thewashingmachinepost




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here we go again

me at london paris

after training like a man demented last year, gaining what i took to be admiring glances from fellow islanders (though it's more likely they were asking 'what the f..'), the stamina was at an all time high (this is all relative, you understand) and i joined around 200 folks to cycle from hampton court golf club just outside london, all the way to versailles, and lived to tell the tale. and it was such good fun, that i'm going to do it all again in 2008. and that's official, because i filled in the secret website, known only to those who had the great good fortune to ride the 2007 edition.

if you'd like to take part yourself, it costs £650 plus £99 for return eurostar rail trip and bicycle repatriation. for this you get food and accommodation en-route, ferry transfer from dover to calais (where we'll spend the first night - this year our first night was spent aboard a brittany ferries boat en route to st malo), and full technical support all the way to paris. now when i say full technical support, that's exactly what i mean: if you get a puncture, the guys in the following van will pop a service wheel in place, and replace the inner tube en-route. you get your own wheel back at the next stop. similarly any other mechanical breakdown. and if the unthinkable happens and something on the frame breaks, there are service bikes hooked on the back of the support van - they'll give you one through to the finish if your is irrepairable. but the very best bit of the whole kit and caboodle is closed roads all the way to paris. unless you are a professional rider, you cannot begin to realise how incredible this aspect is. using a tightly choreographed fleet of motorcycles, they just close every road found along the way, including roundabouts and traffic lights.

the route is different this year - last year we went from south france through to versailles, but this year we head north, taking in some of the cobbles of paris roubaix and on to the eiffel tower where the ride ends. this is the nearest most of us will ever get to living like a pro, albeit for only three days and generally at a slower pace. last year there was slow, medium and fast - this year the entry has been increased and rumour has it there will be four groups on the road - since i don't think the fast group could possibly get any faster (sean kelly's riding again this year, and johan museeuw fancies having another shot) so maybe we just have a medium fast and a slightly more than medium fast. it's absolutely tremendous.

registration for 'newbies' starts on december 10th - log on to londres-paris.com and have your credit card ready.

london paris calendar

of course, the whole purpose of the london-paris ride is to raise huge sums of money towards three nominated children's charities. so while you spend your every waking hour from january 1 onwards, training and honing that athletic physique (each to their own) the other hand should be writing begging letters to potential sponsors. however, you can start contributing right now, (well on december 10) by grabbing a 2008 london-paris calendar from the online shop for a mere £12.99.

gives you a warm glow inside.

posted on wednesday 5 december

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is this the end of the patch as we know it?

flats fixed

a genuine question, considering how much of a throwaway society we have become. last time i was in one of the two scottish metropolises, one of the more prominent bicycle shops had a sticker in the window declaring they'd fix your puncture by replacing the inner tube all for a fiver. which is fairly reasonable value for money if you ask me. and it's a very practical way of fixing a puncture.

when i was a kid, we'd to fix our own punctures by dragging the inner tube to a basin of water and patiently run the poor unfortunate, semi-inflated strand of rubber under the surface waiting for the tell-tale stream of bubbles that would pinpoint the hole. then it was through the drying procedure, marking the spot, sanding the surface, glueing and sticking. unfortunately this was just as likely to fail the following day as it was to last for the next six months.

nowadays, i wouldn't travel more than a kilometre without a spare tube in one of my three back pockets, as well as one of those co2 mini pumps. aside from anything else, the chances of getting a patch to stick to a wet inner tube at the side of the road, are slim to non-existent, so if anything it's easier to replace the tube and fix the errant example when at home. and in the deep mid-winter, standing around in the obscure far west is as likely to encourage the onset of hypothermia.

however, maybe i'm simply becoming less competent as i get older, patches are becoming less efficient, or inner tubes have just become anti-stick. because i can never get the darned things to adhere at all, and i really can't be bothered with all the faff and nonsense of trying to find the bubbles in the basin. aside from this, it seems that the tyre manufacturers have made great strides in providing puncture protection that really works. having run a pair of ultremos for over a year with no mishaps, i can well see why schwalbe have introduced a lighter ultremo inner tube, since it would appear that the outer protection is sufficient to make a heavier tube unnecessary.

so perhaps a combination of things is hastening the demise of the puncture repair kit. granted, the rubber solution glue has virtually evaporated due to the almost ubiquitous self adhesive patch, but i have to confess that i feel rather uneasy riding a narrow tube inflated to around 7 bar with a glueless patch stuck (hopefully) to its circumference. i ride more confidently on a nice new, unpatched inner.

so now that i come to think of it, i don't have any puncture repair kits in thewashingmachinepost bike shed anyway.

posted on tuesday 4 december

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seeing red

red ergopower

the mighty dave t has often expressed the opinion that todays professionals are a bunch of nancy boys compared to the real men of his era. heck, they ride on smooth tarmac, have a team car as well as a mavic car sitting just centimetres behind ready to plug in a new wheel or even a replacement bike if life just gets too hard. and to add insult to injury, there is no longer the much practised dip to the down-tube to change gear while struggling to maintian balance pedalling uphill.

well, it's in relation to this last ploy that we can exclusively reveal (i've always wanted to type that) that the professionals, or at least those using campagnolo on their bicycles, have realised that life is far too soft and that they need toughening up. so in the spirit of unity that prevails in the peloton, they have specifically asked the vicenza engineers to make it harder to change gear. while this may conjure up all sorts of positioning ergonomics - placing the gear levers under the saddle for instance - what they in fact were referring to was the spring pressure on the record ergopower levers (i doubt that professionals are aware that camapgnolo produce any other groupsets). their preference is for stiffer, crisper shifting with a shifter that calls for greater strength and decision (the latter presumably being the preserve of the directeur sportif in the aforementioned car). they'd like a shifter that lets you feel shifts during the more challenging phases of a race, very different from the needs of the amateur cyclist.

you will notice that there is a certain irony in all this, since campagnolo shifters have always been criticised relative to their shimano brethren for being less smooth and heavier in operation. so just as campag have approached the grail by lightening the shifting performance of the right hand lever, those dastardly professionals become brusque in ther aspirations. not wishing to upset the elite of the cycling world, vicenza has acquiesced, producing ergo levers identical to the ones that you and i must make do with, except fitted with 'very stiff special springs' and they're red. well, the lettering is, which vicenza has likened to the colour of another famous italian marque - one that makes fast cars.

i probably shouldn't poke fun, but this seems somewhat reminiscent of spinal tap, where guitarist nigel tufnel had an amplifier that went up to eleven. will this create a black market for those 'very stiff special springs' or will they eventually be released as a limited edition for those of us who can prove that we have been weightlifting at the local gym?

will it be seen as the equivalent of nipping into the nearest phone box and emerging with your underpants outside your tights? i am going to have to make every effort to find a campag sponsored rider in 2008 and ask how strong you need to be to click that 'very stiff special spring'.

posted on monday 3 december

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congratulations

smithfield nocturne

the tour prologue in london last july was, perhaps, a predicatable winner of the gold medal in the sports section of the visit london tourism awards, but surprisingly and very commendably, rapha and the face partnership won the bronze with their highly successful smithfield nocturne. this was the first time the event had taken place and is likely to be back for 2008.

congratulations to all concerned.

posted on saturday 1 december

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the write stuff

cyclists training diary

sometimes you just bite off more than you can chew, and the only alternative is to chew smaller bits. michael hutchinson mentioned in his excellent column in the comic a few weeks back that when filling in a training diary, we cyclists should simply follow the lead of those keeping food diaries for dieting purposes - make it up. only problem there is that you'd all end up with your own variation on thewashingmachinepost - lots of words that bear only a passing resemblance to reality.

in an almost whimsical e-mail conversation between dave trendler of velopress and myself only the other week, i was offered the opportunity to receive a copy of the cyclist's training diary, since we thought it might be an enterprising idea (they all do before you start them) for me to keep just such a diary through the coming 2008 season as i attempt once again, to ready myself for london-paris. not for the post the ignominy of being captured on film, a la anthony mccrossan of cycling.tv, but merely numbers and words filled in on what, at the moment, seem like terrifyingly empty pages.

now it's not that mr trendler will be dropping by the house every few weeks to check that all is correct and above board, but i figured if i made an undertaking to my reader, that i would complete each training day as best i could, running frequent updates on the post, then i couldn't be accused of hiding my light under a bushel. because you'd all know. the bit that makes me think this may be a heavier undertaking than i had at first thought, is mr friel's introduction.

when i bought my (red) moleskine diary for 2008, it came with no instructions at all - simply a day to a page and the luxury of filling in same in any way i see fit. just like i have done for the past year as it happens. training diaries are, it seems, a whole different drawer of armwarmers. this one contains sections to complete for weight training sessions (that'll be carrying the guardian up the road each day), season goals (to have nice handwriting), heart rate training zones, graphs, bike measurement charts, weather... the list is discouragingly endless.

cyclists training diary

now don't get me wrong - i can see the value of much of this in the right hands, i'm just not sure that i own such a pair. and often when returning from what passes for a strenuous five hours on the colnago, i can't say that filling in endless data is the first thing that springs to mind past a torq carbo gel.

however, never let it be said that i shirk my responsibilities (i don't even own a shirk) - in the cause of true investigative and reflective journalism, i intend to complete as many of the pages as i possibly can, because if i can do it, then there are those of far more capable cycling abilities who could probably benefit more from doing the same. or not, as the case may be.

so, in what may become the ultimate (in these pixels at least) long term test/review, i will commence with the new year's day ride and keep you informed thereof.

should you wish to join in and singalongapost, copies of the very same diary are available in the usa from velopress ($15.95) or in the uk you could probably order a copy from cordee. there are a substantial 263 pages of the cyclist's traing diary, and the whole volume is spiral bound so that it lies flat on the handelbars when you're riding (just kidding).

posted on saturday 1 december

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merrily we roll along

rollapalooza

the original incarnation of this current phenomenon was before my time, but since it seems to have suddenly hit the forefront of the cycling psyche, not least because of rapha's culture clash and culture clash two, roller racing is flavour of the month. you can see the attraction - no road closures, no mud, no wind or rain (except, perhaps, on the way to take part) and you don't have to wash the bike afterwards.

roller racing was apparently highly popular in 1950s britain, when races would precede films at the cinema, or take place between dances in the days of the (sorely missed) big bands. britain even had its very own professional roller racer, a chap called eddie wingrave. them were t' days.

for those unfamiliar with the concept, two bicycles are situated side by side on rollers, either with the front forks fixed in place or not. in the latter case, the cyclists are responsible for maintaining their own balance. both machines are linked to a large clock, each bike with its own clock hand giving a large, graphic account of which rider is in the lead at any given time. simulated distance is usually 500 metres, and first to that distance is the winner. the nature of the racing allows for a knock-out competition, or team event.

the modern version, including the two rapha events, were organised by the imaginatively named rollapaluza - a lexical variation on the american music festival, lollapalooza - and now that they're on a roll (pun intended), rollapalooza have two more similar events lined up before christmas: december 8th in manchester's central skatepark, followed by december 15th at the waterloo action centre in london. if you're anywhere in the vicinity of either on those dates, i think you owe it to yourself to pop along and have a go

excitingly, the grand notion of roller racing such as this offers the possibility of being able to organise your own event. i'm not sure that i'd ever attempt to organise a road, or off-road event (the ride of the falling rain excepted) because of the need to liaise with so many 'official' departments and landowners, but a roller race, well...

now i've got myself started - a washingmachinepost roller race in bowmore village hall. could it get any better than that? (answers on a postcard).

posted on friday 30 november

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...on the other hand

oh no it's not

i wrote a piece earlier on this week about t-mobile's withdrawal of sponsorship from their uci registered professional cycling team. my point, if you haven't read it (see below) was that i didn't really think that the ordinary person in the street cared about the alleged connection with drug taking within the team, as confessed by patrick sinkwitz. at least not as far as their phone contracts are concerned.

now, i still stand by that notion - the folks signing contracts with t-mobile for mobile phones are still unlikely to switch to another service provider in case the association with drugs rubbed off on the phones (if you catch my drift). well, several folks e-mailed me about this, most in support of such a stance, but at least one pointing out that i too, may have missed the point - and they are, indeed, correct.

since a majority shareholder in the privatised german company is the german government, the statement that we have an obligation to our employees, customers and shareholders to focus our attention and resources on our core businesses has been interpreted by me in the wrong way. it now seems that t-mobile could effectively be seen as not only condoning drugtaking, but conceivably as being the principal funders of said practice. and i can see perfectly clearly why any sponsor would like to distance themselves from that concept.

so while i still think i'm partially correct, i can also see where the brain fart occurred. thanks to those who e-mailed to very diplomatically point out the error of my ways.

posted on thursday 29 november

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showing no broad teeth

specialized christmas card

it may seem a very obvious subject for discussion when it comes to bicycles, but have you paid much attention to your gears lately? i dont mean have you scrubbed the little darlings to within an inch of their lives, or even checked that one click moves the bicycle into the ideal ratio for the job rather than chattering away in the background, but rather - do you know which gear you should be in?

even from here, i can feel the ire pointing in my direction: we're all seasoned pros here, of course we know what gear we should be in. that may or may not be true, but just in case it's made you think, let's have a chinwag about efficiency. some of the bike tests i have read finish off with a gear table giving an indication of what gear inches are obtainable with the rings at the front and the sprockets at the rear, but i'm wondering if anyone other than the anoraks really care? be honest, the last time you swung round the corner onto the vertical, was your first reaction to question whether you should use the 40.5" or the 45"? didn't think so. usually you find a gear that offers a comfortable rhythm and breeze or struggle your way to the top.

similarly when buying a bicycle or new cassette or chainset. if you've cycled for a while, there's an even chance you have a good idea what works for you depending on the terrain you intend covering. for instance, islay is pretty flat, with only a couple of bumpy bits to strain the knees on occasion. for that reason, there's no real need for a compact chainset, so i run the almost standard 53/39 chainset, and because i'm not as young as i used to be, the cassette is a 12/25, because i don't actually know anyone, least of all me, who gets any mileage out of an eleven sprocket, and that 25 is very handy uphill into an islay headwind, even if it doesn't get a lot of use.

however, i digress slightly, because whatever gears happened to be on the bicycle when you got it, you've probably just become accustomed to them. lots of cyclists don't really understand gears and if anything needs replacing it is usually with another of the same. but unlike the motor car, having twenty gears (which you haven't really because of chain angle and duplicates, but for simplicity's sake we'll pretend that this is true) doesn't mean that you start in first and work your way up to twenty - even though i do know at least a couple of folk who believe that to be true. it may come as a bit of a shock, but there is no such thing as the correct gear to be in. i'm sure many of you have been asked a similar question by colleagues - 'if i'm cycling up storakaig hill, which gear should i be in?'. that depends on what bicycle you're on, what weight you are, headwind or tailwind, and probably most critical of all, how fit are you?

i adore cycling up hills (blame it on robert millar), and i don't weigh very much, so chances are i will use a smaller sprocket than the mighty dave-t who's a pound or two heavier than i, and really doesn't like hills too much (though he does use his superior weight on the downhills). as john lennon said 'whatever gets you through the night'

professional cyclists have team mechanics whose job it is to know all this stuff - the rest of us have the local bike shop. there's nothing to stop you becoming anorakish about gears if it's really what floats your boat, but just realise that it all becomes so much candy floss once you're in the saddle and wondering why they couldn't have invented another ten gears lower than the largest sprocket currently fitted. spend your time making sure the darned things work properly, particularly at this mucky time of year, because there's no point in being able to regale all and sundry how many inches you'll be using up alpe d'huez if you can't get it to change anyway. and use whatever gear feels comfortable, not the one that you think will be most impressive to the surrounding peloton. they're all trying to do the same thing, and no-one's really paying attention anyway. there's a reason you've got around twenty of the chaps - make sure you use them properly.

i'm glad we've had this little chat. next week, sturmey archers for beginners.

talking about gears and the time of year, it's nice to know that the christmas sprockets are still there.

posted on wednesday 28 november

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another one bites the dust

t-mobile hotspot

mrs washingmachinepost and daughter both have mobile phones, and are contracted to that finest of german service providers, t-mobile. while i have no real interest in mobile phones (i don't own such an item) it seemed only right and proper that i support their choice of contract due to the eminence of the parent company in the realm of cycle sponsorship. at least until today.

now the fact that t-mobile sponsored a uci pro cycle team had actually no bearing whatsoever on their choice of provider - the big influence was the type of phone that was thrown in free (?) and the number of minutes and text messages (like i know what all that means) that you get for your monthly debit. and there is probably quite a strong case for thinking that many other adherents of the pink provider based their choice on similar criteria.

so why then, when the sponsorship contract was due to run until 2010, and it was recognised that they were one of the teams at the forefront of the fight against doping, have they suddenly (today) decided to end their sponsorship deal effective immediately? do they really think that the average punter (my apologies to all punters out there) reads about patrick sinkewitz's epo confessions and immediately runs into the nearest vodafone shop? i think not.

one of the stranger parts of t-mobile's severance statement claimed we have an obligation to our employees, customers and shareholders to focus our attention and resources on our core businesses. since their core businesses need to be advertised, which was the main purpose behind sports sponsorship in the first place, what the heck does that mean? were they not concentrating on telecommunications anyway? if not, what on earth have they been doing all these years, and should their customers and shareholders be worried?

personally, i think having the german concession for the iphone is costing them more than they thought it would. and to make matters even worse, the team has vowed to continue under the moniker team high road.

hmmmm.

posted on tuesday 27 november

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in the land of the black and pink

you will doubtless have had a look at the rapha continental - perren street's thrust across the pond, engaging the american cyclist with roadworthy tales of derring do. but someone has to be incharge, because, even if we're willing to stretch a point, camden town is a long way from portland. so someone has to mind the continental shop.

rapha title

and that person is the face of rapha usa, mr trystan cobbett. the man gracefully agreed to answer thewashingmachinepost's inane questions and on a hastily constructed pink background, all is now revealed.

read more...

posted on monday 26 november

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walk on part

pedestrian

like it or not, and there will be those who could care less, many of the world's bicycles are manufactured in taiwan. lots of them are perfectly wonderful pieces of machinery, and many of the world's top manufacturers have their bicycles and frames built in this chinese republic. while this may have originally been due to economic concerns, the fact that it has continued for so long, means that the taiwanese have built a considerable depth of experience and it's probably no longer the case that the experienced eye could tell a taiwanese effort at a hundred paces.

now unfortunately for me, i don't know enough about the demographic of taiwan to know whether the production of large quantities of bicycles has spilled over into daily life. in other words, are there millions of cyclists in the population of nearly 23 million?

unlike sherlock holmes, powers of deduction are not amongst my better traits, but since the taiwanese government has proposed that cyclists be given dual status: that of slow moving vehicle and speedy pedestrians it seems possible that there are enough of them to warrant such a directive. now, before we all recoil in horror, and name several cyclists who quite defiantly are neither slow moving nor pedestrians, there may be a modicum of sense in this. despite evidence to the contrary, re- the bicycle yet again winning the transport challenge across london, there could well be urban areas such as city centres where cyclists could reasonably benefit from this dual classification. but what will this do to the carbon fibre ego?

i should probably stress that, at present, this is only a recommendation, on the interesting basis that such delineation would, under certain circumstances, allow cyclists to move faster (so phloyd may actually have won the tour because he was a pedestrian). bizarrely, it would also allow them to ride on the pavement/sidewalk. frying pan and fire come to mind.

if you honestly think that i'm going to spend several thousands on ernesto's and vicenza's finest to find myself classified as a slow moving vehicle or pedestrian... well. and just to add insult to injury, i looked up the word pedestrian in the dictionary, and while the noun means exactly what you think it means, used as an adjective it means lacking inspiration or excitement; dull...

so i don't think we should take this lying down (in a pedestrian manner), and in a unilateral mark of defiance, i refuse to visit taiwan this coming year.

or maybe not at all.

posted on monday 26 november

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them were t'days

bicycle train

you'll probably not be surprised to hear that i am well aware of the existence of youtube - it's likely everyone is these days, none more so than one of my regular correspondents who sent me a link to a clip entitled cyclists' special, an excerpt from a film made in 1955 (just before my time) showing a world of cycling that pretty much doesn't exist anymore. well, there may be one or two pockets of entrenchment somewhere in middle britain, but they'd all have to be dressed in plus fours and riding pashley roadsters. i was about to compare it to the mighty dave-t peloton of a sunday, but since that usually consists of at least two carbon colnagos, i think we might be excluded. and the nearest i've got to plus fours is a pair of rapha 3/4 bib shorts, or fixed shorts (the brown ones would almost qualify).

two gents arriving on a station platform by means of an open elevator is a bit of a novelty, but for those not conversant with today's rail service in britainshire, the sight of a guard's van with a cycle logo stencilled on the outside will be somewhat of a novelty. heading even more into the realms of fiction is watching a british rail guard actually helping the cyclists to place their station elevator velocipedes in a well specified van, with job specific hooks attached to the roof cornice. there are a myriad of cycles hanging by their front wheels, proving that the demand was there (and possibly still would be, if only the railways paid attention).

but one of the most noticeable features of this bike ride, comprising a sizeable peloton of both male and female cyclists, is the lack of motorised traffic, as they amble along at a rather sedate pace. even if you weren't born around these times, it still encourages warm feelings of nostalgia and the notion to buy a pashley.

you can view the clip here.

posted on sunday 25 november

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