Despite all that’s gone on, Chloe and I (mainly Chloe) managed to pull together a Moon/star themed party for Mr Moon last weekend.

Good things about this month:

• I bought a new bike!
• I cycled 363 miles!
• It was Percy’s 2nd birthday!

Bad things about this month:

• I was sick.
• The children were sick.
• I have been awake since 2am with a bad stomach.
• My marriage ended and the woman I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with moved out.

So in conclusion, fuck you March. Worst. Month. Ever.

Thought that was all going too well. Just found 267(!) blog entries that hadn’t been migrated over. Bugger. Better get to work….

On Sunday I cycled the Hethersett 60. When I signed up for it back in November, 60 miles seemed like a long way. In fact the longest I’d been out for was only 14 miles at that point. However after doing 50 miles in January followed by another 52 last weekend I thought it’d be easy. And it was! It took me 3 hours and 22 minutes but I think I could have done it in under 3 had I pushed myself a little harder. I also went slower on the last 15 miles to help a friend out that wasn’t used to the distance which reduced my average speed.

Roll on the Norwich 100!

With the news that Posterous have been acquired by Twitter I decided to up sticks for my blog again and am now hosting it on Github using Octopress. It’s a lot more techy but in some ways a lot easier to run and update and puts more control in my hands which has to be a good thing, right?

[Some time passes]

Well, found some kinks so far:
* Pictures are missing from old blog posts
* Categories have gone missing
* Categories are back! But are all wrong :(
* Sometimes Github doesn’t actually publish after deploying.

For reasons that will one day become apparent, I bought myself a new bike. It’s a Specialized Tarmac Comp, is made mostly of carbon and looks like this:

And this evening I went out with Iceni Velo on a hill training session on Telegraph Lane East. Somehow, I managed to get the fastest time (of those tracking it anyway). I will gracefully lay all the kudos on the new bike for weighing a lot less and being generally a lot better than my, still awesome, Specialized Allez Sport. However it seems I’m getting a lot better at riding. I did 10 loops tonight and could probably have snuck a couple more if I didn’t have somewhere else to be!

No, not the group of prisoners all chained together breaking rocks but the cycling version. Iceni Velo have been running a chain gang the past few weeks on a Wednesday lunchtime. I’ve been meaning to do it but illness has kept me away till today. I met up with the group just off the A11. There were 6 or 7 of us and I stayed at the back to try and get a feel for the flow and get used to riding in close proximity. The pace was intense! Once we got going we were averaging about 24mph but after 6 miles of that I had to drop off the back as I just couldn’t keep up. I kept on going at about 20-21mph before finally catching the group up much further down the road. It was a hard workout but good while it lasted. I notched up 25 miles in all, not bad for a lunchtime! I hope to repeat it next week and hang on a bit longer…

…join our club.

At the start of the year I decided to join a cycle club in order to get me out and about on the bike a bit more. After checking out the local clubs I went with Iceni Velo as they looked to be quite open and welcoming and had an active forum. Since joining I’ve yet to attend a Sunday morning club ride as a) it’s been quite cold first thing on a Sunday, and b) I have to convince Chloe to get up early on a Sunday :)

I have however been on two other events with the club, both of which have been part of the member-initiated hill training on a Thursday night. Whilst I’m more than happy to go out on my own and get the miles done as I did last Thursday, it’s a lot nicer with other people there to encourage you and help out should anything go awry. This evening I managed to stay with the fast group throughout, even taking a turn on the front for one lap of the 2.1 mile route. I managed to rack up 8 loops in all and 24 miles (including there and back) and genuinely had a great time, even though by the end I couldn’t feel my toes, or fingers and had ice in my water bottle.

Attention RSS readers

I’m migrating away from Wordpress, and my web hosting to Posterous. A sneak preview is available at http://posterous.neverandforever.com/ and in the next week or so I’ll make the switch on the main domain name. Stay tuned.

In July, my employer signed up to Cyclescheme, a way of buying a bicycle from your pre-tax salary in monthly instalments and saving between 40-50% off the cost of a new bike. I’d been after a new bike for ages but couldn’t quite justify the cost given that my old Halfords hybrid bike still worked, even though it was a bit cheap and had a tendency to misbehave. After having researched and thought it through for some time I had already decided I wanted a road bike and after chatting with the good folks at Street Life I went and got myself a Specialized Allez Sport Triple:

As a novice to drop handlebars, skinny tyres and the much higher riding position I was a little nervous on day one but soon got used to it and now wouldn’t dream of riding anything else. Compared to my old hybrid it’s lighter, more responsive and has a much better gear ratio - even in top gear I’m still able to pedal at a decent rpm without having my legs whizz round like a lunatic. I also find I’m enjoying cycling a whole lot more and have just started up a lunchtime cycle from work to get my stamina up in preparation for some much longer rides I plan to do next year. However the main advantage of the Allez on a day-to-day basis is that I’m now even faster getting to/from work. I can comfortably reach home by bike quicker than I would have by car.