Blogs

Rob at the forum writes:

Obviously its starting to get a little warmer now, and nearly time to break out the shorts. What are your feelings on whether to shave legs or not?

That many of us are already obliged to frustrate nature's wishes to satisfy the aesthetic preferences of our partners is reason enough to consider the enlargement of this mandate a depilation too far.

Dylan at the forum writes:

Ive been cycling road bikes for about a year now with no real structure to my training. My Friends are trying to convince me to start racing but im nowhere near fit enough. Now here is where the main problem is Im a fully border at school and im not aloud to go out cycling even at weekends. The facilities availible include Bike maschines, a swmming pool, rowing mashines and all the various other gym equipment like treadmills theyre is also a weights room.

A combination of pressure by cyclists and London Assembly members successfully achieved an increase of £52m in the cycling budget during the next three years. On the 18th of February the Mayor confirmed that the budget for the three years was £334m, after two weeks of pressure in support of an Assembly motion proposed by Jenny Jones AM, that total had increased to £386m. We didn’t get the 2% of the TfL budget that a cross party Assembly report said that cycling deserved, but it was still a big success.

“That’s quite a pizza dish you’ve got there”, says the veteran club cyclist, viewing my new cassette with its 30-tooth biggest cog. My shame grows as I follow his disdainful gaze forward to the compact chain rings. I can almost hear his brain make the calculation: this clown has a 30-inch gear! On a racing bike!

That tickle at the back of your throat...

Thursday and Friday last week I drove to work.  Didn't feel like riding, blamed the kids getting up in the night, I felt tired, I felt lazy, I didn't do the usual pre-race mental preparation, I just wanted to go to bed.  Sure enough, Saturday morning arrived with that slight niggle at the back of my throat.  I just wanted to get through the day, unfortunately the race wasn't until 2pm. 

Specifically, Hell is all those riders faster and fitter than I am, churning up the byways of the North Cotswolds for me. Bastards. It's not like the HONC isn't challenging enough already.

“I don’t have an engine in the bike guys. Don’t ask me how I did it.”

Fabian Cancellara has just staggered up two flights of narrow stairs, an exhausted appearance spread across his face, into the VIP room in the Roubaix velodrome . He begins to tell the story of his emphatic victory, one that places him in the history books as one of the few to do the Flanders/Paris-Roubaix double not once, but twice.

“I think the hands are okay, but the rest of the body just, how can I say, flat fucked.”

This is why. 'Nuff said.

People win British Cycling points all weekend, every weekend, they win them during the week, seemingly to a Category 4 rider such as myself, they win them in their sleep.  It takes 10 points to move up from a Cat 4 to a Cat 3... 40 to move up from Cat 3 to Cat 2, 200 to move up to a Cat 1 and a whopping 300 to become an Elite...

2013 marks my first full season on the road, racing for Wheelbase/Altura/MGD. I'll be using this blog to give a bit of an insight into the trials and tribulations of a young rider in the UK scene. For more day-to-day ramblings, you can follow me on Twitter @liamtglen.