My relationship with cycles with treaded knobbly tyres is a long and complex one. Once way back in the mists of my competitive youth off-road riding meant winter cyclo-cross races held at muddy playing fields or municipal recreation grounds during the road racing off-season. Like many aspiring junior roadies I subjected myself to these bleak windswept afternoons of cycling …
Tag: cycle
Winter Riding – The great sartorial leveller
One of the best things about riding during the UK winter is the way that mother nature helps to level the playing field. For a start when the roads take on their winter plumage of mud, frozen cowshit and massive potholes that seasonal British beast the 'winter bike' makes its first appearance of the year …
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The Wet and Winding Road
Remember remember soggy November, shit weather, crashes and snot - goes the UK riders parody of a well-known children's nursery rhyme. Yup, November is my full-blown excuse fest month. The slightest thing can keep me indoors and off the bike. Sainsbury's delivery? no problem dear, I'll stay in all day waiting for it in case it comes …
Strava – The route to minor cycling immortality or a descent into madness?
During my knee induced layoff I've been pondering my rather meagre cycling achievements. Since what I now like to refer to as 'my riding prime' pre-dated the digital age its highly unlikely that my best results from my racing days are recorded anywhere except in my fading memories. Past glories such as my heroic third …
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Cycling Forums – I ride, ergo I must always be right, ergo everyone else must be wrong and is therefore a moron of the first magnitude!
Would a relative beginner notice the difference if he bought a carbon fibre framed bike? and would said hypothetical bike make him faster? A seemingly innocent question which was posed recently on one of the most popular UK-based cycling forums in the section specifically for beginners to our sport / hobby. A reasonable enough question for a …
Cycling Etiquette – What not to wear, what not to ride, and what not to say!
A once famous cycle racer who now must not be named once said 'its not just about the bike', and he was right. Although the bike is terribly important in terms of things such as frame material, manufacturer and chainset configuration, it's also about what the rider wears, how he or she wears it, and most …
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Best Five Cycling Books (Well, best six really)
With my troublesome knee restricting my already restricted riding opportunities, my thoughts have turned to one of my other favourite pastimes - reading. I've always been an unashamed book-worm, devouring Tolkien and Twain at an age when it was deemed deeply uncool to open anything other than a football (or cycling!) magazine. The literature of …
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Knee Pain – Continue riding or rest up? (man-up or laze-up?)
As we enter a period of what our weather forecast professionals tell us could be an Indian Summer my body which as been relatively creak free all through yet another wet miserable British summer has decided to celebrate the warmer temperatures by throwing its metaphorical teddy out of the pram. My left knee is sending all the …
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The Declining Cyclist 