"Back2Fitness" Event: Pitshanger Park, Ealing - 31 August 2014

What a great day had by all!

Officially our first outing with our new gazebo, flags, banners & cool kit

In collaboration with "Will to Win" Pitshanger Park & ourselves, we invited a few like minded friends to ensure this long glorious Summer continued for just a little bit longer & to encourage those who have let their fitness program slide some what to get back on the saddle, so to speak, and boy did the Sun do us proud.

Will to Win, Pitshanger Park, Ealing HQ & Coffee House

The others that were part of the "Back2Fitness" event were, Ealing Cycle Campaign, London Bike Hub, VeloMec & Ealing Metropolitan Police Service , W5 Physio . . and finally the Community of Ealing. Our objective was to bring Cycling & Tennis together on one day and to make the local community become aware as to the resources that is on their doorstep via these local businesses & associations.

The lovely boys from London Bike Hub, Ealing Cycle Campaign & Ealing MPS

London Bike Hub provided minor bicycle maintenance & advice, whilst Ealing Cycle Campaign (part of London Cycle Campaign) were there to advise cyclist about group rides, safety & other aspects of cycling. And Ealing MPS were offering free security registration for bicycles. They were all kept busy.

David of VeloMec with Richard of Ealing MPS

VeloMec, deal with full bike maintenance, re-builds, customs builds & cycle-fits. We recently met David on a SaddleDrunk ride-out from PaperBack Coffee in South Ealing Road & we discussed a project we were working on, which was our very our SaddleDrunk bike. David was up for the challenge & the result is a fabulous full carbon bike weighing at 7kg!

The Beast built by David of VeloMec

Tom of Will to Win had put on free tennis session for the next generation of tennis players. Many young children were having great fun led by two of Will to Win's excellent coaches.

Great lob attempt by the young player

Don't argue with me, that was definitely IN! (where's HawkEye?)

The Calm before the Racquet!

Hundreds of people from the local community turned-up enjoying the pleasant surroundings and the facilities available. Many were surprised that such a park existed on their doorstep together with high quality tennis courts and a coffee house which serves a mean Flat White!.

We met many people, some we knew but many that we didn't and it was a treat meeting & and speaking with them all. It was great to meet Councillor Bassam Mahfouz, cabinet member for Environment & Transport, on his new steed. We look forward to working with the Councillor and other key members of the Ealing Community & Commerce in achieving a safe environment for cyclists as well as encouraging health & fitness in the borough.

David (No2) of VeloMec fitting someone Pride & Joy

We love cycling, we also love running (every Saturday 9am from PaperBack Coffee) but what we love most of all is helping you get fit but if cycling and running "ain't your thang" we can point you in the right direction. We are based in Ealing & we know people who can help you.

We like to thank all of those that took time to set-up their gazebos & share their experience & knowledge, all of the lovely folk of Ealing that came to see us to make worth while but mostly we like to thank Tom Fairhead of Will to Win, Pitshanger Park for allowing us to use make this event happen. Cheers Tom.

We are SaddleDrunk

Thanks for the love Ealing & until next time "Cycle Safe"

Stefano & Panayiotis XX

Our weekly appointment from Down Under

Hi all,I hope you had a good weekend,and plenty of riding,

Serene Lee again is keeping us company from Down Under.Here it is her weekly report.

First up folks, sorry to disappoint but it’s important for me to make this clarification…

I’m NOT a pro rider. I’m your everyday common folk – the wannabe full-time cyclist but the real-life full-time research student. Yep, it’s a rather practical world out there.

Secondly, I love green. My dad says emerald is my lucky stone; apple green my lucky colour. I’ve always been put in the green house (pardon the pun) at school. Did I say my school colours – for the best 6 years of school life - were green too? I’m a proud Rafflesian. It also just happens to be Oakley’s 30th anniversary for their performance eyewear this year and their celebratory Heritage collection has a lot of green in them (N.B. I love the retro look too but we’ll get onto that in another post). 

Anyway, I had been bugging Joey, my superstar from Oakley Singapore, for a pair of green lenses to go with my shades. She finally relented and sent me some Jade Iridium ones (along with those aforementioned goodies). I collected and snapped them on, before leaving for a club race 30 minutes later.

Well, I won the race rather unexpectedly. 1st female; 3rd overall (among the men). FLAT and WINDY course, doing my fair share of work in the paceline, frisky in the moves that went off the front and in contention for a podium in the reduced bunch sprint. Rest assured it is nothing characteristic of my racing style. I guess GREEN makes everything happen. Or maybe it’s the 2x aspiration of my heel and 3weeks worth of antibiotics. Whatever.

Serene collecting her prize 

I also collected my trophy for my 1st placed female finish earlier on in the month. It happened to be my national day that day so HAPPY BIRTHDAY SINGAPORE!

The Trophy

On a side note, it turned out that my awesome ride drove me into an automatic car-wash pre-race. It was claustrophobic and induced a lot of adrenaline in me, which could partly explain the unfathomable of the race, but I guess it was green too. Maybe I should add that to my pre-race routine.

Car wash

The fog that once shrouded and clouded my mind;

The crossroads that I stood upon;

Gave way to a semblance of rainbow and butterflies.

Literally, and figuratively. 

Melbourne weather can be so unpredictable. 

Storm

Sunset

The grandeur of promise always supersedes its actual delivery. 

Word of advice or rather, note to self: Never forget the power of sufficiency.

And so, I’ve decided to continue being a nerd for a little while more and march on at school. It is probably a good idea when spew worthy efforts of 3mins on/off can throw up these amount of words.

Training and Studying great combination for top results

Mind you, SUFFERFEST was playing right in front of me but I don’t think I heard/saw anything. It merely masked the whir of my Lemond and my gasps for air. I was hyperventilating throughout the session and only realised that when my neighbour popped his head into the balcony and tried to get my attention. He was concerned that I was about to pop dead and die. It seemed just about right as I not only had the usual pedalling muscles’ cramps post-ergo session; but also facial cramps to go along. #nextlevelhurt 

The art of juggling had better improve or else, they might all land on the ground like a pile of poo. That’ll hurt – just like these things do.

My local gym

This makes everything worth the while though.

My lucky charm SaddleDrunk T-shirt finally arrived

Thank you very much Serene.Until next time all over the world just get SaddleDrunk. 

From Australia, Serene Lee Pro Rider talks to us about cycling

I met Serene Lee, last year at the Taiwan KOM challenge and it was a pleasure talking to her and riding with her. She is a promising rider and a great climber with strong legs. Hopefully we will see her soon in Europe.

I have personally asked her to tell us about road race cycling down under.

Serene with her Australian Kit

There’s this thing called writer’s block; and something called verbal diarrhoea. I’m just about to unleash some of the latter because by a cruel turn of fate, I’ve to be off my bike on an uncharacteristically sunny, wintry (going-to-be-spring) weekend. You know that feeling? It stinks like a pile of poo.

There’s this powerful drug that WADA cannot, and will never be able to, ban – road cycling. I can go on and on about its beauty and the benefits that it extols, particularly to my being, but I will save this for another time. Anyway, if you’re reading this, you probably are reasonably clued up.

Long story short, I’ve been intoxicated and probably should’ve been stopped by the police at the roadblock just off the street. It’s early morning on Saturday after all. SADDLE DRUNK. Or rather, not allowed to be saddle drunk and suffering unexplainably (according to the “mortal” souls) from withdrawal symptoms.

The rest of the Team

Pursuing a higher education has always been a legitimate reason to keep riding my bike. Racing it, gives me even more legitimacy to ride my bike for obscene hours. Or so I think at least. I’ve come a long way, in all sense of things. I’m 26 this year and pursuing my Honours (research) in sports and exercise science. Actually, I was about to type, pursuing my studies in all aspects of cycling. That’s the plan anyway – to do my PhD studies on female elite cyclists. There’s a whole host of things that I’ve dabbled with, cannot wait to validate with scientific research and seek solutions for. The paucity of scientific data on female elite athletes is rather in-your-face alarming and I hope to shed some light in that regard. I’ll come back to this next time since I’ve digressed again. 

By a long way, I meant that I flew from Singapore to Melbourne at a whim. One Facebook conversation and ten days later, I found myself staying in Melbourne for the past nine months. That’s me the past few years – doing things uncharacteristically me. So I got lucky with the Holden team (thank you!), managed to find my way into Victoria University and convinced my parents that Melbourne is the place to be for this year. It almost sounds like an amazing, dream-come-through journey right? Yes, and no. It’s been a physical, mental and emotional roller coaster ride that I really could do without in my life. I think. 

For a good example, let’s just start with this weekend. I had to make the decision to miss a race for school. You know, that shit moment when life gets in the way?! I’ve just come off a 25-h training week despite it being lab-testing week for my research studies. I’ve just come off a 3-week training block, off a pretty good performance at a flat and windy NRS race (not quite my thing with my physique) and off a 7-day antibiotic course prior to that race. Before that, it had been on/off for a good 4 to 6 weeks due to a whole host of bad luck – when it rains, it pours. In my case, it storms, floods and overflows the banks. I lost the big chunk of goodness I gained over the first half of the year (I was the fittest I had ever been in April/May this year) and I was just about getting this back….

So I was struggling the first few days of this week trying to recover from the big bout of effort and doubted (rather incessantly) about my ability to pull it off  in the race over the weekend. Snozza, my amazing coach from cyclingtraining.cc., dealt with me admirably and convinced me that the legs would come good on Friday. It did, but I was riding (and weeping) on the trainer as I contemplated the “what-ifs”. I was meant to be unleashing those pistons at the morning TT and afternoon kermesse. I had left my team one down – I’m sorry teamies.

Nice and swollen ankle

It was blood, sweat and tears literally. I had decided to re-visit the doctor to look at my recurrent inflamed heel. It got bad again over the week, probably because the immune system was down and my tired body was rebelling. On that note, I was definitely fit to race however angry the heel was. I was pretty sure it was nothing that sinister; or rather I didn’t want to think it was. The doctor prescribed me antibiotics (again!) and sent me off elsewhere for ultrasound. 

I managed an appointment almost immediately (too soon that I was almost too scared to turn up) and the radiologist gave me a good scare when he told me to keep lying there while he got a doctor to come and see me. Those were a long couple of minutes as I thought he wanted to say that my ankle needed to be chopped off! Apparently it was just protocol, my Achilles tendon was intact and that consulting doctor said he would report to my GP about the ultrasound. Basically 2 options here: for antibiotics to clear the infection and inflammation or to consider aspirating the internal blister/bursa whatever. You know, the last time I had to pull out of a stage race to be sent to a small community hospital in the suburbs, I had asked the doctor to just burst the damned thing and drain the pus. She didn’t, and wouldn’t. No one had relented since then. I’m hoping I get lucky this Monday with my GP – it’s going to take a ballsy doctor to do it but I figure it’s the quickest way to relieve my grief and I can’t do it on my own. I would have a long while back, if I had found a way around it. 

Training at home

Anyway, that consulting doctor advised me to stay off cycling and anything strenuous for that matter, to give my heel a chance to heal. Pun intended. However, being a road racer – illogical sometimes – I had convinced Snozza that I could still ride my bike over the weekend. Maybe just not racing the criterium he had wanted me to enter, as I probably could not deal with excessive heel rub with the off-saddle efforts, but definitely big, long, aerobic rides in this awesome weather. Heart over head?!

An assessment of my heel last night gave me a shock. I wondered how I had put my foot into my cycling shoes. It was pig trotter-ish. An overnight sleep confirmed that trying to ride my bike through this was rather stupid. So I’m looking for an outlet to vent my frustrations as the emotional turmoil ebbs and flows. One moment, I can see the positivity in things and the next; I wallow into a bout of self-pity.

Acceptance;

Contentment;

Enlightment.

Test Centre

Till the next time, thank you SD for providing me with this platform to air my thoughts. I’ve a lot more to say.

Thank You Serene for talking to us. We wish your all the best for the rest of the season down under.

Good luck and be SaddleDrunk.

Ciao SD.

Update on the SaddleDrunk Bike

The first SaddleDrunk bike is slowly come together.

David Eckersley of VeloMec.co.uk has kept an online diary of the progress so far. (follow the link below)

Empty Motorway

http://www.velomec.co.uk/#!workshop-latest/c1v2o

The carbon frames are on sale on the website, production time is 60 days including shipping from Taiwan.

The bike frames can be sold separately or as complete bikes.

For more information please email us.

Be safe on the road and don't get wet by getting caught out by those summer showers.

Ciao SD

Upto date Info

Buongiorno to all of you and buona domenica.

T-shirt available @ our online store 

I have updated the our cycling calendar upto Bank Holiday UK Monday with times for our rides. Please check in the home page.

Also, some of you are still on holiday, so enjoy some reading from the previous blogs.

I hope to see you soon and do not forget to come and visit us at "Back to Fitness" event on the 31st of August from 11am to 2pm in Pitshanger Park, Ealing, London, by the tennis courts.

"Back to Fitness", will be a sporting event where Will to Win will be providing free tennis lessons for adults and kids, also inattendance will be the Metropolitan Police providing free bike register. London Bike Hub, London Cycling Campaign branch of Ealing, will be also attending providing free bike maintenance & information regarding social rides around Ealing. Plus David from Velomec will provide free bike repairs and advise on bike fitting.

Have a good day and be safe.

Ciao SD