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3Cs: Car v/s Cycle in the City

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Cycle chic?

Came across this interesting info on a road.cc article (do read the original here for more interesting facts):

Researchers found that the average journey covered 2.49km and took 14.7 mins, giving an average speed 10 km/h, in line with the average speed of a car in European cities. Average speed rose to 15 km/h, however, during rush hour, making Vélo’v a much quicker way of getting around, even before taking account of the difficulties of finding a place to park a car.

I wonder if the city administrators in India will ever accept these stats and re-orient their infra-focus to include, if not prioritize, cycles.
I wonder if our citizens will ever ask for a clean, cheap, healthy & ‘faster’ alternative over polluting, expensive, lazy fuel-driven and ‘slower’ vehicles.
I wonder if cycling in India will ever again become an accepted part of urban transport mix rather than either a health/endurance fix or a poor man’s vehicle.

How I’d love to see a thriving cycling culture in India. We had one for over half a century, why we can’t have it again?

3Cs: Car v/s Cycle in the City

Let’s get this winter going now..

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Here’s the 2 things I so dearly await this winter:

1. A good snow. So, I can get the euphoria of first (London) snow behind me and start cursing it like in the past.
2. 20th December. So, the days can start getting longer again and I get a few more hours daily to plan (& scrap) rides.

Now, can we get these done quickly so I can get on with business.

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Let’s get this winter going now..

Shit!

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Suddenly realised that I’m still at a fifth of my target cycling capability. Not feeling so smug anymore. His a fifth? Well, current capacity is about 5 days consecutive riding for 60 something kms each. Target is 10 consecutive days – that doubles it – and about 130kms a day – another double, so quadruple of current. Add another portion of current capacity for all the climbing that I’ll need to do some of those 10 days and we have the quintuple.

Not feeling good at all :(

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I posted the above paragraph yesterday while on tube heading to Bond Street for dinner. I had been thinking about the RAB for quite some time but had been scared of sharing the thought with anyone lest I jinx it. That’s exactly what I did.

I  mentioned the plan to a few people from twitter I met yesterday for the first time. Sometime during the meeting, the above thoughts struck me about how much more I needed to prepare before I was ready for the RAB. I was scared shit-less (thus the title).

Later, over dinner at the fabulous Le Renais D Venise, I shared my thoughts with Rags – in detail, including my broad training plan and how the realisation for earlier in the evening.

That should’ve been the end of it. But today morning I wake up to a (seemingly welcome) mail from an organiser at the RAB with whom I’d registered interest a couple of months back. The mail informed me of the opening of registration for the 2011 RAB and so off I went to the website. I learnt my folly – I was preparing for 130kms/day though the real distance was 50kms more at 110miles/day. This was bad news. But then came the real heartbreak.

The cheaper ‘Solo Rider – Bronze’ entry was already sold out. The ‘Solo Rider – Silver’ entry costs a whopping £1,795 per head. Add the £36-64 for British Cycling membership, ~£200 for train tickets, another £200 for misc expenses and I’m already touching £2300. I won’t even add the new road bike I was planning to buy for the ride. An unemployed guy with savings in INR to spend GBP 2,300 on a sportive is just insane. I had no option but to do the rational thing – I gave up.

It isn’t easy. I’d been preparing privately for this ride ever since I learnt about it in late August and it’s heartbreaking to learn I won’t be able to attempt it. Specially, now that I was really starting to get going – having gone from 70-80kms to 250-320kms a week in 2 months and feeling the energy in my legs to go much more.

Of course the initial thought was to give up on cycling all together, go find a regular job (most probably management consulting) and the old life. No, I’m not going down that road. Not yet, anyway. An easy 52km ride wiped all those negative thoughts from my mind.

I do intend to continue cycling, though it won’t anymore be ‘come rain, hail or snow’. That will also save me money I’d have spent on gear for the winter. Also, I shall now again be spending more time looking for jobs than cycling though I do plan to keep looking for those strat & marketing jobs, instead of the consulting calls that keep coming.

Shit!

Cycle Encounters

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Last weekend, I had still to open my account in cyclist encounters. 7 days later, I’m well on my way to being a veteran.

Incident 1: lady doesn’t see me coming So decides to drive her sedan across the road. Thankfully, she stopped just in time so my face just tasted asphalt, not the plastic of her front bumper. (More details posted earlier on twitter)

Incident 2: 3 tall lads casually stroll in from the park onto a cycle path, carved on a small road. They casually ignore the cyclists behind them. I, however, coming from opposite direction, move from bike path to road to avoid them. As I near them, one of them moves off bike path, into my way and politely says: ‘dude, that’s the bike path so ride there!’

Incident 3: I ride the bike across a shared biker-pedestrian traffic signal. At the other end, I cross the path of a middle aged, suited office goer. As I pedal ahead,forcing him to suspend a stride, out comes a volley towards my rear wheel: ‘fuck you asshole’.

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Cycle Encounters

Activity tracking apps

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I’ve been trying various GPS based activity tracking apps for cycling & walking but still haven’t finalised one. Here are my thoughts about the four I’m using right now on my N1:

SportyPal, that trusty old mate from E71 days is here. The previous install was buggy but has improved drastically after update. Only if they could add that auto-pause function.

Runkeeper, the app of choice of my iPhone owner cycling buddies in India, has a superb website with a host of features. However, the app itself is bloated, buggy and hangs ever so often.

CardioTrainer, is a superb app with a complete set of features including that valuable auto-pause feature and voice updates. However, the website for it is basic, actually threadbare. I guess it’s because of their strong facebook integration. However, for non-fb users like me, it does leave a big hole. What’s good though is that both this app & SportyPal support gpx file import/export. So I can easily export gpx files from CardioTrainer to SportyPal.

Finally, JogTracker, has a basic website which is not too well laid out either. However, what they do have is a very light, simple and fast app. And despite being so light and simple, it still has all the functionality of other apps that I use (with the exception of CardioTrainer’s auto-pause feature).

So, after this one week of usage, I’ve decided to dump Runkeeper. Not because of any deficiencies in the app or website, but because it’s so slow and bulky.

JogTracker is also close to being dumped. Reasons: tacky website and no import/export gpx option.

This leaves the field to SportyPal & CardioTrainer.

CardioTrainer has the added advantage of having, apart from the auto-pause feature,  an additional set of paid add-on features. I’m still not fully confident of the app’s performance having seen it pause/stop unreliably a few times. Yet, this is a solid app which I intend to continue testing for the time being.

SportyPal has many things in its favour. For one, it has all my (recorded) rides so far since it was the best app available for my E71. Other than historical data, the ‘open’-ness the developers have shown by giving the option to import/export ride data is a big plus (CardioTrainer also gives the option to export gpx). And finally, since the update, this is the app that has been most reliable on my N1 in terms of route coverage.

P.S.: All these apps are free and available on Android market. Most of them should be available on the iPhone too and SportyPal is by far the best app I’ve seen on Symbian60 based phones (read: Nokia).
P.P.S.: Are there any other apps out there that you feel I should try?

Activity tracking apps

A few good rides

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It’s been a good week, this last one. Mainly because of the bike.

The bikes, along with rest of shipment, finally arrived last Friday. And after spending most of the weekend unpacking, sorting, storing & setting-up, we did have a short 7.5km ride around the neighbourhood on Sunday evening.

Followed that up with 5km of wandering on the cycle around the neighbourhood on Monday. Nothing special – a visit to Tesco, a stop at the coffee shop and another few chores conducted on the bike.

Met up with my uncle on Tuesday and got to walk a bit around the West End – SoHo area. Also used the opportunity to finally buy that D-lock, giving me confidence to venture farther.

Wednesday, headed up north for a trip to Halfords Super to check out more cycling accessories. Damages L75, purchased a full mud guards set for my bike, a small bottle of bike oil, a 2l water sleeve, back light for partner’s bike and a spare brake cable. The ride was a straight-forward 15km one but the small, though many, climbs and headwind did make it look a lot harder than it actually was. Highlight of the journey was carrying those big mud-guards in my bag with 2/3rd sticking out and to the side. Was quite a sight, I tell you :)

Thursday was turning out to be a quiet day till my uncle called again to meet up at Victoria. Met a potential business partner of his to understand the business model, his capabilities and the opportunity size. Interesting discussion and some learning for me on the gray areas of telecom business in UK ;) Thereafter, a walk through West End happened with a long introductory meeting thrown in. This one with another of my uncle’s acquaintances to ‘present’ me and for me to understand what they do. Another brisk walk and I was home. Walked about 5km at a brisk pace, felt good :)

Friday was turning out to be a slow & lazy day, so I decided to go check out the area around Victoria that had seemed quite lively the previous day. The result was an evenly split 20km ride – half through the densest traffic in this city and the other half through calm of Grosvenor Road, Milbank and Hyde Park. This was the ride that gave me that final confidence boost about riding in this city by taking me through the densest traffic areas and around the windy Thames banks. And, by giving me the first road scare ;)

Saturday, like always, was lazy with both of us sleeping through most of the day. Though we did ride out late in the evening to the high street for dinner. A nice breezy 5km ride on peaceful, empty roads. Partner’s decided that hereafter we shall cycle to&from at least one meal every weekend.

Made up for yesterday’s laziness by heading out today on a nice long (in terms of time) ride. It was again a mix of peaceful parks and heavy traffic roads – Hyde & Regents Parks versus Maida Vale/Edgware Road/Marble Arch/Oxford Street versus. A slow 17km ride with breaks for ice-cream in Hyde park and coffee & cake in Regents’ ;)

Now, 70km of cycling and 10+ km of walking in a week is something that use to count as good even in Bombay. Given that I don’t have any friends here to ride with (yet) and that I still haven’t figured out a Wednesday evening 50km circuit and that I’m still pretty much a noob in this city, I’ll say I did well this week :D

In other good news:

Smoking has been under good control recently. I’ve gone from finishing a 20-pack in 3-4 days during St. Paul’s days to not finishing a 10-pack in 2 weeks! *pats himself on the back*

Now the bad news:

The NHS doctor called. Says I’ve got a severely skewed cholesterol ratio (good:bad) and need to correct it urgently. Main action, she says, that I’ve to take is consume lesser animal products (including eggs & cheese :[ )and more vegetables. So, I’ve decided to make my lunch a veg affair (or as veg as I can make it). Unfortunately, despite spending good time searching through all fresh & frozen food shelves in Tesco Metro, didn’t find one veg product without cheese. Given that I’m not fond of cheese myself, I think it’s gonna be a hard search for that veg lunch :/

In continuing bad news:

Still no job. I’m desperate to work. For a short while, even without work. But I just wanna get my hands (brain?) dirty again. Pretty stressed up on that account but, kill me, am still not doing all that I should. Cycling, partner and uncle have kept me busy enough to not let the stress make me do something stupid.

Action plan for this week: apply, apply, apply. Try to network a bit. And, of course, keep cycling.

That’s it folks! Have a nice day :D

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A few good rides

What are you in it for..

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.. the Journey, the destination or the spirit of it all?

This is an attempt at trying to reconcile my thoughts about what happened today on the tour1. Alberto Contador, the defending champion, and Andy Schleck, last year’s runner-up, have been involved in a super tussle from the day the tour arrived at the Alps. In all the stages since then, Contador, known as the best climber in the peloton, has been unable to comprehensively beat Schleck and win back the leader’s yellow jersey.

Today, towards the end of yet another gruelling hot and fast day in the saddle, Andy attacked the peloton furiously and was already off to a super start with only Vinokourov, Contador’s team-mate, anywhere close to chasing him down. However, very early into the attack, he faced a mechanical issue as his chain came off and he had to stop to set it back again. It was then that Contador, sensing an opportunity, attacked furiously off the front of the group to maximise his advantage out of Andy’s misfortune.

Now, had this been almost any other sport, this would’ve been considered normal. But this is not. This is cycling. Above all, this is the Tour. So, even if stopping their small group to wait for Andy would be asking too much of Contador, how should his decision to attack Andy at that point be measured?

Yes, it would be completely acceptable if this was a Formula 1 race since that is as much about the reliability of cars as about the skill of drivers. The Tour, on the other hand is a race of cyclists’ skill, speed and stamina. Taking advantage of a mechanical malfunction in this race seemed just a bit too opportunist, and almost contrary to the spirit of the race.

Which brings me to the main thought. Various facets of our life are much like a race. And everyone races both against themselves as well as against others. In these races of life, what do you race for – the experience of the journey or the chequered flag at the destination? And do you care for the spirit embedded in those races or just define your own laws?

My answer has been the journey most of the time. And it’s done me no good. Another thing I’ve realised. People who go for the destinations/targets, usually end up better than the ones who go for enjoying the journey. This may also be because the metrics of being better/worse off are usually defined by the people who reached the destination first.

A follow-up question: Are your answers to the above questions about being a journey enjoy-er versus destination seeker the same when you race against yourself compared to when you race against others?

(1) If you don’t know what the tour is, this may not make much sense to you. The Tour, here, refers to Tour de France, the most important race on the cycling calendar. Check out more here and here.

What are you in it for..