Riding

Standing at the start I look down at my bar-tape and a section on the left-hand side just on the curve above the brake hood is tatty and ragged where it was clawed by an angry dangling bramble during ride over a week ago. Normally this would irritate me to the point of itchy-fingernails anxiety, can’t start a ride with scruffy bar-tape, it’s just not done, I even have some new tape with which I could have rectified the situation and frankly I’m quite disappointed with myself. But right now I have bigger worries on my mind.

This is brilliant. I’m over three hours into the Marrakech Atlas Étape having scaled the single big 2,129m ascent, the skies are blue, I’m way out in front on my own and my legs feel great. All I need to do now is ride back down the mountain and then do the 20 miles or so on the flat back to the start/finish. It couldn’t be going any better. Forty minutes later, I have to pull out with hypothermia.

The clocks go forward this weekend, marking the start of British Summer Time, although it doesn’t feel like there’s much of a change in the air at the time of writing with most of Europe is embraced in a cold snap.

Anyway, we’re a positive bunch here at road.cc and we know that milder weather is just around the corner. Trust us. So with the clocks going forward and all that extra daylight, there’s more riding time which should help top up flagging motivation levels no end.

General Lord Edward Somerset was an important man. One of Wellington’s favourite Generals, he even managed to combine his military career with one as an MP. Those talents, maybe aided by his family heritage, earned him a monument which you can visit near the family home at Badminton, high on the Cotswold Edge at Hawkesbury Upton. The highest part of our day’s ride.

Before you set off…

Maximise your contact patch. Road bike tyres have a larger contact patch on the road than a more knobbly mountain bike tyre, and you can maximise that precious contact further by fitting a wider tyre, and/or not running it at quite such a high pressure. That said, in snow or looser conditions a treaded tyre or even a lightly knobbed MTB or cyclocross tyre will give extra grip.

We know the winter can be tough on your motivation. It can be cold, dark and wet - it all just makes the sofa far too inviting. In fact, anything can seem like a better idea than going out on the bike. It’s surprisingly easy to talk yourself out of going for a ride, isn’t it?

That’s why we’ve rounded up 10 products that we reckon will help you get stuck in, when you’d tempted to get stuck into the mince pies instead.

Uh-oh! The chain has come off at the start of a steep, chalky climb. So I stop – well, more ‘fall off’ because I was out of the saddle when it happened – and put the chain back on as a dozen riders on classic bikes sail past. I get onto the saddle again, stamp on the pedals and the chain immediately comes off for a second time. I take a closer look… and see that the inner chainring has actually snapped. Damn it! There’s a long way to go and a lot of climbs to scale in just the 53-tooth outer ring. This could be tricky.

There’s not many sports where you can play out with the best in the world. You can’t just have a kickabout by the garages with Lionel Messi, a quick nine with Rory McIlroy is unlikely, and you most probably can’t burn it up the by-pass with Fernando Alonso. Want to go for a bike ride with a Tour De France winner and Olympic medalist? No problem, come for a Ride With Brad.

The bell in the lift pings as the doors open onto the empty hotel reception. The only sound whilst I cross the hall is the tick of my bike’s freewheel and the clip of my cycling shoes on the tile floor. I look at the clock on my bike computer, 01:00. Again I ask myself what I am doing riding out into the dark Italian summer night, my body willing me back to the warmth of my bed.