Five months of 2025 down and unsurprisingly seeing as the UK weather was pretty sunny last month May was my biggest riding month of the year, not because I managed a lot more riding days, but because when I did get out on the bike I was out for longer and rode further. As detailed in my last post I suddenly seem to have cracked the 100km barrier, and another couple of long rides last month pushed my total riding distance up to 399.86km. This apart from one ride on Zwift on a rainy afternoon was all on the road and all on the Ti framed Sabbath.

The lack of off road miles this month was mainly down to me taking apart my Mountain Bike for a spot of long overdue preventative maintenance and never quite getting around to putting it back together. A bit of play has developed in the Cotic’s rear end which after some investigation seems to be due to a slightly undersized rear shock bushing that I’d bought off eBay when the new rear shock had gone in a few months back, having had a decent look at everything its not actually that bad and I still haven’t got around to ordering a new bush weeks later……

The wheels have also been off and been back to their original builder my mate Ian because I thought I could hear a ‘twanging’ kind of noise from the front end over rough terrain which sounded a bit like it could be an errant spoke. After a quick 5 minutes in his wheel trueing jig and a waft over with his spoke tension gauge Ian pronounced both wheels to still be nice and round and still impressively true and well tensioned, so whatever I’m hearing its not the wheels and most probably nothing to worry about. This had been the first time the tyres had been off the rim for over 2 years, in all that time I’ve had zero punctures and never really had to top up the tubeless sealant, in fact I was wondering if there was actually any sealant left in the tyres after all this time. The answer was yes, and apart from a few lumps it was even still mostly liquid but did look decidedly second hand….. (and it stank really badly)

So the both wheels have been treated to new rim tape and fresh sealant along with a set of genuine Shimano brake rotors because the old ones were a quite worn and no matter how many times I cleaned them I’ve been plagued with brakes that squeal more loudly than an uncooperative tom cat having its knackers removed by a trainee vet.

On the road as well as some (for me) epically long rides I’ve finally cracked the top ten of the local Strava segment which eluded me last year and caused my last road related crash (https://thedecliningcyclist.com/2024/08/23/the-anatomy-of-a-crash/) ok, a mere 1,549 people have ridden this segment but hey, I’m (at the moment) the 9th fastest EVER to record a time on it so I’m going to allow my smug face to remain engaged for at least a little while longer 😁. It’s these little wins that are really important to absolutely nobody but yourself that make cycling and trying to improve so addictive sometimes.

So that was May. Unfortunately June so far has started off pretty epically wet on everyday I’ve had off so far but I’ve got a couple of bike upgrades planned and hey if its raining then I’m just going to jump on Zwift to try and keep my fitness up.