I am having a go at using Medium:
https://medium.com/@danandgold/the-audacious-ones-92acd7511c42#.1yfoyup93

Redux

When I first started this blog I was in the first flush of cycling enthusiasm - every ride an adventure, dewy eyed and romantic about all things two wheeled. Inevitably sustaining that kind of excitement is not only impossible but is also wearing and I found the duty of keeping the blog going a chore - another piece of unnecessary maintenance. So it just stopped and in many ways it stopped at the right time - The LeighRiders still exist but they are a very different group with less of a readily identifiable identity.

The biggest change is, though, having a son who cycles - one who has grasped the bike's possibilities and flourished. James has introduced me to the rarefied air of racing and all that that entails. Last year, as Junior racing at National level I got to witness the future stars of the sport in action, experience the thrills of cheering my boy home and picking up the tab for repairs, breakages and necessary bits of kit. I loved every minute of it.

So, as fifty lifts its head above the horizon, I have decided to pause and consider the part cycling plays in my life and to use the blog to record not only James' progress as he makes his way in the ranks of the British domestic racing scene but also my own meagre efforts to fight middle aged inertia. I have set myself a number of targets to mark my quinquagesimus: to beat my PB for a 25mile timetrial (start with the low hanging fruit); to take part in a number of audax events, including at least one 200km event; to lower my 10 mile PB; to complete a 50mile timetrial and to end the season with no excuses...

The Ford Fiesta

Much happens in the year of the peloton – members arrive, make their presence felt and become old hands, other flash across the front and are soon spat out of the back never to be seen again. Others winter away and return with the swallows ready once more for the turbulence of Spring. Still others come back miraculously from the dead, Lazarus like, seemingly out for the count to reclaim their rightful place in life’s slipstream. Of course, some never leave, old faithfuls out in all weathers, iced water bottles no problem, loss of sensation in extremities a little local difficulty, roads that are like skating rinks merely more grist to their mill.

So when one of the movers and shakers decides to move and shake somewhere new it requires some kind of acknowledgement, a marking and a remembering of his influence and effect on a bunch of lycra clad blokes with ‘all the gear and no idea.’ Sloping off to Dubai without some kind of farewell ride was never going to happen, not on the Wing-Co’s watch!

So it was that under strictest Bletchley Park secrecy (removing Christian’s name from the group email), we amassed a mob to ride a hundred miles in a day in honour of our very own Tom Boonen. A man who rides as if he is going for the stage win every time he throws his leg over his crossbar. A man for whom the word ‘steady’ quite clearly has another meaning – something akin to ‘just a bit faster than a normal cyclist can manage.’ A man for whom Strava is a gift and for us a curse.

I had planned on some witty list of cars Ford had made and to go on to make analogies – Meteor, Maverick, Deluxe – but I have never really got my head round cars. Cars haven’t always got round Christian either…But if I had to choose one car from my Wikipedia list of Fords I would choose not something flashy and grand (although it would suit a man who has had more flashy and grand bikes than anyone outside of the pro peloton – Look, Specialised, Willier and now a Pinarello Dogma - a man who is always planning his next bike) no, I would choose the Ford Popular. Look at what my thesaurus gives as synonyms:

Popular- accepted, approved, attractive, beloved, caught on, celebrated, crowd-pleasing, faddish, famous, fashionable, favored, in, in demand, in favor, in the mainstream, in vogue, leading, likable, liked, lovable, noted, notorious, now, pleasing, praised, preferred, prevailing, prominent, promoted, right stuff, social, societal, sought, sought-after, stylish, suitable, the rage, trendy, well-liked, well-received. Yep, that pretty much sums him up.

On the hottest day of the year we rolled out of Leigh with the legendary Blue Egg as our initial destination. A cyclists’ teashop Mecca with Cav’s framed World Champion jersey and favoured watering hole of local legend Alex Dowsett. At just under fifty miles in 30 degrees C, we did well to look like a bunch of hardened men of the road, rather than limp rags waiting to be squeezed dry as we stuffed our faces and slurped our coffee – hydrate, rehydrate, the mantra of the day.

Desperate for shade, we rolled through the Essex countryside in determined fashion, stopping for necessary replenishments in a greasy café in Blackmore and the more genteel The Viper in Writtle. No matter the location, we only cared for more fluids. Each time we arrived looking less like a Rapha advert and more like a middle aged crisis in action. By the time the clock had hit 90 miles we made our final stop, The Barge in Battlesbridge, an ironic name for the war torn cyclists sprawled over the grass, jerseys open to the navel, bare chested and panting, scaring small children and frightening bull terriers and hoping heart rates might return to somewhere near normal.

And then onwards to home, the last hurrah, slowly we reclaimed our bikes, put on soggy helmets and adjusted ourselves one last time. We pledged to ride ‘steady…’ As Jason later reported, “The last time I heard and saw Christian was when he left the Barge saying "Ok I'm just going to sit in and take it easy now" - he then disappeared ahead into the distance! That's probably the last I will see of him - very apt.” 

Blue Egg Tour details

A Season in Hull

I'm not sure I've ever seen Pub Dave's training regime in any of the magazines. Usually the glossies talk about complex carbs, intervals and power hubs but not PD. Instead he spends the winter drinking lager and smoking fags. He stands at the bar as we analyse what's wrong with Liverpool's back four and why Harry needs a proper holding midfielder. We wax rhapsodical about Philip Gilbert and Fabian Cancellera and we don't talk about work. Come the summer term, he wheels his bike out of the shed and rides to work - a round trip of 40 miles, 200 miles a week and he rides himself back to fitness.

In the pub, after the manangers have had their say on Sky, we'll start talking about potential trips on the bike. Mainly pipe dreams, they rarely get beyond slightly sizzled beer chatter but every now again one sticks - four years ago it was 'Wouldn't it be fun to ride to Paris to see the end of the Tour on the same day you turn 40?'

Another such chat explains why I was on the 4.27 with the early morning shift, watching the sun glint off the Coryton refinery. Our bikes laden. On another adventure.

We rode across a sleepy London and over to Kings Cross, a quick coffee and the bikes were strapped into the high speed train to the 'North'. I'd looked on the map the day before. I had thought Hull was not too far away, my map said Yorkshire, Dave corrected me and said Humberside. Either way, a bloody long way!

Decamping at Hull, stopping only for a belter of a breakfast as we consulted the maps one last time before heading off in search of National Cycle Route 1. The blue stickers soon to become deeply etched into my mind's eye, forever scanning road furniture for their life saving signs. Seemingly trapped in one dodgy council estate after another we spot our first destination - the Humber Bridge - Dave had been particularly pleased earlier in the month when the actual bridge sent him an email confirming that bikes could indeed travel over. And we rolled over, not quite believing we were really doing this. Not just the Guiness talking for a change

And then we hit Lincolnshire, a long county and really rather lovely; two hours of rolling hills as we got used to the full weight over our back wheels - panniers stuffed with sleeping bags and tents; mini stoves and woolly socks; energy bars and inner tubes. The Wolds opened up in front of us and much out of the seat stuff ensued, wheezing and clambering all over our steeds we were glad to see the sign for Market Rasen and the first of a series of lovely cafe owners, all willing to fill water bottles and indulge two idiots by stoking their egos and asking them why they were so far from home.

All these Viking place names - Wragby, Buslingthorpe, Fiskerton, the B1202, the rampage of the Danes down the east coast. We rolled into Woodhall Spa after riding the quiet of a converted railway line next to the River Whitham. The home of the Dambusters but even a bouncing bomb wouldn't have woken me as I slipped into a sleep so deep that the kids still playing in the late summer sun must have wondered what the strange men in the coffin tents were up to.

The next day we wake slowly and unsurely but the self inflating mattress had done its job and the titanium pocket stove gets us a coffee and the lady in the pitch next door took pity on the lycra fools and made us a bacon sarnie. Thr ritual repacking of all possessions complete we take our leave and follow the river out of town to Chapel Hill and on to the straightest road, a place where Romans marched out of civilization and into the great unknown through Brotherstoft and Hollands Fen.

As we turn a corner there is an old boy, his bike propped to one side of the path. He is sitting contemplating his small pocket of the world. He asks us where we're going and whether we're enjoying Lincolnshire, he then utters, as if from a novel 'South Lincolnshire was invented by God for cyclists' and all we could do was concur. That breakfast in Boston tasted just that bit better for the twenty miles already in our legs.

The next few hours have become a blur as slowly we lost the wind from behind us and found it in our faces. The flat fens replaced by the steep ups and downs of Norfolk. I felt like a sailor tacking his way forward, fighting the breeze, dragging the bike towards the north Norfolk coast, time slipping as we hit Kings Lynn too late for lunch and with the knowledge that Wells-next-the Sea was still a long way to go.

When we sat down for a pint, trying to get a phone signal, the bike computer told us what our legs already knew - over 100 miles on a bike in a day is a long way. Neither of us thinking straight we stared and tried to recall the 'good bits' - swooping through Holkham Hall with its manicured lawns and deer and geese. Ploughing on past Sandringham. Team timetrialling along the Nene. The rollercoaster roads teasing us with glimpses of the sea as we rose, only to take them away as we dipped back down again. But we just wanted to pitch our tents and stuff our gobs. Fish and chips at the seaside is redolent of family holidays but tonight it was fuel and could have been deep fried Wellington boots and we would have been none the unhappier.

As we pedalled past the shrine at Walsingham the next morning, I too felt like a primitive pilgrim, pushing body and soul beyond comfort, suffering to somehow lead to revelation. I didn't mention this to Dave. He doesn't do metaphysics. Certainly not before breakfast. and certainly not after a small breakfast - the greatest sin as we discovered to our cost in Fakenham.

Now on the cycle route 13 we headed south, small tracks and gentle rises, wheat fields and Constable greens, dappled sunlight and the slight mustiness.  The tone shifted, Suffolk softened and our legs settled into the regular rhythmic cadence of a third day on the bike.

Not even the vicious sting of a wasp, nor the only serious time we got lost - trapped in the Thompson triangle as we looped back on ourselves and could only escape by ploughing on down the A1075 racing lorries as lunchtime disappeared from view - could spoil a day which will keep us warm through the disappointing long nights of Premier League underachievement by both Spurs and Liverpool.

We arrived at Glemsford at teatime, the locals bustling round the bar of The Cherry Tree keen to quiz us on our journey. Treated like conquering heroes come home, we knew where our meal would be served tonight. They kept the restauarant open while we went and pitched the tents and washed in an office with just a kettle to complete our ablutions. From such unprepossessing situations do great evenings arise. A heaped plate and great pint led to PD being asked to join their darts' team - he even won a leg against top of the league and my money was refused at the bar as he was doing them all a good turn. Not a bad way to spend my final day of being 43.

Final day and weary legs. Away quickly from our campsite, we needed somewhere to find a birthday breakfast and CM9 in Braintree proved to be the winner of our east Coast breakfast competition - hash browns and chips! No more Sustrans, it was to be ingenuity and luck to get us on the road home. Yesterday's afternoon dash through Bury St Edmunds was replaced with today's slow and stately progress. The honeypot border towns of Yeldham and Pentlow let us know we weren't far from home and when we saw the sign for Terling instinct hit.

Just North Hill, the Danberg as Dowsett calls it, to negotiate and then it's no more than the return leg of a Saturday ride - with panniers. Granny gear fully locked and loaded, I grimaced to the top, my pulse throbbing through my forehead. Home was round the corner. The familiar litany of names rolled by- Hanningfield, Battlesbridge, Hullbridge, Rochford and up, up to the last hill before Southend hospital.

One last pint, appropriately in the place where the plan was hatched. Back just as the lunchtime drinkers were slipping away, we sat in the garden, pints in front of us, 330 miles behind us and we felt good.

Leigh Riders On Tour

Once there were mountains....

The lot of a teacher can be hard and unfair. No more so when the boys decide to up sticks and hurtle down the Pyrenees during term time. So, until one of them gets it together and writes something, here are a few pictures which don't make me feel jealous, honest...sob...sob.

On the Road

Off The Road

Cheers

The General, he loves it when a plan comes together...

Alphaville

They all say it about the Leigh Riders. They all say how great it is that it's not like a proper cycling club with the blokes in blazers and annual subs and marshaling of the annual tt. We like it because it's a loose affiliation of blokes who just want to turn up and ride.

All true but also not exactly accurate. On the face of it the gang are just that, a group of like minded individuals existing in a state of perfect harmony - a dream republic where everyone is both King and subject. Where everyone's voice counts and peace flows like a river and everyone is free to wear Lycra.

I am often asked by outsiders (non bike riders) how we decide where we ride and it is here that it becomes clear that any impression of free wheeling anarcho-syndicalism gives way to nature red in tooth and claw. For it is here that the soul of the group is fought for. At best it is a good natured discussion, a debate amongst a select band who tussle over the various needs of individuals - who needs to get back to placate wives, kids, bosses; who feels knackered after a night on the lash; a knee strain; a rotten week at work and who just wants to have a chat and suck on a wheel for an hour or two. Consensus reached, we pedal away.

There are times though when the silverback gorillas emerge and we see the alpha males make their pitches. On long rides this can take the form of preferred roads, favourite hills or untried tracks. To be in possession of a map beforehand (or to have quite clearly done your homework) can signal an intention to run the ride, a benign dictator who dispenses the pleasure of a new found route like baubles to his court. It can also be seen as a gauntlet thrown with fingers jabbing at other squiggly lines to suggest, oh the temerity, an alternative destination. Here the feeling is more of incipient civil war rather than the universal brotherhood of cyclists. And this is without even considering the machinations which occur if someone dares to suggest a different cafe. Like a Jedi mind trick these are not the tea shops you were looking for.

Invariably the road taken is never regretted, but the road not taken is stored, logged and will be rolled out next time to be presented to the oligarchy again who may eventually allow the ride to be made. Whatever the actual form of government, the surface appearance of a democracy is important. Waiting for one another at key junctions, slowing for piss stops, barracking the unfortunates who puncture and giving a wheel to the desperate. Unless, of course, the gloves are off and the hammer's down and then it is the survival of the fittest. A Darwinian struggle where only the strong and the wily survive. Adapt or die goes the cry as the alpha-est male stomps on his pedals, up the hill and out of sight. And only then do the cycling socialists come to the fore giving protection to the weak and broken, huddling the masses, the we are truly all in this together mentality that gets everyone home and out of the wind and into a warm shower.

And like a beaten hound we come crawling back to our masters once more to do it all again. Back on the chain gang, hoping this time we will be top dog.

PS I have just come back from a solo Canewdon considering the message of this post - it started out as a possible paean for a soviet collective and ended up describing a 'no such thing as society/ we'll ride as a group if you can keep up with me' free market capitalist model with a little welfare state safety net for the weakest members of society slung on for good measure. Hmmm...I might need to rethink this cycling as politics thing.

Team Kit

The Look of Love

Every time is like the first time. It starts with a few surreptitious looks. Glances almost out of the corner of your eye, as if to confront the love object head on will dazzle you into blindness.

Then you start making enquiries. Just for your own satisfaction you understand. You're never going to do anything about it. Out of your league.

Then you find yourself dropping a name into the conversation just to hear what it sounds like in your mouth. Your friends become suspicious.

Before you know where you are and quite how it happens you are going out together. By yourselves at first, out in the country alone where no-one else will know you. Eventually, you get to know each other. It's a little awkward and for a few days you wonder if you have made the right decision. But in your heart you know there is no going back.

You start to take a few pictures and you sneak a look on your phone, you can't quite believe your luck. Nothing's made you sweat with joy like this.

Eventually introductions are made, your mates coo and admire your choice, you can tell they are jealous. Some may even darkly mutter that you are punching above your weight. You don't hear anything but her sweet voice mingling with the birds in the trees.

Soon you realise you fit together perfectly - all previous relationships a pale imitation of this the ideal marriage. You go away for long weekends together. You speed down lanes with the wind in your hair, you are dangerous and carefree. You are young beyond your years and wish you had met sooner. You are glad you got together at all. You enthuse to anyone who will listen. You are in love.

Every time is like the first time, maybe this time you won't start having your head turned by the latest young thing, maybe this time the glossy mags won't sing their Lorelei song, maybe this time it's for keeps.
Maybe...

From Our Own Correspondent

News just in from our intrepid boys just back from the Doorstep Tour of Essex. 250 miles of sweltering heat, punctures and glorious sunsets.

Guess What...

Summer's arrived.

At last the arm warmers can be consigned to the back of the wardrobe, knee warmers hurled into the washing machine, never to be seen as matching pair again. Those bright, short sleeved tops which have sat patiently on the shelf while week after week of torrid weather has left them unused and yet yearned for. It's taken til June has nearly bowed out but here it is for however brief a time it may be.

There is nothing quite like hammering along on the good bike, the sun on your back, sweat streaming down your neck, midges and other small insects providing extra protein. Sticky tyres on sticky roads and all around, nothing but blue sky. The fields are finally in full flourish. Gone are the days when wisps of grass poked out from the ground like bristles on Van Gogh's beard. The chocoalte fudge cake furrows are now covered with waist high crops and the sudden flush of oil seed rape smeared like butter across the horizon will always engender an intake of breath, as if it is always seen for the first time, always a moment of wonder.

Summer rides are like gifts, as if all year has been about preparing for these few moments when everything makes sense, when all the grinding into the teeth of a gale allows for the ease of movement; the swift click into the year's unvisited gears comes out of those frozen months of toil. It's on these days when you wish to be like the Coppis of this world who never troubled themselves with helmets, who just planted a cotton casquette upon their head, a pair of raybans upon their face and headed off to duel with the Bartalis of this world. But ride with helmets we must, or face the wrath of motorists who already feel we are both suicidal and threatening for being on their roads.

The muscles run smooth on days like these, unencumbered they feel supple and full of potential, that somehow power has been stored there, overwintered and ready to be unleashed. So much of even our cycling is pyschological: feeling better, we ride better. Feeling in form leads to an increase in performance. We bury ourselves only to rise again like bad movie zombies only to bury ourselves harder, faster, deeper. And then rinsed and worn, dead bugs stuck to our sweat slick faces we return home, grinning like buffoons, we declare that life has never been better. Summer's arrived, the world is on our side.

Frontin'

New Toolkit

A thing of beauty all the way from Australia - as the label says, sexybicyles.

They look like they make some lovely bikes: http://sexybicycles.com/

Normal for Norfolk

Let's cut to the chase - the weather... awful, loathesome, ridiculous bastard dreadful. Call it what you will you won't meet a cyclist this spring who has a good word to say about the Met Office, supposed global warming and the fucking weather. All of us whining about being off the pace, not having enough miles in our legs, having to spend Saturday mornings with the wife and kids because it's been a) wet, b) cold, c) treacherous or, d) all of the above. Every Friday I look at the forecast with a sinking heart as once again I see that the meteorologists are laughing up their sleeves at me, personally.

So, when PC said that we should all slope away to his place in Norfolk at the end of March, we all said yes expecting that the elements would have the final say. All week furious text messages circled Essex as we attempted to keep our spirits up with forecasts of torrential rain and whipping winds from Siberia. Eventually we all agreed, we're going, come what may.


Of course, that immediately led to the next crisis - just what to pack. Non-cycling clothes took all of 60 seconds to sort but, what shoe covers? Gloves with rain proofing or not? Lightweight stowaway macs or full blown rain jackets? In the end I had 3 bags full and then I remembered my shoes! And then I remembered my helmet. In fact all Thursady evening I remembered yet one more thing after another - water bottles, sunglasses, inner tubes. Quite how I ever get out of the house on a Sturday in just forty minutes, I'll never know.


We drove up on the Friday, unpacked and ate a healthy pasta dinner. These boys really are atheltes, I thought as I sneaked a third beer while no-one was looking. Then the Calvados was opened and one by one we fell asleep in front of the dvd. The next thing I knew was it was 7.30 and bleary eyed cyclists stumbled out of bed, grabbing Nurofen and guzzling water into their dehydrated bodies. A solemn breakfast of porridge, toast and coffee only merely delayed the inevitable - an all day ride in the wind and rain where PC had already warned us of the myth of 'flat' Norfolk.

A cyclist can futz about with his bike for hours given half a chance - inflating tyres, lubing chains, fiddling with mudguards, listening for imperceptible sounds from headset and bottom bracket but in then end you have just got to get on to the blasted thing and ride.

The ride was all that it had promised to be, mile after mile of empty roads, just rolling through slowly returning Spring. The odd blossom here and there, an occasional blush of bluebells in a shaded dell. Life, it felt, was finally on the rise. We carved through the Sandringham estate with the Johnny Rotten's best lines in my head 'we're the flowers in the dustbin...there is no future in England's dreaming.' Didn't stop us parking up and having a very fine cuppa and sandwich though.


The ride progressed past classic East Anglian flint churches and estates with impressive stags just staring mournfully at us as we swished past - our chains thick with the sludge and mud known by the hard men of the road as 'Belgian toothpaste' - the grime that you see on the faces of the unlucky losers at Flanders, Roubaix and De Panne. Legs loosened, the peleton settled into quiet contemplation, the nervous chatter of the ride disappeared and instead a silent determination and pleasant solitude took its place. Riding in a group can give some of the greatest peace and quiet on god's great earth as there is no requirement to talk if necessary, sometimes all you need to do is just keep turning those wheels.

Late lunch in Castle Acre and we found the platonic ideal of a rest stop - understanding proprieters who knew just what to serve up to six hungry cyclists - the loo even had a picture of a Tornado and a photo of Colditz prisoners on parade - perfect for The General and WingCo who both have more than a penchant for planes. And then the chat began, 'Did you see that lovely..' and the enjoyment came in the telling and reliving of a pleasure shared.


The final stretch home, PC assured us, no more than an hour, my legs finally acknowledging that the crap winter had left me with nothing left to give. As I set my teeth firmly into the wind, all I could think was that I didn't know where his place was, what the name of the nearest town was or which direction I should be headed. With this fear in mind I stuck doggedly to his wheel. My prayers to the cycling voodoo gods must have worked as just as the lactic acid really began to bite one of 'The Diesel's' spokes went in his rear wheel. A well needed break while the boys all consulted how to get him home without any further disaster. The only word I heard was 'slowly' and my heart sang.




I don't remember the last ten miles, I was just glad to recognise turning back to the house and wearily, yet with a huge smile, I got off my bike. For this day only we had tasted spring. And we knew we had another ride just like this one prepared for tomorrow and we'd already made a reservation at the tea shop in Castle Acre - we could have our showers safe in the knowledge of more country pleasures to come.

Snow Upon Snow

As if to prove me wrong DJ sent me a couple of Barling in the snow. As he says " Who needs a turbo when you have one of these!"

He went on to add "I also got out on my cross country skis, but that's really alternative"

Hmm...there's cyclists and then there's DJ

We Few, We Happy Few

In the spirit of Agincourt five of us made it out on a bitterly icy but bright morning.



And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That rode with us upon Saint Basil's day.

New Year's Day

I've never liked Bono, never liked that overblown, windswept, grand vista pseudo visionary kind of pop star. It gives me great pleasure then to be able to report that he was wrong. All is certainly not quiet on New Year's Day. Well, not if you live anywhere near Southend seafront. All is mobbed on NYD more like.

This thought whirred through my brain as I picked my way past all of the poor parkers who negotiated the spaces outside the casino, the pedestrians spilling on the pavements and the kids on new Christmas bikes slipping on the cycle path that the council had seen fit not to salt, grit or clear in any way, shape or form. This didn't, of course, stop the fat Jag driver who carved me up and then made obscene gestures at me because I had deigned to ride on his road on this of all days.

But, you know, there is not much that can put me in a bad mood on a day like this - if the snow is our enemy then these clear crisp days are what winter riding is all about. It's as if all other breathing I do during the day is nothing in comparision with the deep lung clearing breaths I take when out on these rides. The sharp winter light under the endless flat horizons may not be everyone's favoured aesthetic but the feeling of stretch, expansion, escape is there on these days as I pedal the fixed round the familiar haunts of Wakering and Barling.

The old road men used to train in winter on a fixed, they claimed the constant cadence and lack of cosy choice of an easier gear set them up well for a spring season of racing. I don't know how true it will be for me but 40 miles on the fixed today has certainly left me hungrier, more tired yet more alive than I would otherwise have felt. Maybe the woozy tunes of the Boards of Canada and Belbury Poly added to that other wordly sense but as I returned dodging the cars on the front I felt, well if this is the new year ...bring it on!

Snow

When snow arrives the schoolboy cheers and grabs his sleigh, the cyclist on the other hand cries 'no' and rages against the gods. Snow, you see, is the ultimate enemy. You can get out on the bike in the wind, just grit your teeth and bare it; there are even those who love a bit of mucky weather - they are usually Belgian and ride bikes specially designed to get rid of mud easily. But snow, no. Snow means being 'stuck indoors'. There are are a number of ways to deal with this impasse - go snowballing with the kids, laugh it off and try to stay away from the treacherous pavements; book a ski-ing holiday in the Alps and throw yourself entirely into the snow theme or get the turbo out.

The turbo, for those uninitiated in such things, is a device for turning a bike into a stationary bike. In effect you turn your front room into a gym, but without the buffed up babes and nice showers. A turbo is cycling without the fun - a machine designed to make you sweat and leave nasty stains on the front room carpet. It is noisy, hard work and very little fun. I usually position it in front of the telly and watch old Tour De France videos in an attempt to feel like I am cycling against the greats - it works for about a minute!

Of course a truly dedicated turbo rider has a state of the art machine which is set up to replicate stages of legendary races, the resistance on the back making it feel like you are actually climbing Ventoux in your living room/garage/one room flat, it is linked to a pc spouting data like crazy - power in watts, heart rate, cadence but it's still a turbo.

And then there are those that hook up their turbos to the world wide web and race people from all over the globe. I am sure that there are pleasures to be gained from beating a bloke from Iceland at 3 am while all around are in their jamas but it's not for me.

When the snow finally cleared enough to ride I took the fixed out for a spin. You may wonder why I would take a bike without 'proper brakes' out on roads that still had wedges of ice still upon them but the answer is pretty simple - the fixed is fun to ride, providing a pretty constant response at all times with very little reason to get out of your seat and thus the bum stays planted and weight is kept over the back wheel, making it as stable as anything. And did I mention it's fun?

When i chat to older blokes about owning a fixed their eyes often mist up and they start to tell me about their teenage days when riding a fixed was standard for just about every lad on the block. They chat about chain inches - just how big their front cog was, how tiny their back cog was, the times they nearly killed themselves coming down hills - how they rode with neither back nor front brakes. My dad, in fact told me that he used to wait for a bus at a stop and then follow in its slipstream all the way over to Stevenage to meet his future wife (and my future mum) on his fixed. He rode a couple of inches from the back of the speeding vehicle with the conductor gesticulating wildly for him to back off as they approached a stop. He claimed a ridiculous 58x11 - a gear Chris Hoy would have been proud to use and something an ordinary cyclist would find hard to even get started, you'd need thighs that could crack walnuts - maybe age has amplified that gearing?

It's no wonder the fixed works so well in an urban environment, a low maintenance machine that is light and nippy enough to negotiate the traffic. It's faster than public transport - a twenty minute tube journey is cut to five on the bike and you see so much more - zipping back from Tokyo Fixed's new store (nice!!!) to 14 Bike Co over at Truman's Brewery would be a good 40 mins on bus/tube/walk but under 15 on the fixed (ok there was a wrong way down a one way street and a couple of gentle rolls through reds but generally in a relatively flat city like London it's surely the only way to travel)- we went past the cruisers on Old Compton Street, the shoppers on Oxford Street, the distracted academes by the BM, round past the truly batty and beautiful John Soanes Museum, straight past the pap of St Paul's and into the Gherkin heart of the City before scooting to a stop just past Huguenot weaver's houses on the edge of Brick Lane. The feeling of exhilaration from that kind of ride is a difficult buzz to beat. And they look supernice as well.

phew!!!!

If you have never seen this guy before, well, wow...

Breakfast of the Champions

Cyclists are fussy fellows. The more obsessive of them have been known to weigh each mouthful of food before cooking, write down the number of calories consumed and factor in how many hours on a turbo will rid us of it. The cycling mags are full of advice on nutrition - which supplements to take to help fast muscle twitch; new studies into the right percentage of protein in relation to carbs; how many litres of sports' gloop to drink whilst riding; the value of green tea in relation to lactic build up and countless countless other handy hints.

As the wind bites and the legs flag out there a middle aged man's mind turns to breakfast. Most start the ride with something in them. I favour a bowl of porridge and a cup of rocket fuel strength coffee. Others prefer a hastily stuffed banana, whilst other still prefer to suckle on gels with donkey spunk-like consistency . But all know that these are merely hors d'oevre to the main breakfast. The fuel that only the virtuous can truly consume.

If not all rides lead to Barling, all rides end up in front of a pot of tea and, hopefully, food. Some swear by cake and I can see its attractions - there is only one thing the English do better than cake - preferably coffee and walnut in artery hardening slabs. But, for me, I truly need something a bit more, erm...substantial.

The true home of the Leigh Riders, as we have decided to call ourselves, is The Barge(prop Jason White, one of Essex's finest cyclists himself). One of a row of cafes built into arches under a sloping road, this is the spiritual heartland for us. As we arrive, the waitress dumps an urn of tea which she regularly replenishes with nary a word of complaint and then listens to our specific dietary requirements - brown or white, poached or scrambled, can i have that with mushrooms and not tomatoes, any chance of a river of brown sauce? There's as many breakfast varieites as there are cyclists.


We sit and the steam slowly rises from us, in states of undress, the early morning denizens of the cafe slightly bemused by grown men in skin tight lycra and socks over their shoes, we devour on the Barge's finest, regardless. The talk turns ribald, the day's near misses, leg fades and moments of heroism relived. It's a time to hear arcane component talk, regale each other with opinions about the latest edition of Cycling Weekly and generally talk bollocks before we re-climb on to our bikes and slowly slink back up the hill and back to our grown up lives and families.

thanks to MF for the photos

Fixie Fun

Because it's the holidays I have a lot of time on my hands to watch all manner of nonsense on youtube. Check this out: