Have I really ridden for 700 consecutive days ?

 

                                          On November 24th I posted my 700th consecutive outside ride on Strava 

It's been a long couple of years for us all that's for sure and we have all had to find our way through the pandemic the best way that we could, for me that was to keep riding my bike ... everyday. I have just passed the milestone of 700 consecutive days riding outside, not something that I particularly set out to do, it just sort of happened, gradually and fairly slowly for a lot of the time.

When Covid arrived in March 2019 my race season had just got underway, I had made the decision to start early that year so I had managed six races before everything else was cancelled and that was it, season over for me and everyone else. It was fairly obvious to me that the year was a write off in terms of racing so I made a conscious decision to let my 'top end' race fitness go guessing that it wouldn't be needed for a year or more and that I couldn't hold it for that long, even if I wanted to. But I also knew that if I stopped riding consistently that there was a good chance that my fitness would go completely and at my age it would be really difficult to get it back and could mean that I wouldn't race again. So my solution was to ride every day, mostly low intensity and mostly fairly short rides but all outside and with some regular doses of quality thrown in.

By the end of 2020 (a leap year) I had ridden every day including Christmas Day which went down well (not) with Mrs R - A.K.A. 'The Team Principle'. By this time it was starting to look like we would have some sort of race season in 2021 so it wasn't the time to stop the 'streak' in fact it was time to ramp it.

                   By May the 8th another milestone was reached when I hit 500 and it was a wet one ! 

I might have ridden every day but I definitely didn't train everyday. The majority of my rides are really easy (more on this below) and involve pedalling gently to my favourite cafe at a very leisurely pace, stopping regularly to create Instagram content. The other thing about my ride streak is that a lot of  the rides were off-road on my gravel or mountain bikes, again nothing too strenuous mostly bridleways and cycle tracks away from the traffic but always carefully planned to include coffee at some point. 

My season finally got underway at the end of May and I must have been feeling enthusiastic and keen to get started as I did a round trip of 240 miles for an hour of crit racing at the UCLAN Sports Arena in Preston, Lancashire. Despite there being no rain whatsoever on the weather forecast it rained - torrentially throughout. Although I 'got round' OK and managed to stay upright unfortunately my brand new packet fresh white socks didn't survive.  

Fortunately better weather for one of my four visits of the season to the Darley Moor circuit in Derbyshire another long trip for me but in year when the race calender was a bit on the sparse side it was a case of if I wanted to race I had to be prepared to travel.

For the record a summary of my 2021 race season  looked like this:

• 10 races
• 2500 miles driven
• 5 overnight stays
• 0 punctures
• 0 mechanical issues 
• 1 crash (cut finger no bike damage)
• 0 Results !

Above race action from Darley Moor captured by my friend Cheryl Owens and all I can say is there are some fit old fellas in Derbyshire that's for sure. You can read more on how my shortened 2020 season went here Back to it.

Something that this 700 streak has confirmed to me is that to be of any benefit training needs to be hard a significant proportion of the time is actually false ... it doesn't, although to qualify that statement I am a 66 year old with several decades of very consistent training in the 'bank'. I've posted a more detailed account of my recent approach to training here Training without training.  

                                     Ready to roll out from raceforthecafe HQ for another coffee spin.

These days the biggest proportion of my riding, probably over 80% is done at an easy pace, my breathing isn't laboured and if the ride is only around an hour or so to the cafe the physiological demands are on a par with going for a brisk walk, nothing more, I'm rolling along pedalling and my heart rate is up slightly but the pace is very comfortable.

                                                                                        My type of - ride direct to the cafe.

                                                                                     With a nice 'sit in' on the way home.

As I mentioned earlier I have been training for endurance sport for a long time, in what now seems like a former life I was (a fairly average) Ironman triathlete for many years but this is not to say that this approach is not relevant for everyone. I have previously posted about Ironman triathlon here: Changing Sports here Origins of Ironman and here Ironman Lanzarote 

These days thanks to the work of scientists and researchers like Stephen Seiller we now know that some of the world's very best endurance athletes spend around 80% to 85% of their training time going easy. Of course the other 15-20% is no doubt brutally hard but they know that even they don't have the physical or mental capability to train at that level all the time without burning out - nobody has.

So how I train now is to make sure I am pedalling consistently and most of the time at a moderate pace so that I can be sure to get out every day. Some of the time I go hard for different periods of time, 3 mins, 5 mins, 10 mins 20 minutes, I just mix it up and at some point every week, without fail I go really really hard, absolutely all in, maximal effort just for a few seconds a few times and that's it. 

The relevance and benefit of this approach is that it engages all three of the bodies Energy Systems , aerobic (5 min +) anaerobic (30 sec - 3 min) and anaerobic alactic (8 -12  seconds) which also means it's an approach that's event specific for me. All of my races (BMCR) are pretty hard from the start but usually not hard all the time, especially when sheltered in the wheels which is where I like to be, but they do get very hard at different points often for several minutes at a time when the pace is high, the terrain is tough or when as often is the case attacks are coming one after another. Inevitably at some point the racing gets very, very hard, just for a few seconds when closing a gap getting on to a wheel or sprinting at the finish.

So you may (or may not) be thinking how long can I keep this un-broken all rides done outside streak going ? Well there is a clue in the picture above, I have a bike set up and ready for my first excursion to the enchanted land of Watopia that I have been hearing so much about for the last couple of years. 

To be honest it's been ready but unused since the start of the pandemic but I have now decided that some serious Zwifting is in order in the new year just in time to avoid the worst of the winter weather. The last day that I didnt ride outside was the 25th December 2019 so it feels like Christmas Day 2021 might be a good day to have my next rest day. I'm just hoping that having days off doesn't turn in to a habit, give me a follow on Strava to find out.

Thanks for reading.

Oh ye I remember - bike racing !

Finally ! it's back and on May 31st I raced for the first time in over 14 months, a BMCR (British Masters Cycle Racing) Covid Test Event, just over an hour of racing on a closed circuit at Darley Moor Sports Centre in Derbyshire. Even though it was only a test event there was a big field of sixty age 60+ riders.

       Some of these fellas can't be over sixty surely ?

It was great to be back racing at Darley Moor as by coincidence my last race pre-pandemic was here on March 6th 2020. I have previously posted of my of age group racing exploits here Too Old For Racing ? here In the Pain Cave and here In Memory of Johnny P

BMCR races are always very competitive with a lot of attacks especially in the early part of the race and the first one of my 2021 season was no exception. I was comfortable in the bunch from the start and very happy with my fitness and it was good to confirm that the quality structured training I had done in the last couple of months had got me to the right level after such a long break from competition. It was also good to know that my approach to riding during the pandemic that I wrote about here Pedalling Through The Pandemic had maintained my base fitness well. So my fitness wasn't an issue but the race did remind me of something fairly obvious, positioning is key ! especially on the last lap and at Darley Moor the position that you enter the final corner is likely to be the position that you finish the race and it was ... 20th. 

I had to wait until 24th June for race two at the UCLAN circuit in Preston, Lancashire, a long trip of 115 miles each way for me for an hour of racing which under normal circumstances would be a bit too far but with the race calendar still looking a little sparse and the British Cycling Masters National Circuit Championships on the 3rd July this was an opportunity to get a quality work out in a warm up race.

Unfortunately despite there being no rain whatsoever in the forecast it rained, a lot, but at least it was warm rain and the track was grippy even in a downpour so I managed to stay upright but unfortunately my brand new white socks didn't survive, bike racing it's certainly not for everyone that's for sure.

Next up was a trip down to Leicester and my first time racing at the New College Circuit, which was flat and fast and a little bit dull to be honest. No wind at all meant that nothing was going to get away despite attacks coming what felt like every lap and the race finished in the inevitable bunch sprint.

                                                                           Link to my Strava

When the race is going to be decided in a sprint and you are not a sprinter the chances of a result are slim, especially with some of the best guys in the country present. So I knew that I needed to spend a lot of my remaining pennies getting to the front on the last lap to have any chance of getting anything from the race. Despite knowing what I needed to do and having the legs to do it I left it too late to move up and entered the last corner about 6th and finished 6th. Fitness is there it seems like it's the execution that needs work !

Race four was back at UCLAN the following Thursday and another long drive to find that I didn't take any legs with me and as a result had an absolute shocker ! I won't bore you with the details but I did eventually understand why, I was seriously dehydrated and had been since the previous weekend in Leicester. 

A warm night at UCLAN a strong field and I suffered like a dog. The experience has prompted me to make big changes to my hydration strategy before during and after training and racing. This is a topic for a blog post in itself as to be honest I can't believe how badly I have neglected my hydration, especially since the weather has got warmer. My only defence is that as you get older thirst sensitivity is significantly reduced but I knew that so it's no excuse really - more on this another time.  

Something else that I have been paying a lot more attention to which has a big potential impact on performance is sleep and rest more generally, another element of recovery that I haven't paid enough attention to. I have been using some wearable technology in the form of this smart watch from Amazfit so that I can better understand health markers such as my resting heart rate, and sleep patterns which should/could (along with my new hydration regime) help me to improve my performance and more importantly maintain good health. The Amazfit watch uses PAI (Personal Activity Intelligence) that measures the impact of any physical activity on heart health and provides a rolling seven day average.

I have also been using these ZenBuds ear pod from Amazfit  they mask distracting noises and can play soothing sounds to block out the outside world to help you to fall asleep more easily and by monitoring sleep patterns allow analysis of sleep quality. I haven't used them much yet but I have been sleeping a lot better although that might be because Mrs Rees has put the summer duvet on the bed ... who knows ?  

Finally: I now have a YouTube channel that you might want to take a peek at (it's just like the sort of stuff you find on here but in video form) It's early days and I am very much starting from scratch and on a very steep learning curve with video but you have to start somewhere. I have lots of ideas for YouTube content so check it out and maybe hit the  subscribe button  TERACEFORTHECAFE  as there is some good stuff coming up. Here's a link to the story so far How I started my YouTube channel

Thanks for reading.

From sheets of MDF and rolls of wallpaper to a YouTube Channel in 3 months.

 

In January on a bit of a whim I decided that a good lockdown project would be to start a YouTube channel, theraceforthecafe cycling so I ordered five sheets of MDF a few rolls of wallpaper and I got to work. I have always enjoyed the luxury of having a double garage for my bikes and stuff but any decent YouTube channel has a studio so some changes had to be made. 

 I had convinced myself that sacrificing half of my bike storage space to build a YouTube studio was a good idea and that it would be worth it in the long run ... hopefully.

Video is definitely the future and although you could reasonably argue that there are already too many cycling YouTuber's around it's also true that YouTube viewing has grown hugely during the last year and that the viewing habits of millions if not billions of people around the world have probably changed for ever. So the audience is definitely there, the challenge of course is producing the content that they actually want to watch, while at the same time building an audience from scratch.

This has definitely been a project that has evolved significantly since I had the original idea which is another way of saying that I have been making it up as I've gone along. Sometimes it's best just to crack on and see what happens which is what I've done, but I did do quiet a bit of research before I started (watching YouTube videos) so I managed to convince myself that I had a handle on what would work and what I needed to do to create it.

I have never been a big YouTube viewer and I have deliberately not spent any time watching other  YouTube cycling channels because I wanted to try to do something original. The videos that I have watched during my 'research' have all been instructional videos on setting up a channel, and on video making and editing. If you think of YouTube as a huge search engine you really can find out how to do almost anything on there.

It has been a really steep learning curve and I have learned a ton of stuff but I will be the first to admit that there is still a huge amount that I am bluffing my way through. Although I have spent some money on building the studio I decided not to throw too much cash at the project by investing in a lot of new equipment. A good quality video camera is something that I will need in the future but to start with I decided to do everything with my phone. I use the Iphone 11 Pro Max so the camera quality is really good, add a tripod, an external microphone and ring light from Fovitec and a cheap soft box studio light and that's basically all the equipment I have. To edit the videos and add any text or music I have just used a free app on my phone called inshot which is excellent and can do everything that I need for the moment, although I have needed a bit of practice. 

The plan was to launch the theraceforthecafe YouTube channel with eight videos to give viewers a range of topics so that hopefully they would find something that interested them, I decided to start with videos that are all around the five minute mark in duration just as a way of encouraging people to watch them all the way through. 

I wanted the channel to look the part from the start so I got a channel banner and some graphics made on the website fiverr. I've never used Fiverr before but what an excellent site it is, just like Ebay but for creative projects, all turned around in just 24 hours - brilliant. 

What's the channel going to be about ?... cycling obviously, the content will be really varied so hopefully there will be something for everyone. Try to imagine the YouTube channel as a combination of this blog and my theraceforthecafe Instagram content, combined in video form and you are on the right track.

I soon realised that making eight videos (even five minute ones) in the time that I had available was going to be too much work so the plan evolved again. I reached out to some of my Instagram friends for help and sure enough they stepped up and the Cafe Collective was born.

The new launch plan became five videos from me and one each from my three Instagram friends. Who are Julian a photography expert and mental health advocate from over in Berlin on Instagram   pedallingthroughlife  Gus a charismatic 'California Boy' Instagram gusgoescycling who does his riding in London and Rahul from Newcastle Instagram projectsunrisecycling who is a super keen cyclist and bike builder, if you hit the links to their IG accounts you will see the sort of stuff that they do. All three guys came up with their own ideas and although they have a mix of relevant experience from their day jobs we were all learning together and each of them brought something different to the party. Also coming up on the channel are some mountain bike/off-road videos from someone else I know from Instagram calvin.berger from North Carolina who is only fourteen but a cycling star in the making ... I'm certain of it.

The priority at the start has been content over production quality and we have been learning by doing which was another reason to start with short videos, as our skills improve we plan to move on to longer more challenging projects and we have loads of ideas.  

Once I had the new logo and branding it made sense to organise some raceforthecafe merchandise, caps hoodies and tee shirts for when the channel really takes off, he said optimistically. I have a few of  of these items left so if you are interested just drop me an E mail or a direct message on Instagram. It's been a bit of a whirlwind few months but I have thoroughly enjoyed it so far. 

Thanks for reading and it would be great if you would check it out, it will get better ... I promise !

  theraceforthecafe cycling - YouTube Channel

Training without training - what I learned during the pandemic.

Here are a couple of questions for our times: 

1. What is the best way to train when there's nothing to train for ?    

2. How much fitness do you loose if you don't any any 'proper' training for nine months ? 

On the 18th of January last year I was in an optimistic mood and super motivated so I had decided to get my season underway early at the Croft Motor Racing circuit and I was pinning a number on for the first round of the Velo 29 Winter Series. After four months of well structured training, including a lot of race specific high intensity efforts I was feeling good and 2020 felt like it had the potential to be a great season.   

On top of having trained well I was moving in to a new age group and was going to be racing as an over 65 in the E category. Not that the 'E' age group is any less competitive than 'D' but because of a rule change I was moving into the category a year earlier and effectively a year younger than I otherwise would have. British Masters Cycle Racing had decided on a rule change to align with other organisations and effectively class every ones birthday as the 1st of January and as my birthday is at the end of November I would be one of those to potentially benefit most from the change. So this was definitely going to be the best chance I would ever have to get some good results in age group races something that I haven't really managed to do so far. 

There isn't any sort of training that you can do that's as hard as racing, especially when you're a 3rd Cat racing in an E/1/2/3/4 on a wide open circuit and the wind is gusting at 50 mph - you know what they say about what doesn't kill you ?

On the wheel of one of my best mates and former regular training partner Darren Moody. As we waited on the start line Darren and I (combined age 115 years) were speculating on the average age of the field, we decided it was about 23 and resigned ourselves to a tough day out.

January 25th and another hard day at Croft but thankfully when the going gets tough you can absolutely rely on the British Army.

After five 'training races' at Croft on March 8th my season proper started at a different motor racing circuit, this time it was Darley Moor in Derbyshire the first round of the BMCR National Series for over 60's and what turned out to be my final race of 2020. 

Despite missing the race winning move and not picking up any series points I came away from Darley Moor thinking that I was definitely going to be competitive and feeling pretty positive for the rest of the season ... you know the rest, by the end of March it was pretty clear that their wasn't going be a 2020 season for me or anyone else. 

So what next ? racing is important to me and I definitely wanted to race in 2021 but I didn't think it was possible for me to maintain my race fitness for a full year without a race season. The reality of 2020 soon became clear and riding solo almost exclusively, which I rarely did before Covid, quickly became the norm. I decided to keep it simple, no plan, no structure, just ride every day and sprinkle a bit of quality/intensity into the mix every now and again.

Although I have a power meter I don't generally train to power, partly because I ride a few different bikes and I only have a power meter on one of them, but also after getting a power meter I quickly came to the conclusion that at my age (65) training with it is really just a way of monitoring my inevitable decline, which I don't find particularly motivating. So I train to heart rate but the power meter is still very useful for fitness testing. My riding since March has been approximately 80% low intensity and 20% of mixed duration high intensity intervals done on a very irregular basis without any sort of structure. The 80/20 Principle So how much fitness do you loose if you don't do any 'proper' training for nine months ? The answer to the question in my case is surprisingly not very much at all, in fact I got a little bit faster which came as something of a surprise.

When I got the power meter in 2018 I did some baseline testing to establish my power zones and FTP and I hadn't repeated the tests since then. I wrote a series of three blog posts on training and racing with power at the time (you can read them here Power #1 Power #2 Power #3 ) So two years older and after nine months of very little training but plenty of low intensity riding I decided to repeat the tests, on the same bike at the same time of the year, in exactly the same location and in very similar weather conditions. The tests were done on three consecutive days, the same as in 2018 and each time after a thorough warm up. Day one was 3 x 5 minute efforts with 30 minutes recovery in between. Day two was 1 x 20 minute and day three was 3 x 1 minute. 
                                      

This stretch of road I use for testing is close to home and is ideal as there's not too much traffic, it has a decent surface and an even incline with a roundabout at the end, all good reasons for using it but mainly it's because it's only five minutes from one of my favourite cafes - Caffe Italissimo 

So how did the results compare ? how much less fit was I ? and had my race form completely disappeared ? Well no, actually it hadn't, in fact on two of three tests I found that I had actually improved. To be more accurate I had lost a bit of power but I was quicker, on the five minute efforts my average power for the three tests was down by 3% BUT and it's a fairly significant but, I was quicker over each of the efforts.

On the twenty minute effort I was down by 2.8%  on power compared to 2018 but again I was quicker. In November 2018 I covered a distance of 6.66 miles in the twenty minutes in November 2020 I achieved a distance of 6.83 miles in the time (2.5% further) in the same neutral wind conditions on an out and back course on the same stretch of road.

                                                                    Same bike, same road, same weather ...same pain.

The one minute efforts however told a slightly different story, overall I was 8% down on power from 2018, initially I wasn't sure if this just because of poor test technique (gear selection and pacing) so a few days later I repeated the tests and the results were virtually the same. After thinking about it the loss of 8% was probably about right and was most likely explained by the fact that for several months most of my efforts had been no longer than a minute and not at maximum. The ability to do these short efforts well has a lot to do with pain tolerance, which is trainable at any age, I decided that the most likely reason was that I was just not used to doing them, psychologically as well as physically so I decided to do a training experiment.  

For the next four weeks during my daily rides I did two or three sessions a week of max effort one minute intervals, starting with 5 x 1 min and building up to 10 x 1 min. Then I re-tested, well rested, in similar conditions, same road etc. After four weeks of structured one minute intervals I had re-gained 7% of the 8% I had lost. This came as another surprise as optimistically I was hoping to get about half of the loss back, so to get to within 1% of what I consider to be good form was a nice bonus. So it turns out very short, very high intensity interval training works ... who would have guessed ?

                                         In need of caffeine after 10 x 1 min max efforts on a gravel bike.

The test dates were: 2018: November 2nd, 3rd and 4th and in 2020: November 5th, 6th and 7th. They are all on  My Strava and some extra analysis was done from the data available on Training Peaks. 

A few things to note:

• The 2018 tests were done after a full season, I may have been fatigued ? but on the other hand I may have had really good form from regular racing.
• These results may be personal to me and not valid for everyone, I have 37 consecutive years of training and racing behind me so my fitness base is solid, but even so they may not be sustainable in the longer term. 
• I am 65 and recent research points to a small amount of high intensity training being the best approach for those of my advancing years. The loss of power may have just been due to being two years older, I refer you back to my reason for not using the power meter. 
• I also made some dietary changes during 2020. I have not been eating breakfast and I have had no alcohol at all, both have without doubt helped me to maintain my 'racing weight' and the latter has probably helped with motivation too. 
• The other thing worth noting is that I did a lot of riding off road on gravel bikes and probably about a third of the 10,000+ miles I did last year were on surfaces other than smooth tarmac. As someone who knows about these things once said to me "you get nothing for free on a gravel bike" which is very true, particularly on the type of trails and bridleways that I ride, not much in the way of hills but not much descending either, so always pressing on the pedals albeit at low intensity.

                                            There seems to be a training benefit for me just from rolling on fat tyres 

Overall and based on the one minute training experiment and re-test I would say that I am currently 4-6 weeks away from being ready to race. So if we get the nod to start again this year, which unfortunately at the time of writing is sadly starting to look doubtful again, I will definitely be ready. 

The final take home message has to be that consistency is key and it absolutely trumps everything else. The most beneficial thing that you can do to maintain fitness is a lot of low intensity riding, which is why I rode every single day of last year 366/366. Obviously not many people are lucky enough to do this but consistency can be just three rides a week if that's all you can fit in, as long as it's EVERY week. Most days I was just riding and not training but I went hard some of the time, probably around 20% of my ride time. I have learned that this percentage seems to be about right for me at the moment, but it will probably reduce as I get older, you may need more ... or less?  

Thanks for reading - stay safe. 

Cadex: Ultra Performance - with heritage

I got an unexpected E mail a couple of weeks ago, one those that I had to read two or three times because not being the sharpest I thought I'd misunderstood it. It was from the marketing department at Giant UK asking if it would be OK if they sent me some of their brand new Cadex ultra performance components to try, wheels and tyres and a saddle that would go really well on my Giant Propel ... oh go on then. 

                                                                                       The cafe whip now looks whippier than ever

 You know when you get a new IPhone or any Apple product for that matter and your blown away by the quality and precision of the packaging, every time, well I was like that a few days later when the Cadex stuff arrived, even the tyres were impressively presented and the Boost saddle was in a beautifully constructed box.

The instruction manuals for the wheels came in Cadex branded wallets and in case you're wondering what was in the cylindrical package on the right of the picture above, it contained a very carefully packed Cadex wind stopper vest ... obviously. I was well impressed straight away, even before I had paid much attention to the actual products.

The Cadex brand was launched or maybe it should be re-launched (see below) during the 2019 Tour De France, above Greg Van Avermaet on his Gold Giant TCR Advanced SL giving it full gas over the cobbles of the Mur De Grammont on Cadex 65's. The CCC team and Van Avermaet in particular played a key role in the development of the Cadex wheel system, the brand launch at the Tour was covered by GCN and you can see their video on the Cadex wheels and components here GCN - CADEX - TDF  

The Cadex brand although part of Giant is a completely separate company which makes sense because naturally they don't want Cadex products just to appeal to Giant owners. Cadex has its own engineers and designers and as it's backed by the company that first developed carbon bikes their intention is to build on Giant's existing knowledge and expertise to produce the very best in cutting edge cycling components.

I have been a big fan of Giant bikes since way back, I got my first carbon TCR for my 50th birthday, here I am suffering on it at the 2007 European Age Group Duathlon Championships. I loved that bike, I really did and I also loved those little stubby clip on aero bars too, in fact, I'm still using them on my Giant Revolt gravel bike. During my multi-sport racing years I was really lucky in that I can remember very few race days when the weather was really bad. I remember this day though for sure, going all in up Arthur's Seat in the centre of Edinburgh five times, with a run before and a run after, all in torrential rain, a painful memory that one. 

                                                                    Even on the gravel I'll take every aero advantage I can get these days

While I am being nostalgic here's another of my TCRs I loved this one too, at the time without a shadow of a doubt the best bike that I had ever owned, a fantastic machine, I wish I'd kept it. 

The Cadex brand name is by no means new and readers of a certain age may remember back to 1987 when Giant introduced the CADEX 980 which was arguably the world's first mass produced carbon road bike. These first carbon bikes were constructed with carbon tubes bonded in to aluminium lugs which now sounds a bit crude but it was revolutionary back then. Giant used the Cadex brand as a 'moonshot' a hugely ambitious project that took the Giant brand way beyond what was available at the time, which is exactly what they are doing this time around with the new Cadex components.  

Above - what ultra performance looked like in 2006, not one of mine this time but my son Jack's TCR the first with a moulded monocoque frame. I remember when he got it, we both thought it was the best looking bike we had ever seen, another one that I wish we had held on to. 

Bonding carbon tubes into lugs didn't really take full advantage of the qualities of carbon fibre so after some pioneering work by legendary bike designer Mike Burrows  Giant developed moulded monocoque construction frames. In manufacturing terms this method was extremely efficient and used far less material but it's limitation was that the moulds were extremely expensive. Giant got around this problem by introducing the Burrows designed TCR (total compact road) frame which had a downward sloping top tube and was produced in just four sizes. By changing the seat post and stem you could, for the first time, create the perfect fit for any height rider which was a ground breaking development at the time. 

Before the Cadex wheels went on to my Propel I first tried them on the dining room table (as you do) for Instagram purposes only obviously and it was bit of a risky shot to pull off to be honest but I got away with it, only because Mrs Rees or to use her official title 'The Team Principle' wasn't home at the time. 

After getting the initial E mail and even after the Cadex stuff arrived, I'm not sure why, but it hadn't actually dawned on me how high end the Cadex products were. My Giant Propel Advanced was already a great bike equipped with Giant's own excellent SLR deep rim carbon wheels but it was instantly transformed by the Cadex components, I couldn't believe how different it felt - in a really good way.

Final shot of the Cadex equipped Giant Propel at one of my regular Instagram locations. I've only done a couple of hundred miles on it since the Cadex upgrades but each time I've ridden it I've been a bit more impressed and noticed some other improved sensation. I've started writing them down so I don't forget. In the new year when I've done a few more miles I'll post a detailed review on what I have already realised are components that are of a much higher standard than anything I've ever used before.