Who turned the heat up....

Great weekend for cycling. Weathers been really warm (managed to catch some sunburn on Saturday afternoon), still I was a very happy cyclist riding in the sun! Road cycling is so much simpler when you've so much less stuff to take. Normally I'm getting out arm warmers, leg warmers, overshoes, rain cover and neck scarf before you start putting on everything else. This weekend it's just been shorts, top, socks, shoes and a couple of bottles of fluids (along with helmet, cap and gloves of course).

Managed to get the new Garmin 705 all set up and mounted on the bike (thanks to neighbour Gary for all his helpful advice). It's a bigger unit than my previous 205, but boasts full colour screen and more bells and whistles. I've now got one screen to look at on the bars, rather than the separate bike computer and GPS . I've set it up to show me : - ride time, speed, avg. speed, real time cadence, avg. cadence, calories, heart rate, distance. It's really handy to have all that data just projecting back at you real-time as you ride, think I'm going to enjoy using it. It's not the most intuitive device to set-up and programme, have to say, however when it's all done, it's done.

Had three rides this weekend. A quick 17 on Friday night after work, 25 yesterday afternoon and 41 today, so that makes 80ish in terms of miles for the weekend, all on my new Dolan wheels. Bike is running really nicely, feels super fast on the road and is a joy to ride. Took this pic of the bike on the way back via Warrington yesterday. Still can't believe it's mine!

Managed to get dropped by a fella in Altrincham running an Orbea, I was bobbing along at 22mph (which I thought reasonably credible) only to have him ride my wheel for about 100yds then pull out and fly by, not even a "hello", "good morning" or "how's it going?". I like a bit of bike etiquette, still you can't judge everyone by your own standards. Had a nice chat with a fellow at Costa in Hale, he was admiring the bike and did the "lift test", you know how it goes, bike can only be judged by its' weight, thankfully it passed with honours!

Finally, it's lovely to get home and not have to do a massive top to bottom clean of the bike. Today, it was just a matter of putting the bike in the stand and giving it a full wipedown with some baby wipes (tip from one of the lads in the club), all done and dusted in a few minutes. Lovely.

No ride stats to share in detail today, hopefully normal service will be fully resumed when I've got the Garmin running and fully sorted. If you use either MyCycling Log or Dailymile, you can find me under user name "Roadphil".