Cycling

Cycling is one of my favourite sports. Given the traffic on the road, I prefer quiet routes or forest tracks, and that is why I ride in the hills and forests on a mountain bike. I like riding routes that are really rough, but rather downhill, and I would rather climb the hill on a good-quality track or even a road.

At the moment I have kitted the bike out with a holder for the FreeRunner
and using the GPS that is in the FreeRunner and Open Street Map maps I am no longer afraid to set out on unknown tracks.

My favourite routes are:

• Přední Žalý via Štěpanice and back via Valteřice
• Zlaté návrší via Benecko
• Pecka Castle

I ride an older but well-equipped and excellently maintained bike of the Leader Fox brand. It is a bike with a 22" frame, which is the largest series-produced frame of this manufacturer, but even so the bike is already small for me. I swear by double-wall rims and front suspension. I also always have to have the gears and brakes properly adjusted. I ride strictly with mudguards. The front one is made of hardened plastic. I require the rear mudguard to be long, so that it reaches all the way down to the bottom of the frame, because otherwise the front derailleur gets clogged up.

Cycling comeback

Since I was no longer a poor wretch of a student, in 2010 I decided to buy a proper bike for me at all costs, so that I could start riding again. And so in 2011 I got a new Torein bike from Duratec with a custom frame and 29 inch wheels, and thus returned to cycling.

Cycling 2011

The new bike:
Duratec Torain

In 2011 I regarded myself as a beginner and so I started easily. Thanks to the fact that I had ridden a bike regularly before, my body quickly began to adapt. I started training mildly, but regularly. Thanks to the cyclist, trainer and bodybuilder Martin Háze, I also learned that nutrition matters too, which was especially noticeable with constant training. I then closed the season by taking part in a road time trial race in Bělá pod Bezdězem (on a mountain bike).

In the autumn, so that my body would not idle, I decided to get into strength training. After all, nothing is perfect and so at the end of the cycling season the body is out of balance, and that is why it is good to straighten the body out again. So I bought dumbbells, specifically a 50 kg set with a big barbell and two dumbbells. And over the winter I devoted myself to strength training. In November, however, the weather still favoured cycling and so around midday, in nice weather, I set off on the bike. Then it got colder and snow fell, which could also be put to use. When there was time and the weather was good, I went skiing. I just had to buy new poles. And in my length probably only expensive carbon ones are made :-(. With the rest of the ski equipment it was a sorry state, though. On top of that, in my town, the cradle of skiing, the maintenance of the ski trails gets worse year by year. In winter I also started going to the sauna, regularly, and grew rather fond of it. All of this could be called a sort of light winter preparation.

Cycling 2012

In the spring of 2012 I was not in much of a rush to get out on the bike. I was not very hardened to the cold and I did not have clothing for cold weather either. So I only set out on the bike in March, always around midday, when the weather was nice and warm.

Gradually I started training and then riding the bike to work as well. And training after work too.

I was in no hurry for the first race of the season, because I had not trained much anyway. I did the first race in May; the weather was calm but quite cold, about 9 degrees, and overcast. It was a road time trial from the JCL series.

I took a liking to the JCL, because all the races in this series are in my area, and moreover they are time trials, that is, short races. They take place on weekdays and so I ride to them by bike straight from work. Unlike MTB races, my weekend is therefore free. I enjoy MTB half marathons more, but they last longer, which on the one hand I am glad about, but on the other hand, because of how demanding they are, I have to drive to them by car. On top of that they are at the weekend, so a race kills half of my weekend.

In the immediate area I became especially fond of one pond, and so I started going swimming. I straight away got myself swimming goggles and started going regularly. In the end I was there all the time when the weather was nice. It is a perfect complement to cycling. Besides, it is not good to ride the bike all the time; it is better to give the legs a rest so that they can recover. So instead of training on the bike in the scorching heat, when you sweat so much it runs off you, I rode to the pond after work to cool off and relax; on such a day I only rode 30 km. Overall I spent a great deal of time by the water and commonly swam for 2 hours.

Once I did a route between two ponds where I had a swim and then rode on; in total I rode 65 km that day.

I ended the season again with the race in Bělá pod Bezdězem and the Novopacký half marathon, the 51 km route Given the good weather, I also squeezed in two more races at the end of September.

In November I also took the chance to buy a second-hand road bike, which suited my requirements, was at a good price and, above all, was my size, so I did not hesitate and bought
Canyon Roadlite AL 6

In November I still managed to ride another 600 km on it.