person so could put up with the strain.

The result was that we saw 3 or 4 perfect representations of the reasons people like us do the jobs that we do in healthcare: a smiling face on a patient!

It made my year, guys. Thanks.

Just before Christmas I got bored with my Turbo so was managing to get out and run off road with one of my dogs for about an hour or so each night. It's probably really cycling specific as all the hills are steep, and I'm really enjoying it.

The downhills are another matter.

The North Face have been brilliant over the last year; investing time and effort when I give them the puppy dog eyes. So when I couldn't ride my turbo (boredom and some pain) or row on my ergo (proper pain, stupid idea: idiot) due to the shoulder surgery, they dug deep and sent me some running kit.

Biomechanics is my thing and I could wax lyrical about shoe design, but that would be boring and pretentious. But the TNF single track shoes are great on the rocky terrain I run on and their vortex and better than naked kit is, well, unnoticeable in use.

The weather has been minging and the kit has been well used and very well appreciated too!

This means that we will really have to push the boat out for them in 2012 to pay them back for their help and understanding.

We were planning on that anyway but don't tell them.

My little dog, Tilly, had cataract surgery just before Christmas, so we won't be eating for a while at Hobbit's Towers. But it was worth it as she can see and, more importantly, cause trouble.

spot the collar

Obviously, my arm isn't working properly yet, even with loads of physio from "her indoors". Even though my deltoids don't do much of any conviction or determined use, it does feel much better than before.

The incessant ache I had is gone; I can rest my chin on my hands without shoulder pain and it's just, well, less painful. I didn't realise it at the time but it hurt like hell for years. I still can't get my head around it being in such a state for a long time.

So I'm going to keep running until my orthopaedic review in a week or two...

... But I miss my bike!

Which is nice.

I wish you all the best for 2012.

If you were as lucky as I was in 2011 with friends, support, shoulders to cry on and threats of what would happen if I stopped then you can't fail to have a great year in 2012.

Friends are the important part in any venture

Happy New Year

Christmas Rush!

There hasn't been one: A Christmas rush, that is.

In November I started cross training with Jo, and this included going swimming with her Tri club, of which I am now a fully paid up member. It was many years since I had swum last and I was never very good at it. This is compounded by the fact that my shoulders are half the width, bulk and strength, they used to be.

When I was a student and boxer (training in Salford's Oliver's gym in 1995/6), I had big shoulders. Circuit training, climbing and any other fitness orientated activity led me to look "deformed" as Jo likes to put it. Folk called me Skeletor (probably because I was pale blue, too). But, after various fractures, rebuilds, bolting, chopping, grafting and whacking, I now have wimpy little painful shoulders. But like us all, I just get on with it, because if I whinged as much as I wanted to, I'd soon get a smack in the face from Jo.

So we got in the pool for the first time in 8 years or something and I was worried that I might swim like a concrete flipper...

There is something a helluva motivating about getting into a pool...

...and not drowning.

I did ok, really. I could breath and everything! I couldn't take a proper long stroke with my left arm, but I was doing ok. It was a little painful though.

But for the past 7 years, my shoulder pain had been there, on and off, all of the time. Core training was getting a bit more difficult and sometimes press-ups and chin ups were out of the question as I got a searing pain in my left collar bone. This had been broken in 2003, plated and then the plate was removed once healing seemed complete.

So we swam for a few weeks, and trained on the bike and on the Turbo trainer. The shoulder got "quite sore." Actually, something was flaring up big time. I don't know if the swimming caused a flare up, as I have a feeling it might have been happening anyway, but you never know.

The next day I saw my Consultant. He was kind enough to fit me into his private clinic, as he's been a close working colleague for periods in the last 7 years or so. He's also done both my knees, both my shoulders (lots of times) and helped me out in work, umpteen times. I'm kind of lucky to know him.

In I go with my arm in a sling. (Paraquotes follow)

Me, "It feels like something is very wrong. I've got pain running all the down my arm and it feels like it's on fire. If I didn't know better, I'd say that it feels like it's broken or something. That was what the pain was like when it flared up, but I was only lying in bed."

He, "We'll have an MRI done tomorrow, but I think we might find that it's just some inflammation that might respond to injection therapy."

The day after the MRI I get a phone call.

He, "You need a bit of work doing."

Me, "So I wasn't being a hypochondriac? I was worried I was being a jessie."

He, "Nope, your shoulder is broken (non-union) and you need some other surgery to stop the pain down your arm. It must have been very painful for years."

Me, "Bugger."

He, "Snigger."

We're a bit confused, here at Hobbit's Towers. How on earth did it not feel more painful? How did we manage the 24hr solos and The Hobbit's Tale with a bust shoulder. Surely that's not right?

I don't get it.

Thinking on it though, I did have to stop wearing a certain brand of mountain biking backpack because it really hurt my shoulder. The only ones I find comfortable nowadays are The North Face ones, luckily.

SO!

my shoulder, last week

A few days later, I was in the local private hospital (I'm not posh, I have insurance) having two procedures done on my left shoulder. The orthopaedic guys that set this hospital up are almost all cyclists and an incredibly supportive bunch, so I like them! In fact 3 or 4 of them have been an inspiration for a few things for me, but I wouldn't tell them that.

I had an open reduction and internal fixation of the clavicle, with a nice shiny and expensive titanium plate and screws, just like my Hope Brakes. After that he went into the end of the shoulder using an arthroscope (keyhole) and performed a sub-acromial decompression. This is where a bag of fluid (swollen in my case) is removed to prevent further damage to the underlying musculature. It normally takes a bit of getting over.

Within 2 days, I was in much less background pain than in past years. I can now put my elbows on a desk and lean my chin on my hands without getting searing pain in my shoulder. I didn't even realise that I couldn't do this...until I could. The surgery bit hurts a bit, but it's improving quickly.

A few more weeks and I'll be back on the bike but, for now, the turbo is having a right old beating!!

But today, I had to miss a ride with the Santa Cruz Syndicate's Steve Peat et al, and most of the Santa Cruz team riders because of my shoulder. That is rather upsetting!!

And I don't even want to own up to the stupidity of burning my hand a couple of weeks before that. A and E and many hospital visits followed for that too!

I'm an eejit.

Endurance within

Rob Lee has been around for a long while.

Take a chance to read his view of the world of Endurance Cycling by following the link below.

I have and I think I might quite enjoy it.

He better have put my name in it, tho!
:)

For reference, when I posted this he was a 42% of his funding target.

Ride out with new friends

Whoaaa, the media thing continues...

...All we did was one wee ride. It was a good'un, but it was one ride. I'm recovered from it, after about 5 months with various wee musculo-skeletal ailments, colds, flu, stomach issues and renal problems.

But it was one wee ride...

...I'm not doing it on purpose, but it's doing me lots of favours, that's for sure...

...Keep an eye out for more "Dave is a media whore," soon.

You have to look after your sponsors, and the friends that spend time keeping you on the straight and narrow, so some of the next few months worth of media stuff might come from slightly different directions than you might expect. Paradoxically, "looking after" your friends seems to actually mean asking them to do something for you.

Anyhoo. I'm at the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy Congress, showing my wares, and being nice to people. I got chatting to this chap about my constantly niggling achilles tendon injury which hasn't really improved in the last few months, even though I've done all the evidence based rehab exercises on it. He suggested that I let him wire me up to his "pain control machine."

The sensation of being electrocuted at about 30Hz for 6minutes, with my toes bouncing all over the place was...interesting.

The result?

No pain.

I can't get my head around it, but I'm popping around for another treatment in a minute.

Back to bike stuff...

Last weekend I took some new friends out (from Essex) for a mountain bike ride. They were in the area and wanted to be shown a few new trails. They spent a day at Afan Argoed, tuning their skills to the hills that we have around here, drinking coffee and the odd beeer, I believe.

I took them to a local area that is reknowned for it's technical challenges, mud, rocks, and STEEP hills. During the morning I steadily raised the bar on the difficulty rating of the trails we rode, and noticed their reactions by the increasing amount of "wide-eyed" moments that they experienced.

This was going well, and they were enjoying this new type of trail. The skillset required was obviously a bit different to what most of them were used to using but they were coping really well, and seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Early on in the day, I hadn't fancied doing one of the steep drops. It looks bad but is actually pretty easy. I just didn't feel like I wanted to do it...

...Out came the TiC "Tyres" excuses, but I soon owned up to not feeling up to it for some reason. I always pay attention to these little mind games that we play with ourselves; so I didn't do the drop. I never feel a berk if I back out of something like that.

We steadily increased the tech nature and scary score for the bits we rode, and I started to feel quite good on the bike.

After a few hours the guys were starting to get a bit tired. So I guessed that we might not cross the road and head up Machen Mountain. This is a HUGE climb, and I can tell that, Doc, Rich, Paul, Paul and Matt weren't that keen on much more climbing. I don't blame them.

So we did the classic descent in the area, which Rich Todd of Ergon once described as "Riding down the front of a cliff and mountain." It was a bit wet, and it's hard enough in the dry, as you snake around on the edge of traction with your bum on the back wheel, over roots and rocks.

Marvellous!

And it lasts for about 1Km.

We had an over the bars: quite a nasty one: and some slips slides and lowsides. But they all managed to get down it one piece, and completing the challenge was met with a general reaction of, "Crikey, that was extreme!"

It is.

They survived, as did I on my "wrong tyres."

Thank God!

Then I took a couple of them to do another, slightly more risky one. They loved it.

Next time they come back, I'm dragging them up that mountain!

It's been a while comin'.

I'm getting slack on this blogging lark, sorry.

Training has been ok, and I'm getting quite quick again, and not really feeling much in the way of "the burn" when I'm spinning away on my bike.

Nice.

The energy in/energy out balance needs to be addressed though, otherwise I will never fit into one of those ridiculous skinsuits, next year. I promise not to do that to your eyes and scar your memory.

I've got a couple of new training routes, near my home, with which to work on my techy and climbing skills. Each lap provides 500m of climbing in 10Km, and the descending is rooty "seat of the pants" and "edge of traction" stuff.

Heh heh!

This route is also the new testing ground for the Dueller Dropper Post Prototype that we at LocoBMRacing have been playing with for a while. This is a great piece of functional and shiny kit that you should keep your eyes peeled for. I couldn't do my training route without it; that's how steep my playground is!

Last week was holiday time. Jo, Me, Tilly and Rufus (our, ahem, kids) went to the 7 Stanes for some fun.

The plan was that we rode on our own, whilst the other looked after and walked the dogs. And do you know what? It was really relaxing!

Our time was spent riding the trails at our own pace, without waiting for each other, and with a flow that you don't normally get when you are with a group.

The upshot of this was that we both surprised ourselves with how quickly you can actually get around some trail centres, just by being smooth and consistent. No need to go anaerobic.

Which is nice.

This wee trip also gave me the chance to fiddle with our POV camera, and it resulted in this video made up of 3 second interval shots, and music by Vitalic.

Kirroughtree, September 8, 2011 from Dave Buchanan on Vimeo.

In other news; and I'm really happy about this...

...You may remember that I'm indebted to lots of sponsors and supporters for the riding that they allow me to do. Have a look on the sponsors and links pages and you'll see just how lucky I have been.

You will also possibly remember that when I did "The Hobbit's Tale" in May, I was lucky to have a load of my friends help me out and keep me going.

It was tough. In fact it was the toughest thing I've ever done. I'm quite proud of myself- but more so of the people that made it possible. Whenever we mention the ride, you see that haunted look of tiredness and, possibly, signs of the odd mental scar in the face of the supporter you are discussing things with.

It was just as tough for them.

You know who you are. Thank you.

So...

...It's your fault that I just had the Guinness World Record for "The Greatest Distance Achieved on a Mountain Bike in 48hrs" awarded and recognised.

The year has been disjointed, after the ravages of the ride but, ultimately, it's been worth it!!!!

Next year is our focus now!!

Time to start preparations!