You all (3 of you) thought I’d forgotten about the monthly updates didn’t you? Well never fear because here it is, just a bit late…. but the excuse is good, it’s just that I’ve actually been rather busy riding and fixing bikes rather than writing about them.

First as ever the stats, June was a pretty bumper month for me with a total of 464.33 kms ridden across all disciplines. breaking that impressive (for me) figure down we had 230.68 kms on the road, 42.92km on the mountain bike and 190.73 kms on Zwift.

The unusually big indoor milage was down to a couple of reasons, firstly the weather in the UK for the first part of June was pretty shocking. Wet, cold, windy and generally not conducive to riding outdoors so Zwift was the obvious retreat because you can call me a wimp but I hate riding outdoors on the road when its windy and rainy, I’d just not my idea of a good time. The second reason is that I’ve now committed to a return riding trip to Majorca in late September and now I know after last year what I’m letting myself in for I’m absolutely determined to bring my climbing A game to the party. Now don’t get me wrong I know that however much training I manage to cram in between now and getting on the plane I’m not going to be anywhere near troubling the top several thousand of the Strava leaderboard’s on any of the big climbs, but I would like to go out there as prepared as I can reasonably be to get the maximum possible out of my aging legs. To this end I’ve been doing some climbing specific workouts on Zwift that promise to turn me in the proverbial mountain goat, and in-between them doing maximum efforts up the Alp d’Zwift which is of course Zwift’s facsimile of the famous Alp d’Huez climb of Tour de France fame. Now a decent time up the Zwift version is anything around an hour and I’m hoovering at around the 71 minute mark on a good day so there’s definitely work to do on the climbing front.

Now because the UK weather norm seems to be extremes at either end of the why can’t it just be comfortable scale the second half of June was a heat wave of (for our rainy little island) almost biblical proportions. It was so hot that the road leading into my village which the council had just resurfaced started to melt, and because every sensible British person has spent the last 20 years super insulating our houses to try and stave off the ever rising energy costs and nobody has air conditioning it really made it quite unpleasant to be indoors. Riding the road bike was actually rather pleasant and so long as I didn’t stop for long enough at any junctions for the heat to start drain the will to live from me and I drank enough to make my insides slosh about every time I braked I was able to clock up some decent rides over the course of a few days between work shifts. I even took down from its hook in the garage roof and dusted off my rather neglected Sabbath Ti road bike and took it out for what’s become a rare outing since the Flashy Giant TCR with its electronic gears and modern disc brakes became my go to steed of choice. It’s still a great bike, comfortable, fast enough to be fun and to my eyes anyway looks fantastic, but ……. and I never thought I’d be saying this ……… it’s no longer my favourite road bike. I think the little TCR has just spoiled me. Getting back on the Sabbath after a decent stint riding the Giant made me realise a couple of things. When I initially got the TCR I was a little disappointed in both the disc brakes and the Di2 gears, but now I’ve had a chance to fine tune the set up of both and I’ve got used to the benefits and getting back on the Sabbath made be realise how much I actually miss them both. The disc brakes performance differential to the rim brakes is the biggest game changer. Now the disc versus rim brake debate is a very hot topic with a lot of heated opinions being thrown about but I can only speak for myself. I was quite happy with the rim brakes performance until I had the chance to ride on the disc brakes for an extended period of time. Now going back to the rim brakes I immediately missed the power and modulation that the discs give you. They might need a bit more maintenance to keep the dreaded disc brake squeal at bay but for me it’s worth it.

Same story with the Di2, do I need it? no, but now I’ve got used to riding with it I’m missing it when my hands are having to go back to moving cables. So where does all this leave the faithful old Sabbath? the answer is ‘not sure yet’ but realistically with the eBay find Rourke taking shape (more on that soon) and the Moulton TSR fulfilling the winter steed role some rationalisation of the Declining Cyclist fleet may have to happen soon because when it comes down to brass tacks I can only ride one bike at a time and I’m also running out of room to store all the damn things.

Anyway, next mission is finish the Rourke frame rebuild !