We originally bought the tandem frame in the mid 1990s, when I equipped it with some classic tandem kit. As a consequence, it has a lovely retro vibe to it. We haven't used it a great deal after moving south from Dundee at the end of 1999. After the seatpin incident at the end of our 2024 cycle tour, our Thorn touring tandem was out of commission until the snapped seat post stumpt could be extracted. At that time it was clear that the Longstaff tandem wasn't a terribly forgiving ride, so I started making some changes. But first, the initial bike set up.

The original build

In which I discover things I never knew about my indoor trainer and my Garmin watch!

I was interested in seeing how well my Garmin Vivoactive 5 watch would function as a heart rate sensor, broadcasting to whichever device I choose. I had tested the connections, and could see that it could pair with my Apple TV (which must be via Bluetooth) and with my Edge 840, presumably via ANT+. I was keen to see how the watch would shape up when I was engaged in riding HIIT intervals of 30s - would it keep up well enough?

Every so often, I'm motivated to test concordance between various sensors that connect to bike training devices. This is usually to confirm that there is good consistency between devices, usually power meters. This particular test aimed to evaluate some HR sensors and a couple of power meters. I wanted to compare the HR derived from my Garmin Vivoactive 5 watch (optical), a Polar Verity Sense armband HR sensor (optical), and my regular Polar H10 chest strap HR sensor. Over the years, I've found that Polar chest straps set the standard for HR measurement, and they are good tools for measuring heart rate variability (HRV) via the HRV4Training phone app. Unfortunately, I have been experiencing some skin irritation from from sweaty chest straps during indoor training, so I wanted to evaluate whether switching to one of the optical sensors might help.

As a secondary aim, I was interested to see how my current trainer, a Garmin Neo 3M, compared with a pair of Assioma Favero dual sided power meter pedals.

I’ve generally gone with advances in bike technology as they’ve developed over the years. Mostly these have represented refinements in existing technology, such as the steady creep in gear numbers from 5 speed freewheels (when I was cycling to school as a teenager) through to 12 speed cassette hubs. In mechanical gears, I’ve usually been able to keep abreast of which cassette spacing would work with what combination of shifters and gear mechs.

All that began to change as we moved into combined brake/gear levers (STI from Shimano and Ergopower from Campagnolo).

A bit of background on my online training

Over the last 25 years or so I've found that indoor training is the key to improving my fitness and performance in time trials. Away from the vagaries of dealing with terrain and motor traffic, I can focus on the workout rather than survival. 25 years ago, power meters weren't readily available, and one's focus was on heart rate as a measure of exercise intensity. Indoor trainers offered adjustable resistance, but little else. In those days I found the structured plan in Pete Read's The Annual Manual (the Black Book), which presented a month by month plan for training on an indoor trainer, to be highly effective.

As noted in a post from June 22nd (Revisiting an old tandem), our old Longstaff tandem has been back in use while the Thorn touring tandem was out of action pending the seat post stump removal and indeed since the Thorn was repaired. It must be 20 to 25 years since it has seen regular use! It's a remarkable sprightly ride, but in its original set up rather a harshe ride, especially for the stoker.

There have been a few examples of electric pumps for bike tyres on the market over the last few years. The first I was aware of was the Fumpa Pump, produced in Australia. I have the original model, and the nano Fumpa. I've also bought a Cycplus A2 Pro. These devices offer some advantages and some disadvantages for the cyclist. So in order of purchase, here are my opinions.

As an opening comments, these pumps all have battery capacity limitation to varying extents. Obviously the smaller pumps are more limited in this regard than the larger models. But I would not take an electric pump (or for that matter CO₂ cylinders) on a long bike ride in preference to a conventional pump. All these pumps can be used for inflating tyres with Shrader or Presta valves.

We've had the Thorn tandem out of action since the seatpost broke on the last day of our cycling holiday about three weeks ago. I'd tried to shift the post stump using a mole wrench but couldn't shift it - though I was being a bit cautious as I wanted to avoid distorting the seatpost remnant which could make things even more difficult.

After seeking advice from local cyclists, the best suggestion was to take the offending seatpost to John the Seatpost Man in Chorley. I decided that taking the whole tandem up was going to be a hassle and, since I planned to give the tandem a good clean up, I stripped the tandem down and only took the rear frame section with us. We'd planned a visit to the Leeds area for family reasons, so we drove up to Chorley before heading east to the Leeds area. This was OK, except the drive to Chorley took ages, due largely to an accident up ahead of us as we skirted Manchester.

On our recent cycle tour in the Hebrides, we managed to drop our backup Garmin bike computer, an Edge 520 Plus, during a fast descent. It hit the deck quite hard, bounced then ended up in a watery ditch. We retrieved it, still functioning despite a badly shattered glass.

The underlying circuit board could be seen through the break, and the corner was abraded off where the device hit the tarmac. As far as I could see, the majority of the screen was still functioning, with a few dark areas at the top and bottom. Here's a photo of the damage.

With our usual favoured tandem out of action pending the removal of the sheared seatpost, I dusted off the spare tandem and we went out for a rather nice ride on a sunny day. I also replaced the seemingly perished tyres with new 28mm Continental GP5000 tyres. That was a struggle in its own right.

Longstaff tandem

With our favourite tandem sidelined until I can take the rear section of the frame to the Seatpost Man in Chorley, I’ve taken it upon myself to sort out the Longstaff tandem.

I had this tandem frame built about 30 years ago and for the last 20 or so years it has seen very little use. It's a rather lovely single marathon frame finished in flam kingfisher blue. I had the frame built for fast riding rather than touring, and it has seen use on a couple of occasions in time trials. The tandem is pretty light for a tandem, but it's really a bit old-fashioned now: it has an elderly Campagnolo tandem chainset, Campagnolo tandem hubs with screw on freewheel, and Dia-Compe cantilevers. Gearing is Campagnolo Ergo-Shift, with a Choris rear mech and a triple front derailleur from  a long unavailable Campagnolo MTB groupset. I built the 40 spoke wheels with Mavic Module 3CD rims and 13G/14G butted spokes. Those rims are a bit limiting regarding tyre width.

Over the last few years, a new material for inner tubes has surfaced - TPU or thermoplastic polyurethane. The first brand I noticed was Tubolito, though there are several available now.

Generally I like to keep up to date with advances in cycling technology. This includes increasing gear numbers, adoption of disc brakes, carbon fibre frames and parts, electronic gears and the like. I like to think I hold views on bike tech that have an appropriate balance between reality and fantasy.

For example, disc brakes seem to me to be welcome because they offer superior braking in some conditions, such as heavy rain. Given that braking efficiency on a bike is mostly down to friction between the tyres and the substrate (in my case tarmac), I've never found disc brakes to have braking performance superior to rim brakes. And I would not like to be on a cycle tour and have problems with a hydraulic brake system.

I've posted a few times on my modifications to my set up of the Cervelo P3 (most recently on my home brew eTap wiring). The recent mods over the last few months include:

• Fitting a secondhand pair of Aduro tri-bars with the high arm pad extensions
• A complex rewiring of the 11-speed (i.e. non-AXS) SRAM Red eTap gearing
• Replacing the inner tubes with Tubolito PFU tubes
• Sorting out the computer mount to accept a front light
• Replaced the ageing big chainring.

I've been meaning to take the P3 out for a test ride to make sure all is in order, and with my first event of the 2024 season fast approaching (the Port Talbot Wheelers 2-up 25) I decided to do so this morning.

Support for Joomla version 3 ceased in August this year, and I'd been working on ensuring the three Joomla sites I maintain were upgraded to version 4 in advance of that. What I realised in doing that was the enormous amount of cruft I'd accumulated over the years, especially with the North Bucks Road Club website. One of the issues is always that of finding a sympathetic template, particularly where user access on mobile devices is concerned.

In which I test (and implement) some alternative wiring possibilities for SRAM eTap gear shifters

The SRAM eTap Aero groupset was released in 2015 with a version aimed at road bikes where the gear change controls were switches in the brake levers, and which communicated with the front and rear derailleurs via a proprietary wireless signal. For time trial bikes, the eTap aero was released, where switches mounted on the aero bars were wired to a "blipbox", which wirelessly relayed commands to the gear mechs. Typically, one would set up a pair of switches (the "blips") on the base bar and a second pair of switches (the "clics") on the ends of the aero extensions. The blipbox has four sockets, two for upshift and two for downshift - each clic or blip switch is connected via one socket. The blipbox also has some buttons for shifting. The annoyance there is that the size of the blipbox makes it difficult to tuck it away in the time trial frame.

Hed H3 wheels are  probably Team Grumpy’s go-to wheel - they are pretty close to being indestructable (but not invulnerable) - they aren’t likely to go out of true as there aren’t any spokes to break or lose tension. 

In use, I’ve always found them to handle well except in the windiest of conditions (see for example the 2018 edition of the Duo Normand when I ended up using a regular spoked wheel). In comparison to very deep rimmed spoked wheels, they seem to be more of an all-rounder aero wheel for time trialling.

In which I review the power meters I've been using over the last few years. All of these seem to be accurate and consistent in their data. This is a brief review of the four systems I currently use - and to cut to the chase, of these four power meters, which would I recommend as a power meter on a new bike build?

Given that two of these power meters are discontinued, the choice comes down to the SRAM Red chainset or the Assioma Duo pedals, and from the viewpoint of easy transfer between bikes I'd recommend the Assiomas (which can also be bought in a version to be fitted to Shimano pedal bodies). I should add that all four of these power meters have been absolutely faultless in use.

A supremely comfortable saddle for touring use. Possibly my oldest bike component that is still in use (even if only occasionally).

During a recent garage clearout, I unearthed this saddle. It's clearly seen better days - the surface of the leather is a bit cracked and the rivets are a bit green! These photos were taken after I applied some Proofide.

In which I grab the soldering iron and splice together wires and plugs to place the 'brains' of the eTap system deep in the bowels of my TT frame!

Earlier this year, I travelled to Wales for a Team Grumpy reunion of sorts, in the form of a 2-up team time trial. This was a ‘sporting course’, so I took along my Cervelo P3, currently equipped with 11-speed eTap Red gears. By the time the bike had been in and out of the car a few times, one of the blipbox ports had stopped working (this happened before, with the P5).