Ride Report - July 20th 2025
- lgccasuals
- Jul 20
- 3 min read
Ride #6 of the LGC Casuals.
The week leading up to this one had conspired against my own cycling ambitions through a combination of mechanical issues and awful (typical) British summertime weather.
DT Swiss issued a recall notice on my wheelset despite them being less than 3 months old. Plan B was to therefore take my 10-year old bike out of retirement. Just as I thought she was road-worthy again, I turned the handlebars left and realised it was applying the back brake.
So I had 2 bikes not functional. One with the risk of wheels whose carbon may disintegrate like wet papier mache, and one whose brake situation meant I could only go straight on or right. Great.
In any case, I managed to get some riding in this week.
The first, I decided to take a risk and ride on the potentially exploding wheels anyway given DT Swiss hadn't said anything further since their initial notice. I wanted to do a reccy of Sunday's route, and I'm glad I did as it took me down some unnecessary towpaths and dodgy A road crossings.
For the entire ride, I was overly cautious. Could have probably walked down the descents faster. Making it back in one piece I decided it was probably stupid to have risked it, so my next midweek ride was confined to the world of Zwift once more.
There were a few of us who has originally intended to do a Sigma Sports social ride on Saturday - a good looking 75km route, and a chance to meet some more local cyclists. With the bike issues, and torrential downpours at play, I gave it the figurative rain-check. It did mean that I was very keen to get out on Sunday as a result.
Simon graciously took it upon himself to fix my brake issue by replacing the cable and figuring out a temporary fix for missing grommets and botched outer cables. Thanks to his mechanical prowess, I had a bike road-worthy enough for Sunday, again. Or so I thought.
6.10am on Sunday. 20 minutes before we start our group ride, I noticed that one of the back spokes was pretty much falling out the back of the wheel. Time for a choice. Go fetch the right tool to set it right or put caution to the wind, and ride the buckaroo explosion wheelset.
My tools live behind an annoyingly squeaky door under the stairs. It would have inevitably set off a chain reaction of door open - dog bark - children awake - wife mad. Better to risk it. A quick swap of pedals and bottles, and out I went.
Meeting at 6.30am always feels like a big ask. Harry had been at Hitchin summertime the night before, and living a bit further way, had to get up closer to 5am to 6am to get to the depart point in time. But we all said afterwards that once you're out, you're grateful for not missing the rest of the day. Kids & partners are much more grateful that way. Even if it means Ben sacrificing his 'lie-in' day.
Today was a shorter loop. A mix of earlier Sunday responsibilities, my fear of a dead bike, and an impending storm, it made sense to keep it closer to 30km. We headed out on a familiar Cromer Windmill loop.
I love this route as it gets you from town into country within 10 minutes, and provides around 350m of climbing within the 30km or so loop across 5 noticeable climbs. It gives that good blend of fast well-paved country lanes, short challenging climbs, and technical descents. All in a neat compact package.
There is one climb in particular I love on this route called 'Cromer Climb'. It's one of those where there is a sudden right-angle turn and it goes straight up. Only 280m long with an average gradient of 8% maxing out at 12%, it's great for a quick minute of effort. I got the run-in wrong today so lost a bunch of speed going in, but I can see myself using this as a benchmark for improving.
With 4 of us out today, we made good time and were back in Letchworth around 8am, just in time for the first coffee shop (No 12) to be open for a quick coffee and chat before bidding farewell to each other. A really fun ride all-in-all, and looking forward to the next one already.
Comments