As I was saying....

...before I was so rudely interrupted.  

Well, what a cock-up that was.  Regular readers of this blog, who I estimate number about three, will have noticed a distinct lack of posts.  And a distinct lack of news about my efforts in L'Enfer Du Nord. 

To cut a long and deeply depressing story short, I had to pull out with about a week to go when it became clear that the shoulder injury I picked up in the Alps in March was not going to heal any time soon, in fact it was getting worse.  

A week's, probably ill-advised, surfing in Devon was the final straw. 

There followed a long period of gloom, and not much on-bike time -- since even relatively short rides would result in numbness and an inability to perform relatively simple tasks, like eating or brushing my teeth.  

I didn't feel much like writing.

But, it's slowly getting better. To the extent that I've entered a longish (155k) sportive in September as a kick-start to my training for 2010

As to the blog - keep checking back.  I was spurred into posting by two things - first, Richard Lee's rather nice Cycling Art blog, which features a link to here -- shamefully showing no new contributions for two months.

And second, this fabulous picture from Stage 3 of the Tour.  Bernard "Le Blaireau" reminding a misguided protester why he was justly regarded as the hardest man in the peloton, and why nobody ever tried to take liberties on his watch.

Chapeau, Bernard -- a blow for old blokes everywhere.

Dry Season

I'm staying off the beer, in a half-hearted attempt to get my ailing body into some sort of shape.  Still allowing myself the odd glass of wine with food.  

There's no sense losing all proportion over this; and anyway, I've been heartened by reading "Sex Lies and Handlebar Tape",  Paul Howard's intriguing biography of five-times Tour winner Jacques Anquetil.

Anquetil's colourful private life is now well-known, but is probably worth repeating.  In as short a summary as I can manage:

• He had an affair with his Doctor's wife, setting up home with her and her two young children.
• When she proved unable to bear him a child of his own, he had one with her daughter -- who was by now a teenager. 
• He then lived with the two women and his new child in an unorthodox (no wonder the French have a word for it) menage a trois.
• When this arrangement failed, he attempted to make his two former lovers jealous by having an affair with his stepson's wife, a relationship that continued until his death.

Chapeau, Maitre Jacques.  Sunday lunch at the Anquetil house must have been a bit tense.

More interesting in some ways was his attitude to food and drink. 

Anquetil had a reputation as a bit of a gourmand, horrifying traditionalists with his taste for seafood and creamy sauce. Howard suggests that some of it was pretence, done to wind up the press and opponents, but Cycling magazine looked aghast at his diet when he came to Herne Hill:

"Before his races ... Jacques ate hors d'oeuvres (sausages, meat, salad), sweetbreads in cream sauce with creamed spinach, and fresh fruit, and he drank spa water and coffee."

Sweetbreads in cream sauce?  I was lucky to get some bread-and-butter pudding when I raced at Herne Hill.

And he was partial to a drop.  After an all-night drive to one team training camp he sat down to a breakfast of langoustines with mayonnaise and a carafe of white wine.  His famous quote about training is reproduced here in full.  Asked by a young fan how best to prepare for a big race, he recommended:

"A pheasant with chestnuts, a bottle of champagne and a woman"

In particular, I like the fact that he was very specific about the food -- less so about the rest.

The book if full of interesting, almost incidental, asides that reveal the lost colour of pro-racing.

Among my favourites so far: Apo Lazarides,  on a lone breakaway up the Col D'Izoard, stopped and waited for the peloton to catch up because he was frightened of being attacked by bears; Raphael Geminiani, angry at being left out of the French team for the Tour,  turned up at a stage start with a donkey named after the selector Marcel Bidot.

Truly, it is the races that have got smaller.

  

 

Back to the Old School

32 hole, Veloce hubs, DT stainless spokes, silver Open Pro rims. And, according to the rim tape, "personally approved by Monty Young".  It's a long time since Monty was a permanent presence at Condors in the Grays Inn Road -- sitting at his ancient jig and creating perfect wheels.  But his spirit is still there somewhere in the carbon and titanium high-money operation that his shop has become.

Monty made wheels for my father in 1949, and a set of track wheels for me that I raced for a season then rode into the ground over five years fixed-gear commuting on London roads.  

Never had to use a spoke key once.

Best of all, these new ones were on special offer and less than the cost of a second-hand pair I'd been eyeing up on e-Bay

They'll be on the bike tonight and on the road tomorrow.

 

 

Pain and Humiliation

At least once a week, I drive to a nondescript house in suburban South London, take off my clothes and pay an attractive young woman to inflict pain and humiliation on me.

In case you think this is some Max Mosely-style middle-aged sordidness, I should point out that these are visits to my osteopath -- a whippet-thin, sub-3.30 marathon runner with astonishingly strong hands and an ability to find the part which hurts the most and concentrate all her efforts on it, which suggests the CIA may have missed a trick by not recruiting her for Guantanamo duty.

I'm being treated for what I claim is a ski-ing injury to my shoulder, and what she says is the inevitable result of 20 years of poor posture, insufficient stretching and general laziness.  Did I mention the humiliation?

I've written before about how  pro-cyclists exist on the fine line dividing superfit athletes and physical wrecks.  Even rank amateurs like me suffer for our sport -- overdeveloped calves and thighs, poor core strength and useless upper bodies.

There's an old bloke I sometimes see out on the road -- well into his seventies -- who has an impressive on-bike position over the drop bars of his modern carbon machine.  Unfortunately, he maintains almost exactly the same position -- hunched forward, flat back and crouched legs-- when he gets off and walks into the cafe.  Clearly his spine gave up on standing straight a few years ago.  I have seen my future.

My own personal Ole Kaare Foli has so far not banned me from riding my bike. But she has insisted that I take regular breaks while riding to perform swivelling shoulder movements and dangle my right-arm loosely at my side like a chimp.

So if you see someone riding a red Casati round Richmond Park looking like Tarzan's Cheetah, give me a break. I need all the support I can get.

I've been bad...

I've been rubbish, actually.  At keeping up my training and this blog.  When Brian Washingmachinepost kindly enquired how things were going, I realised that my e-mail reply wasn't much more than a list of excuses and moans.

I've moved house.  Which has brought with it untold chaos, deep in cardboard boxes and paint-tins.  Just finding the basics of life (clean cycling kit for instance) can take hours.  Through a mixture of advanced planning and straightforward awkwardness -- my bike tools were kept out of the hands of the removals men and travelled with me in the car.  However, our Hungarian decorator has taken to prising open paint-tins with my Campag cone-spanners.   

Another bizarre result of moving is that -- for the first time in 20 years -- I've stopped reading The Comic.  It used to be delivered  every Thursday along with the paper,  but no newsagents in our new part of South London actually deliver to your door. Too dangerous, probably.  So far, I'm not missing it.

I'm trying to launch not one, but two new businesses:

www.parkinsonmedia.co.uk

www.thinkagainmedia.co.uk

...which is proving to be fascinating and exciting but massively time-consuming.

I've just been on holiday.  The annual family ski-trip to one of my favourite parts of the world -- Northern Sweden.  I'm not sure it's possible to become bored with powder snow, stunning mountain scenery and beautiful blonde women --- but if it could happen anywhere, Sweden would be the place.  While Boonen was sprinting for victory at the Roubaix velodrome, I was dodging moose on the E6 back to the airport.

And I've picked up an injury -- an inflamed shoulder.  According to my osteopath, a classic cyclist's problem -- decades of hunching over dropped bars have left my upper body so tight that a minor ski-ing knock has refused to heal -- there's almost no room in the joint for the muscles to recover.  Nothing that a few sessions of expensive and painful bone-crunching won't fix.

And finally -- I forgot just how much I relied on commuting to keep my fitness up -- fifteen miles most days on fixed at least kept things ticking over.  Now I'm working from home, it seems a real drag to have to get my kit on and get out on the road.

But that's enough whingeing.  This afternoon, I put my To Do list to one side, stepped over the cardboard boxes and went for a ride.

And it felt very good.  Watch out, Tom -- I'm back.

The bags are coming

You know there's a major campaign right now against plastic bags? Well they're fighting back. Twice in one day I was attacked by a plastic bag while out cycling. Not the same plastic bag, obviously -- that would be too Doctor Who for words.

Different location, different times, different bikes. But same menace.

The first came as I rode my wife's commuting bike past a builder's skip and a five-yard tendril of bubble-wrap came looping out and tried to strangle me. I batted it off and it attempted to wrap itself round the front wheel instead. My wife's machine -- a bit like a Dutch-bike in design -- shrugged it off but it was a nasty moment.

Then, heading back from a run to Richmond Park, I spotted a huge, blue plastic bag in the middle of the road. It didn't move until I was about six feet from it, then it suddenly leaped across the road and enveloped me and my bike. In the space it took me to stop, it had become entangled in the rear wheel, the cassette, the right hand quick-release, the back brakes, the chainring and the left-hand pedal.

Much to the amusement of a nearby bus queue, it took me ten minutes to remove the blue monstrosity -- at one point I had to take off the back wheel and hang the rest of the bike on the fence while I pulled and struggled.

Two attacks in one day. Coincidence? I think not.

Cycling Saviour

The last time I moved house, most of my belongings came with me -- on the back of my motorbike.  The remainder -- a Colnago, three pairs of skis and an Amstrad PCW 9512 -- arrived in a borrowed estate car three days later.

This time -- moving house over the Easter weekend, it took a team of five Kiwis four days to load and unload two giant pantechnicons and our world now consists almost entirely of several hundred identical cardboard boxes.

In a link with the past, however, my Casati came separately -- ridden the half-mile between old and new. 

We have moved into a rambling Gothic monstrosity which a colleague likened to something out of ScoobyDoo but the essentials of modern living -- broadband, digital TV, dishwasher etc., have slowly been reconnected.

Training opportunities have been limited, not helped by the unpredictable weather -- apart from one early morning blast down to Richmond Park.  Half an hour rummaging in the boxes turned up wildly inappropriate summer shorts and jersey, but the addition of  leg-warmers and an Assos climajet made it bearable.

Once again, it demonstrated cycling's ability to revive -- dare I say resurrect -- flagging body and spirit.  Workmen are digging up Sawyer's Hill, so the long drag up to Richmond Gate has been reclaimed by cyclists and deer -- both safe from motorised oppression.  A family of deer were standing in the middle of the road as I crested the hill; they looked -- startled -- in my direction then turned away, convinced that this slow-moving, bright blue creature was no threat. 

Three laps then back to the boxes with a renewed vigour.  Oh, and the Aga is great for drying damp riding gear.

Back to earth

Just back from four days in the Alps, ski-ing with a testosterone-fuelled Dads' Army from my youngest son's school.   It revealed one unfortunate truth -- despite all the miles of pedalling, my legs aren't quite as strong as I hoped they were.  At least one flat out, top-to-bottom run had my thighs screaming for mercy long before the final turn.

We spent one day gloriously off-piste, far away from the crowds and the lifts but some of the time we were faced with one of the great hazards of modern ski-ing -- high-speed motorway madness.  It was like London rush-hour with rubbish brakes, and at the end of the first day I went and bought a -- rather cool -- Giro helmet to ease my shredded nerves.

Back to work today and the madness of the real London rush hour.   I pulled up to the lights in Sloane Square and a black cab driver rolled down his side window to speak to me.  I feared the worst, but his intentions were good.

"Watch out for the bloke behind," he said "He's on the 'phone and not looking where he's going -- nearly had a cyclist off back there".

I thanked him and pointed out that, in the past twenty minutes, I'd seen three people texting as they drove along.  We grumbled together about the deteriorating standards of London driving for a couple of minutes until the lights changed.

Need to get training again soon.  Ski-ing's alright -- but you don't get big legs sitting at a computer. 

 

Coming up short

I'm old enough that when I started cycling the chamois inserts in shorts were genuinely made from goats.

Thin, unpadded ovals; they were wonderfully soft and absorbent in the shop and for the first ride, but washing gave them the consistency and feel of coarse-grade sandpaper. 

 

To make it wearable, you had to grasp the insert with both hands and scrub like a demented Victorian washerwoman; then apply "chamois cream", a thick yellow gunk which just gave it the feel of sandpaper covered in axle grease.

Unsurprisingly, there seemed to be more cases of saddle sores, infections and the dreaded boils in those days; and you sympathised with those old-school pro's who would begin the day with a sirloin steak stuffed beneath their privates, ride a 200-mile stage and then fling the flattened, seasoned cut of meat to the hotel chef to prepare for that night's dinner.

Decent artificial chamois brought an end to all that, of course, and the reduction in cyclist-groin-to-animal-product-interaction has been one of the many improvements I've seen in cycling over the past twenty years.

But my increasing mileage in preparation for June has highlighted some, er, shortcomings in my shorts department -- and I've had to take action.  

I've ordered a new pair of Assos F1's -- suspiciously cheap off of that Ebay; and bought a tub of the same company's pricey new-age bum butter.

It's certainly a different product to the chamois cream of thirty years ago -- lightly perfumed and with the consistency of an expensive moisturiser.  Rather disturbingly, it warns "avoid intimate areas" -- how does that work, then? 

Initial impressions are favourable -- despite an unexpected warming sensation on first application.  Lance Armstrong apparently recommends some product used by American farmers on their cows' udders -- but I think I'll stick with the Swiss variety.

I'll keep you updated.  Although, obviously, not in too much detail.

 

The Slippery Slope

I've always been a sock purist.  Short, plain and white -- the only only acceptable covering for a cyclist's lower leg.  

However, I have been tempted from the paths of purity and righteousness by a rather fetching item from someone calling himself "The Sock Guy".  Bright yellow "Lion of Flanders" socks -- how could you resist?

Luckily, they aren't available in the UK at the moment -- Wiggle claim to sell them, but they're not in stock. 

So I turned for my pressing sock needs to Prendas -- planning to buy a couple of plain white pairs to keep me going.  Temptation loomed in the form of some stylish Italian champion tricolores, and some Belgian ones done out in red, black and yellow and the slogan "Biere, Frites et Merckx". 

Reader, I succumbed.  They're still short -- and mainly white -- but I fear it may be the first step on a road which leads to the ultimate shame -- calf-length, black Lance-a-likes.

Lovely day today.  My legs came out for the first time this year, along with my summer-weight blue Dauphin kit (Hello, girls!).

Spring may be just over the horizon. 

The Man in Black

Freezing fog in Richmond Park this morning, an unexpected downer after days of clear blue skies.  

Halfway up the hill that leads to Richmond Gate, a police car was parked on the roadway -- doors open and a WPC standing alongside.  She took the opportunity to shout at me, berating my stupidity.  Given that I was grinding my way up a long hill on a fixed gear, she had quite a bit of time to express her opinions.  She was a bit like one of those mad Dutch fans on Alpe D'Huez, only slightly less encouraging.

"Oi, you!  Perhaps you should consider getting some lights on your bike!  Or maybe wearing a yellow jacket or something on your top?  'Cos you're not very visible in this weather, are you?  Just a little tip.  Bit of friendly advice, might stop you getting killed...."

And on she went.

In reply, I just waved in a friendly fashion and said "Thank you, officer!"  Partly because I was so short of breath that I didn't feel like engaging in longer discourse.  And partly, of course, because she was right.

I'd left my lights on the hall table -- it was daylight outside, after all.  And I was wearing my Rapha softshell -- highly commended for style and comfort, nuls points for its hi-viz police-friendliness. 

I skulked round for another few laps, chastened -- while idiots in cars with no lights hurtled past inches from me.  I met up with a club-mate, resplendent in our bright red and yellow winter kit and used her as a human shield from the half-blind four-wheelers.

I always use lights at night, and try to dress conspicuously - within reason -  but I'm not 100 percent convinced how much difference it makes.  At its worst, visibility today was down to a couple of hundred yards.  If you can't see another human being -- even one dressed all in black --- at that distance, you really shouldn't be out on the roads. 

Some of the drivers who went past today were engrossed in hand-held mobile conversations, one was texting.  It's a given that WPC Plod won't have shouted at them.

After 30 years of riding in London, I remain convinced that confident road positioning and speed are as important to your safety as bright clothing. 

To be honest, you could have lit yourself like a Christmas tree today, with a roman candle up your jacksie, and still not guaranteed that you were seen.

Let's be careful out there.

The Aloha Spirit

I always have to suppress a smile when the perennial issue of cyclists' friendliness -- especially towards newcomers -- comes up.

There's a letter in the comic again this week, praising the pro Stefan Schumacher for saying "hi" on a training ride, in comparison to the allegedly aloof and unfriendly types the writer has met "around London and the Surrey Hills".

I was responsible for a small controversy in my own club a while ago, when I questioned why some people wouldn't even acknowledge other members out on the roads. Someone replied that, as first and foremost a running club with a strong cycling section, many members had come into the sport without any grounding in the conventions of cycling clubs. Like being friendly to fellow members, presumably.

But the main reason I smile is that my other sport is surfing. About three of four times a year, I like to go off and ride some waves -- badly but enthusiastically. And surfing's attitude to newcomers is very straightforward: "You're not welcome"

In fact, surfing's attitude to everyone is straightforward: "Whoever you are, you're not welcome".

Limited natural resources, an explosion of popularity and revolutions in internet forecasting have led to an inevitable conclusion -- too many surfers are chasing too few waves. Localism -- summed up in the phrase "if you're not from here, don't surf here" -- is on the increase everywhere.

It's not new, but it's becoming more vicious. There are areas of Hawaii -- indeed entire islands of Hawaii -- which are never photographed or mentioned in the surf media; because of explicit violence and death threats against journalists and editors.

A friend of mine has made a couple of short films about surfing near his home on the west coast of Ireland. When I asked him if he was going to put them on YouTube, he patiently explained that "some of the spots are too easy to identify" -- and there would be retaliation.

This week - wind, swell and sunshine combined to give a glorious, if cold, days' surfing on the South Coast of England. I spent a couple of idyllic hours at West Wittering -- a glorious spot known for its gentle longboard waves and hassle-free crowds. I was aware, though, that there were spots an hour-or-so's drive away where my reception would have been much more hostile.

Even in laid-back Devon, there are places where visiting surfers are lucky to escape without violence in the water; and find a combination of slashed tyres, waxed windscreens and excrement in their rucksacks on returning to their vehicles.

So, in comparision, the odd miserable git who doesn't wave back is not so bad, is it?

Trust me on this one

In a month or two, I am leaving my employer of the last 28 years and setting off into the uncharted waters of self-employment.   I find myself spending an unhealthy amount of time thinking up bizarre business schemes which will make me the next Bill Gates.

Many of these flashes of brilliance come to me on the bike: which is either vindication of the claim that exercise clears your mind of excess distractions and allows your elemental free-thinking soul to flourish; or evidence of oxygen starvation -- which leads the brain to think that rubbish ideas are better than they are.

I had one this morning.  

A clear, cold but very windy day in the South-East -- I was just finishing a session in Richmond Park when the lightbulb came on. 

Coming off the long descent to Robin Hood Gate, I spotted a lovely old gitanes-blue Citroen 2CV a hundred yards ahead.  I put on a half-hearted sprint, caught up with it and, for the next mile or so, sat in behind.  It was bliss.  Cruising along at the legal limit, hardly turning a pedal, the spluttering, air-cooled engine of the Citroen sounding like a giant Derny.  

The driver, clearly unnerved by the gurning idiot in her rear view mirror, tried to speed up - but even I can keep up with a 2CV on the flat.  

My riding companion compared it to  having your own personal super-domestique -- like being towed along by a big, blue Sean Yates.

And that's when it struck me.  Get a couple of 2CV's, and hang round well-heeled bikie's haunts -- Richmond Park, Box Hill, Crystal Palace parade etc.  Offer, for a substantial fee, to pace groups of city boys on their training runs. 

Just think, boys, now no-one needs to take a turn on the front!  Or read a map -- just ask the driver for whatever's required -- "A hilly 65k, sir? I've got just the thing.  Tuck in behind, and follow me". 

The drivers would, of course, be competent mechanics with tools and spares in the back -- to aid the suprising number of riders you come across with £4k carbon bikes and no idea how to change a tyre.

And the deluxe version would include a video screen on the back of the car -- showing inspirational films, commercials and -- for the truly dedicated -- a Bloomberg ticker.

I'd better get started on the business plan before Rapha pinch the idea.  Dragon's Den, here I come.

 

The Bandit of the South Circular

The cycling-music interface has not always been a happy place.

True, Eric Clapton's passion for all things Italian (principally wine and supermodels) has led him to build up an impressive collection of Colnago's and a couple of Cinelli's -- but I've seen no evidence of him actually riding them.

There's a great signed picture in Condor's shop of a young Mick Jagger on one of their Mackeson team bikes but it doesn't seem to have been more than a passing Sixties' fad.

And who can forget, however hard they may try, the sight of Paul Weller struggling to maintain his normal icy cool in a wool-mix Magniflex top? Not since Bryan Ferry took to the stage dressed as an Argentine cowboy has a normally stylish man made such a fundamental error in dress sense.

Kraftwerk and the Delgados both include hard-core bikies in their line-up; disappointingly, Campag Velocet never did.

Beyond that, you're really scraping the barrel. The drummer out of Madness was in my old club in the mid-eighties -- he left after he was repeatedly dropped on the mid-week Regents Park chaingang.

And dance music has flirted sporadically with bike clothing. Early ravers briefly took to wearing lycra shorts; and team tops were popular with the late-nineties hard house crowd. Appropriate of course, since Gatecrasher kids were one of the few groups whose consumption of illegal drugs approached the levels of a professional cyclist.

But in all these discussions, one name is routinely forgotten. Step forward Billy Connolly, bearded Scottish comedian, former folk singer and bikie.

At least, I'm pretty sure he was - although I can find no record of it in any of his biographical profiles But I remember reading an interview with him in the eighties where he talked about riding when he was younger.

In particular, he wrote a song when he was a member of the Humblebums, called "The Bandit of the Great North Road".

It was a hymn of praise to those riders who prefer to train alone rather than join clubs or go out with larger groups.

Sometimes, this morning for instance, I feel a bit like that Bandit -- the only rider in Richmond Park not part of some brightly coloured peloton. I like riding in company, and do it when I can.

Equally, there are times when just wheeling along with nothing but your own thoughts is a real luxury.  This morning, icy cold but clear, felt like one of those times. 

Hell of the Ashdown Pt.3

Right. I've washed the bike, had a bath, a glass of wine and a good night's sleep - and, in retrospect, the Hell of the Ashdown doesn't seem quite as bad.


On paper, it's a grim day out. 65 miles with 2000 metres of climbing, much of it steep.

From the saddle, it was actually OK. Helped by the friendly enthusiasm of the Catford volunteers; by unseasonally warm and sunny weather and the glory of the English countryside -- the pain was almost bearable.

Even Kidd's Hill - an apparently endless slog through the scrubland near Harftield, rewarded you with breathtaking views over the Ashdown Forest and the long, straight, rolling drop back down - where you could play at being Magnus Backstedt.

High point? Blasting through the best of Kent and Sussex without once having to look at a map -- following the well-placed signage and seen safely across dangerous junctions by cheerful marshals.

Low point? My Vittoria Pave tyres -- supposedly bulletproof Roubaix-busters, the back one blew out five miles into the ride after a minor encounter with a pothole. And they weave like a dolphin on high-speed descents.

Something a little flatter for my next outing, though. Is there a Hell of Norfolk?

The Hell of the Ashdown

Early to bed tonight, I'm riding 100 hilly kilometres tomorrow in the charmingly-named "Hell of the Ashdown Challenge".

The event is organised with the usual friendly efficiency of the Catford Cycling Club, who've sent a route card and signing-on details.

One clause in the Terms and Conditions caught my eye:

"The cyclist named below acknowledges that this is a hilly and arduous route which they are confident they have the ability to complete."

Can I get back to you on that one?

Fashion Crimes

Or not. My resolve to stick to a low HR diet lasted a couple of miles, until my riding partner cranked up the speed on the first hill and I had to step it up or be left behind. I genuinely see the long-term possible benefits, but it's much harder to stick to than I thought.

At one point we latched on to the back of a reasonably quick group of about 20, in fairly tight formation -- and I was able to wonder again at the beauty of a small peloton, the thrill of being part of such an efficient machine.

Two things spoiled my enjoyment. The first was the realisation that our rapid progress owed much more to a 20-mph tailwind than any efficiency on our part. The second was the way one of the riders in the pack was dressed.

Did I miss a meeting, or an e-mail from British Cycling HQ? Since when has it been acceptable to wear long football socks on a bike? The guy had fairly normal cycling clothes and shoes -- but spoiled the effect with knee-length white socks with stripes on.

I'm a tolerant man, and no-one who cycled through the '80's is free from some pretty serious fashion crimes on their cycling rap sheet, but there are limits. I know that new people are taking up cycling from all sorts of backgrounds and other sports, and they may not be aware of some of the unwritten rules. And some of those rules are probably due changing anyway.

And yes, all cycling clothing is capable of making even relatively stylish individuals look like numpties.

But knee-length socks? If you see him on the road, please have a word.

Spintime

The torrential rain forecast for London this morning never arrived.  But the wind did.  A horrible, howling headwind that meant I had to stand up for the slightest incline.

Which was another reason my training schedule took a bit of a dive.  I had an hour to get from home to Richmond Park, round it at least once and back home and, because of the threat of rain, I was riding my fully-mudguarded fixed.

I suspect that even Miguel Indurain would have struggled to do that on a 69-inch fixed and keep his heart-rate as low as mine is supposed to be at the moment.*

So it was head down, grit teeth and spin like buggery and I left the heart monitor in the drawer.

I think it's safe to say that the time spent "in zone" was zero -- certainly after I clipped my shoes in.

Back home, I frantically flipped through "the book" in the hope that I could somehow  categorise this morning's session as a "rapid cadence block" or a "threshold spinning period" or some such 21st Century shiznit.  

I eventually found it listed under a "slightly-better-than-stinking-in-your-pit-but-not-much session."

Made me feel better though. Back to the book tomorrow. If it doesn't rain.

*Actually I suspect Big Mig would have done it without even going above 30bpm.

Half Way Home

In the words of the great Ice Cube, today was a good day.  You'll remember that in Ice's case, his life quality was largely dependent on whether he needed to use his AK or not.  My requirements are simpler, although equally subjective. 

I was out early, rolling into Richmond Park just as it was getting light.  And what light.  Pure blue sky, bright sunshine and thick white hoar-frost across the grass.  Some of the roads had a fine white coating, but not enough to cause any slipping or sliding.  Cold but not miserably so.

And for once my legs seemed to be working;  letting me spin 25 miles in a low gear and a low heart rate.  I think that book may have something going for it after all.

Quick coffee and back home, through largely empty streets and much of the city still asleep.

My cyber-training partner Brian was complaining earlier in the week about Force Nine gales keeping him off the roads of Islay.  Which is one of the advantages of living at the warm and crowded end of the country.

Back to work this week though, and the daily London commute.  I'll be needing that AK after all.

   

Hell of the Surrey Hills

The forecasts were for a Siberian Armageddon -- knee-deep snowdrifts and temperatures down to minus 17.  Well, some of the forecasts - mainly those used by some of the online news services. The Met Office, which supplies the BBC, was more cautious -- but there would definitely be snow.

Which wasn't an auspicious start to the first serious ride of the year - a planned 50 miles through the hills of Surrey.  

We were following a Cycling Plus route which shared some of the same terrain as the excellent Serpentine Three Hills Ride.  

I had visions of us ending the ride looking like Andy Hampsten in the '88 Giro.

Out of the car-park at Westhumble station, low grey skies but no sign of the impending blizzards. For the next 30 miles, not more than a few yards were flat.  Box Hill, Leith Hill, Ranmore Common -- I felt like I was pedaling squares up the hills.  When I dared look at the heart rate monitor, it was bouncing around the 160 mark -- so much for my training programme.

And it was cold.  Bitter, soul-sapping cold through two thermal vests, and two jackets.  Only briefly helped by a corned-beef sandwich and mug of coffee outside the cyclist-friendly Peaslake Village Stores.

We cut short the ride at under 40 miles just as a light snow began to fall.  By the time we reached the station again, it had turned to drizzle.

January can be a hard month to be a cyclist.