Tomorrow We Ride

Road racing on the bike is a very different beast to time trialling. This is a truism, but it certainly becomes apparent very quickly when you make the leap into the dark side. Today was the Bristol South Road Race, taking in 8 laps of Stowey Hill near Bishop Sutton, with an 80 strong field. It was very hot indeed. I took one bottle, which may or may not have been an error. There was a KOM competition on Stowey Hill; on the first lap i sat back and let it go, waiting to warm up a bit. On the second lap i moved to the front and rode hard, and may or may not have been pipped on the line by an Exeter Uni rider who was full of beans. He was on the right and i was looking to the left – another schoolboy error.

After the climb i sat up a bit, only for a team-mate to come through and ride hard on the front each lap. I didn’t really want to ride hard on the front but couldn’t really stop him. He got in a bit of a ding-dong with the Exeter Uni rider about his overshoes. It was like two bald men fighting over a comb. ‘Overshoes are illegal’, said the Exeter guy. ‘They’re aerodynamic’ said the team-mate. I don’t think it makes the slightest bit of difference either way, and i don’t think the scrutineers could really give two shits, but i kept my counsel. Nevertheless, it was typical of the dialogue in the bunch that crops up from time to time for no particular reason. Where’s Le Blaireau when you need him.

On the third lap i held back a bit and then moved through the bunch to line up for another pop at the climb and was feeling confident. A large car with an even larger caravan came round the corner – the front part of the bunch passed through ok, but as it rounded the corner it nailed first one rider then the others fell like dominos. The combined sound of aluminium caravan meets carbon fibre meets skin and bone was jarring and the crash left a scene of chaos. There were 3 BSCC riders taken out immediately and one Bath Uni rider, possibly some others. The front of the bunch slowed up and we neutralised the race. I rode on ahead to check with the marshals at the top of the climb what was happening, they told us to race on and listen out for the commissaire. As i passed the message up from near the very back – after talking to a fairly damaged looking rider and suggesting he might retire -the bunch got rolling again, but one rider took the ‘opportunity’ to attack and immediately rode off the front. i was at the back at this point having only just got back on. I was distinctly unimpressed. I guess it depends how you see the race and what you think is acceptable or not acceptable, and how much you want your points. As we looped back around the course past the crash site the section was neutralised and there was a rider lying on the road in a BSCC jersey. This was enough for me. Without even thinking about it I climbed off the bike and went back to the HQ. A number of other riders did the same. On each subsequent lap the race was neutralised past the crash, which was essential but effectively prevented there being a real selection or a timely break and meant the race came down to a bunch sprint – anathema to climbers like me.

In hindsight, the race was fantastically well organised and the commissaires have to make a tough decision when there is a crash on a looped circuit. They chose to continue, which was probably, on balance the right one. I chose to climb off, which was also probably the right one.

Lessons learnt from Rocky 1 to Rocky 5

-       Road racing requires a bit of a freaky mindset.

-       it can be hard to summon up the motivation to ride tempo in a bunch that undulates and shifts like the stinging tentacles of a portugese man of war, and it’s particularly hard to ride hard to the finish if you struggle with some of the more existential questions that tend to pop up in the race; i.e why are we riding when three riders have just been reduced to angles of limbs and blood on the tarmac by an enormous motor caravan? i struggle in that respect.

-       if you’re going to road race then that means riding 3^rd and 4^th category races. That means crashes, smashes and the pain of fractured limbs, torn face and mouth, road race and abrasions, missing teeth, broken bike parts and torn clothing. Frequently.

Lastly, it made me yearn for the simple pleasures of riding my bike in the countryside with friends, connecting with the landscape around me and enjoying the flow activity in all its infinite glory.

nb: i’ve edited this post a bit after going out for a walk in the evening sunshine. it’s softer than it was.

Bristol Urban Sport: M Shed Exhibition

M Shed in Bristol are in the final stages of planning their big summer exhibition. It’s a look at how sport has been an integral part of the social fabric of Bristol over the past 200 years and eschews the mainstream or bigger clubs in favour of more esoteric pursuits.

Over the past two months or so I have been collating and harrying and chasing club members to try and get bits and pieces together for the exhibition. BSCC have a rich history and it’s amazing how many things came out of the woodwork. In the end we were spoiled for choice and many of the things didn’t make the final cut. Nevertheless, i dropped off some lovely shiny things today and I am very much looking forward to seeing the wider perspective and the sporting narratives of people within the city.

Rain Rain FUCK THE FUCK OFF

I think that’s how the nursery rhyme goes.

After my exertions of the weekend i started to pick things up again on tuesday, heading out for my usual pre-work hilly training ride. I surprised myself, i had good legs. furthermore, there seemed to be no head or tailwind for the first time in living memory. I went up and over Dundry and then up Belmont.

On Belmont’s vertiginous lower slopes i looked down at the chainrings and noticed there was an alarming amount of flex or lateral movement with each pedal stroke. i resolved to look at it later when i got home. at the time i presumed it may have been because i’d been running the inner ring on my fixed wheel over winter and this possibly might have bent it a bit. but what the hell, i’m not robert forstermann. i ignored it and carried on riding.

oooh la la, that's a lot of leg

I was listening to music; this sometimes helps and can make the ride feel a bit different. occasionally it can stifle the pained squeak of a badly-fettled bicycle part, and I fear this may have happened on this occasion. I rode on along Beggar’s Bush Lane and enjoyed the pace and speed. I felt good, and like Ralph the Rover, had no fear of impending disaster.

I was about five miles from work when some bad stuff happened. There are mechanicals, and there are mechanicals. (and there also the mechanicals, who feature heavily in a Midsummer Night’s Dream, a group of craftsmen who also enjoy amateur dramatics and like to gambol in the woods and get in the way of courting Athenian lovers).

I was out of the saddle, honking up to the downs from the top of bridge valley road when my chain unshipped and i nearly emasculated myself on my shiny cinelli stem. i stopped and attempted to flick it back across and on but to no avail. i looked down more closely and realised my chainrings were no longer properly attached to my bicycle, but rattling around like some filthy dancing hippy’s bangles at the front of a hawkwind set at glastonbury.

not one, not two, but THREE chainring bolts had mysteriously vanished. I had only two left, and they were about to  follow their suicidal brethren and leap into the void.

i hastily rearranged the remaining two and limped the last 4 miles to work, anxiously checking every 2 minutes to see if it was still hanging together. I rode home in the evening accompanied by a horrific scream of grinding metal, scraping with each pedal stroke. in truth, it was a minor mechanical because i could ride home.

i’ve had an additional rest day today on account of the abhorrent weather. I made use of the extra time by massively overtightening every chainring bolt in the house. this may lead to complications under the ‘law of unintended consequences’ at some point in the future, but it’s a risk i’ve got to take. this weekend sees a fast 10 (weather permitting) and the Beacon Roads Mountain Time Trial, which is in short, one of the best time trials in the world and hideously tough. I am currently undecided as to whether i should take the uber weapon of the c-bomb…

Touring the World by Bicycle

Some time back i read the first of Ann Mustoe’s books. She was a headteacher in a prestigious school in London. On her retirement she had a Condor Heritage made especially and simply rode off into the sunset. Prior to the journey it’s reported that she couldn’t mend a puncture. Her narrative is inspirational.

Ann Mustoe heads off on her travels with an educational guard of honour

I’d recommend the books to anyone interested in travel, the spirit of adventure and cycling. Ian Hibell is another famed and epic cyclo-traveller. He rode a Freddie Grubb, one of the more evocatively named British framebuilders of the 50s and 60s.

Ian Hibell on the open road

Currently following in their gumwalled tyre tracks are Christina and Hattie. Christina is an erstwhile BSCC member who came out on quite a few winter club runs. Their fantastic blog documents the journey thus far: highly recommended reading and an incentive to get up off the sofa and experience the wider world.

There is something utterly liberating about cyclo-touring and i’m reminded of the mini-tour i did with Graham and Steve last summer; 4 days down and around the Devon and Cornwall wild places. I got to rereading the posts i’d done and was struck by how many amazing, unusual and captivating experiences were crammed into a short space of time.  The world pays heed, things happen, nature obliges and your sense of time changes.

Mass Extinction Event

I’ve borrowed this graph from Jack Thurston’s flickr feed. i love a good graph.

it shows how we’ve gone from this:

to this:

by way of a graph modelled on the route profile of the r25/3L.

Paris Nice: Col D’Eze

i spent most of yesterday afternoon trying to avoid spoilers, but failed spectacularly because i accessed the limitless power of the internet. anyway, if you haven’t seen it yet, Wiggins won with an awe-inspiring display of uphill time trialling, if that doesn’t sound too euphemistic. the interesting thing is that it’s a hill climb of sorts. they really should have more uphill time trials on the continent; they had one on alpe d’huez a few years back. it’s a world of short TT extensions, confusion over what to ride, and a weight limit of 6.8kg on the bikes. it’s hard to even imagine what’s going through the riders’ minds in the video below. the crowd is oppressive and overwhelming. armstrong has his cap on backwards like a true hillclimber. his speed is unreal.

On the Col D’Eze Wiggins was turning over the gear remorselessly. it’s a really astounding sight. He’s the first British winner since Tommy Simpson in 1967 and is staking a claim to being one of the greatest riders this island has ever produced.

When i first started getting into cycling i remember watching the tour and trying to see how Max Sciandri was doing, a half-italian, half british rider, or whether Robert Millar still had the legs (his powers were on the wane).  this year we’ve got one of the world’s pre-eminent stage racers, the world champion and a stack of gifted riders across several teams. it’s hard to believe just how much british cycling has changed, but if you want a point of comparison i recommend ‘wide eyed and legless’, by Jeff Connor. It describes the problems faced by the ANC Halfords team in the 1987 tour. it’s a fantastic book.

 

Jelly Legs

i’m not sure if it’s related to last week’s ride through the arctic steppes of lyneham bank, but i’ve had a really wobbly training week this week. i felt ok on monday, but since then my legs have been rubbish, so i haven’t been able to do my usual interval session. i would do one tomorrow but it’s getting close to the next race day, generally it’s best not to a painful race type effort within 48 hours. having said that, last year i regularly raced on consecutive days so maybe it won’t matter that much. only one way to find out!

i also got the summer bike out last week, but it’s been back away again since. all it’s served to do is enhance the feeling of hard work on the winter bike.

that aside, i have been mostly researching for my project and watching bike racing on the terrorbox. the advent of the cycling season also means one thing: timbersports. it seems to invariably follow the coverage of the ASO races and i’m now pretty much hooked on this esoteric event. i’m not the only one either….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

suffice to say, you don’t know what you’re missing. tired of timbersports, tired of life.

Drafting whilst Cycling

it’s a well-known fact that drafting is the key to success in nearly all aspects of road biking, with the exception of the individual time trial where it’ll get you pariah status faster than you can say ’75% of the effort’.

i don’t know if i speak for other cyclists or not, but one of the things i live for as a cyclist is that moment when the absolutely perfect draft appears out of nowhere. i had one that was nigh on perfect today. i turned into a long section of B road and up ahead an enormous low-loader was just turning out of a works depot onto the main road. i slammed it into the small cog and gave it everything to get on terms before it accelerated away from me. this is the first essential ingredient of the draft – you’ve got to get on terms, commit straight away and grab the lift.

the rear trailer had two enormous wheel ramps on either side, shielding me entirely from the wind. i tucked in behind and rapidly moved into the 11 sprocket, churning over the big gear like dave le grys, but without the differential gearing (something Adam from the BBP told me about but i forget how it works, it basically means you can push 300 inches or something).

i managed to cling on, completely out of the wind and quite possibly scaring the cars behind. i can’t help but think that it must be a bit of a spectacle, although this is tempered slightly by the knowledge that from inside of a car nothing looks that fast. cyclists doing 25+mph look positively pedestrian, if that’s not a contradiction too far.

So anyway, after a short while i stole a quick glance at the garmin and realised i was doing nearly 40mph. on the flat! i felt super strong, the Ole Ritter of Long Ashton. I averaged 30mph for about a mile on my road bike, and peaked out at 40. it was a fantastic drafting experience and made up for those times i’ve tried to grab a cement lorry or other such and left with a sudden build-up of lactic acid and not a lot else.

The best drafting experience i ever had was on an after work ride, from Bristol to a friend’s house in Lynmouth. It was a bit of an epic, about 90 miles, finishing with Porlock in the last 10. To compound matters i had to battle a vile headwind across the flats from axbridge to minehead. There’s a flat section after Minehead, and suddenly the guardian angel of cycling sent me a Massey Ferguson, replete with high sided trailer and a top speed of 30mph. I managed to draft the combo for 9 blissful miles. When he finally turned off i couldn’t help but laugh and he gave me a thumbs up.

The most cinematic draft ever is in Breaking Away, Peter Yates’ amazing rites of passage film that also has some cycling in it. i’ve posted it before. it’s here.

 

 

The Cycling Post

Lots of people tend to have lots to say about the comic, especially its tendency to favour sportives over the domestic racing scene. very few do anything about it other than vent their spleen on various cycling forums.

Which is why the cycling post, a new online cycling magazine, is such a good thing. it has race reports and other bits and pieces, ranging across the different disciplines of competitive road riding in the UK – with a bit of cyclo cross thrown in for good measure in the shape of a great interview with Helen Wyman.

Definitely worth a read….Chapeau to James and Giles for getting it off the ground.

An Extraordinary Day

I went to London today, not to see the Queen, but to meet with a chap who publishes cycling books. Incidentally, the best way to get to London is not via Newport, in case you’re wondering. for the first time in my life i got on the wrong train and found myself speeding through Patchway and into the dark and dank recesses of the Severn Tunnel, rather than alighting at Parkway for a platform hop onto the London Express. As i said, an extraordinary day.

I met the chap at the Jerusalem Tavern. It’s odd to think that i lived in London for nigh on ten years but i never discovered this pub. It’s an amazing place and I will mark it out as somewhere to visit. So anyway, the narrative is as follows: after a somewhat speculative pitch at the turn of the year based entirely on the ‘nothing ventured nothing gained’ school of thought i was surprised when he replied positively a few days later. Further communication followed and since then I’ve been fully immersed in researching and planning a book about cycling (alongside being fully immersed in some other not insignificant upcoming events in my life). This is very exciting but also a little daunting. Whilst it’s not particularly secret, i’m going to keep it close to my chest for now, apart from saying it’s focused on many of the areas explored throughout this blog.

When i got home i found a DVD of images had arrived from Peter Whitfield, he’s a cycling historian who also has access to the Bernard Thompson Archive. The images are startling and provide an evocative insight into the sport. I came across an image of Allen Janes, a life member of the Bristol South, riding his very early Argos low-pro with a crown-mounted handlebar.

technical term: "funny bike"

And to anyone who has been finding excuses not to ride of late, three days ago I met with Vic Clark. He is 92 years old and raced the Manx International in 1940. He still gets on the turbo for half an hour each day. 66 years ago he was National Hill Climb Champion. Talking to him was a moving and fascinating experience. Here’s a very brief snippet:

I hope you’re feeling suitably warm and inspired and go out and ride your bike, if not your tandem, and enjoy the unceasing happiness that cycling brings. i hope i’m able to look back on a life of cycling when I’m Vic’s age, accompanied by someone like Connie, every step of the way.