Duracellbunnyonabike wrote:FasterFerret wrote:Interesting, honest review.
I don’t know you (at least not from forum name) so I am not sure what you want to read into my blog and why. I can assure you though that I have never underestimate or not respected this record enough.
At some point I will date the details of my preparations. You will see plenty of time and thought, mental and physical training etc has gone into it.
Glad to read that somehow a second big speed wobble is easier to deal with. There is hope.
Hi,
I'm glad you stopped by.
If you look through the number of posts on here you will see that there are a lot of people supportive of anyone (including your good self) who has a go at this. It is a strange thing to be sitting up late in the night willing on a dot that represents a person that we don't know, other than through an online blog and a shared love of this strange end2end thing, as it crawls across the screen.
If you scroll back through (and there is a lot of it) this thread you will see a number of us trying to guess what the 'magic formula' is (probably knowing full well that one doesn't exist). You will also see
a lot of support for you, Mike and Ian.
So, my working theory is one that I am struggling for a full explanation for is 'miles in the legs', the idea that some form of hardening process occurs over miles and miles and years and years in the saddle - is it mental, is it physical (can the two be separated?!). How much of it is experience? - speed wobbles get easier (?!), nutritional strategies get learned (what works for a 50m doesn't work for a 12 hour doesn't (or does) work for 48 hours), this saddle/wheel/tt bar/tyre combination works that one doesn't, my neck/butt/arms/feet will last or not... Confidence to know that you've been in this dark hole before and you got through it, so you are going to get through this one (and the next one when it appears).
So when I read through your blog (and I'm one of the ones that has read every page of your website) I readily admitted that I was probably just going to get stuck in a loop of confirmation bias - reading into it what I wanted to read - that in order to crack this particular nut, as well as needing a lot stars to align, a lot of miles on the clock are going to be necessary, not necessarily to enhance the engine but to enhance the all-around 'robustness' (for want of a better word/term).
I think that I mentioned in another post that I wish you had 'found your talent' earlier, because (to confirm my bias) if you had had an extra 5, 10, 15 years of cycling all of those miles and little things picked-up along the way
might have helped,
might have been the difference. Pure supposition of course, but something that is based upon watching a number of other athletes from other endurance sports trying to 'move-up' over the years. And you've got to admit that in the scheme of 'moving-up', this one is right up there?
Anyway, trust me no one on here is out to be disrespectful, least of all me - I wrote about Ian's attempt that 'in failure' he had put in a ride that most people could only dream about, the same is true of yours.
So, stick around and put us right where we are wrong - it was you that did the ride, not us, we just watched the dot - but we did it with a bizarre amount of passion and respect!