First decent ride of the year: Tak Ma Doon & Crow Road

I haven't done a decent ride for nearly 2 years now. Work and home commitments with a sequence of episodes of ill-health and injury have pretty much stopped me dead. I managed regular commuting & the occasional longer trip, but nothing particularly hilly nor especially long.
Part of the point of next year's trip & of this blog is to give me goals and a way of measuring my progress.
So, just now, I'm in about the worst shape I've been in fitness-wise for about 10 years... Things are starting to improve: with having moved, my commute has tripled in length, to 14km each way with 62/126m of climbing. With the shifts I do, I still haven't managed a full week of cycle commuting though, so there's still a lot of improvement needed.
I had the day off today & the weather was good, so I thought I'd find where I was fitness-wise. I planned a 60km route with some of my favourite roads: the Tak Ma Doon & the Crow Road, with the Carron Valley in between. The climbs couldn't be more different, but I love them both in different ways.
The Tak Ma Doon is probably my favourite road anywhere. It starts with a wee turn off the A803 in Kilsyth & hits a steep ramp almost immediately, then levels off to about 5% for a kilometre or so. Then 100m at 13%, then 300m at 3%, then 200m at 14%. It carries on like this the whole way up, with a few short sections on bends topping 20%. It's a properly vicious climb.
I find climbs like this really difficult since it's hard to get any rhythm. It's also really difficult to get any recovery from the 13+% sections which almost inevitably put you into the red...
Climbs like this demand a degree of respect & even reverence. The climb also takes you from a very urban setting to a view point with amazing views, onto a rural & remote-feeling valley. There is a sense of transcendence, in both a physical and environmental way.
Then the views from the top! On a clear day, you can see both Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh & Goatfell on Arran: the whole of the central belt lies in front of you. Today, the visibility was OK, without being great, still, there are some stunning views:


The loch in the second photo is Banton Loch: a reservoir on the site of the last decisive battle of the English Civil war, yes, 150 miles from the English border....

The Crow Road, from the North, has very similar numbers: 238m climbing at an average of 5%, compared to 270m at 6%. The difference is the consistency of the gradient. There are a couple of bends where the gradient approaches 10% for a few metres, but it's pretty much consistent the whole way through. The main difficulty with the climb is already having done the Tak Ma Doon & being tired. I like this road, but it's a different thing entirely: outstanding road surface, lots of traffic, wide road, consistent gradient....

So, what have I learnt:
-I'm not as unfit as I thought I might be;
-I've a long way to go, however, in getting properly fit;
-The Tak Ma Doon is a properly difficult climb;
-You can't hide lack of fitness on a difficult climb;
-That SPD sandals are great as commuter shoes, but really poor on steep hills;
-That I'm descending ATM with the grace of Bambi... In roller skates.... On ice... Seriously, I could take lessons from Andy Schleck in descending just now, it's something I really need to improve;
-That I'm not a good climber;
-That, despite the above point, I love difficult hills;
-That, if I ignore the 20 mins of taking/making work phone calls when my mobile phone signal came back, I managed the route in less (just) than 3 hours, so held an overall average of 20+kph....

There is a oneness that you can reach on a difficult hill: the moment before it defeats you. That oneness with the bike, with the gradient, with the pain, is something almost spiritual & is uniquely beautiful. There are very few moments in life of utter unity of purpose & thought & intent. This is why I love the Tak Ma Doon: I can have those moments thereon.

Numbers for the day:
-57.9km distance
-926 metres climbing & descending
-high point of 338m above sea level

The Route

The route is something that will probably evolve over time. I have plotted a route using TrackLogs software, but there are almost certainly numerous refinements yet to be made.
The original plan was to follow the Northern coast of Scotland from the central belt all the way back round to the start point. This is fairly straightforward on the West coast, where there are far fewer roads, far less settlement and, consequently, far fewer choices. It gets far more complicated on the East coast, especially as you head South of Inverness. Two of Scotland's largest cities are on the East coast, Dundee & Aberdeen & are fairly hard to avoid. One of the basic ideas of this trip is to avoid large conurbations, which would be very difficult if I follow the coast. I am therefore considering taking off the corner from Inverness & heading South from there, missing the coast entirely for the last section. This shaves about 100 miles off the route & includes 2 monstrous climbs (The Lecht Road & the road over Glenshee ski station, both markedly over 600m above sea level). This would mean that the route included the biggest road climbs in Scotland (Bealach ne Ba is also included on the West coast) and the highest road in Britain (Glenshee, 670m). At the moment, I'm tempted by the option with the hills, although I will probably end up hating myself on the day I have to do them!
I'll put the outline up day by day as separate posts.

Aerodynamic bikes

Please don't get me wrong. Pro Cycling is one of my favourite sports & the only sport that my wife and I both really enjoy, however, this years, "Tech Focus," sales-spin-off of the Tour de France just strikes me as daft, let me expand....

I like reading about the new bikes at different races, especially about those that race on the pave. I'm aware that part of this is about selling us the next big thing. Last year was Di2, Shimano's electronic shifting groupset. Many said that it was engineering to solve a problem that didn't exist & I would largely agree. This year, however, the engineering has been there to solve a problem that does exist (if you're a pro-level rider), but somehow completely fails to actually address & ignores the elephant in the room of the far more elegant solution that's already been in place almost 80 years & there have been numerous others since....

This year's new revelation has been aerodynamic road bikes. Yes, you heard right, not Time Trial bikes, but road bikes. Aero time trial bikes are almost understandable, especially where they exist to make the position more aero, however, an aero road bike?
Seriously, in a peleton, you're quite sheltered from the wind, on a climb, wind resistance drops massively, so where is it that you need this advantage?
Wind resistance rises as a square of speed relative to wind. Power to overcome this rises by a power of three, so the importance of aerodynamics on human powered vehicles is hard to overstate.
That said, it appears frighteningly obvious that 90+% of this drag is caused by the great big sail on top of the bike; the rider. These bikes are offering 1-2% less drag. That's pretty much unnoticeable for most of us & tiny & insignificant if you're a really powerful rider riding on your own into the wind.
It strikes me that you can't have it both ways: either drag is a real problem & use a recumbent, or that it isn't & don't worry about it.
Their marketing appears to take us as daft, are we really?
Manual Morand used the Mochet Velocar (a 4 wheel recumbent) in 1934 & was banned. Graeme Obree broke records with the "superman position" and was banned.
So it seems that, according to the UCI, saving some drag is good, but saving too much is bad.
The marketing seems to work in the same way: saving drag is good!!!! Unless you save too much of it, then that's bad....
I hate stupid marketing: upright bikes are fantastic, but even if all of the bikes had zero drag, they'd still be trounced by a recumbent!

Part of what I like about pro cycling is the absurd difficulties that must be overcome, but this current sales thing is about as sensible as a tyre that makes Paris-Roubaix smooth. It can't happen, stop lying to me!!!

None of this applies if you are a racing cyclist, bound by the UCI, however, for most of us, this isn't the case.

I just want to see people having access to the tool to do the job, that's not the current state of play & the current marketing drive merely emphasises how unfair & wrong this is.

What bike & why?

I plan to ride on a Challenge Fujin SLII. Simply put, this is the best bike I have ever ridden....
This question might break down into 2 parts, however: why a recumbent; & why that recumbent. So I'll answer those one by one.

Why a recumbent
(the short answer)
Because it's more efficient. & why not?
(the long answer)
I got onto cycling as a roadie. Light-weight, Campagnolo-equipped bikes were what I rode & wanted more of. I got exceedingly fit (I was cycling 200+ miles a week), then had a freak accident & broke my wrist quite badly. The thought of not cycling for several weeks drove me mad, so I hit the interwebs. A good number of "Internet Forum People" (© Mark Cavendish) suggested that I try riding a recumbent, which wouldn't put any strain on my wrist at all....
After a few false starts, I found David at Laid Back Bikes in Edinburgh who took the time to teach me the differences and how to deal with them. With David's approach, it only took about 15 mins to get the basics. & how I enjoyed the differences!
After annoying David with numerous test rides & discussions over coffee, whilst still in a stookie, I decided to buy my first recumbent, a Nazca Fuego (you might need to click the flag icon to get it into English), which is a really good all-round bike. It was, however, 15kg. With my roadie head on, I objected to this. It is insanely good on the flat & downhill, but uphill was somewhere I couldn't hide my poor power-to-weight ratio.
So, rather than get fitter, I decided to try to find a proper roadie recumbent....
Simply put, recumbents are faster, more efficient & a lot more fun. They tend to be heavier, which offends my weight weenie instincts, so:

Why this recumbent?
I spent some considerable time trying to find a road-bike recumbent. There's a few of them around: this, this, or this, for example. Having checked out costs, I decided that I'd get a Challenge Fujin SLII. This is one of the few choices I've made that I've never regretted.
What a bike! It has incredible speed & handles amazingly well, it accelerates really quickly, is incredibly aero, is really light.... In short, it does everything that a road bike would want to do, but better.
If you have ridden a recumbent, but not ridden this model, then find your nearest Challenge dealer & ask for a test ride.
If you're still stuck on upright bikes, then find someone to teach you to ride recumbents....

Seriously, this is one hell of a bike!

(I must add that this is entirely my own opinion: there's no commercial interest in this expression at all)