Audax and a rail strike, not entirely optimal. I’d signed up to do the Herts Greenways 100k – a distinctly low-stress audax, intended for pootling through back lanes and greenways (the clue is in the name), long enough ago that (a) my gravel bike had not yet acquired it’s J-shaped derailleur cage (replacement due Any Day Now. I hope) and (b) the rail strike summer of 2023 had not started/been announced.
I had intended to ride the gravel bike – it’s ideal for this terrain. That was out of the question with the cage in the condition it’s in right now; I need the three gears that the cage cannot now reach, or my knee will be distinctly unhappy on anything that isn’t pretty much flat. The road bike is a nope; it can’t take tyres wider than 25mm and, although it was ok on one of the greenways a week or so back, we’ve had rain since then and I really don’t dare ride sketchy terrain on skinny tyres. If I fall on my left knee one more time (and any bike fall is always to the left, for me) there’s a fair possibility that I won’t walk away from it, or indeed walk for some considerable time afterwards.
So, that left the mountain bike. Which is a lovely bike but as aero as a brick and accordingly slow, and exhausting. To be fair, it’s not really intended for trying to ride at any sort of speed and I have no real experience of riding it longer distances – I tend to do 25-30 km rides on trails/tracks around this area. As there was a fair possibility that I simply wouldn’t finish the ride on this bike, I didn’t want to drive to the start so that I could bail without having to beg a lift from family back to the start to retrieve my car – and playing into all of this was the fact that the audax route passes about 50m from home …
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