It’s been a good weekend’s cycling the past couple of days. On Saturday I got in a three hour endurance ramp ride down via Selkirk into the Yarrow valley and then back up to Innerleithen and round over the Granites to Stow. I survived the two miles of unbelievably rough chipseal in the Yarrow valley that feels like sitting on top of a jackhammer going full tilt 🙂 It was also the first day on the road with my new Angletech Aeropod Lowracer bag which finally arrived. Hooray!

The bag provides about 8 litres of space – it looks bigger than that but there is a big cutout in the middle for the wheel. As the name suggests, it’s designed for bikes like low racers where the seat is very close to the rear wheel. On the CHR with the seat in the lowest position, the bag still touches the rear wheel when you really load it up with weight, so I added a wedge of polystyrene between the bag and the seat to keep it off the wheel.

I’ll do a thorough review of the bag in the near future but it is working out very well – it’s big enough to store all you need for a day trip and fits on the CHR much better than a Radical bag which has much more of a problem clearing the rear wheel without a wheel cutout.

On Sunday I hooked up with David Gardiner from Laid Back Bikes for a social ride round the Innerleithen loop. David rode down from Edinburgh on his CHR and we met up at Heriot.

Here you can see the difference between a Radical and Angletech bag – David’s Radical bag is supported on the M5 rear mudguard and works fine but is squashed up in order to keep it off the wheel. The Angletech bag maintains a much better shape and I’m sure it gives a small aero boost when you get up to a decent speed.

We did do an unscientific roll down test into a stiff headwind to see if there was any difference between the two bikes. I pulled away fairly quickly from David. I am running a lower seat position and have better quality wheels, but David is considerably less ‘chunky’ than me and doesn’t use pedal extenders. So I have a weight advantage but David should in theory push less wind. It’s impossible to know what was causing what, but was interesting to note nonetheless. My gut feel is that the bag does help a little once you’re up above 20 mph.

Sunday was pretty cold and I was well wrapped up in order to keep Raynauds and Asthma at bay, but we had a great ride round the loop with a stop in Innerleithen for lunch, coffee and cake.

David took a few photos showing the bag (and me) in action. I was too lazy to faff around with a camera whilst riding with gloves on so no pictures of David or his CHR I’m afraid!

By the end of the week I’d done 580 TSS points and 190 miles – quite a big week for me.