Author: CWCC

Training for the Tour de France 8:17. A personal best time. Not that anyone is celebrating you understand. There’s no one here with flowers, champagne, interestingly coloured jersey, cute cuddly toy lion with optional St. Bernard or even a well done, but nevertheless it remains my personal best time. Eight minutes and seventeen seconds. That’s all it took to acquire one weeks worth of shopping in the supermarket. With a little more training and by arriving at the supermarket earlier to avoid the post school run queue I reckon I could shave off another minute and a half. Why am I doing this? I’m training for the Tour de France.

Well, I’m not cycling around the supermarket obviously. Of course, being female I’d have to do the Tour de l’Aude instead, which is only a week long and certainly doesn’t require me to sprint around supermarkets as though my hair is on fire, because they never broadcast a second of coverage in the UK anyway. This despite the fact that Emma Pooley seems to win it regularly. Say what you like about the woeful inadequacies of the nation’s football team, we do happen to be rather good at cycling in this country, and you’d think that with all that lycra the nations papers would be plastering pictures of cyclists all over the place in a bid to raise sales. Er, where was I?

Oh yes. Standing outside a supermarket, out of breath.

I’m here practising my speed shopping so that I can maximise my Tour de France viewing. Every year I seem to miss vital parts of the race through having to do mundane things like shopping, cleaning, putting the washing out and well, living, I suppose. So this year I am in training to get any essential jobs out of the way before the coverage starts.

Do I have nothing better to do? This is something better to do! Who wouldn’t want to spend six hours a day for three weeks watching various internet tickers, reading Twitter feeds, watching Eurosport and listening to Sean Kelly, Dave Harmon and Carlton Kirby as they commentate on the racing? Well alright, so just me then. Nevertheless, I shall be doing it and I shall be doing it uninterrupted, particularly by supermarket shopping.

I could get my shopping delivered, which would solve the problem of actually fetching it. The few times I have done this I have been aghast at the amount of carrier bags required to transport items from van to house. I swear individual tins get individual carrier bags and customer service seems to be an ideal unheard of these days. Given that I live around the corner from a supermarket it just seems simpler to go and get it myself.

Other problems are coming to mind now. Do I disconnect the phone for the duration of commentary? How do I answer the door without missing that vital sprint finish? Should I rearrange the house layout so that the kettle is next to my computer? Perhaps I could just move everything into the bathroom. Well, maybe that’s going too far. I’ll keep working on my shopping instead.

Alice Wood – June 2010

I’m at Hawes with just over 50 miles and over three hours and something in my legs, so just over half way and now I’ve got to make a decision. It’s a decision that I’ve been thinking about for the past 20 miles since we left the last control point at Keld. I’m not having one of my better days and even though I’ve found the climbs of the Stang and Tan Hill reasonably comfortable the section into the wind along Mallerstang Common was really tough going and my legs feel pretty drained. My options are to ride the thirty miles back down the valley to Richmond to complete the 80 or to tackle the two hardest climbs of the day – Fleetmoss and Park Rash – and complete the 100.

Fast forward 25 miles and I’m at the top of Park Rash, the last major climb of the day, I’m soaked through, my legs are devoid of energy and I’m under no illusions that even though these 25 miles have a net height loss they will test me to the full. And so it proves to be, so much so that I have to take on an energy gel with only three miles to go to make sure that I don’t finish the ride in a heap, yes it was that bad, every minor gradient is a hill and every breath of wind means a change down in gears.

So why did I opt for the hundred? The night before the ride the forecast looked grim, persistent rain and 10 degree temperatures, and this at the end of May? Talking to Dave, Rob and Steve before we set off we reckoned that we could set off prepared for the 100 and take the option of the 50 or the 80 if conditions deteriorated. We left Richmond in light rain and all the way to Hawes the conditions weren’t too bad meaning we turned right at Keld committing to one of the two longer distances. At Hawes I thought about the cassette I’d bought with 29 teeth and the regret I’d feel if I opted for the 80 and still had something left in the tank at the finish. Rob and Steve were by now long gone having pressed on at their normal speed from Keld – Rob would later finish well within the gold standard and 10th fastest on the day – leaving Dave and myself. Dave had already made his mind up to do the 100 so I chose not to think about it at the Hawes control stop and after quickly taking on board some liquid said ‘right let’s go’ and off we went up to Fleetmoss. I’d not done this climb before and it carries before it a pretty fearsome reputation. With over 50 hard miles in your legs it is certainly a test regardless of what gears you have available to hand. Part of the problem is that you can see it all laid out before you, rising gently to start with it then rears up ferociously at the end. At first you think it doesn’t look too long, this is an optical illusion that is cruelly broken when you realise that the tiny slow moving dots in the distance are cyclists not ants. We get up the best way we can, just enough to reach the top without pressing on too hard so as to risk the rest of the ride. Once over the top it starts raining properly and never stops for the rest of the ride. Kettlewell is the next stop, I still feel okay at this point but the wet and cold is starting to have an effect.

As we start the climb out of Kettlewell I recognise it immediately having driven over it in a car, general wisdom has it that Feetmoss is the hardest climb, I would disagree, Park rash is a brute of a climb, especially after 70 miles. It’s certainly steeper, Dave likened it to the climb out of Commondale x 2, I’d say it’s worse than that. It starts steep and as we pass two riders who have given up the ghost and started to push I find it difficult to get traction on the wet surface forcing me to weave across the road to get some grip, it must be at least 25% if not more at some points. I lose a bit of ground to Dave but manage to get back as it flattens a little, but we still have a bit to go. There is a final ramp of around 20% up to the highest point, which on legs that haven’t quite recovered bites into my resolve, in the saddle or out of the saddle it makes no difference. This really is a tough climb and I’m glad of the 29 sprocket.

Throughout the ride Dave has been treating me to his analogies most of which relate to steam engines. Coals on the fire to keep your boiler up to steam is one of them, if that’s the case the fire in my boiler has just gone out and now I’m running on empty. A special mention is needed here for Dave who could have gone round at least 15 minutes quicker if he didn’t have to wait for me on the last section after Kettlewell, he even had to get the energy gel out of my own pocket for me with three miles to go as I was too cold and fatigued to do so, thanks Dave. Saying that I did save him from the embarrassment of missing his own wedding. We passed John Carr from the club just before Leyburn while he was fixing a puncture. We stopped to see if he was okay and he wished us well as we set off on our way, ‘see you at the Thursday night TT’, he said ‘Yeah see you there’, said Dave. ‘No you won’t’, I reminded him. ‘Why?’ he asked ‘Cos you’re getting married?’ I replied. ‘Oh yeah’, he said.

The organisers of this event liken it to the Etape du Dales or the Fred Whitton Challenge in the Lake District in terms of its seriousness. I’ve not done the Fred Whitton but have ridden most of the route and the climbs at one time or another on various excursions to the Lakes and would say that this ride is not quite in that league but it’s certainly very tough. As well as the named climbs there are also lots of shorter steeper digs and heavy rolling roads to contend with that eat into your reserves. It certainly feels like all its 100 miles. The 50 and 80 mile routes are also challenging and anyone who completed any of the distances can be proud of their achievement. It was good to see a fair few Wheelers’ riders completing one of the circuits, great rides from Andrew and Vicki Howe and Richard Lilleker in the 50, Steve Ward in the 80 and John Price and John Carr in the 100. We were supposed to meet up with John Price at the start but somehow failed to do so as we were a bit late setting off, we must have passed at one of the control points somewhere along the route or when John was having a ‘natural break’.

I have listed the times below:

100 mile route

• Rob Carter, Velo 29 – 5.48.36 (Gold – 10th fastest on the day)
• Rob Dotchin – 6.37.24 (Silver)
• Dave Kirton – 6.45.27 (Silver)
• Paul Christon – 6.45.40 (Silver)
• John Carr – 7.01.09 (Bronze)
• John Price – 7.10.41 (Bronze)

80 mile route

• Steve Ward – 5.51.59 (Bronze)
• Richard Wetherill – 7.01.49 (Merit)

50 mile route

• Richard Lilleker – 3.05.11 Gold – 3rd fastest on the day)
• Merrion Hughes – 3.47.56 (Bronze)
• Andrew Howe 3.49.38 (Bronze)
• Vicki Howe 3.49.43 (Bronze)

Paul Christon – June 2010

I think that it was Paul Sherwen who said something along the lines of ‘he’s going to have to dig deep into his suitcase of courage’ when referring to a rider on the Tour de France several years ago. I don’t have a suitcase of courage myself, more of a small seat pack perhaps, but I do boast a fine collection of excuses, probably a suitcase full in fact. After no riding at all for about a month due to snow and lethargy I have found myself reaching into this suitcase to fumble around for a credible reason for my slow pace, sorry did I say credible?

Anyway try these for size:

• Man flu (Cold)
• Stiff legs
• Virus
• Over training
• Under training
• Square bearing in hubs and bottom bracket (I’m sure these exist)
• Bad knee
• Low iron
• Pot holes
• Bone idle
• Heavy bike
• Lungs not big enough
• Changeable wind
• Friction
• Gravity

And oh yes how can I forget… rubbing brake blocks

But it has been cold hasn’t it? So much so that even running has been difficult, and I haven’t been going very well at that either. I tried using the rubbing brake blocks excuse for my slow running then realised that it seemed a bit implausible so had to look for something else. That’s the problem with running, equipment based excuses are limited apart from ‘my lace came undone’ so you can only blame yourself, which is no good at all.

Going back to Sherwen’s quote, he usefully combines the suitcase with the other cycling staple that is always yelled from the sidelines ‘Digging in’. Whether you are doing a time trial, a road race or a hill climb people will always tell you to ‘dig in’ as though you are preparing for trench warfare. I would also bet that they shout it at cyclo cross events too, even though I have never done one. Why this should be peculiar to cycling I don’t know. I even find myself doing it, when marshalling for example. What should I say I think as a cyclist or cyclists approach, I probably run over several responses in my mind as I stand there before involuntarily yelling ‘dig in!’ as they go by. I think that it must be subconsciously implanted into our brains when we join a cycling club. Saying that, I’m not complaining as people used to aim other less encouraging comments in my direction when I used to play football.

When you actually think about it ‘digging in’ would not be a very good tactic for a cyclist to employ, it would only slow you down surely as it suggests that you want to entrench yourself, making yourself difficult to shift. ‘Float across the ground as though you are lighter than air’ could be an improvement, if a little more difficult to remember, no that wouldn’t work, I just couldn’t imagine Bryan Bevis shouting that out.

The one advantage of the cold and icy weather is that now it’s eased a little us cyclists seem to value the opportunity to get out on our bikes more, at least if the numbers getting out on the club runs are anything to go by. The talk is of events that we will do later in the year as we try to imagine clear spring days and warm summer evenings, all we need to do now is ride through the sludge on the road through February and March and get ourselves fit.

Paul Christon – February 2010

For me the Bring and Buy sale is a pivotal moment in the cycling year. Out of the autumn gloom emerge two groups of cyclists; those looking to offload their unwanted or unneeded wares and those looking for a bargain. I seem to fit into both camps which leaves me with a bit of a problem, how do I go off shopping yet man the stall? The solution is quite simple, bring your wife then you can do both things at once ‘think of all the bike clutter we’ll get rid of and all the money I’ll make’, I told her as I wandered off.

Strangest purchase of the night on my stall, and probably any stall, was inevitably from Dave Kirton. I noticed him eyeing up some winter gloves that I had attractively priced at £4.

‘I might have these’, he said.
‘As you’re a mate you can have them for £3’, I replied
‘I’m not going to use them for cycling though’.
‘That’s okay as long as you pay me £3’.
‘No I’ve got another use for them’, he said looking rather pleased with himself.
‘You don’t need to tell me’, I said looking rather worried.
‘Yes they’ll do the job nicely’, he said as he tried them on and looked carefully at his outstretched fingers ‘perfectly in fact’.
‘Hmm’
‘I thought they’d be good for cleaning the car’, he continued.
‘That’s a relief’
‘Why what did you think I was going to use them for?’
‘I dread to think’.

Gloves aside I managed to get rid of a fair bit of stuff, but I’m always a bit surprised that decent bits of kit remain unsold while the stuff you think would be hard to shift goes like hotcakes – the unsold stuff and a few other things will be on the For Sale section on the website soon. As usual though I managed to spend more than I made, much to my wife’s exasperation ‘it’s only because Bryan nabbed me for my club membership!’ I protested, to no avail.

After the Bring and Buy the long nights are well and truly set and since then I’ve only been out on the bike about twice, other than going to work. Last year I was a Club Run regular but this year I’ve committed myself to the winter Fell Run Series, which means that Sundays are a bit difficult. As cross training fell running works quite well if you can avoid falling over – something I’ve rather worryingly managed to develop a bit of a talent for of late. The other benefit is that it has a generous prize list as the races incorporate age categories. The only problem for me though is my prizes to date total two bottles of wine and six bottles of Stella, not good for fitness but enjoyable nonetheless. It doesn’t replace biking though and I’m beginning to feel the withdrawal symptoms and my lack of cycling seems to highlight the need to shed at least another bike form my collection, especially as I haven’t even ridden it this year. So if you’re on the lookout for a steel framed classic keep an eye on the website.

I must admit that my modest success in fell running, for relatively little effort, has made me question why I bother to cycle competitively at all ‘I didn’t realise you did?’ I can hear some of you say. I suppose it comes back to the old thing of enjoying something rather than being good at it. I have to put a fair bit of effort in to cycling to be average at it while other sports come much more easily to me – running, football, cricket and racket sports for example – but cycling would be the last one I would give up. While out riding a couple of months ago with a friend who is just getting back on the bike we had a conversation along the lines of ‘if you could be good at just one sport and crap at others would you settle for that and what would it be?’ We both agreed that it would be cycling but having had some time off the bike I must admit that I’m beginning to waiver, it’s probably just the time of year I hope.

To remedy this I’ve been thinking about Christmas, most notably what bike parts I would like. If my wife’s reading this (she probably won’t be) I am also thinking of what to get you too, honest! One thing I wouldn’t advise anyone to put on their letter to Santa is a pair of those new Crud full length guards for road bikes with close clearance. I shelled out over 20 quid for a pair and have since spent far too long getting them to fit without rubbing. They’re weird, you can get them just about right, even do a ride on them, then next time you get the bike out of the shed they’re rubbing again and you fiddle around trying to adjust them and they just drive you nuts. The problem is they’re too flimsy so easily drag on the tyre and the clearance is just too tight with little margin at all for adjustment, stick to Raceblades, they’re not perfect but they work.

I’ve almost, almost…, got to the point where I have all the bike parts and accessories I need, other than a really nice Goretex winter jacket (hope my wife is reading this), which leaves me with a rather dull cycling related list, which at the time of writing looks like this.

Dear Santa please could you bring me:

• An 8 speed chain
• 9 speed chain
• Some dry lube
• 4 bog standard inner tubes
• A bottle cage

Not much to play with on Christmas day is it? And to make matters worse I would have to order it myself as I wouldn’t trust anyone to get the right makes, the magic of Christmas eh?

Paul Christon – November 2009

After a 5am rise we picked up Dave and his impressive stock of sandwiches at 6am. A fairly traffic free drive saw us reach Whitehaven at about twenty past eight. Just before this Dave treated us to one of his jokes ‘I see no ships, only hardships’. It was to be the first of many, unfortunately for me.

After using the Tesco toilet to lighten the load – every little helps! – and getting my bike ready I left Dave lying in Tesco’s car park stretching his back and fussing over his sandwiches while I wandered off trying to find a way of dipping my back wheel into the harbour, technically the Irish Sea. I must have looked suitably clueless because soon a local man took charge of the situation and led me to the proper place, a sculpture that has been erected on a slipway into the harbour to mark the official start point of the C2C. I did wonder if he was employed by the good people of Whitehaven to make sure that witless cyclists do the ride properly and don’t just set off from the Tesco car park. Once my sister Sarah had taken the requisite photo I rode back to meet Dave and we began the ride at a quarter to nine.

Straight away you are faced with the climb out of Whitehaven which lasts about half a mile and is around 8% or so. Once we were over this we headed off in a south westerly direction with the wind right behind us and despite the heavy traffic it was good to get the ride under way after all the preparation. The first 20 miles flew by in little more than an hour and it wasn’t until we turned south just after Cockermouth that we had to work into a wind, the drop in speed came as a bit of a shock to the system but soon we were heading south east again and were holding our own against a side wind.

All this talk of wind makes it sound as though we were obsessed, and indeed this was true. Normally bikers like light winds, or no wind, as rides normally have the same start and end point. In a linear ride though you only think about direction. Our conversations on training rides over the previous two weeks had gone something like this:

Me (when referring to the easterly winds): Imagine if the wind direction is like this on the day?

Dave: Nightmare

Or vice versa, we even started sending each other emails and texts along similar lines, each passing comment on wind direction or strength, and who says cyclists have limited conversations! A few days before though I noticed that the Met Office website was predicting a change so our communication took on a more optimistic tone. For wind enthusiasts out there the direction in Cumbria at the start of the ride was a South Westerly and the strength 12 mph rising to 15mph later in the day. The day before there had been Westerly gales of around 35mph which sounds really good but would have been quite scary on some of the descents over the Pennines.

So here we were breezing along, literally, the wind at our backs, the rain holding off, perfect. After 45 miles we got to Penrith and said farewell to the A66. For me the next stretch was one of the hardest of the day, a couple of hours in and with the initial freshness gone from my legs the rolling heavy road started to take its toll a little. I mentioned this to Dave as we approached the Hartside climb, mainly to prevent him going up too hard, but also to seek reassurance ‘was he finding it hard too?’ I thought. He seemed quite easy and said that the roads were a bit heavy and that we’d take it easy on the climb. Strangely enough once on the climb I felt good, at 5 miles long and around 6% it’s the sort of climb where you can get into a rhythm and keep it there and after half an hour we were at the 1,900 foot summit, the high point of the ride and a magnificent view. There was a problem though, where was our support vehicle? My wife and sister had arranged to meet us here so we could take on energy drinks and food. We had planned two stops, one here at around the 60 mile point and another at Staindrop at around 100 miles. It was pretty cold and we didn’t fancy hanging around so I made a quick call on my mobile. The estimated meeting times that I had given were based on an average of about 16-17 mph and with a following wind most of the way we were well ahead of schedule and they were just outside Penrith.

Five minutes later and we were belting down to Alston hitting 35 – 45 mph most of the way, a great bit of the ride. The ride up Alston High Street on the other hand was one of the worst. It’s not exactly cobbles, rather uneven polished bricks, but they shake you to bits just the same and it was a relief when they were over. A few miles down the road and our support vehicle containing my wife Shelly, my sister Sarah and more importantly Dave’s sandwiches caught us up. We were at the 65 mile point, nearly halfway, and as I watched Dave tuck into to his sandwiches I realised that all the food that I had brought was banana flavoured, especially the bananas, stands to reason I suppose. Well almost, I had seven energy bars and six were banana flavoured, the other one being chocolate orange flavoured and almost uneatable. I looked over at Dave enviously.

The next stretch was possibly the hardest, especially the long drag as you approach the Durham border. It’s around three miles or so and probably not much more than 4% but we were into a stiff head/cross wind and it was surprisingly tough, this was where Dave had his bad patch. Once over this the road swung back towards the east and we followed the valley past High Force, through Middleton in Teesdale and on towards our second stop at Staindrop.

40 miles to go and most of it flat, we had to negotiate Darlington Centre and Yarm High Street, easy places to have a mishap among the traffic, but we got through okay and once we were over Leven Bank we knew we had done it. We both felt quite good on this last bit and did the last 40 miles in 1 hour 50 minutes. We finally arrived at Redcar sea front at 4.25pm after 7 hours 40 minutes total time and 7 hours 4 minutes ride time. We were surprised that we had done it so quick, averaging 19.3 mph, but we had good conditions and favourable winds most of the way. The tide was right out so down the beach we trudged carrying our bikes for about a quarter of a mile so we could get the photograph. There was no Redcar equivalent of the Whitehaven man to show us the way but that was no excuse, it had to be done.

At the time of writing we think we have raised about £450 – £500 for Middlesbrough Mind so there was a great sense of achievement. As a ride I would thoroughly recommend it, Whitehaven seems the obvious place to start and the Hartside climb is almost essential but once you reach Alston how you get to the East Coast is up to you, whichever route you do it works out at around the same distance – ours was 137 miles. It’s tough but not too tough and is well within the scope of most club cyclists within a day. Make sure you do it on a day without a head wind though, we reckon it would have taken us about 1-2 hours longer if it had been an easterly wind and it would affect morale. Oh yes and another thing, follow Dave’s example when planning your food rather than mine and pack some sandwiches!

Paul Christon – October 2009