August it turned out was a bumper month for riding – indoors and out, on and off road, I managed to twiddle my cranks through the full range of cycling experiences …… oh, and I’ve bought another bike sight unseen off eBay again!

First as always the stats. The total distance ridden was a pretty respectable 477.45 km. Breaking that down I managed 277.44km on the tarmac, 96.84km on the dirt and the remaining 103.21km was climbing virtual hills in my back room on my ZwiftRide.

Just to change to indoor vibe up a bit I decided to try out the new kid on the virtual riding block Rouvey by signing up for their free 7 day trial period, but I’ll expand on that in a separate post as it was a very different experience to Zwift and there’s a fair bit to unpack comparing the two platforms so more on that soon.

On the off road front I’m still very much in the honeymoon period with the Santa Cruz Bronson, after every time I’ve ridden it my Starva summary has been liberally splattered with personal best times and I’m cleaning tricky sections of trails that I haven’t managed without dabbing in frustration for literally years. I know deep down that these pretty dramatic improvements that I’m seeing almost every ride are going to inevitably plateau off at some point, but hey I’m going to bask in this riding glow for as long as I possibly can!

My road riding last month was pretty steady as I start to build up to my short Spanish excursion which is coming around with rather frightening swiftness. I’ve been trying to get some longer rides in to get me used to the sort of distances I’m going to be covering in Majorca.

As for my latest eBay folly, well so far I’ve only managed to take it out for a ride once as almost inevitably ‘it looked better in the pictures’ and has needed a bit more time, attention and of course money spending on it that I was anticipating to get it rideable. Don’t worry once I’ve actually ridden the thing properly I’ll explain all in a separate post, but for now here’s a sneak preview

More on that next time!

So that was August. As September gets into its stride the days are most definitely getting shorter in the UK and the temperature is starting to get me wondering were my arm and leg warmers are, but I’m still hoping to get some decent riding in as the summer winds down, and there’s nothing like a nice new secondhand bike to motivate you to don the Lycra instead of settling into the sofa.