Tag Archives: Cycling

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Book Review – THE RULES, The Way of the Cycling Disciple – The Velominati

‘The Velominati embrace cycling not just as a pastime or a means of travel, but as a way of life – as obsessed with style, heritage, authenticity and wisdom as with performance. THE RULES is their Bible.’

There is much to cherish in the Velominati’s extended paper copy of their famous online RULES (Sceptre £12.99). At times, there also appears much to scoff at, deride and probably a few to sensibly ignore. Such are the potentially divisive nature of some of THE RULES.
There is bound to be disagreement with some of the 91 Rules (there are now 92 on the website) set down by the Velominati, and I’m sure that they, the self-styled ‘Keepers of the Cog’, wouldn’t have it have any other way. Apart from the side benefit of enabling the good-natured, post-ride debates that interpretation might foster, disagreement also shows a less than total dedication to the cult and therefore elevates the total believers more fully. THE RULES are set up as a litmus test for the knowledgable road cyclist and, looking around at those on the roads these days, the non-believer rate is high.

20130908-082132.jpgI was introduced to THE RULES almost as soon as I expressed a resurgent interest in using my bike as more than a mere mode of transport.

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A Bad Case of the Vuelta Blues

“Hi everyone. My name is Howard and I’m a Grand Tour addict. It’s been a week since my last fix.”

I’m in France, on holiday, sans WiFi and television. There is a Grand Tour going on and I haven’t got a clue what is happening. It’s the first time I’ve been out of touch with such an event since 2010. It feels very wrong. It’s getting me down. I’m tetchier than usual – even when you factor in spending so much time with a six and seven year old who know there is ice cream around every corner. There’s no doubt about it: I’ve got a bad case of the Vuelta Blues.

Our last two family holidays have also coincided with the Vuelta but they have been in Cornwall and, thanks to the proximity of our rented apartment to the beach, I’ve been able to sneak inside at regular intervals to check on progress. Plus there is 3G on the beach so race reports have never been out of reach. Here, in the Vendee, with roaming charges likely to exceed the cost of the fortnight’s accommodation, that is not an option. In fact I might as well be halfway up the river of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness such is the dearth of connectivity. I find myself staring intently at ‘proper’ cyclists as they pass by on our way to the beach – looking for a sense of Grand Tour knowledge etched into their faces. ‘Are you experienced?’ I silently implore of them. ‘Do you know where to score?’

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Flashback – Ride Report – Ice Cold In Essex – Feb 2013

As I’m off on holiday this week and am doing more sunbathing than writing, here’s a ride report from earlier in the year when things were a wee bit frostier.

23/02/13
Ice Cold in Essex

I’d postponed the 7.30am start by three quarters of an hour in the misguided hope that the temperature would somehow be radically improved, but February is February and all things move slow this month.
Me included it seems.

In the end an 8.15 start was no warmer but at least it was still dry and, in town at least, there were few signs of ice on the roads. There was snow though – small and short-living its true, but still snow nonetheless – and for the first few miles I felt glad that I’d left ridiculously large tyres on the bike. Yeah, I thought, once we get out of the metropolis and hit those iced-up country lanes I’ll be glad of these bad boys.. I’d also be glad of the extra socks, overshoes, arm-warmers, long sleeve jersey, neck warmer, 3 pairs of gloves (not all at once), hat, jacket and gilet. I just stopped short of bringing the hip flask of whisky but actually regretted that later. No two ways about it – it was bloody cold..

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Every Bike I Have Ever Owned..

1. Red tricycle with white wheels – Got the front wheel caught in a drainhole on our drive one summer day, flipped over the top and scraped the hell out of my 3 year old bare belly. Ouch. And, yes, that is me below… 

trikes April 1976

2. Purple 2 wheeler – solid wheels. Learnt to ride on that one…

3. Raleigh Strika silver – Sadly not the back-pedal brake model.. Loved the fake plastic ‘suspension’ parts on the front forks.

(Out grew)

4. Raleigh Viper. 5 speed. Blue. Drop Handlebars. 10th Birthday present – 1985. I thought I was the Boss on this.

(Flipped and chopped the bars and then sold when I was around 14)

5. Chrome Bomber – bought from the Classifieds in the Hull Daily Mail. First bike I paid for.

(Absolutely no idea where this one went.. Possibly into the River Hull for a dare.)

 

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A Hard Day & Night – 24hr TT – Interview with 2013 National Champion Stuart Birnie

Imagine, if you will, climbing onto your bike early on a summery Saturday afternoon and going for a 60 minute solo ride at a pacy 21.5 mph. Sounds good, nice even.. Now imagine staying on your bike, needing to maintain that speed, for another 23 hours straight. Doesn’t sound so good anymore, does it? Imagine how you might be feeling by 10pm on Saturday evening; with darkness falling, knowing that you will still be going hard at 10am the following day, having ridden right through the night with only burning muscles and an exhausted mind for company. And when 10am finally rolls around you still have four more hours to do. At the same viciously relentless pace.

Welcome to the very singular pain-cave that is the 24 hour Time Trial.

On 22nd July, whilst most of the cycling world was focused on the casual Parisien denouement of the Tour de France, a few hardy amateurs were completing the Mersey Roads 24hr National Championships Time Trial. Having taken themselves to their limits for a full day and a night, the event was won by Stuart Birnie, riding his third ’24’, with a spectacular distance of 518.372 miles (833km) – beating the defending champion, Ultan Coyle, by a margin of just 5 miles, less than 0.5% of the collective mileage. For most of the race they were only separated by a couple of minutes at the respective time-checks. If the distances alone are impressive, then the addition of the pressure of a closely-fought encounter is incredible.

photo 2 bw

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Ride Report – London Surrey 100 – A.K.A. Olympic Leg-achy

Sunday 4th August 2013. The Olympic Park, London.

A year on from the balmy party evening that became known as “Super Saturday” and the Olympic Park in the East End of London is looking a little less than super. For starters it’s 7am, it’s cloudy and decidedly cool. An enthusiastic PA is trying to rally the 8,000 or so cyclists still being corralled into starting lanes but most look half asleep and are more interested in eating a last minute banana or trying to jump the significant queues for the banks of Portaloo’s which have been set up between the Copper Box and what was the Media Centre. The other remaining buildings – the elegant but lonely Velodrome, the stripped-back Olympic Stadium and the now wingless Aquatic Centre are all off limits and surrounded by building site fences. Traces of the pathways between the key sites are now criss crossed with access roads and it’s hard to reconcile the air of lacklustre anticipation with the thronging energy of a year ago. With a number of articulated lorries and a small fleet of race cars waiting nearby for the afternoon action, it actually feels a bit like a ferry terminal. In terms of a showpiece legacy event the start of the inaugural Ride London-Surrey 100 is decidedly low-key.

I first thought about riding the Olympic Road Race route last year but somehow 2012 passed without me making it happen. The London-Surrey 100 seemed to be the perfect way of rectifying this and, having missed out on a place in what turned out to be the massively oversubscribed ballot, I was lucky enough to be offered a charity spot to ride for Great Ormond Street Hospital from their reserve list. GOSH helped cared for my first son Dylan in the last few days of his very short life so the chance to raise funds for them and do the event in their name made me very happy. I had taped a picture of him to my Garmin as I left my house in South East London earlier and knew I would be thinking of him throughout the day.

20130812-125313.jpg

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Domestique – Charly Wegelius – Book Review

Most cycling biographies focus on what we have come to believe are the two fundamental cornerstones of pro cycling: the Agony and the Ecstasy; the pain and the victory. Epic suffering (often experienced both on and off the bike) is eventually contrasted with transcendental glory as the subject overcomes adversity to achieve their goal. The format is repeated in any number of books for any number of riders. We have come to believe that this is how is must be. Charly Wegelius’ illuminating book “Domestique: The True Life Ups And Downs of a Tour Pro” (£16.99, Ebury Press) differs from the standard template. We get plenty of the pain and suffering of training and racing but the glory of victory is even more painfully absent. Wegelius spent 11 years as a pro cyclist, riding for some of the biggest teams in the peloton. He was well respected and, at times, his services were highly sought-after, yet he never won a single race. And therein lies the real beauty of his story.

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Tour de France – Final Roundup – nothing artificial about this race (except the ‘fireworks’)

In the end the promised finale fireworks never came. Not from the top of the Arc de Triomphe after the evening stage on Sunday, where we given a projected feu artifice lightshow instead of some actual gunpowder explosions (the whole show was greeted with polite bemusement rather than rapture in our house), and not from the last few days of racing either where the assumption has been that the riders simply didn’t have enough left in the legs to seriously attack the yellow jersey and so saved what they did have for the scrap for podium and best team places. Another sign of a clean Tour? Maybe..

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Tour de France – Stage 15 Roundup – Bang, Froome, straight to the Moon.

The second rest day of the Tour de France marks, for us armchair followers at least, the beginning of the end. Sure, those guys on the bikes still have a mind-bending amount of cycling to do, but if the 3 weeks of the Tour was condensed into just one stage (like when TV scientists cram the whole of Earth’s existence into just one year and we learn that humans popped up at about 3 minutes to midnight on New Years Eve) then we are long past the feed zone and the intermediate sprint. We have already shed three-quarters of the Sky domestiques and we are either hungrily eyeing up the remnants of the breakaway, or wondering if this is the moment when Cadel will start going backwards quickly. Yes, my friends, we are now a ‘select group’ as Phil Liggett would say; we are at the ‘head of affairs’ and, just as someone pops off the front and is ‘free to fly’, the ITV4 cycling coverage will be going into its final, 7 minute long, ad break.

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Tour de France – Stage 9 roundup – “Cycling, Bloody Hell!”

As Alex Ferguson sort of once said: “Cycling, Bloody Hell!”

Or as Johnny Rotten didn’t quite say once either: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been treated?”

What an epic weekend! The Pyrenees were meant to play second fiddle to the Alps this year; only two stages and none of the hoo-ha of Mt Ventoux or Alpe d’Huez. I’ll tell you what though – if this is second fiddle then we are in for some virtuoso stuff come next weekend.

The late part of last week played out more to the expected plan. Cav gets his win on Stage 5. Greipel hits home first for Stage 6 and then Cannondale and Sagan beast Stage 7 and he looks to have green pretty much wrapped up within the first week.

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