September 8th: Autumn's on the way, aaargh! I did the local 24 again last night but only managed to set off at about twenty past six and the sun was setting as I got back in so it looks like 'bike light season' is here again. It was a fairly windy but very pleasant ride except for my legs. I started off absolutely flying but my legs gave up after a few miles and I struggled a bit for the rest of the ride. My average was 16.6mph so they can't have held me back too much, It would have faster but I got stuck behind a tractor towing a hay rake for about a mile on the farm track section. Still, 24.0 more miles for September.
12th September: I decided to take Awesom-O out today because it's been raining a lot lately and I thought the roads would be soaking. I made a decent job of truing the dinged back wheel beforehand and realised, whilst de-greasing the cassette in the bath, that the bladed spokes had all twisted so I ended up untwisting them with the spoke key and holding the blade of the spoke in an adjustable Bahco spanner and guesstimating the nipple rotation again. The chain then needed a thorough de-greasing because the Muc-Off wet lube had actually completely dried into a weird dry dirt that took a lot of scrubbing off. Anyhow, I lubed the chain with the recommended 2 layers of Purple Extreme, allowed a couple of hours for it to dry, and set off on the local 24. It was very windy and overcast but a lot of the clouds cleared by half way so quite a nice ride and 24.4 more miles.
15th September: Did the local 24 last night on Awesom-O again. I noticed on Saturday's ride that the stem and the front wheel weren't quite aligned properly so I sorted that before I went out because it's extremely irritating, a view I suspect I'm not alone in holding! The weather was windy and chillier than it has been recently but a very enjoyable ride overall and 24.5 more miles for September.
19th September: The weather was gorgeous today so I headed out to do the local 24. Because the weather was so nice however, I decided to go exploring instead. I ended up on the rural part of the route and took a road I've never been down before and ended up cycling through Aughton and into Ormskirk.
It was quite a tough start but once my legs kicked in it was quite an enjoyable ride. It's a depressing fact that the weather can only go downhill now that autumn's arrived but you can't hold back the seasons I guess. Anyhow, 26.0 more miles for September.
20th September: I wanted to get out of the house for a bit today but didn't really fancy doing a full ride as the weather was grey, overcast and chilly. In the end I decided to do the old coach road as I haven't done it for a while. Despite the less than awesome weather I felt extremely strong and really enjoyed the ride and it was 15.7 more miles for September.
22nd September: I did the local 24 tonight after work. I knew I'd be setting out fairly latish so it's officially the first ride of the year where I had to go out with full lights. This sucks, obviously, but my new Exposure Diablo was pretty epic coming back along the shared use path through the village pushing out 1,300 lumens! It only runs for an hour at full pelt like this but I've found out since I bought it that Exposure do add on battery packs that plug in and extend the run time which is pretty cool. 24.0 more miles for the month.
27th September: Well, it finally arrived! The 2015 British Heart Foundation Blackpool to Manchester night ride has rolled around again. This year, like last year, was blessed with calm dry weather and I got to the Trafford Centre pretty early and managed to get into the second 'pod' of riders and was on the road by about ten past midnight.
I spent the first half of the ride with a bloke who'd finished his first LEJOG a few days previously and we were soon overtaking some of the slower riders. I then lost him and ended up following a tall guy on a Trek (really nice guy with tattoos covering his head, face and neck!). As we got to around ten miles from Blackpool I took a turn on the front. This went well but I was starting to flag slightly in the last couple of miles and as the guy's mates shot past with about a mile to go, he joined them and shot off towards the finish.
Anyhow, I made it in the end beating last year's time by 4 minutes with 2h 53m which was awesome. It might have been faster still but the tattooed guy and I got diverted into both feed stations which neither us wanted to do - something to avoid next year. It was freezing cold in Blackpool and the buses and vans for the trip back took ages to leave but that seems to be par for the course with BHF night rides. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to get under 2h 50m next year if I get my calorie intake right throughout the night but it was quite fun and 51.4 more miles for September.
30th September: It was a gorgeous warm sunny day today so I went out to stretch my legs after work. I didn't fancy the full 24 so I did the old coach road and then the full length of the shared use path that runs through the village. Anyhow, a good ride and 18.7 miles to conclude September giving a monthly total of 233.1 miles.
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