One last Indian summer twilight ride

The forecast for the next week indicated that this Indian summer we're having is about to draw to a close, so I thought I'd do one more twilight ride from work to Mt Lofty last Friday night. The other reason for the ride was that my new wheels had just turned up and I wanted to try them out. They’re nothing flash, just entry level Shimano R500's which were on special online at Cycling Express for $99 (half price) with free delivery. I sometimes feel a little guilty buying bike stuff online and not from a local bike shop but, believe or not, we have more important things than my cycling habit to spend our income on (mortgage, food, school fees etc.), so I've always tried to do the bike thing on a very tight budget. Mostly this means buying stuff secondhand and sometimes online. I still do buy stuff from my LBS, but with items like these wheels, it’s pretty hard resist the online deal because it’s just so ridiculously cheap. 

So anyway, I was a little excited about my humble wheels because there’s hardly any new components on my bike. Unfortunately though, they still needed work. The back wheel was well out of true, so I spent 20 minutes getting it right, and the front was little out of whack too. Evidently that’s quite common with new wheels, especially cheaper ones, but I still think it’s a little dodgy that they leave the factory in less than perfect order. So I whacked them on and they looked a treat - the black, red and white of the wheels nicely matched the white, black and red of my frame and forks.

It was even warmer than last Friday, around 29°. I headed off from work a little earlier than last week and, after my last dodgy ride up Glen Osmond Road, I took a safer route along Duthy and Wattle Streets, then up the back streets to Cross Road and the freeway corner. Sadly the serenity was missing on the climb this week. There was a traffic restriction on the freeway so a lot of traffic was diverting up Mt Barker Road at Devil’s Elbow. It was no problem because the bike lane is mostly protected by a curb but it was a little noisy and smelly with all those trucks and buses climbing the hill.

Anyway, I’ve decided I’m not working nearly hard enough up these hills. When I start a climb I've had a tendency to put my bike into the lowest gear and just slowly plod away, leaving plenty in reserve because I’ve been unsure about how well I’ll cope. Now that I know I can get up hills okay, I’ve decided I need to start pushing myself a bit more. So, on this ride, I started to periodically drop down 2 or 3 gears, get out of the saddle and push. It worked out pretty well and it certainly felt more productive. I pushed myself fairly hard and by the time I reached the top I was breathing heavily. My time reflected the extra effort – I took almost 5 minutes off my previous best time from the Tollgate to the summit. The other benefit of getting out of the saddle a bit more was felt in my posterior - it wasn't quite so sore at the end of the ride.

Like last week, the descent was in the dark only this time I has my new little USB rechargeable LED  rear light (a Moon Gem 3.0), which was very bright and quite impressive for it's compact dimensions. I just need to get a decent front light now. I took the descent relatively easily but still managed to get up to a 20km/h average for the whole ride. Clearly, in the scheme of things, this is pretty slow but it is, nonetheless, better than I've ever done on a Lofty run before. So I'm pretty happy to start seeing some measurable progress.