Tag: cycling jersey

Man Down!

Club Run – Saturday 30th May, 2015

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance:                                     110.2km/68.5 miles with 1,099 metres of climbing

Ride Time:                                             4 hours 16 minutes

Group size:                                            33 cyclists at the start. A handful of FNG’s

Weather in a word or two:               Bright, breezy, chilly. (Okay, 3)

Main topic of conversation at the start: Half Man Half Biscuit and the Dukla Prague away kit, the Sausage Festival and answering lots of sensible questions for one of the young FNG’s, who turned out to be super-fit and well able to handle himself without any of my blather.

Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop: One of the girls is swimming the Channel next week and we were all shocked to learn the rules outlaw wearing wetsuits. Here I was thinking the UCI had the monopoly on arbitrary, asinine rules that lack all credibility, common sense and compassion. It may also explain why she’s been ordering industrial sized tubs of Vaseline recently. Or not.

Ride Profile
Ride Profile

The Waffle:

Man down!

32 brave lads and lasses set out under mainly bright skies, laced with a chill and occasionally debilitating westerly. A day warm enough for shorts and arm warmers as long as you kept moving, although one rider was rather bizarrely dressed in a bandana, helmet, shades, jersey, arm warmers, full length gloves, a gillet, a rain jacket, shorts, leg warmers, shoes and overshoes. Who was that masked man? What did he know that we didn’t? Were we due unheralded bad weather of Biblical proportions? Was it the Invisible Man? Was he allergic to sunlight? A vampire? All eminently sensible questions that, sadly, remain unanswered.

With Reg convalescing, I had the opportunity to take the no name winter bike out for a spin, and we slotted in to the back of the group where I got the chance to catch-up with super-fit, twinkle-eyed octogenarian Zardoz. He’s not really that old (allegedly) but carries with him the aura of a benevolent, white-haired, Bernard Cribbins-style good natured and avuncular grandfather. This however merely serves to hide a psychopathic killer instinct to put the hammer down just when the hills start to bite. Which is fine, and you accept it, because all the while he’s smiling sweetly at you through your pain.

We were tootling along quite merrily until we hit one of those small innocuous hills, get halfway up and find the road blockaded by a tangle of supine riders and bikes. As I’ve already outlined, going up hills are where things can quickly become a bit sketchy on club runs, amidst jostling, switching position, bad choices and inattention. I was too far back to see exactly what happened, but depending on who you spoke to, someone either shipped their chain or accidentally “uncleated” at an inopportune time. There was a wobble and perhaps a bit of barging and a touch of wheels. Seizing the opportunity to get out of a solemn promise to spend the afternoon shopping for a new kitchen, Dab Man hurled himself to the tarmac with a few others. His shoulder pinged. Or maybe it ponged. Either way, it ended up pointing in the wrong direction, and by the time I got up to the accident he was sat quite cheerfully on the side of the road, seemingly oblivious to the pain, lamenting his bad luck and starting a long, long wait for an ambulance. OGL, Szell and a few others hung back to keep him company while we rode on.

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Nothing good ever comes from a chute dans le peloton

I hope the Dab Man makes a swift and speedy recovery and is soon back riding from what turns out to be a broken clavicle. I should also, I guess, take this opportunity to apologise for calling him a wuss when he tumbled on black ice during one of our winter club runs earlier this year and had to call for the broom wagon to sweep him up from the café. Ok, ok, in retrospect maybe having a fractured wrist and being unable to brake are acceptable excuses for abandoning a ride after all.

The group split, then split again and Crazy Legs took the opportunity to drive us into the teeth of the wind at a murderous pace. I drifted back off the front and slotted in behind our very own Plumose Papuss, a 44kg bundle of youthful energy and seething enthusiasm, laced with wicked potential and armoured in long green socks(!) Well, I say bundle, but only in the sense of taking a bundle at both ends and twisting and twisting until it forms a whipcord thin, razor-wire of muscle and sinew. I tried sheltering from the headwind behind his back wheel, but he has so little body mass it was as ineffectual as standing in the middle of a raging torrent with an umbrella up and hoping to stay dry.

I dropped further back until I was just about hanging on as we made the haul up Middleton Bank, where Zardoz attacked and young Papuss floated up after him. Crazy Legs and G-Dawg dutifully followed and I dropped down to my own pace, sliding around The Red Max, who was loudly and roundly cursing Sir Isaac Newton for having the temerity to ever invent gravity(?)

We had a general regrouping at the top, and from there I watched The Red Max manoeuvre into position for his customary “Forlorn Hope” a massively long break for the café, or as he likes to think of it a short, 5 mile sprint. A bit heavy legged I couldn’t catch the wheels, and became slightly detached. I thought I might pull a little back as the road climbed, but the gap stayed resolutely the same and I was forced to coast into the café sur la jante and in splendid isolation.

After an uneventful ride back I turned off for home and a draggy climb of 4 or 5 miles into the headwind to cross the river. Then with the wind thankfully behind I scuttled along the valley at a fairly decent clip to the bottom of Heinous Hill. 1.2 miles long with an average gradient of 7% and ramps of up to 16%, on paper it doesn’t sound too hard, but it’s a bit of a leg shredder at the end of a long ride. Makes me wonder why I choose to live up here, although if the catastrophic weather the Invisible Man was expecting ever arrives, perhaps I’ll be safe from all but the worst flooding.

Until next week…

YTD Totals: 2,477km/ 1,539 miles with 27,096metres of climbing.

Afterword: For those who are as much in disbelief as I am, the snappily titled Channel Swimming and Piloting Federation rules quite clearly state: “No swimmer in a standard attempt to swim the Channel shall be permitted to use or wear any device or swimsuit that may aid his/her heat retention such as wetsuit. The swimmer is permitted to grease the body before a swim, use goggles and one hat. Nose clips and earplugs are permitted. Caps may not be made from neoprene or any other material which offers similar heat retention properties.”

Rolling with the Raphalites

I was making my way home from the club ride last weekend, nursing tired legs, Reg and a poorly bottom bracket, when I was stopped at the lights leading onto the bridge and noted a couple of serious looking cyclists, game-faces most definitely on, coming in the opposite direction. The lights changed and I crossed the river and began wending my way home, expecting any moment to be overtaken in a whirr of spinning wheels, a flash of bright colours and a hearty, “How do?”

Nothing.

I slowed to cross the railway lines and let a van out of side road. Still nothing, I began to think they must have taken a different route and not crossed the bridge.

Pushing on I skipped up the short, but steep rise to the road junction, stopped and unclipped at the red light and waited. First one, then the other dragged themselves up beside me, panting like an asthmatic, overweight Darth Vader when the turbo-lifts on the Death Star malfunction.

“How do?” I dutifully enquired, the recognised, UCI approved and universal greeting of cyclists everywhere.

“Going far?” one asked in reply, perhaps not quite realising it was almost 2.00 in the afternoon, the best part of the day had come and gone, and I’d been out since 8.00 o’clock that morning. I mentioned I was on the fag-end of a 70 mile club run and he mumbled something about a planned 100 miler. Ah, I was in the exalted presence of Raphalites.

One glance across showed me a beautiful, painfully expensive and acutely niche Italian carbon frame, deep section carbon wheels, and prominent Rapha logos adorning the necrotic, fag-smoke blue of heavily tattooed limbs.

I rolled off down the hill, soft pedalling somewhat because of Reg’s and my own fragile state, expecting the two to whiz past at any moment. Again, nothing and I became convinced they’d turned the other way at the junction.

They did finally catch me when I was held up busy roundabout, and we rode through the town centre together – just long enough for them to cast a few disparaging glances down at Reg. At another busy roundabout they dared more than me, and I watched them ride slowly away.

I hit the final, steep climb home, and there they were in front of me. Despite 70+ miles, a creaking bottom bracket and legs shredded by Mad Colin’s impromptu paceline (see here), I was closing on them with every pedal stroke. They turned left at the first junction, opting for the slightly easier, longer, twisting, but much less busy and infinitely preferable climb to the top.

I followed, expecting to overhaul them on the steeper lower section, but they turned left again and freewheeled down to a well-known cyclist’s café, obviously needing to stock up on triple shots of espresso and apple flapjacks to fuel their 100 mile epic. I hope the wholegrain goodness and industrial strength caffeine super-charged their ride, because if they couldn’t lift their pace beyond what I’d seen I couldn’t see them getting back before dark.

Random Rambles and Esoteric Observations, Part#1

I have to admit to being a bit of a cycling dandy – as my teenage daughter might say, “he loves him some cycling jersey” – although if she saw I’d just written that she would instantly, and quite rightly, disown me (inheritance be damned!)

Anyway, an unfortunate and unexpected change of bike last year has opened up a radically new colour palette and gear rethink as, like any rational cyclist, I attempt to perfectly blend and co-ordinate man with machine like some Borg-infested Gok Wan. Resistance is futile, girlfriend?

I now have the perfect excuse to add to my bulging drawers (sorry, that not only carried all the wrong connotations, but a rather unpleasant mental image), ahem, to add to my ever growing collection of cycling jerseys. With this in mind I recently sent off to the sweatshops of the Far East for a jersey reportedly inspired by the Bundisliga. Yes, we’re talking football, and German football at that. I still don’t quite understand the connection or thinking here, but the colours perfectly match my new bike, so it works for me.

Not only was the jersey well-made, a good fit and excellent value for money, but according to the tag it had quite startling features beyond my wildest imaginings, promising “high elasticity Lycra” to “cultivate one’s morality version of joint human body.” Even Rapha or Assos don’t give you that.

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By the way, I’m by no means the worst offender when it comes to bike styling – I once caught a club mate changing his usual drink from blackcurrant to orange so the faint blush of colour through the plastic of his bidon* would complement his new bar tape.

* faux posh for water bottle