Irontwit

In 1977 I was a very short 3rd year at Kettering Grammar School. I was just old enough to be starting to visit record shops on my own and the very first album I bought for myself was Rattus Norvegicus by the Stranglers. The previous summer, my team, the mighty Southampton FC had upset the form book by beating Tommy Docherty’s all conquering Manchester United in the FA Cup with a peach of a goal by the late Bobby Stokes (no, it wasn’t offside). I was starting to rove further and further afield on my bicycle around the lanes of Northamptonshire.

I loved my bike, it represented freedom and I regularly visited my friends in nearby Kettering and villages around to play wargames with Airfix tanks and toy soldiers. Every July, though, my attention would turn to the sports pages of the Guardian (our family newspaper) to read about the Tour de France.

Quite why I started to follow the Tour I have no idea. Back then, there was no TV coverage and names such as Zoetemelk, Van Impe and Hinault were just names in newsprint. It may have been due to the fact that every summer we drove all the way through France to visit my grandparents in Spain and I would see huge numbers of tanned cyclists on skinny steel-framed bikes zooming around the French countryside wearing colourful trade team jerseys. It certainly wasn’t due to there being a great British hero in the Tour at the time, Barry Hoban having won his last stage back in 1975. Perhaps it was the fact that, like many young boys, I’d always be striving for the unobtainable, and every visit I made to a bike shop I’d spend ages looking at the immaculate Italian frames by the likes of Colnago and Bianchi. There is something timeless about the appeal of a classic steel frame and my desktop image today is that of a Colnago Master frameset in red – a pipedream project of mine. It didn’t seem to occur to me that even if I had saved every penny I owned I still couldn’t have bought one as they didn’t produce a frame designed for the shortest kid in the year.

Channel 4 started broadcasting in 1982 and prior to that the only way I knew how to follow the Tour was to read the short stage reports in the back pages of the Guardian. The names of the great summits like Tourmalet, Galibier and L’Alpe d’Huez were known to me only through photos of the greats on the pages of magazines. I distinctly recall Hinault’s victories in 1978 and 1979 in which the Dutch rider Joop Zoetemelk finished runner up and elated in Zoetemelk’s victory at his 13th attempt in 1980 when Hinault abandoned with a knee injury.

As things turned out, Channel 4 started broadcasting the Tour just as things started to get interesting from an English speaking point of view. Sean Kelly was in his pomp, winning the green jersey in ‘82, ‘83 and ‘85 and my first real cycling hero, Robert Millar,  became the only Brit to ever win a “classification” by pedalling up to Guzet-Neige and taking the polkadot jersey to Paris. His 4th place became a highwater mark for Brits in the Tour until Cav’s exploits over the last two tours and Wiggins’ epic ride last summer. I saw Millar race in the twilight of his career (must have been about 1990) when he raced in the Kellogg’s series city centre race in Manchester. He crashed right in front of me tearing his lycra shorts quite badly but carried on regardless.

My next Tour hero was obvious. Lemond had already finished on the podium twice by the time he won in 1986 and to add spice to the brew, there was a bitter internecine struggle going on in his team between him and Hinault. Lemond’s subsequent win in 1989 was nothing short of incredible. The 8 seconds by which he beat the inscrutable Freanchman, Fignon on the Champs Elysee was one of sport’s epic transcendental moments. The fact that he won again in 1990 was almost incidental. Greg Lemond had that killer combination of fighting against the established order by innovating (think Oakley sunglasses and tri bars) and being the all American kid.

The early 90s lacked a true hero for me as it was difficult to warm to the dominating Indurain, however these years were enlivened more than somewhat by the Tashkent Terror, Djamolidene Abdoujaparov, whose sprinting must have terrified his opponents.

Next we entered the “Dark Years” and although there was some classic TV coverage, nobody could really believe in the now discredited victories of Riis (‘96), Ullrich (‘97) and Pantani (‘98). Despite the furore of the Festina affair and the dominance of Armstrong for 7 tours I still watched the coverage religiously, and in a somewhat unlikely move, my next Tour hero became the Aussie hardman Stuey O’Grady. This happened accidentally as I had purchased a Cofidis team jersey in 2003 while visiting a Decathlon superstore near Paris to show my support for David Millar. To my disgust, Millar got busted for EPO the following years and Stuey was the other English speaker on the team. He was the classic underdog (something that always appeals to me  as a Saints fan), perenially finishing in the top ten (he was second in the green jersey competition 3 times) his win in the 2007 Paris Roubaix is one of my all time favourite sporting moments. I’m still a big fan, and although Stuey now uses his experience to direct his team on the road rather than go hell for leather in the sprints, watching him put in massive turns on the front of the peloton for his team mates is still awe inspiring.

Stuey wearing "my jersey"

I finally got to watch the Tour live in 2007 at the “Grand Depart” in London. Bradley didn’t quite bring home the bacon and Stuey crashed while setting the fastest time leaving the day clear for big Fabian Cancellara to grab the Maillot Jaune, but, like everybody else who went for those two days, the sights and sounds will remain indelibly etched.

Funnily enough, despite the last 2 years being the greatest ever in terms of British involvement, I can’t class Mark Cavendish or Bradley Wiggins as true heroes of mine (I do enjoy Brad’s Twitter stream, though). You can’t help but admire the incredible way Cavendish uses his speed to finish off stages having been set up by his Columbia sprint train, or the way in which Wiggo suffered on Mont Ventoux to hold on to 4th place, but I find neither character particularly appealing. Perhaps also the successive drug scandals (note to M. Proudhomme, we really don’t want to see Rasmussen, Vinokourov or Ricco in the Tour peloton ever again) have taken their toll. Nevertheless I still love the race and I hope that I can find a new hero this summer. Maybe Roger Hammond who refused to compete in a three week Tour until we had completed a whole race without a drug bust (he rode for Cervelo Test team at the Vuelta Espana last year after the Tour de France ended without any positive tests) will finally get a chance to ride. I’ve seen Roger win twice in the Tour of Britain (Blackpool and Liverpool – where he scalped Tom Boonen amongst others) and would love to see him given an opportunity. Or perhaps, Russell Downing? Russell is the classic “home grown” talent who has been signed by the Sky uber team. Only 5 months to go…

In a post a few weeks back I was bemoaning the temptation of using Wiggle and the other online retailers at the expense of your local bike shop. My point was, not that Wiggle et al are bad as such, but rather that we need to remember who is going to help us when the chips are down. I draw a parallel to the Borders bookstore situation: one of my favourite ways of whiling away an hour when other people want to check out the Next sale is to sit in Starbucks in a Borders store with a coffee and a cycling mag. I can’t do that in Stockport any more as Borders is gone. Maybe I bought too many coffees and not enough mags.

When I had my smash last week I knew I needed to get back on the road asap, and I knew I would need to use my local bicycle shop to do it. Nobody else would be able to offer the kind of flexible and personal service I needed. I intended to use the whole of the running gear on my existing bike and I don’t think that Wiggle would take too kindly to a bunch of second hand Dura Ace bits turning up on their doorstep on the basis that I was buying a frame from them. I know there are some folk who like nothing more than tinkering with the intricacies of index shift gear systems, and I do, to a point, but building up a solid reliable bike from scratch isn’t something I’ve done for many a year. In actual fact, I did end up buying a few bits from Wiggle – they had the Oval R900 handlebars that I love so much down from £130 to £56 in the sale and that’s the kind of bargain that no local bike shop can hope to compete with. I’m sure I could have saved a few more quid by shopping around for bits online, but the bottom line is I want Bicycle Smithy in Hazel Grove to be there next week/month/year and for that I’m happy to forego the fact that I could get an extra fiver off a new stem if I shopped on the web.

Yesterday I got the call from Jon at Bicycle Smithy that my frame had arrived; I’ve gone for the Kinesis high modulus carbon special, the list price for which is £1200. This may sound like a heck of a lot, but when you look at the spec of the frame it’s easily competing with frames that are anything up to twice the cost, it just doesn’t have a swish Italian name badge on it. The bike will also have a nice new Oval carbon seatpost and Oval carbon stem to match the bars so should end up looking very cool indeed.

For those that like to know these things:

• Kinesis KR810 high modulus carbon frame with Tracer fork;
• Dura Ace 7800 gruppo with Hope ceramic bottom bracket and TRP920 brakes;
• Oval R900 stem, handlebars and seatpost;
• Selle Italia SLR T1 saddle;
• Mavic Ksyrium SL Premium wheels.

Pics and first impressions coming soon: thanks to Jon at Bicycle Smithy!

After the last 6 weeks of non-training culminating in my smash on the bike, it’s a relief to be training again. Actually, I’ve managed to build the running quite steadily, and it seems I’ve had no ill effects from the crash. I ran for 14km last night in a reasonable 1:15, and that’s after a fast 10k on Friday night in 44 mins; not bad for a week that started with a bike wreck of cosmic proprtions.

Jon at Bicycle Smithy gave the Principia the once over and gently broke it to me that it was time that the old girl went to the frame graveyard in the sky:

• Front fork snapped;
• Frame cracked where headtube meets top tube and downtube;
• two busted rims;
• Carbon fibre handlebars had a heavy impact, so retired.

It’s a testament to the strength of the Principia frame that it didn’t actually snap or bend, still it’s done four years sterling service. I’ve actually found that the top tube length was a little too long for my liking giving the bike a very relaxed ride, but making it quite difficult to get a comfortable yet aggressive position when using clip-on tri bars. My number one priority when selecting a replacement is finding a slightly more aggressive geometry yet remaining comfortable enough for longer sportives. I also want to take the opportunity to move up to a full carbon frame which will hopefully give me better shock absorption as well as some weight saving (although the Principia was pretty light). All the running gear, including the shifters are still in good order so that’s one small mercy, I suppose.

I think I’m going to go for Kinesis KR810 frame with their tracer fork. In the small size the frame weighs an impressive 985g and the top tube length is 2.5cm shorter than the Principia. I’ll mate this with a slightly longer stem making the overall difference 1.5cm which I’m hoping will be just the right sort of reduction to give the ride I’m looking for. The problem is, how to pay for a new frame and assorted bits while waiting for compensation. I spoke to the police last night, and they are definitely prosecuting the driver so there should be no question of liability.

Two funny things and two good thing happened today, despite the obvious downer of wrecking my bike (see previous post). Firstly, when I told the taxi driver who brought me home (think heavily overdosed on kebabs with a broad Glaswegian brogue) about my wee accident and my intention to climb into a hot tub when I got home he replied, “In my spare time I’m a qualified sports therapist, and you don’t want to do that. You should get into an ice bath instead.” Nuff said.

When I got home I thought I’d check my email, and top of the list was an email from 10 Downing Street concerning the 3 feet 2 pass e-petition that I’d signed a few months back. Needless to say, the petition was rejected. I thought the irony was quite funny at the time.

And the good things? Since tweeting about my accident, three cyclists have offered to lend me a bike via Twitter. I’m going to take up @jobysp’s offer of his Specialized with sincere gratitude. I came across Joby a few days ago when I chanced upon a Daily Mail article about his campaign to raise awareness about bad driving against cyclists. Turns out he’s quite local to me (Hyde) and his blog is definitely worth a look.

The second good thing is that when tweeting about the accident I suggested cheekily to @brainPOP_UK that they might like to make a cycle safety video for their brilliant resource bank of videos for schools. They thought it was an excellent idea and have asked for some input from me. If you are involved in education and you haven’t come across BrainPOP, their site is well worth a good look at. There is plenty of free content and free trials as well as the subscription stuff. So maybe I’ll be embedding a road safety video on here at some point in the not too distant future.

Spot the technical problem

It goes from bad to worse. I got knocked off my bike today by a VW Golf driver who turned right, across the traffic. Obviously a cyclist in a bright yellow top is invisible when travelling towards you in broad daylight at 20 mph. Fortunately, despite wrecking his front wing and putting a me shaped dent in his windscreen I seem to have come away with little more than bruises, though the various tweaks and twinges I’m getting suggest that waking up tomorrow morning might be an altogether more painful affair.

My bike, however is looking decidedly worse for wear. My lovely high modulus carbon forks have snapped clean through; the headset is rattling about in the headtube; the front wheel isn’t quite as round as it was, and my shifters are most definitely hors de combat. Hopefully the driver’s insurance won’t have too many quibbles, which considering the police attended the accident and told me that they intend to prosecute, seems unlikely. The complete pain is the few weeks it will take to sort out while I am without bike.

To finish the Shakespearean quote “…Made glorious summer by this son of York;” Well, my summer will only be made glorious by the rapid delivery of a new steed. Watch this space.

Looking back through my training diaries I can see that for the last few winters at least I’ve been out running and riding on the roads throughout. A succession of mild winters has meant that I haven’t bothered at all with indoor training. This winter, of course, has been completely different. It started off with a nasty chest infection in the run up to Christmas which meant no training at all. Then, as I started to recover from that I pulled a calf muscle badly, after a further week’s recovery the calf went again (in a different place). Along came the Big Freeze and that ruled out riding, too (not having an mtb to head out into the white stuff). As a result, I’ve had 6 whole weeks off the bike and it’s only through the last week gone that I’ve managed to do anything like a proper week’s training since Christmas

Amazingly, I’m running really well. The calf has benefited from the rest, as well as all the extra yoga and core strength that I’ve been doing. I’ve been making sure that all my runs have a high cadence element to them at some point, and I’m keeping the intensity much higher than I normally would at this time of year. Hopefully, this will mean that the fitness will come back relatively quickly.

The cycling, on the other hand, has been little short of a disaster. I managed to commute to and from work once last week, and my legs were shocked. It didn’t help that I’d switched from a compact crankset to a 52/39 as I want to train much more specifically for time trialling this year. At some point I’m going to have to switch back to a compact, as I haven’t got a hope in hell of getting round the Fred Whitton on a standard crankset. In the meantime, my legs are just going to have to take the burn as I try and build the strength to turn over bigger gears on the flat.

I'm in the Fred Whitton for 2010 again

As someone involved in the education sector, I’ve seen the proliferation of unconference events such as Teachmeet over the last few years. These events are organised “from below”; the delegates decide on the agenda and do the presenting. Generally speaking they are free and thus not susceptible to the commercial pressures that conventional conferences are subjected to.

I’ve been thinking for a while that there ought to be space for events like this in sport. Normally, of course, you buy training plans, a coach’s time, sign up for a training camp etc. These things cost various amounts from nominal fees to quite a lot of money. The question is, is there a space for a self-organised “unconference style” training camp over a weekend where anybody can come along? “Official” organisation would be limited to setting up a wiki to disseminate information and for folk to register interest. There may be scope to group book accommodation and maybe a Saturday night meal if that’s what people wanted. There will be no formal coaching or organised rides or runs. Everything at the event will be organised by attendees.

The Ironmeet idea is obviously aimed at preparation for Ironman UK and attendees would be able to cycle the published bike course and run on the published run course. However, anybody can attend perhaps as reconnaissance for a future Ironman bid, or just to find out about triathlon. The Ironmeet idea has no assets (beyond a domain registration), or bank account, is not “owned”  or formally constituted by anyone and is absolutely not insured. Everyone attending would be expected to take full responsibility for themselves and have their own cycle/medical insurance etc as they deem appropriate.

If you think this idea has mileage, please blog, tweet or talk about it and register interest through a comment on this post. I have registered Ironmeet.net as a domain solely to provide a convenient wikispace to run the event from and it will be up and running in due course. My current thinking is late May early June at a campsite in or around Rivington (last year’s transition) to have ease of access to the run and bike courses, although I’m entirely open to suggestions.

It should be noted that Ironman UK has organised official training camps for the event (although the page on the IMUK website is down at the moment) and this meet is in no way intended to compete with those events.

Image from Richard Seipp at qwertyphoto.com

Shame on the Capital Projects Committee for voting through the report recommending the continued ban of bicycles on Manchester’s tram system during off peak hours. I seem to recall that the City Council were clamouring to associate themselves with cycling last year by bestowing the Freedom of the City on the successful Olympic Cycling team based at the Manchester Velodrome last November. So now, when it comes to actually providing cyclists with some real support they fluff their lines. Not only did they agree to continue the ban, the whole thing was conducted in an underhand and shady way designed to prevent public consultation and input. The ridiculous situation persists whereby buggies and prams etc are allowed on Metrolink and all bikes, even specifically designed folding bikes, are banned unless carried in a case. Shame on Metrolink and the committee for subverting democracy in such an underhand way.

For the record, the 5 Labour members of the committee voted to defer the decision until the report had been made public; the 7 Lib Dems and Conservatives voted to accept.

Manchester prefers cyclists to remain indoors

Image by johnthescone under a Creative Commons licence from Flickr

If there’s one area of lifestyle that has more cobblers written about it than any other, it’s surely diet. For couch potatoes there are thousands of diet books, diet plans, clubs  and groups etc. that all promise startling results while eating “all the things you like” (Yeah right. Has anyone published the Cornish Pasty diet yet?). For the athlete there are the myriad bars, shakes and gels all promising “scientifically proven” performance improvement. Guess what? Iif one product guaranteed a performance improvement above any other, then every serious athlete in the world would be using it. For pro athletes, winning is the only game in town. Then there are all the nutritionists lining up to give you advice. Tip: dietician = classically trained scientist; nutritionist = lack of formal qualification, at best purveyor of sound advice, at worst purveyor of baseless woo. And all the scientific claims made about all the incredible (let’s stick to legal, here) products that you never knew were just waiting to transform you into Lance Armstrong/Michael Phelps/Chrissie Welington. So writing a blogpost about diet presents a number of problems – first and foremost, I’m not a dietician.

My aim here is to talk a little bit about what works for me and to point the reader at some useful online articles to provide a little more information.

As a person I have a tendency to put on weight easily and for about 3 seasons my racing weight was around 74-78kg which made me pretty overweight for my height (169cm) according to Wii Fit. This didn’t stop me doing 5 half ironman races. However, last season I lined up for Ironman UK at 67kg. As you can imagine, this made a tremendous difference, and in fact, I doubt that I would have made it to the finish line weighing 10kg more. How did I manage to do this?

First of all, there is a natural contradiction in the approach to burning energy when you are engaging in long endurance events like Ironman. You want to conserve energy as much as possible through efficient mechanics, but also by slowing the rate at which your body burns fuel, if you can. This works against the traditional aim of weight loss which is to try to increase your rate of energy consumption and thus speed up weight loss. The conventional way athletes have tried to improve the body’s efficiency at conserving energy is by training “starved” – usually done by long runs or 2 hour bike rides before breakfast. The danger of doing this is to push your body into a major “bonk” – hypoglycemic shed collapse (dangerously low blood sugar levels). I’ve tried training like this, and it’s no fun: you are slower and I’m sure it teaches you bad habits in terms of pedalling and running style as you struggle for energy. It’s ok for an early morning swim before breakfast or short run, but 2 hour sessions aren’t for me.

Yum, my downfall

Secondly, and most dangerous for me, is the “train to earn treats” syndrome. Namely, you put back all the energy you’ve just lost, and more besides by over-eating after training. This is incredibly easy to do. If you have done a 4 or 5 hour bike ride you may well have burned upwards of 2,000 calories, but how many calories did you put in during the course of the ride in the shape of energy drinks and bars? A single Powerbar contains 220 calories, so it’s pretty easy to see that you could have consumed 1,000 calories and more while training and thus require a relatively small meal after training merely to remain in “energy balance”. During the winter I am known to enjoy a cake or two after a training ride. The consequence is that I put weight on over the dark months, something I don’t worry about too much as  I enjoy some mental downtime and I’m sure my body benefits. But just by upping the training volume after Christmas doesn’t automatically mean that the weight drops off. This great blogpost on Science of Sport shows how difficult it actually is to get the energy in/energy out equation right. The upshot of all this is that I need to work at weight loss.

In working out a weight loss regime for me I make sure that in order train properly I am in a fit state to begin, so I follow these rules:

• Prior to training I eat plenty of carbs to fuel my training session, e.g.cereal plus dried fruit plus banana for breakfast, or a wholemeal bread sandwich plus salad for lunch etc.
• During training I take nutrition according to the needs of the training session: only water if it is less than 1 hour in length; energy drink if it’s up to 2 hours; bars, energy drinks etc if longer than 2 hours. As far as possible I try and plan my needs for the ride/run and stick to the plan (it’s good discipline for Ironman racing, anyway).
• After training I try and eat a small meal or recovery shake immediately – I love the ForGoodnessShakes brand. These things are pretty calorific  (over 330 calories per 500g bottle) so it’s easy to overdo the energy replacement if you’re not careful.

There is a school of thought that says starving yourself after training is the best way to lose weight fast: all that exercise speeds up your rate of calorie consumption and that effect continues for a while after training. The trouble is that by doing this you are compromising your recovery by not putting back in vital nutrients and carbohydrates. You are also leaving yourself prone to depressing your immune system and catching infections. The last thing I want is to succumb to injury or infection so I will always put effective recovery above losing extra pounds: I want to be strong, fit and raring to go for my next training session.

Perhaps the biggest problem for me is rest day eating. I have a tendency to eat just as much as if I were doing a big training day, and this immediately undoes all the good work I’ve put in. I don’t count calories in detail, as this is prone to wide margins of error (see the Science of Sport blogpost above), instead I use the Weightwatchers point counting system (“What!?” I hear you exclaim) simply as a guide (I just use one of their point counting guides – I don’t go to the meetings ). Actually, the reason that this works for me is that it gets me to write down everything I eat and I can see easily if I’m within the target I’ve set myself. Again, I try and eat healthily and normally for breakfast and lunch, it’s just the evening meal and evening snacks where I really have to be more disciplined. As far as possible I try to eat early and avoid carbohydrates for the evening meal.

So my weight loss regime can be summed up as follows:

• Eat properly before and during exercise;
• Eat sufficient of the right sort of stuff immediately after exercise to aid efficient recovery;
• Avoid high carb meals in the evening;
• Watch what you eat very carefully on rest days in particular.

Obviously, “eating properly” means healthy food choices such as fresh fruit and veg, unprocessed simple carbs

Go easy on the croutons

like rice, cereals and so forth. I’ll sort out my store cupboard: no biscuits, cakes etc. to avoid temptation, particularly post workout. And lastly, I’ll use some simple tactics when shopping like buying cold pressed virgin rapeseed oil instead of olive oil (half the saturated fat). I tend to buy higher quality lean meats too – I can always tell when my iron levels are dropping during a big exercise block as my evening salad will be partnered with a nice sirloin steak instead of the usual ham/tuna/chicken combo.

I would reiterate my earlier statement that I am not a dietician and this post is based on what I’ve read and my experience as a triathlete.

Yesterday I weighed in at 71.1kg (I managed to stay below 70kg all the way through Christmas, but injury and the Big Freeze has meant things have slipped a bit). I have just found that I’m in the Fred Whitton Challenge again this May so, if I want to beat 8 hours, I’m setting myself a target of less than 65kg on the startline on May 9th. If I achieve this I’ll be lighter than anytime in the last 25 years!

Blogposts on diet:

Fellow triathlete, Austinslide’s take on weight loss

Science of Sport blog, a great series of posts on weight loss (read oldest first)

Professor David Colquhon’s discussion on Gary Taube’s book “The Diet Delusion”

Images: Cornish Pasty by analiem under a Creative Commons licence from Flickr ; Salad by minato under a Creative Commons licence from Flickr

Way back in 2002 the Greater Manchester Local Transport Plan (LPT1) committed in principle to carry bicycles during off-peak hours. This was backed up by a survey of almost 1000 passengers on the tram service who declared themselves 85% in favour of allowing such a proposal. This commitment was never put into effect and despite indications in 2008 that the new trams coming into service would be more spacious and thus facilitating the carrying of bicycles, this evening the Capital Projects Committee are being asked to nod through the recommendation of a report that such a commitment should be shelved (see previous blogpost) even though the report having received no public consultation whatsoever.

This is a shameful situation, especially when you compare London Transport’s attitude to the carrying of bicycles off-peak on the Tube.

This link is London Transport’s official map showing which lines may carry bicycles off-peak – including lines right into the heart of the city:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/tube-map-bicycles1b.pdf

Click on the thumbnail to view a larger version of the map.

I also know that Manchester cycling campaign groups have provided evidence of long lists of European urban light railway systems that allow the carriage of bicycles, all of which appear to have been ignored by the report being presented this evening.

I’ll let you know the outcome.

Update:

And here it is: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/green-living-blog/2010/jan/15/manchester-bikes-on-trams

And Manchester is the home of British Cycling. Rubbish.