I’ve done 9500m in 10 days on holiday over the last couple of weeks, but that’s because I’m somewhere hilly and that week I’ll be at home, at work and recovering from a triathlon, so I reckon I’d be pushing it to do the actual challenge even if my legs could probably cope.

I usually extend the ride in rather than theride home but have been known to get home, swop bikes and go out again. Nothing today though, although there will be plenty of riding over the next 2 weeks as I’m now on holiday 🙂

I’ve never had an issue, most orders dispatched same day, one bike was in stock so I took it away with me on the day, the other was a bit slower than predicted to build up but they kept me informed when I emailed to check.

It’s my birthday and not only am I at work but I’ve got stupid amounts to do so no skiving off early…

The payback is that once I’m finished that’s it til 18 june!

I’m always amazed at how much of an assumption of laziness there is. I cycle to work two days a week and drive the other three. I have free parking in the multi storey over the road from the office. My boss is currently on holiday and our secretary asked whether I was using her parking space in the basement while she’s away. Does she really think I’m so lazy that I can’t walk across the road?

And don’t get me started on the annual free BBQ that I never get to find out about in time to get a ticket because the only place they advertise it is in the lifts…

I used to have a boot rack on a Fiat 500. You can just about get a bike in one, but not two bikes and not with other luggage, and the glass roof meant no roof rack either. I hated driving with it on. Above 60mph it felt unstable, and I once nearly lost a bike on the M1 (I saw it moving strangely, pulled over to the hard shoulder and realised that it had let go of the bike on one side). We got it to France and back like that last year (from Yorkshire) but long drives trying to stay under 60mph were tedious and I ended up watching the bikes in the mirror as much as the road ahead. Not to mention security – even if you lock the bikes to the rack, it wouldn’t take too much effort to remove the whole thing from the car.

I now have a Berlingo and it’s so much better to have the bikes inside with me!

I’ve also noticed that if I give a cyclist lots of room the driver behind me often does too. Driver education by stealth 🙂

A clutch pedal once fell off when I was borrowing my mum’s Clio. It was parked at the time, I had been putting it into gear to move off.

Luckily it was outside a bar on the coast in Spain (she live out there) so I had a pleasant wait for the recovery truck as I wasn’t going to be driving anywhere…

Will also keep a look out, you must be within half a mile or so of me. Most of my bikes live indoors but will keep an eye on security too!

I’ve done just over 1200 miles on my alfine 11 and no major issues. Getting the knack of the gear changing took a while but I seem to be there now, and I’m getting used to the weight. It’s not on a particularly light bike to start with so by and large I’ll just be pootling on it anyway. For fast road rides I’ll use a standard road bike, but the pompetamine with alfine is great for rides with a mix of road/cycle path/track.

No leaking issues here even after I serviced it myself (I was a bit worried I wouldn’t get the seal right).

I’ve recently been touring on it. I was a bit wary about using panniers and adding even more weight to the back, but it was fine – except trying to get it through gates…

65 miles in Scottish drizzle. The sun came out after I’d finished…

I’m doing coast and castles this weekend, so hopefully 60 miles from Berwick to Innerleithen. If the wind doesn’t drop, it could be hard work.

Last night, riding home from work.

I don’t have a set route. There are various options, and at this point I either turn right and cut through some back streets or carry on to the traffic lights and turn right there. There’s not much difference and I have no realpreference, other than if traffic is busy the right turn at the lights is easier/safer to get in the right position on the road.

I approach the first option and look behind me but see a stream of traffic so decide not to pull over to the middle of the road and go to the lights instead. Except the driver behind has seen me look (no signal as I decided not to turn, so just the look), slows down and makes room for me. At this point I realise I’d better make the most of it and turn to avoid confusing him, and he hung behind me until I’d completed the turn even though there was time to pass on my left.

No, and that’s sort of the point. An experienced cyclist/time trialler won’t use the “facility”. An inexperienced cyclist will go nowhere near the road. So who is it aimed at?

The a64 does that round York. I ended up on it by mistake once and couldn’t imagine that anyone would cycle it out of choice.

Full kit mainly for me, partly because I wear skirts for work which isn’t entirely practical cycling kit, and also because I need a shower at some point in the morning so may as well do it after my commute rather than before – and if I’m changing at that point anyway I may as well wear kit designed for the job in hand despite my relatively short commute.

On maintenance, I cleaned my bike after the first few rides on it. I did the 1000km alfine service at closer to 1500km and at the same point finally got round to cleaning/lubing the chain for the first time… I bought something that needed minimal maintenance and have made the most of it…

Our building managers provide free bikes/helmets for short trips in the day. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen them in use.

As for danger, at a previous company HR tried to ‘ban’ senior Managers commuting on motorcycles, luckily the Head Lawyer was a two-wheeler.

I was knocked off my bike by a car on the way to work last year. When my boss told her boss, his response was that I should be banned from cycling on road.

It only took the warning that I could do far more damage to myself on a mountain bike without the assistance of cars to make him back down 😉

I do wonder whether subsidised BC/CTC membership (and hence insurance/legal cover) would be a good perk, or whether it would add to the fear that cycling must be dangerous if you need insurance to do it?

I live 5 miles from work which works really nicely. I only cycle 2 – 3 times per week (mainly because I have evening commitments 2 days per week which I go to straight from work and which don’t lend themselves to arriving by bike), but I tend to do a 10 mile route in to work in the morning. Depending on my energy levels after work I can either cycle straight home or do something longer (or cycle straight home, swop to my road bike and head out again).

I have hub gears, tough tyres and disk brakes, and after 900 miles on my “new” bike the extent of my maintenance has been changing the oil in the hub gears and occasionally lubing the chain.

Facilities alone won’t do it. In the building I work in there are a few different companies. Last year the pressure on the underground bike racks got too much and they introduced a new system where they are allocated to named people to ease the crowding. My firm were allocated 4 spaces and only 3 of them were taken, whereas other companies had much higher cycling rates. All the showers etc are communal (in the sense that all companies have access to them rather than some mass communal shower), so facilities has nothing to do with it.

I would hazard a guess that a lot of them came from sky who seem rather more, ahem, pro-cycling than my mob. I’m not sure what exactly do to encourage it, but I’m sure that whatever it is is a lot more than my firm which rejects any attempt to introduce cycle to work and where the senior staff look at you like you’ve got two heads when you suggest that cycling 5 miles to the office might be quicker than driving.

Celeriac and walnut gratin, red wine and apple crumble

I’ve had the “can you recommend me a bike, I’m looking for something decent – as much as £150” conversation before. The same bloke then asked me how much my bike cost and I was going to make him guess, but gave up when he started going up from £100 in £10 intervals as it would have taken a while…

No, because I’m a girl. I have more QOMs than I expected though. I obviously benefit from the fact that I’m in a smaller pool of riders (but most of them have been ridden by other people so it’s not just that I’m the only female to have ridden them and recorded it on there). I did a sportive at the weekend and picked up some QOMs from it, there are a couple of other women who have also uploaded their rides round the same route on the same day but I seem to have been faster up the climbs than they were.

Being top 10 on a segment is less meaningful for me because only a relatively small proportion of mine have significantly more than 10 female riders.

Ah, the comment about shared use pavements and passengers opening doors brings back a memory.

I’m cycling along a cycle lane on the road. Passing car driver wants to stop at the side of the road to let a passenger out. His bright idea was to pull up by the white line between the cycle lane and the main carriageway so that I could carry on in the cycle lane to his left just as his passenger opened the door into it 😯

I’d worked out what he was doing and went round the other side of him, but I’m still amazed that anyone could think that was a good idea. I may rant about people stopping in cycle lanes but in that situation it would have been a hell of a lot dangerous than what he actually did.

Not competitive at all. If I want to race, I run. If I want to enjoy myself I ride a bike. That said, I have more QOMs on strava than I expected to get when I signed up “just to measure my progress”.

In terms of sanctions/compulsion what I found interesting was that in 1998 I did a semester at a US university as part of my degree. In order to register as a student I needed to show my vaccination records and although I’d had the single vaccinations as a kid (and had my doctors records to prove it) I had to have MMR before they’d let me enrol.

Established middle class.

I struggle with indicating on the bike – particularly going right. I want to get better at it, but a year or so ago I came off while indicating right and broke a couple of ribs so I’ve lost all confidence, particularly if I need to brake at any point during the manouevre. But, at least I know that I should be indicating, and I do other things instead – trying to get eye contact when I look behind me, positioning myself assertively approaching the junction to prevent people trying to squeeze past and so on.

I did get wound up once when I needed to change lanes in the lead up to some traffic lights which were (a) red and (b) at the bottom of a hill, meaning that not braking wasn’t really an option. I made eye contact, the driver in the lane I was moving into clearly knew what I was trying to do as he left room for me. I moved into the space, all nice and smooth… then the driver who had been behind me in my lane pulled up alongside and had a real rant at me.

On the flip side I’ve lost count of the number of times recently that a driver has pulled away from the side of the road as I’m alongside them without indicating.

I have a USB stick of music plugged into the car (Actually, I have 3 sticks floating around which I swop round from time to time). No issues here – if the track name is in the file it shows up on the display. When it’s on random it does seem to pick a small number of songs and cycle through them rather than everything on the stick though. It came in the car when I got it – a Fiat Blue and Me system I think.

I think there is a cultural thing rather than just women, although sometimes women seem disproportionately affected by it.

I do wonder how much influence celebrities doing race for life or london marathon (and talking about it in gossip mags etc) has on persuading women that they can run too. There’s nowhere near the profile for celebrities doing cycling events – not least because other than maybe London to Brighton and the new London event there is little on that scale. Whether you think huge events are something that you want to take part in personally or not, the profile raising side does have some benefits.

Also, the sort of culture where protecting your kids means a 4×4 arms race, and parent and child parking spaces because it’s too dangerous/difficult to walk across a supermarket car park doesn’t help. If you can’t get across a car park and if there is no need to do that because the facilities are available to park outside the door, then are you really going to attach a tagalong or a bike seat, put the kid in it and get to the shops by bike unless you can’t afford to run a car – and then you’re fighting the “utility cycling is for poor people” mindset again?

My driving licence is in my wallet mainly because I’m less likely to lose it there than if I put it in a safe place. I usually carry my wallet. Sometimes I don’t (when I’m running, on short bike rides). Sometimes I’ll carry a bit of cash and pick up my driving licence while I’m at it. Sometimes I won’t.

My intention to commit a criminal offence has nothing to do with this decision, it tends to be about carrying something that will allow me to be identified in the event of an emergency.

Commute to work this morning – thermal bib tights, waterproof trousers over the top, helly hansen base layer, short sleeve jersey, long sleeve thermal jersey, waterproof jacket, buff, socks, shoes, overshoes, sealskinz gloves, big glasses to keep the wind and snow out of my eyes.

I’m not sure I like the implication that I’m not normal. Although I can probably live with above average 😉

I’m not a particularly girlie girl. I rarely wear makeup and I have long hair mainly because it doesn’t require such regular trips to a hairdresser. But I wouldn’t cycle to work without showers, towels and hairdryers. I usually wear a skirt for work so I can’t cycle in work clothes unless I use a step through hybrid, and my hair is a mess even if I’ve not worked up that much of a sweat. Luckily for me I have had a gym membership for years and a few years ago my firm moved to the building next door to the gym. So I use the gym showers rather than the ones at work because they provide towels and hairdryers meaning I don’t need to carry them.

I originally come from a running background, and it’s interesting to see how many women *do* run. Not as many as men, but a good proportion, certainly when compared to spain where my parents live and where I’ve been known to win my category in races purely by virtue of being the only entrant. Race for life may not be an event for serious runners, but that sort of atmosphere is instrumental in getting a lot of women out there, as is the fact that you can get started with very little kit. I have several non sporty friends who have started running recently but still look at me like I have two heads for cycling to work.

I do notice differences between how I approach cycling and how my oh does though. I’m not interested in technical stuff or racing. I’m a bit more risk averse, and for me getting out for a long day out with cake stops and a pint at the end is the point not willy waving about speed or how much we’ve climbed. I’ve tried, but I’m still happiest on road, or the sort of off road which is basically a road with no cars. I tried cyclocross once and never intend to try again, not helped by the fact that although it was a “fun” race it was mainly men and I was way off the back. The local grass track league would involve riding with the men too, presumably due to lack of demand for separate races. I’ve never done it but looking at the results there are a handful of women who turn up occasionally, but not enough to squeeze specific races into the programme. Chicken and egg, how do you get the demand without the ladies only events?

And I don’t even treat sportives as races…

I have a free santander account which has free travel insurance – there’s a minimum monthly deposit but it’s not a huge amount – but I don’t know if they still do it as it’s an old Alliance and Leicester one.

Coming down steadily in leeds for a couple of hours now. I cycled to work because I just know what will happen to the roads later. Worst case scenario is I push the bike home or leave it at work and run (only 5 miles) but no way am I risking a car when we get the normal leeds snow gridlock.

3 road bikes (one winter, one summer, one that lives in spain for holiday use), a pompetamine for commuting, a hardtail, a hybrid I never use and two wrecks that really need to be binned because there’s nothing salvageable left on them.

My OH has a similar number. And I’ve currently got my nephew’s new islabike in the front room because he’s only getting it for his birthday at the end of the month.

I write a lot of handwritten notes at work, but usually they’re just for my own use (to dictate up into a filenote later or annotations to a document where I’ll type comments into an email or mark up the document on screen later) so they’ve been getting less and less legible over the years. I dread to think what I’d do in an exam these days.

I’m considering doing this. There is a sportive starting a mile away from my house which is overpriced tbh – you have to buy your own food at the feedstops, and it’s one of those “we’re associated with a charity but they don’t get any of the entry fee” type events. I’m very tempted to donate the money direct to the charity and then ride it without an official entry – there’s nothing to stop me going out for a ride on my local roads, is there, and as they provide virtually no support en route other than signage (which, being local, I wouldn’t necessarily need) I can’t take advantage of it! And I can use my own loo before I set off too 😉

I’m going via Innerleithen, but I can’t actually remember why I opted for that.

Mrs Poddy – snap – also doing coast and castles in early May 🙂 First tour for me and I’m really looking forward to it.

Just need to get a rack and some panniers sorted for the pompetamine…