One of the reasons for this review is that despite disc brakes being somewhat de rigeur these days, there are still a lot of v-brake users out there. Consequently, there are an awful lot of v-brake pads still available on the market. I'll be honest, I've only tried Shimano XT pads (not brilliant and very noisy) and the stock pads that came with the Arch Rivals (reasonable but very thin friction material so not long lasting).
I can't remember why I had these on the front brakes when I got back on my bike last June but they've been absolutely fantastic. Compared to discs, v-brakes are never going to be brilliant, especially in the wet, but these really are as good as I've tried and are extremely confidence inspiring. Best of all, you never hear a peep out of them, they really are fit and forget. The friction material is fairly thick too so you won't be replacing pads every few months.
My front pads were worn right down (after ~1,200 miles of road and off-road, wet, dry and downright muddy conditions) when Halfords had their new year sale this year. These were on sale for £4.99 for a pair so I bought two packs and replaced all my brake cartridges. Here they are fitted:
I've done a few hundred miles on the new brakes and I'm just as impressed as I was with the first set. Best of all, when the pads are worn down, you just pull out the mini cotter pin, slide the worn pads out and fit a new set of pads which are sold seperately so there's none of the hassle of aligning new ones.
Recommended!
February is going to be a challenging month as I lost the first 3 days visiting a friend and there are only 28 days to start off with! Panic 'on'...
4th Feb: Got 22.6 in with a variation of the 'local 18'. It involves carrying on past the Stanley Gate pub and heading right into Ormskirk then turning left at the first row of shops, up the shopping street and taking the right fork at the roundabout and heading up the long, steep hill towards Aughton then dropping down towards Kirkby and the rest of the usual route.
6th Feb: Did the local 18 but carried on into the village for a doner kebab on the way back (ahem...) thus making it 18.9.
8th Feb: A Saturday bimble with James saw us meeting at Iceland in Rochdale and heading up the Rochdale canal to Hebden Bridge and back clocking up a nice 27.7. Apparently, Hebden Bridge is known as the lesbian capital of the world - who knew?!
It was extremely muddy but the way out was good fun with the wind behind us. The way back was a nightmare with us heading straight back against howling gale force winds. By this point, my bike was so muddy I resorted to holding it by the top tube and submerging it in the canal. Twice. The bike looked awesome for 5 minutes but was soon plastered in mud so I probably won't try that technique again!
Photo shamelessly nicked from www.weekendnotes.co.uk because I forgot to take my DSLR...
13th Feb: Did the local 18 for another 17.9.
16th Feb: James is away with his girlfriend this weekend staying in a wigwam in Cumbria (?!) so I did a route I planned a while ago that I named 'the Wigan weird shape'.
It was quite a strange route because it looks in Map my Ride like the last 3/5 of the route is largely downhill but it felt like one of those routes that was all uphill but managed to miraculously arrive back at the car (how does that even work?!). It wasn't the nicest
route ever either, there are some seriously long uphills as well as some
canal towpath and farm paths to ensure you end up muddy from head to
foot but it was good for another 26.4 miles towards the monthly total.
19th Feb: Did the local 18 for another 17.9. Incidentally, did it in the best ever time at an average of 15.9mph!
22nd Feb: Met James today in Woolston just east of Warrington for a ride I'd found on www.cycle-route.com.
Most of it was very pleasant with no major hills and taking in a lot of countryside but there were some sections of very busy A road and getting back across Warrington was fairly dicey. Definitely not a ride for children or the traffic squeamish but it was another 26.3 towards the monthly total. Just 42.3 to go and I'm away next weekend from Friday...
25th Feb: Did the local 18 for another 17.9. 24.4 miles to go...
26th Feb: Did the local 18 for another 17.9. 6.5 miles to go...
28th Feb: Went for an potter around the village for a February total of 204.5. Phewww...
One thing I've really found helps get the mileage in is to have a 'go to' route. A route that requires no thought or planning. A route when you know you have to drag yourself out the house and get some mileage in but really can't be bothered...
My first one was a 14.7 mile route that included several miles of heaved up old tarmac, called the old coach road, through some very scenic countryside near to where I live it but was very jarring because of the road surface.
I subsequently found my current go to route, aka my 'local 18'. It's not very interesting:
Up the bypass and under the M58. Turn left at the Stanley Gate pub, cross country for a few miles then turn left and over the M58. Drop down into Kirkby and keep going 'til I reach the East Lancs road. Turn left and keep going to Windle Island then turn left and back up the bypass to the village.
It's not very exciting but it gets me out on my bike after a long, hard day at work which is the whole point of a 'go to' route. Oh, and if you've ever seen an idiot on a blue bike in the area wearing cycling shorts whatever the weather, it was probably me...
In short, yes. Firstly, Map my Ride is a web based fitness tracking program for the storage and analysis of your bike rides (they do Map my Run for runners as well). It stores all your workouts along with timing and elevation detail and allows you to keep track of your progress.
Routes are created by drawing them on a version of Google maps, giving you distance and elevation info as you plan. When finished drawing the route, you either store it as a route and log it as a workout each time you do it or you can export it as a file suitable for uploading onto a GPS based bike computer or smart phone.
Alternatively, you just start it recording on your device when you set off and ride wherever you fancy. When you get back you attach your device and import the route into Map my Ride and it shows you where you've been on a map with timing and elevation distance. Pretty cool, huh?
You can use Map my Ride with a smart phone but a lot of people are starting to debate the accuracy of their inbuilt GPS functionality. Along with the fact that dropping an expensive iPhone when out for a ride would be an expensive mistake, I decided that a dedicated GPS bike computer would be a better bet. I couldn't really afford one that did full-on turn-by-turn navigation so the Garmin Edge 200 was the perfect choice for my needs.
The Edge 200 is a basic GPS bike computer that does everything the bimbler needs. It measures speed, elevation and location and offers a basic type of way finding called bread crumb navigation. You basically take your route file (.GPX for the Edge 200) and place it in the 'New files' folder on the device when it's hooked up to your computer. The route can then be selected from the 'Routes' folder on the device. If you are physically on the route, a dotted line is displayed on the screen along with a scale. To navigate, you basically follow the dotted line.
It sounds basic, and it took me a while to pluck up the courage to try it out, but it's an awesome function. James and I have been on some epic bimbles around large connurbations and bar missing the odd left or right turn (usually because I'm easily distracted by female joggers and cyclists :P), it hasn't let us down yet!
For anyone wondering, following nearly getting lost when in Chorlton Water Park in the pitch dark and nearly losing our toes to frostbite (I perhaps exagerate a tad but it felt like it...), the backlight can be set to constant on mode. Even in this mode battery life is impressive. I regularly use the device for 2+ hours and it still shows as having 80-85% battery life left when connected to the computer again - you can't do that with a smart phone!
In a fit of retro-enthusiasm a few weeks ago I bought a set of period correct XT canti's from a guy on Retrobike to go on the rear of my bike. I fitted them but soon realised of course that my v-brake levers pulled in the wrong way and no matter how much brake I grabbed, there was basically no rear braking. I obtained a canti correct brake lever but the braking was still poor (and LOUD).
As I was replacing these canti's with a spare set of Avid Arch Rivals the other day, I realised I'd lost the original bolts and was left with a fairly random collection of mounting hardware. Being the slightly obsessive type, and as a nod to the weight saving craze of the early nineties, I splurged £12 on some 6Al/4V titanium brake boss bolts from ebay and now have a very coordinated looking bike. The bolts were slathered with copper grease before fitting as titanium has a bad reputation for galling.
These new bolts look really smart as a full set and as all of us who were around in the weight saving craziness of the early nineties know, my bike can now go up hills 37% faster than before no matter how unfit or hungover I'm feeling!
There now follows a gratuitous pic of my new rear brake (pre- the speed enhancing bolts). I have an Arch Rival on the front of the bike and they're like car brakes - powerful, quiet and unobtrusive. The rear is now much the same:
Having used Finish Line wet lube on and off since it hit the market in the early nineties, I had to give this new 'high tech' version a try. It consists of a fully synthetic 'racing' base lube with powdered hexagonal boron nitride suspended in it. Hexagonal boron nitride is a super-slick, hard-wearing ceramic molecule not dissimilar to graphite but much, much tougher.
I've used about half a bottle of this lube so far and I'm extremely impressed. It really does make your entire drive train utterly silent, it almost feels like you're cycling along with no chain. It isn't perfect though, compared to Finish Line's standard wet lube it's much thinner and isn't as water proof. I went for a 28 mile ride yesterday in very wet and muddy conditions and my chain is fairly rusty this morning with lots of orange spots. I remove and clean my chain when it gets like this (and after every 3 dry rides anyway) so this isn't actually much of an issue, it's still a great lube! There is one slight downside however, the boron nitride particles tend to sink to the bottom and the oil needs a really, really good shaking to get it into suspension again.
Overall, as a summer lube, highly recommended!
I've tried being trendy and running a single-speed but, d'you know what? It sucked! I think mankind scratched it's collective head and invented gears for a very good reason. I then decided that 1x9 was a cool idea but the chain kept falling off...
Next step was to source and fit a bash guard to go where the big ring once sat on my XT cranks (to avoid the chain rubbing on it, you need to source some 1mm thick washers to go between the bash guard and the tabs on the crank arm when you install it). This worked but of course the chain occasionally dumped itself around the bottom bracket shell...
Much head scratching later, I found a guy on Retrobikes selling a second-hand Superstar chain retainer. One quick paypal transaction later and it was on!
Perfect - keeps the chain exactly where it belongs no matter how fast or rough the terrain and it just happens to look quite cool too. Job's a good'un!
*As a slight aside, the customer service at Superstar Components sucks. Being second hand, one of the tiny grub screws in the device was fairly mangled making future adjustment dicey. I emailed them expecting they'd probably post me one as a gesture of good customer service but instead I got an email that more or less just said "Duh, buy one from a hardware store!" I'm not sure if he was American or not but I don't fancy my chances at B&Q with that request...
Back in the mists of time, around 1990 I think, I went to university in Aberdeen. My new best mate there, Matt, was a mountain biker and I was soon part of the Aberdeen uni club astride a GT Karakoram. Following the very first year of student loans, and the university bike sheds being burgled, Matt and myself were both soon riding Dave Yates MTBs.
During those years at university, me and a handful of good friends lived on our bikes (funnily enough, all Dave Yates MTBs), raced (poorly) and generally lived the 'bike' life.
Since then, the bike was largely unridden except for a spurt in the early noughties. The right hand chainstay was largely chewed through due to a combination of chain suck and low budget student maintenance so it went back to Dave Yates where it had the stay replaced and was sprayed 'Sky blue'. I then shod it with Specialized Fat Boys and put maybe a thousand miles on it before again losing interest.
Last June my mum and I took my niece and nephew, Adam and Daisy, for lunch at a pub a few miles away that sits on the bank of the Leeds and Liverpool canal and this is where it all started.
A combination of me thinking the tow path looked inviting and the vague thoughts of a 20 mile 'Ride for health' coming up at work meant I was back the following weekend with the bike where I cycled a few miles up the tow path and back.
It was knackering but I started doing some mileage around the village where I live and, with much trepidation, did the Ride for Health around Manchester with my work and absolutely loved it!
After the Ride for health, I signed up for the 'great manchester CYCLE' and did the 26 mile route which was awesome. Cycling across Manchester, including the Mancunian Way, with thousands of like minded people in glorious weather was definitely a highlight of the year.
To really top the year off, we had a new guy called James start working with us in our department at work and it turned out he was a cyclist! We now meet up every weekend and go for a ride that I plan in advance using Map my Ride. In summer we normally aim for about 25-30 miles and in winter, 20-25.
Anyhow, this is the gal in question (although she has since been joined by two other bikes) 2,724.6 miles after that fateful pub lunch and I fully intend to add at least another 200 miles a month to that total on her (and the new bikes) for the foreseeable future:
