Bike tyres - Pirelli P Zero 4S real world review

I bought a new bike last year and got the stock wheels which came with it but saved up for a set of pretty HUNT Carbon wheels. I love them. The new wheels meant I needed to buy new tyres and after a search I opted for the Pirelli P Zero 4S roadbike tyre. The price is decent and cheaper than the Continental 4000 s I had on my other bike. My new bike came with Hutchison tyres which I liked a lot but couldn't find them available in in Switzerland so the Pirellis were a good alternative. They are made in the Hutchison factory in France (I`m told). Reviews are decent but like a lot of product reviews I don't agree with the good reviews and I have different experience.

They are really light and easy to fit to the wheels. Getting them going and stopping is good too, wet weather braking has not been an issue either. I have no problem or complaint at all about their ability as a road tyre. My issue is their lack of robustness if I go a teeny weeny bit off road. By Off Road I mean light gravel which many Swiss cycling routes seem to include. Another road surface they don't like are cobbles. This is obviously an issue  when you want to go ov er the Gottard pass. The north side ramp has a few kms of cobbles right at the top and the south side to Airolo is entirely cobbles :), or that is what is feels like.

So far I have had to replace the back tyre because one of my excursions cut a slit in the sidewall and I have quite a few small gravel created slits and gaps in the front one. I am really disappointed that the slightest off road activity effectively means Im off to the shop for a new tyre.

The Schwalbe Pro Ones are now on order. Lets see how long they last.... My lovely Gazelle has only ever used Schwalbe Marathon Plus so I hope the hype is true about the Pro Ones.

Ride, Crash, Recover

After 10 years of using cycling as my main for of commuting I expanded it to be my main form of exercise about 2 years ago. My first new bike, which wasn't a Gazelle, for 15 years was a Bergemont Hardtail Mountain Bike.  I love it. It has allowed me to expand from my 20km round trip each day to exploring the local hills at the weekend. It really helped improve my overall fitness and I was out in all weathers.

Then I decided I wanted to go further still and bought a road bike. Getting on my road bike was like another world had opened up for me. I could go further and for longer and just look at all the lovely new kit I get to buy!!!

So I decided that I wanted to get a bit more serious about this training lark and bought the Cyclo90 program from CycloCore. I did the 3 month program, signed my self up for an event and enjoyed every sweaty minute of it. In May I cycled up Sustenpass in the Highway to Sky event and realised that I enjoyed this more that I had expected. So with that under my belt I planned my next big challenge... the Alpen Brevet.

Highway to Sky was in May, Alpen Brevet in late August giving me 3 months to prepare. I did this by using more of the CycloCore/SouloTV sessions and the occasional organised event all designed to get me to Meiringen in August ready and raring to go.

I took part in the Bike Festival Basel Mountain Bike Challenge on Aug 19th, my last training ride before the Alpen Brevet and disaster struck. I have no idea what happened.  All I know is that I crashed and woke up in an Ambulance on my way to hospital.  I had broken my left arm and right index finger as well as the severe lacerations to my left elbow, concussion, amnesia, dramatic bruising on my left hip and lovely bruises on my face. What a disaster, all of my prep gone.

So I went from being on my bike every day to nothing. I am surprised at just how little information there is about recovery form injury. There is loads of information about recovery between training sessions but hardly anything about being injured. So I decided I should write this down.

Crash Day

Operation to implant a metal plate in my arm and join the Humeral head to the remainder of the bone. I woke up wearing a harness to immobilise my arm, a tube and bottle sucking any spare liquid out of the affected area and a bandaged left elbow. 

Day 2

Visit from the surgeon, she cheerily explained that if in future the head dies due to lack of good blood flow, its OK because we can put in a replacement one. 

Day 3

The first of many Physio visits, I can hardly do anything and im still a in shock at the state I have gotten myself into.

Day lots

I found this in my DRAFTS - as you do - and its now 2 years to the day later.

I got the metal plate out a year ago because it was causing Bursitus and. after what seemed like an endless amount of physio sessions, I have most of the movement back but not the strength, Its still a bit sore but I am back on the bike and have never enjoyed a hobby so much. I will now actually post this because I`ve got opinions about the bike I feel the need to share - :)

Womens cycling shorts - my personal opinion

Having been a normal NL resident cyclist for years I never had anything specific to wear when out on the bike. This is because my bikes were used for going to work, the supermarket local tours in fairly flat perfect cycle paths with little effort, but since I have been out on my mountain and road bikes, it is clear I need a tad more padding than my teeny saddle provides. 

My first attempt was actual shorts with a liner and a waist. I felt cut in half. They are baggy mountain bike shorts with a separate pair of padded pants for underneath. If I ignore the being cut off at the waist part and just think about the shorts themselves, they are great. They have big side pockets which can fit a map. They are baggy enough to protect me from bushes and other things which would scratch me. The problem was that I really didn`t like the tight waist of the padded liner/underpants. So I looked further.

 I then bought my first pair of actual bib shorts. I chose some on special offer from a webshop but I made sure I picked a make I recognised and respected (GORE). They are womens specific with zips to allow you, theoretically, to be able to use the toilet without totally disrobing.  Many people will advise trying them on first - this not a bad idea :) - I didn't. There are a few things to say about these. But first here is a picture of the GORE Power 2 Lady shorts.

They have zips at the join between the top mesh bib and the bottoms and a small hook to join the vertical straps together. The features are then - the chamois, the bib top, zips, thigh grips.

Lets start with the chamois - I really don't like this one, I felt sore from the start. I have read that as we are all individual the same level of padding can have a great or lesser effect and  it is safe to say these are not for me. Next we have the bib top – that’s fine I suppose apart from the hook thing. I don’t like the way it make everything tight when connected and you get a little open space underneath – and when not connected the straps are very wide. Then we have the zips…oh dear. I am sure there is a technique but I dont get it. Finally the thigh grips, they are broad and hold the cuffs well – so plus points for the grips, lots of minus for the rest. I accept that I may be wearing the wrong size but at 73kg and 178cm tall, the XL should fit – no? It fits my legs, and body but the zips???  

 Anyway, then we come to the Odlos. Again I bought XL and these are BRILLIANT. The padding is fantastic, the zip at the back works!!!! and the thigh grips are great. A perfect bib short – if you ask me. The picture below shows the rear zip. Fantastic invention. They are Odlo Galibier Bib shorts and I now have 2 pairs because they are just so comfy.

Rear vertical zip

 I have seen Specialized have a rear magnet connection which a friend thinks are great, different to Zips and the horror of the rear hooks! (my lack of rear facing vision makes that an impossibility) or worse still the single over the head down the middle strap. Perhaps for small women but not for me.

My next post will be my opinion of two Castelli brand bib shorts which was my next adventure into getting things to fit me.

Cyclocore 90

I am writing this after just finishing week 8 of the 12 week - 90 day - Cycling training program called CycloCore 90.  I cant say enough good things about this program , it has helped me improve to a point I barely thought was possible.

I am a 51 yr old cyclist having come back to cycling after years of a) no exercise b) decent running c)kettlebells!!!! and finally back to the bike. My level of fitness has been fairly decent for about 5 years but will need to improve if  I want to cycle in the Swiss Alps - which is the plan for this summer. Last year I did loads of cycling locally on a mountain bike but I have always wanted a road bike and gifted myself on late last year.

So back to Cyclocore - I was looking for something to help be improve to get me able to cycle in the Alps and found this program. The reviews I could find sounded promising so I paid my money and made my choice....

I got the 90 day plan which is basically 2 sets of 5 week active plans, 1 week recovery week. The active weeks are a combination of indoor HIT bike trainer workouts, core workouts and outside in the real world cycle plans. The plan says the exercise is expected to be harder than I can do - got that right! - and I am improving every week.

The creator is Graeme Street, now of Soulo.tv and it looks like this Cyclocore plan is the base plan for everything else that he does. The plan itself is fairly easy to follow - I do it early morning then cycle to work... puff puff .

I went for a cycle today - 60kms and it has 2 big climbs, each about 8km and about 6% gradient all the way.  I am so surprised at how doable it felt, dont get me wrong, im shattered :) but in a good way.

I highly recommend this initial 90 day program if you are looking for something to kick start your cycling fitness - I am loving every sweaty minute of it.

Go to soulo.tv for more information - you wont regret it.



April 2017
Update -Finished the program and after a week of rest and recovery I tackled what would have been a huge multi climb ride - huge for me that is. It was clearly challenging but all went well apart from the fizzy left foot which started about 40km into the ride. Another thing to investigate. Now on to the climbing specific program or ill never get up Sustenpass in a decent time. I am going to take part in HighwaytoSky on May 20th. This is the website  https://www.highwaytosky.com it will be my first real Alpine pass, cant wait!

Windows 10 WIFI problem limited Surface Pro 3

I have had Windows 10 for a few weeks and it was going OK until I suddenly experienced WiFi Issues.

It was all going OK until a week ago when the Wifi reception began to be bad and then became Limited and I just couldnt find out how to fix it.

I googled WiFi Windows 10 to discover that it wasnt just me, there are loads of us out there. I have a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 which I had upgraded to Windows 10. Many people seemed to have problems but most of the proposed solutions didnt work. I tried removing the network profiles and edited the registry to really finish the job but it still didnt work.

I finally worked out something which seems to work so I thought id post here in case others have the same problem.

The problem seems to be the Network driver. I tried uninstall, reboot and it reinstalls. The problem being it installed the driver which caused the problem. So here is how I installed a previous version of the driver.

I have screenshots on this pretty powerpoint slide deck.

Enjoy

Heff

GPS watches and me: the Nike GPS watch - stay away

I am a self confessed gadget freak. I love them but they need to actually work. I have many and most of them I really like. My BB 9900 and Playbook for example are really good, my Macbook is fantastic.

I have been running for a few years now and wanted to get more techy data sometimes I feel a bit like Sheldon but there you go.... I tried to use my 9900 to do this but its to heavy and I didnt like carrying my phone. Partly because its heavy

I had a look at loads and finally plumped for the Nike GPS watch because I use the website and already have loads of data there. Another reason was indeed because its was much cheaper than the Garmin ones.

So my first impressions were good, it has a screen large enough for me to see with my middle aged rubbish vision - I run with my old glasses on which are not exactly strong enough but as long as I miss the cars I'm fine..... but then I got to use it and was less impressed.

The GPS is from TomTom which should mean that it works, on the whole it doesnt. I am amazed at how long it can take to get a fix on my position - it that works at all. I run in the same area all the time and it can take more than 5 minutes to fix my position. This is just rubbish. Even if I stand still it often doesn't manage to find me. Once everything is connected- then its OK but the GPS location is very very bad. It utterly fails to impress. Then I managed to drop it but as the watch is for outdoors I had expected a stronger screen. My screen now has a pretty crack in it. If you make anything meant to be used outdoors in a sporty environment is it not supposed to be strong enough to handle this?

I also have a Polar heart rate monitor watch which, you will not be surprised, has been on the floor a few times and is just perfect.

I think I got what I paid for  - my Nike was half the price of the Polar and Garmin GPS watches but not worth the money. I should have bought either of them.

TomTom seem to have created their own sports watch - I would be very reluctant to chance it. I hope someone does a demo concentrating on the build quality, GPS location and ease of use (for lefthanders)

Waterrower machine fails on monitors

Further down in my (few) posts you will see that I bought a Waterrower indoor rowing machine a year ago. As a rowing machine its great, as a monitor its rubbish.

We have had issues with the monitor from the start. It stops monitoring your progress, the screen goes blank, it stops, its goes to 0.0 etc etc . We have had the measuring disc replaces by the shop where we bought the thing and finally in December it went back to Waterrower themselves where they replaced the monitor. I had hoped they would have checked everything out but when it came back ( a month later) the problem is still there.

I find this just ridiculous. The machine itself costs over 2000EUR and the monitor is just rubbish. If I had bought a cheaper machine - and there are many- I would be less concerned but this is the supposed top of the range indoor home rower! and its just not fit for purpose.

The competition is the Concept 2  a machine we decided not to buy because the Waterrower was better looking and took up less space.

I advise Waterrower to get their act together regarding the monitor - if you offer a system with this feature, it must work. They say you can go online and row against others- that is also a nightmare. The Concept 2 online community is huge, waterrowers hardly exists. I don't really want to go online, but I would like to record what I do on my laptop. This is possible, only for Windows! (I have a Mac). I did use it on an old PC but even the Windows software is described as Beta and is horribly clunky, complicated and little use. It looks like it was made for Win95.

All in all I dont know if I would recommend a Waterrower anymore. I love the rowing experience, I hate the electronics which just dont live up to the promise at all. It seems like this lack of IT savvy is over the entire company - their websites are also rubbish. Try looking at the online shops in different European countries for a laugh.

OK rant over

Water Rower - get on the case PLEASE you have a great machine which fails on one feature. Fix this and it will be fantastic.