live-cycle

Want to ride the Ronde van Vlaanderen? Fancy tasting a slice of riding like the professionals? Paul and I rode the 155km version of the Tour of Flanders on a cold, wet and windy Saturday and, I have to admit, it wasn’t the hell that I expected. We survived to tell the tale, a little shaken, perhaps, but quite stirred by the experience. We set off from Ninove at about 8am and it wasn’t long before it began to rain intermittently. The first 50km were flat and fast, and we covered the distance comfortably in two hours. It was at about this time that the sun finally put in an appearance, and stayed with us for the rest of the next 20 minutes. The cold and wet were what worried me most but because we kept a good pace, we stayed warm enough. It is, ultimately, the cobbles that are most to be feared.

The first time we hit cobbles we were moving quite fast. Rapidly we lost momentum as our teeth took a jolly good rattling.  Riding on cobbles is no fun. Extremely uncomfortable, in fact, and there is no right or wrong way to ride - hold the handlebars loosely and you lose control, hold too tight and it’s like hanging on to a jackhammer. I wouldn’t be surprised if riders here suffer vibration white finger.
Our first climb was on tarmac, and was easy enough, but the second was the dreaded Koppenberg, a 925 metre climb on muddy, slippery pave with a maximum gradient of 14.5%. To tell the truth, I did climb off and push a bit on this climb, as well as the fourth of the 14 “cols”, but I did manage to ride the rest. Most pleasing was that I made it up the penultimate climb, the heart-stopping Muur-Kapelmuur, where many riders slipped and fell on the steep, wet cobbles. Paul made all the climbs without a foot touching the ground, and was doubly pleased the following day to see some professionals pushing. We finished the ride in about 7.5 hours, including 50 minutes of stopping for food, drink and checkpoints. We were hungry and ready for some Belgian beer, but otherwise none the worse for wear. In fact, the only casualty was my cycle computer, which gave up the ghost at 100km, a victim of the wet wet wetness.
So, you still want to ride? I have three pieces of advice:
1. Don’t do it if it is raining. If it’s wet, head for the nearest pub and watch the event on television while enjoying the fine selection of beer that is on offer.
2. If you must do it, ride a mountain bike with front suspension and road tyres. (If you want full suspension, you’re a cissy and should be doing the off-road event.)
3. Don’t give in to the roadie style mafia: take a backpack or Camelbak and go prepared for all eventualities. You will, after all, be on the road for anything up to 12 hours if you do the 250km route.

The 2010 edition of the Absa Cape Epic has just passed its halfway mark, and it looks like one of the toughest so far. At the end of today’s time trial, the fifth out of eight stages, only 462 teams remain of the 600  that started on Sunday. About 70 riders finished as individuals, having lost their partners along the way. The attrition rate is high, testimony to an uncompromising course designer known unsurprisingly as Dr Evil. Paul and I are following the race daily, and despite the apparent harshness of the course, we both wish that once again we were there. The Epic has a strange attraction, like a cruel mistress who beats you and mistreats you, and still you yearn for more. Or so I’m told. I’ve never had a mistress like that, or like anything else (that bit is especially for the attention of Mrs Rink).

The current race leaders are Karl Platt and Stefan Sahm, who won last year, but if I were a betting man (I can’t afford to be, so it’s all moot) I would put my money on Christoph Sauser and Burry Stander. On the first couple of days the pair suffered illness and mechanical problems, but have come back to win the latest three stages and are up to third overall, seven minutes behind the leaders. They have clearly thrown down the gauntlet and, barring mechanicals, they could well be on the top step on the podium by the weekend.

This year’s Epic has been touched with sadness - on Tuesday morning James Williamson, a 26-year-old from Australia, died  in hospital after his riding partner was unable to rouse him. James, who edited a mountain bike magazine, and his partner had been riding well and were in 18th position. I am sure that all the riders will make their continued participation a tribute to James.

This delicious little handbag comes with a designer label . . . not Mulberry, nor Louis Vuitton, but Boardman. Yes, that’s right, Chris Boardman. Believe it or not, this miniature marzipan number carries the tag of the Olympic cyclist, world record holder and, lately, designer and developer of the eponymous bicycle brand. Well, sort of. Here is what happened. Today we enjoyed tea at the Berkeley Hotel in Knightsbridge, hosted by Boardman and his associates. There the assembled hacks were served the most delicate of sandwiches, with all the crusts removed, followed by the most colourful sweets that you could imagine, including the little number above. Pink champagne made this press do more Carrie and the girls from Sex and the City than the launch of a new  line of bicycles available from  Halfords and its Bike Hut chain.

But that is just what it was. It turns out that the Boardman backroom boys have noticed that women are built differently from men. I don’t mean the fact that they come perfectly formed, and have curves in all the right places (okay, go on then, slap me), but that they have different requirements when it comes to bicycles. So now we have boardman/fi (female informed), a range of bikes with geometry designed specifically for women. The range includes a road bike, carbon road bike, hybrid and hardtail (doesn’t sound that feminine, but live with it), which will be on sale in a couple of months.

Chris did explain what the differences are between men and women, but we were all so absorbed by the confectionary that we missed the detail, so you can check it all out shortly on the Boardman website. But what is most important is the fact the range should appeal to women, the discreet pink detail notwithstanding. And as long as it is another way of getting more people on bikes, I like it. Come on girls, get on yer bikes and keep the revolution going. And congrats to Chris for making cycling sexy.

Copenhagen may be able to boast the most chic of cyclists, but it is not the only major city in the world to combine beauty and bicycles. Take Darlington, that bustling metropolis in the North East of England, where a pedal revolution  is being fomented  by a bunch of radical teenage girls. Yes, you read that correctly - teenage girls.

Yes, these little Darlingtons have set up a group aptly called Beauty and the Bike, and on their sit-up-and-beg Dutch-made bicycles they are spreading the word among one of the most hardened group of cycle-atheists in existence - young women. Their message is: you can look cool on a bicycle, and you can do so without wearing Lycra.

The project was established in 2008 by the Darlington Media Group, and some of the girls involved have visited in Bremen, Germany, to see just what a cycling society should be like. Now through their website, a DVD and a book they are promoting their good work to a wider audience.

Well, what more can we say, but “Right on, girls. Viva la revolution!” Now go and check out that DVD on their website.

Do you remember learning to ride a bike? For some time I suspected that I had always been able to ride a bike, that I was born with the ability, or that it was a quite natural part of growing up. But then I had a flashback: an eight or nine-year-old, in a back garden in Johannesburg, a large lawn ringed by fruit trees.  I remember an older boy visiting, someone from the church choir, too old to be my friend. Probably had a romantic interest in my eldest sister. Glen was his name, I think.

Well, he had arrived on his bike - a black Raleigh, as they all were in those days. I had asked him to teach me to ride, but the bike was too big for me. So while he and my sisters sat on the lawn talking, I began scooting around, standing on the left pedal. After a while I put my right foot under the crossbar and started pedalling - suddenly, quite unconventially, I was riding a bike.

That Christmas my parents gave me and my two older sisters a bike to share - a girl’s bike, black Raleigh, with a simple pedal-back brake. We fought over who could ride it when, but it was the first feeling of freedom that cycling has given me ever since. A girl’s bike? Friends jeered and mocked, but I couldn’t care less.

Thinking about it, Iwas quite lucky. We didn’t have much money, so it took a few more years before we each got our own bike. But we had a bike, we had friends with bikes, we had space to learn to ride them, and to fall off (I got into trouble when my second sister fell off and chipped a tooth, even though I was nowhere near).

I see that this week the Government launched a new strategy to teach children at school to ride bikes. It is called Active Travel, but somehow it has not yet managed to hit the national newspapers - I think they are all too concerned with talk of bullying in the Westminster playground. I became aware of it only through an email from the Halfords press office, welcoming the initiative. Of course, as a bike seller, Halfords has a vested interest, but that does not mean we should ignore the move, which could lead to a healthier, happier nation. Without initiatives like this, the propapagation of cycling would be stuck in a ditch. And where would that get us when the petrol pumps dry up?

After my rant about cycle paths, it is probably time for a bit of a ramble … Anger and angst about urban cycling will always be churning through the dark recesses of my mind, so I am sure I will return to the topic, but now it is time to change tack, to take a slow ramble through the byways and backroads of my brain.

Take yesterday’s ride - a ride under icy clear blue skies.  It occurred to me that the Cape Epic starts in a mere four weeks’ time. At this stage last year I was fitter than I had been in ages, but I’m glad that I’m not riding the Epic this year, not having to train in the snowy, icy miserable conditions that we’ve endured. But as I pedalled along yesterday, on the roadside there were signs of better things to come: amid the frost and frozen puddles I came across a bank of blossoming snowdrops, a sure sign that spring is not far off. Over the years that I have run or cycled past this patch, it has always been ahead of the rest of nature, always the first place to see crocuses, daffodils and bluebells.

For me there is no Epic this year, but there will be other adventures. First up is the Tour of Flanders, well, 100 miles of it, which Paul and I ride on Easter Saturday. But during my meanderings yesterday it struck me that it is ten years since I last did some serious running, ten years since I last did the Comrades marathon. So I have decided to run a marathon this year. I don’t want to do London or a big race like that. Instead, I think I have found the ideal course: Loch Ness marathon, on October 3.

So there you have it, in writing, my aim, my pledge for the year. I will run the monster marathon. And the great thing is that all the training will be in the summer. Which only goes to show that Lance Armstrong was right: it’s not all about the bike. Or is it??

Sometimes you can’t avoid a blog posting: it is something that just happens. At first you just see it in the distance - you know it is there, and you just cannot avoid it. Rather like the pothole that buckles your rim when you’re sqeezing between the bus and a brand new Merc, with no room for manoeuvre. Or like the protruding root on the muddy downhill, sneakily sticking out on a corner, half-hidden by dappled shadow.
You know you are going to come into sudden contact with whatever it is, and you don’t know how it will pan out.
This gaping hole that lies straight ahead of me is a rant. Specifically a rant about cycle paths, and even more so about those who design them. For the past few weeks my experiences and observations of cycling through London have been building up to this rant, and suddenly, when I no longer commute (don’t ask) I now have the time to write about it.
So, where do I start? With this sign, I think.
Now, we have all seen these signs, and they seem to breeding at an exponential rate. There must be a few that are actually necessary, but most are planted in the most inane places, where no cyclist would consider getting off his or her mount and pushing.
Take where I live, for example, just off the A20, where there is a cycle lane in both directions. When cyclists leave the busy road for our estate, they are ordered to dismount. Why? Do the road designers seriously expect them to hop off and push through a residential area?
Come on! These people are paid good money to use their noggins.
My guess is that they work on a quota system - they are told how many dismount signs are needed per square kilomtre in urban and rural areas. Either that, or they bought a job lot and have to justify the purchase by disseminating them. They aren’t that expensive - a mere £29 each from Equip4Work, and something off for buying bulk.
As cycling gathers momentum as a sport, pastime and means of transport, there will be a proliferation of signs affecting cyclists. Let’s just hope that that the signs of the times are pointing in the right direction.
Next: a proliferation of potholes

I was browsing through some photos that came in on the news wires last week and was struck by this inventive chap in India.
I thought his idea was quite novel, but a search on Google shows that bamboo bikes are not all that new or original. In fact, you can get them custom built with carbon or alloy joints, but the most amazing one that I came across was put together with epoxy and hemp fibre. The makers all rave about how eco-friendly they are, and how cheap and readily available the raw product is. But looking at the price of them, though, I reckon the manufacturers are being a bit disingenuous. The raw material may be cheap, but I don’t see them as being a source of inexpensive transport in poor countries.
Apparently the ride is good, with great ability to absorb vibration. The bikes themselves look super as a fashion accessory, and are perhaps great for the road … but for a big off-road downhill, I’m not so sure.

AS a cyclist, it is great to be noticed - it means that people know we are there, that they are aware of our presence. But I suppose that being noticed can also makes us easy targets. Take a couple of articles in the press over the past two days, for example. Yesterday The Sunday Times carried an article that shouted Cycle rage: tyranny on two wheels. I call it an article but, really, it was a rant by one Matt Rudd about the Lycra louts who ride on pavements and ignore the Highway Code.
Now we all know that there are those who ignore the norms, and give us a bad name, but this article tarred every cyclist with that same brush, and damned us for daring to claim our place on the roads.
Rudd manages to dredge up three cases where pedestrians have been killed by cyclists. No mention of the number of cyclists killed or maimed by motorists, nor even those injured when colliding with pedestrians who cross roads without looking (in my book, the most persistent danger).
The second article was in The Times today, entitled Council enforcers to put Lycra louts on straight and narrow. There we have it, those Lycra louts again. It appears that Westminster council is to deploy enforcers to hunt down errant cyclists and issue penalty enforcement notices. Angela Harvey of Westminster council says: “We’re always getting little old ladies who are knocked down and abused by a cyclist who leaves them on the ground as they ride away.” ALWAYS, I ask you? And if we go by her quote, it is always the same cyclist. Naughty bugger.
But at least there is some fairness in this article - it even quotes the number of cyclists killed or seriously injured. And the clincher is Tom Bogdanowicz, of the London Cycling Campaign, who says that enforcement of regulations is vital for all road users. And he adds: “It is vital that local authorities address road danger to cycle users by improving the very conditions that force some cyclists to seek the refuge of pavements. Where road design improvements have been made, offending falls significantly.”
Actually, I don’t mind if there is a crackdown on offending cyclists. If it makes the badly behaved ones behave, I will support that. But what we need to see at the same time is a crackdown motorists who block cycle lanes, endanger cyclists, stop in the advanced stopping zones.
But what offends me most of all is people who make unsubstantiated accusations against whole groups of people without any evidence, nor any right of reply. There should be a penalty for that.

“I’m going for a ride on my bike.”
Words that pass a cyclist’s lips almost every day. Yes, we go for a ride on our bike, but how many people can say: “I’m going for a ride on MY bike”? MY bike that I made, that has my name on it?
What prompts these thoughts was a little soiree on Monday night held by Halfords and Boardman bikes, quite fittingly at the Transport Museum in Covent Garden. It was an evening to keep in touch with the press, really, and to introduce the Boardman Limited edition (1,250 bikes, special decals, signed and numbered, and almost sold out). Chris Boardman was there, obviously, along with his production team, some Halfords staff and a fair sprinkling of PR people, plus a bright array of their bicycles for us to spill our beer over.
But it made me wonder: how many people can truly say that they are riding their bike. The Eponymous Cycle Club must be quite an exclusive band: there is, of course, Boardman, and others that spring immediately to mind are Gary Fisher, Greg Lemond and Eddie Merckx. After a bit more thinking, I came up with Ernesto Colnago (who was employed as a mechanic on Merckx’s Molteni team), and Fausto Pinarello. Then there is Dr Alex Moulton, who pioneered the small-wheeled bicycle revolution nearly 50 years ago, and William Pashley, a First World War dispatch rider who set up Pashley Cycles in 1926.
Someone who comes close, but is not quite a full member, I think, is Tom Ritchie, who rides some of his very stylish and expensive bicycle parts but, to my knowledge, does not have a frame with his name on it.
I decided to dig a little further, and my librarian, Google, took me to Baron von Drais, a German inventor, who is probably the most eminent member, because although he does not have a bicycle brand named after him, he was one of the people who invented the bicycle, although his eponymous draisine has rusted away from our vocabulary over the years.
But my favourite club member is Major Nichols. During the Second World War he served in the Navy as a Gyroscopic Compass Technician, leaving as Petty Officer. Major, it turns out, was his Christian name. He went into bike building, in his home town of West Bromwich, and died in 2005.
I know that you’ll probably come up with dozens of names that I have overlooked, and I will be happy to hear from you.
But before I finish, I have just one question: Who is Claude Butler?