Another grey day, cloud cover from horizon to horizon. 45km in 2 hours and 25 minutes. So up through Collingboune Wood and back along the cloud enshrouded Chutes Causes way to Conholt Park and down the long descent to Clanville. Weyhill and Anna Valley and then home via the N246nation cycle path.
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Short loop out to the Fullerton Crossroads and back, Gear fettling required as even though the front derailleur worked with no issues in the stand when tested, on the road couldn't get the the largest cog on the crank set engaged. It's not a surprise as the SLX 10 speed crankset has been replaced with a Alivio T4060 - 9 Speed triple crankset. As the Alivio crankset now has the trickle down of Hollowtech II technology for the crankset, rather than the traditional square tapered configuration, the intention is to replace the chain-rings with a Narrow-Wide 10-speed chain-ring, but first I was interested to see if the mix of 10 speed and 9 speed components would work. Apart from the issue with getting the biggest chain-ring on engaged it seems to work ok. A quick 'qoogle' indicates that the 9 speed chain-rings are spaced out a little wider than the 10-speed chain-rings and there is an issue with the Front derailleur not being able to push the chain far enough out to engage with the largest chainring on the 9-speed crankset. This can be resolved with using a 9-Speed front derailleur, which we have in the spares box. Thus splitting the bicycle into 9-speed front, and 10-speed at the rear, time will tell if we pursue that solution in favour of running the bike as 1x10. Update, started from scratch and set up the front derailleur again, and it appears to be running more smoothly from Granny ring to outer. Also of minor interest is the revised Cadence vs Gearing measurements using the BikeCalc.com website to see what the change from 40T to 44T would mean.
Bought a meduim sized Topeak Fuel Tank which fits nicely on the top tube of the Mango Point AR. It is securing attached to the frame using three Velcro straps. It is easily took, my wallet and keys and a couple of energy gels. It also has has a nice detail in a battery cable access port which i intend to use to power my USB driven LED front lamp.
32km in an hour and forty eight minutes, the second half of the ride proved to be rather hard work, but we got through. It was another gloriously crisp bright morning with temperatures at -3 centigrade. So the landscape had a white covering of frost on the farm land and still on the parts of the country lanes in the shade of the raising sun.
Out to Kentboro and back just over 30km's in an hour and a half. Nothing much else to say.
Out to Broughton again, 33.5km's in 1 hour and 42 minutes. So went pretty much straight south to Broughton, via Red Rice and skirting Danebury Hill on a rather muddy bridleway, down Spitfire lane, and Broughton Road to the western edge of Broughton, then along Heathman Street to Nether Wallop, then back via the lane which stirts the Middle Wallop Airfield and back to Kentboro, Monxton and Anna Valley.
Out to Broughton and back. A mixture of country lanes and muddy bridle ways made up this loop out from Andover to Broughton and back. 37 km in two hours.
Signed up for the 33rd running of the Hell of the North Cotwolds. The original and Classic British Endurance Cycling event.
I ordered a Chinese Cree XM-L T6 LED light before christmas and it finally arrived today, I have to say i'm impress thus far, will be trying it out in the coming weeks. It has a USB male connector on a fairly long cable which is intended to be used with a USB power pack, thus giving it a little more flexibility in what Ampere hour rating we can use, as we have a selection of USB power packs around the house already. The Light comes with a simple rubber band system for mounting on your handlebars, this proved to be more than enough to keep the small light unit secure. The light has three power modes - low, medium and high which are selected via the push button on the back of the unit. I did notice when testing the light, that the button is not very glove friendly and to successfully cycle through the modes it was necessary to remove one glove. The unit also has a strobe/flashing mode which is accessed by holding down the power button for several seconds. This is very much a 'flood' light with no real shape to the beam which is normally expected in a bicycle light. This wasn't a problem in the high power mode as the beam was wide enough and bright enough to flood the country lanes I was cycling along when testing the light. In the lower modes the light worked well with my current Smart Lux 60 light which has a more focused beam. As already noted as the unit comes with a male USB connetor so any currently available USB power unit can be used to power the light. In this test I used a 1000mAh source which was tie wrapped to the handlebars, a more refined solution will need to be source, this will probably be a top tube frame bag. I ran my inital test in the middle of a very frosty night and didn't see any reduction is the light's beam while running on high power for that time.
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January 2023
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