As you can see from the above picture of my extremely hirsute legs imposed on a sunny background September saw me returning again to the Spanish island of Mallorca for 3 days of riding in the sun where the roads are mostly smooth and the drivers don’t regard you as prey that they have a licence to hunt and remove from the roads.

The 3 days in Mallorca pushed my riding for the month comfortably over the magic 500km mark with a total distance covered of 563.19 km. In fact all my riding on the road (284.54km ) was clocked up over those 3 days, there was a single 41.90km outing on the MTB and a significant 236.75km indoors on Zwift spread over 9 rides mostly up hill as I desperately tried to get some form and fitness before the Mallorca trip.

So why all the Zwifting? well true to form the weather in the UK finally reverted to type in the early part of September, rain, wind and a distinct lack of sunshine combined with an annoying head cold made riding outside deeply unappealing. I knew I really had to get some time on the bike in however because I was painfully aware that compared to the same time last year my fitness wasn’t where I wanted or indeed needed it to be before I attempted the climbs of Mallorca again. With time rapidly running out before the trip I decided that the best and most time effective way to train was to do some intense climbing focused Zwift sessions to hopefully get my legs used to going up steep stuff for more that 1/2 an hour. To this end I spent a lot of time sweating profusely in our back room toiling up the Alp de Zwift and other mountainous virtual routes making what my wife described from the kitchen as some truly alarming noises.

Did it work? well perhaps up to a point it helped but as I’ll cover in another post just about my Mallorca adventures I certainly discovered that there’s really no substitute for getting the miles in the legs before trying to ride much longer distances than you usually tackle, but I don’t want to spoil the story so I’ll leave that there…..

In other news and as hinted at in recent posts the decliningcyclist fleet has finally had a bit of a prune. It was hard but with space in my garage at a bit of a premium and being mindful of the fact that a man can only actually physically ride one bike at a time the bullet was bitten. First to go was the recently rebuilt Rourke. I loved the way the bike rode and I’m really glad I rescued it and hopefully gave it a new lease of life ……. but realistically I was never going to ride it very much so it was advertised online for a little over what it had cost me to rebuild and sold quite quickly to another chap of a certain age who appreciated its retro vibe and downtube shifters. Next up was my faithful Titanium Sabbath Silk Road, and this one I truly have agonised over. I’ve had this bike over 10 years and up to fairly recently I really thought I’d never sell it, but my riding has changed and slowly and almost insidiously other bikes have supplanted the Sabbaths once unassailable position as my go to roadbike. With the Giant TCR now being the bike I reach for when fast summer rides are on the cards and the Moulton TSR being available for more leisurely outings the Sabbath has spent the majority of the last 12 months hanging from a hook in the garage so it was time to let it go. With the prices of complete secondhand bikes like the Sabbath being pretty low at the moment and mindful of the fact that there are some pretty nice bits like the carbon 9Velo wheelset on it I decided to strip the bike down and sell it as a bare frame and hang on to the groupset and wheels for a possible future superlight rim brake build. At the time of posting the frame has potentially sold to a buyer down south but typically after hounding me to buy it and promising to send me a box and to arrange his own courier to collect it he’s now not answering messages so watch this space. If the sale does fall through there is a plan B for the Sabbath so annoying as being messed about is I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.

Finally a quick word on my retro Cotic Soul Hardtail MTB. Now this was a bike that was very nearly the next on the fleet rationalisation chopping block but I thought I’d give it one last blast before letting it go. I enjoyed that ride around the smooth blue trails at Delamere Forrest so much that the Soul has earned itself a stay of execution. I’ve even spent so time and a tiny amount of cash on it. When I built the bike up I’d used a 1 x 10 set up that I’d had in my spare bits box for awhile but the gears had never really worked properly so I’ve converted the bike back to a triple chainset and a standard shorter range cassette at the rear. With what I’d call an age appropriate drivetrain set up fitted the shifting is transformed and the little Cotic rides better than ever and has earned its place at the back of the garage.

So now that autumn seems to be settling in and the summer season ending Mallorca trip is done what does my winter riding plan look like? Well in short two things, Mountain Biking and Zwift racing so more on those hopefully next month.