Team Kilo To Go Blog: Introducing Nic & Gareth

Team Kilo To Go

The Verenti KILO TO GO Series is all about making cycling accessible to all. Just to prove that absolutely anyone can take part, the KILO TO GO team has two novice riders on board, Gareth and Nicola Harries.

The busy couple, who work as vets in Staffordshire, have begun squeezing in training around their hectic lives as they prepare for their first season of cyclosportive riding. They recently took delivery of their Verenti bikes – the Verenti Millook – and here, in their first installment for the Wiggle blog, they tell us all about it…
You can follow their progress – and see what the KILO TO GO guys are up to – on their Facebook Page and Twitter pages, plus there’ll be regular updates here on the Wiggle Blog too.

From Nic:

Our much anticipated Verenti bikes arrived this week. Just to be clear – I know nothing about road bikes (and not much about my mountain bike!), but even to me they are lovely looking bikes and amazingly light compared to my mountain bike. The bike is black, so doesn’t quite match my lovely pink dhb R1 cycling shoes which arrived a few weeks ago, but a girl can always accessorise!

Since agreeing to take up the challenge to become a road cyclist and participate in cyclosportives, I have been running to try to improve my fitness prior to getting the bike. I was about two/three weeks into my running when we had a cycling assessment at the Human Performance Laboratory at Oxford Brookes University, the aim being to highlight areas of training that we could focus on and provide benchmarks which could be reevaluated later in our training.

It turns out that by looking at VO2 max, Filipe Salbany (sports scientist @ the lab) could see that I have the potential to perform well at endurance events (I guess the 100 miler would come into this category!), but at the moment as I am unused to cycling I should stick to flatter roads and then increase duration and intensity once cycling in comfort. He also suggested cycling at a lower cadence at the moment as I appear to have the strength to do this. I’d had a perception that this kind of testing was only for performance athletes, but actually this is far from the case – there is something here for everyone.

Having admired the pictures of the bikes since they arrived last Wednesday, Saturday finally came around – and the opportunity to get the bike set up at KILO TO GO HQ. First, the cleats were set up on my shoes and then with the bike on a static trainer the saddle height and position were adjusted. Having the bike on a static trainer was an opportunity to practise clipping in and out of the pedals, something I had been quite anxious about. The reach on the handlebars is a little long, so we may try to get a shorter stem, but this didn’t stop me getting out on the road.

At first, I was tentative to say the least – clipping in proved to be harder than clipping out! However, I quickly got into the swing of things and by the end of a 10-mile ride it was smiles all round. I was working on Sunday and my rota this week affords no time for cycling in daylight hours, but I was keen to get out again before the next weekend, so an early start before work on Tuesday was called for and I cycled for an hour. I also had my first tumble off the bike, very slow motion as I couldn’t unclip in time having already stopped (lesson learnt- better to unclip one foot before stopping!). Bike and rider both OK due to a soft but prickly landing – into the bottom of a holly bush! Should be able to get out on the bike both days this weekend, so watch this space!

Check out the video!

Nic

From Gareth:

The arrival of our new bikes was a little like Christmas felt as a kid. Anticipation. Excitement. Nervousness. Obviously for a bloke, anything new, shiny and technical is always a source of great excitement. Although I knew they’d arrived, I was on duty on the Saturday so could only be slightly envious that Nic was getting into the saddle first. I finally met my bike on Sunday after spending several nervous hours wondering about how it would feel, what the clipped in pedals would be like and if I’d like it. It would be fair to say that I didn’t simply have butterflies fluttering around my stomach, I had a washing machine on spin cycle!

The Verenti Millook is beautiful and after lugging around my mountain bike, I was staggered by it weighing little more than a handful of feathers. Getting set up on the static trainer was a nice introduction, although I learnt that cycling shoes and tiled floors don’t suit each other and I hit the deck without even making it as far as the saddle. The video should earn a few quid on ‘Who’s Been Framed?’

It didn’t take long to identify what adjustments were needed in my saddle position and the position of the shoe cleats, and then we hit the road but fortunately, not literally. It might be said that you never forget how to ride a bike, but my mountain bike experiences compared to this would suggest that they are completely different species, let alone different animals.

The SRAM gears are a delight to use and covering the tarmac takes far less energy than on my mud machine. I wouldn’t say it’s effortless, but in relative terms, that’s how it feels. The steering is incredibly sensitive and it’ll be a while before I feel 100 per cent confident in my handling but otherwise this adventure has started beautifully and my Sunday morning fears evaporated within 200 yards! I repeated our circuit 24 hours later and felt far better than I expected to.

The evaluation with Filipe at Oxford Brookes University Human Performance Laboratory left me wondering how my body was going to handle this new challenge and so far, I’m pleased to say that it feels fantastic, although when we encounter some serious hills, I’m sure I’ll revise that opinion!

Gareth