Category Archives: absurd

1000 plateaus

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Yesterday I reached 1000 km of riding indoors since the moment I started working from home due to Covid-19 in March. I hadn’t ridden much outdoors since moving to Manchester in early February, and I’ve not only ridden much more than I have in ages, but done most of it in… Zwift. This is a significant change: between 2015 and 2019 I rode only 10 times on the trainer, for a total of 106 km…

Paul Fournel, author of Need for the Bike (beautifully republished as Vélo, with illustrations by Jo Burt), and the most unlikely of indoor cyclists, describes two extremes: one his complete bikelessness in Morocco, the other his reaction to the paradoxically bike unfriendly San Francisco. Visiting the latter, Fournel resorts, against type, to ride inside on a static trainer. He won’t go to the gym (I won’t spoil the punchline). I haven’t found the UK lockdown as bike unfriendly he found San Francisco, but I have thus far had no desire to ride outside for pleasure, only utility: to the supermarket with a trailer. To queue.

I couldn’t really afford a smart trainer, but the day after my last day of commuting by train and Brompton for the foreseeable future I ordered a Tacx Flux 2 (more on this later) given my growing realisation that much or all of my cycling is going to be indoors, either because of Covid-19 or because I’m going to be looking after a newborn from late July as well as helping look after my sons post-lockdown.

I fully intended to explore different virtual/augmented reality platforms when it arrived, it after a brief dalliance with Tacx VR I had a go with Zwift, and despite some early confusion found a surprising level of engagement. I’m sure many of you have seen that Black Mirror episode (15 Million Merits), which satirizes the gamification of not just cycling, but life itself), and I for one have been pretty dismissive of virtual cycling and especially virtual racing.

 

Not entirely dismissive though.

And there are other, less judgmental views of the future of a semi-virtualized future for cycling, such as Bruce Sterling’s excellent story Bicycle Repairman.

First-hand experience has been enlightening. 

Simulation Zwift simulates some aspects of cycling, but others are real. You still sit on a bike. Resistance changes. You get tired. Your butt hurts. You get bored. You can see and interact with others (albeit in an impoverished way)… you can even fall off.

Racing I have only raced my bike once before riding in Zwift in nearly 50 years of cycling. In the last month I have ridden three races, one of which I was DQed from for being to powerful for my entered category (see below under ethics and anti-cheating). My only real life race was over 1700 km long; my longest race in Zwift was 32 km long.

Data I usually ride with cadence and HR sensors and log everything in Strava. In Zwift I get a real, rather than virtual measure of power in W, and crucially W/Kg and 95% 20 minute max power (see below on why this is surprisingly important)… this has been revealing, as it has helped me not overtrain as well as maintain higher work rates when I want/need to.

Power I now have a good idea of my FTP and strengths/weaknesses. I can also see how my HR is not a good measure of effort (but is a good measure of how fatigued I am).

Equipment If you don’t have a smart trainer, HR monitor and a set of scales you won’t be able to race with any sense of real comparison with others. Your desire for such benchmarking may vary. In game purchases (currency = drops) can get you lighter or more aerodynamic virtual frames/wheels, and you can personalise your look. My smart trainer, a mid-range Tacx direct drive model, sounds unwell, is a bit flaky and I fear it’s demise, but I daren’t send it back due to current shortages and transport restrictions.

Heat and wind There is no wind indoors unless you have a fan. If you have one it won’t make you go faster if it is behind you.

Ethics and anti-cheating measures I was canned from my first race in ZwiftPower for being fractionally over the listed W/Kg limit for Category D (calculated for 95% of 20 minute max): this makes even thinking about winning tricky as you need to work just hard enough, but not too hard, or resign yourself to the bottom of the next highest category, as I have done. But unless you register accurately with ZwiftPower it is impossible to tell whether you are winning or losing, and to distinguish between more or less factual representations of effort. There is also ZADA (now CEVAZ). The easiest way to cheat is to under-report your weight. And sandbagging… sigh.

Fitness I am now fitter than I have ever been. And because of isolation, haven’t been ill despite riding nearly every day.

Hills, mountains and dirt It is harder work uphill and on gravel.

Injury Staying in the same position is tough on the body, and I have had reason to switch saddles.

Isolation you are never alone. Unless you want to be. or you get dropped.

Socialisation There are group rides, where the leader has a yellow beacon and the sweep a red one. Some are very organised (AHDR for example, or HERD/PACK), some less so. You can invite other riders to ride socially with you.

Identity and representation Some choose to make their avatar like their real self, some don’t. I shortened my avatar’s beard when I trimmed my real one.

Appearance and reality Just read Baudrillard.

Distance and duration It is possible to ride long distances, but you have to take care of positional issues, and remember to eat and drink. My longest ride was just over 100 km, and it hurt. There are even audaxes (ZHR)…

Efficiency You can find solo or social rides/races 24/7 to suit fitness, training goal and time pressure.

Active and passive You can chat or be silent (using discord or the built-in chat). You can organise, or just participate.

Laziness You don’t need to steer or brake, and if you have a smart trainer, you can freewheel downhill

Fun I have had immense fun.

Epicity If you want it, it is there for the taking. If not. that’s fine too. Or not.

The outdoors It isn’t.

 

 

 

Adventure Commuting

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So, it’s come to this. I am re-branding as an adventure-commuter. For too long I have ridden the same route in and out of work, once or twice a week. But since I am no longer an aspiring ultra racer (one race completed one race completed, no further plans) or randonneur (two SR Series but havent finished a brevet for over a year now) and have less time for weekend riding (although I will be cyclo-camping on holiday) the obvious thing is to upgrade my routes from Hebden Bridge (and probably also Manchester) to Leeds.

My current ‘fast’ route is fairly direct and follows the main roads (A646 and A58 mostly), dicing with the trucks,vans, buses and other lunatics. An adventure of a kind, and there are some wonderful vistas (such as the entry to the Calder Valley in the night). I know this route so well that I can identify the organic development of road defects and even recognise people walking to work. It takes about one and a half hours to two hours door to door, not much slower than train plus Brompton, my other default mode. And although it isn’t flat I only need the small ring once.

I have had a range of other routes, taking in the Aire Valley Cycleway (bit of a detour via Shipley), and bits of the Calder Vall Cycleway but I have failed to fully commit. I tend to baulk at a ride longer than two hours, but why stop there? Earlier this week I rode out of Hebden Bridge up the steepest hill (via Birchcliffe) and proceeded to take in as many climbs as possible before descending to the cycleway in Skipton (the first part of which is axle-breaking rocky path) and on into Leeds. Took about 3 hours. On the way back I descended into Luddenden Foot and rode along route 66 through the woods by the railway and river. The next phase will be to set off earlier and ride a more extensive loops up North or South, avoiding main roads and mixing in paths and cycleway as appropriate. Eventually I plan to set off for work from work, riding all night to arrrive back at work by morning. I could also add in a level of complexity by using trains to get me further from work, but that might be a different pursuit.

No wonder I am tired all the time. But sleep is for wimps.

(I would have written a blog about lovepacking, but that’s too private, and far too serious).

#adventurecommuting

Get Carter: 400 – 260 = audax hotel again

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You’re a big man, but you’re in bad shape. With me it’s a full time job.

There’s a missing post before this one which was too dark to share. So tangentially, I pass over a completed 300 and get to a failed 400 with a long name: a night in a beautiful bus shelter and a great ride cut short by my inability to sleep enough in the days before. You don’t want the details, so instead some impressions and images, and the connections made by my head.

The text of the missed post included the assertion ‘long distance cycling is not a death cult’. And it isn’t: as I write this I am listening to Matthew Bourne’s version of Chaplin’s Smile, and my last event was, despite wind and then awful rain in Holyhead and a spot of exhausted vomiting, a good match for my mood:

A standard pulled apart and touched gently.

And if there was violence, it was only in my head…

 

Image result for get carter beach

Oh dear what can the matter be?

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There was a time when throwing up in the middle of the night in a Northern town might have involved drink and drugs. These days I’m better prepared (bivvy bag) but it’s cycling that drives me past the point of physical no return. Two rides in a row now have ended in physical and mental collapse around the 300 km mark. You may think this is normal and unsurprising, but in over 20 years of long distance cycling I’ve only ever quit three audaxes: once through over sleeping and running out of time and the other two this season, in similar circumstances and in close succession.

My most recent ‘failure’ is particularly telling: having ridden 200 or so km to Glasson in the Fylde, and managed to navigate around a closed bridge and a swiftly mended puncture (first this year), I descended into chaotic failure mode surprisingly quickly. I clearly hadn’t eaten enough before reaching Glasson (where I inhaled a burger) and wasn’t functioning properly. I was following a mandatory route and hadn’t really had any navigational issues but my Garmin routed me in completely absurd way following my stop, dumping me onto a bizarre network of minor roads and cycle paths, all in roughly the right direction but none anywhere near my planned route. In a better mental state I might have noticed earlier, but I had clearly gone into ketosis and that state where the body is OK but brain is starved of fuel. 

Hence, Colne at around midnight, opposite a full hotel. 307 km but a fair way still from home. Sick twice and shivering. I was offered help by a lovely taxi driver and a BMX bandido, but by that time I’d called for help from my angelic partner as I was in a worse state than on the Old 240.

Learnings: I’m switching to using my smartphone and ride with gps app for navigation if I ever do this again. I’ve done two DIYs before with no issues but this was a complete navigation disaster. And some thoughts about taking on more fuel (possibly liquid). The main realisation though is that as I get older I may need to reduce the intensity of my training and ride longer distances (there’s lots of good advice from ironman triathletes on this it seems): I’ll let you know how I get on.

Men of Kent pull an all-nighter (Permanent Brevet Randonneur 300)

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Don_Quijote_and_Sancho_PanzaReceipts

A handful of receipts to be stapled together and posted with a card to a man I have never met. That is the goal. And it is a good one.

Don Quixote – Sancho Panza – Rosinante

Offshore wind farms in the distance make me ponder a future without fossil fuels: throughout the night I am haunted by Mad Max visions of a post-petrol world, the lack of traffic signalling a world dominated by pedal power and wind.

Rain in a park

In a park, on a path, as the rain steadily turns from annoyance into a heavy and unwelcome presence. The riding becomes dirty and sightless. All I can see is reflections from the water droplets on my glasses.

Peloton
George, embedded in the Ashford peloton, deep in conversation as Gavin and I drift on and off the back, enjoying the stimulation but unsure of the pace.

A Thousand Plateaus

After the rain and the joy of an increasingly dry early morning, the gaps in our trio increase. We ride as increasingly silent and isolated units, becoming social only at the controls, but even here it is a grim task eating and drinking.

IMG_20160522_074156

Birdsong

The volume and diversity of bird song after the deluge, even before the sky changed from black to blue is an assault on my ears. A seagull tells me we are close to the coast again, but I rarely see the sea.

Navigon

Only Garmin could manufacture a device which guides you perfectly along a route until an unpredictable moment where it ceases to do so. It is like a map for spies, designed to destroy itself before capture.

Grimpeur

Early on: a hill. Heart rate reaches 159 never to return. Later undulations register only as minor annoyances, slowing me down but making little impact on my increasingly depressed heart.

Route 2

The joyless disappointment of the National Cycle Network – it is telling that the worst part of the route is dedicated to bicycles: what a sign of British failure.

Mambo Italiano/Mama Mia

Before. Renato Carasone. A Peroni. Ham, rocket and buffalo mozzarella. Chicken Risotto…

No particular order/moment form/mobile/Stockhausen

After. It always comes back to me like a Stockhausen piece. In this case a mixture of Goldstaub and Sternklang. And maybe a bit of Stimmung.

And if you want to ride it:

http://www.aukweb.net/perms/detail/DWI02/

Gavin’s post about it here

The Ghost in the Machine: underneath the tinfoil hat.

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I have been struggling for a while to decide how to continue to write about cheating in sport given its state of anomie. Scandal after scandal in athletics, soccer, tennis (and even cycling) have helped normalise the view that sport is actually inherently fraudulent, whether or not that is in any sense ‘true’. Nonetheless, two developments in sporting fraud have emerged which suggest a post-humanisation of sporting fraud. Neither are entirely new in concept, but both engage with human performance in ways which question the boundary between technology and the body, and create a gap between our inquisitive nature and what we can comprehend as either human- or machine-like.

  1. Gene Doping
    The ability of products to manipulate the inner workings of our cells isn’t all that new, and many journalists have latched onto the warnings about dangers (turning something on doesn’t mean you can then turn it off) or the potential for such products to be both potentially undetectable and incredibly powerful. One such product which has never exited testing or been brought to market is Repoxygen, which causes an alteration to cells which then produce higher than normal levels of EPO. Whether this exists as a black market product is unclear but it is certain that athletes, coaches and sporting authorities believe that to be likely. The crucial difference between Repoxygen (or a similar product) and rEPO is that whereas doping with rEPO decreases the production of EPO by our bodies whilst boosting red blood cell production, Repoxygen acts directly on the cells increasing their production of natural EPO. The trick is to do so without creating chronically and dangerously high hematocrit levels. That does not happen with rEPO – which suppresses natural production of EPO and is therefore relatively short lived in effect.
  2. Technological Fraud
    The second development, which although highlighted by recent events at the U23 Cyclocross World Championship event, has been posited for much longer, is the use of small concealed electric motors to boost cycling performance by a marginal, but significant quantum. There is a suspicion amongst some that Femke Van den Driessche used such means to achieve her gains on the climbs at the 2015 Koppenbergcross – a suspicion that may have helped motivate what looked to be a targeted operation to detect the motor using an EMR application in the pits at the World Championships.

What links these two techniques is their invisible testing of our assumptions about what it us to be human. Of course, all cycling is technologically enhanced, but whereas an illegally light bicycle is only quantitatively illicit, the motorised bicycle is qualitatively illicit. We assume the power input which the drive train converts comes from the rider and if this is no longer the case we are watching a motorcycle race, not a bicycle race. With gene doping it is not the undetectability or effectiveness which chills, it is the categorical shift from human to… not human. In both cases there is an uncanny valley effect where in the absence of better preparation, whether natural or pharmaceutical, the athlete goes beyond what is possible for their physiology. The results of doping can look odd to the naked eye, but the result of gene doping or technological fraud create a categorical shift. This is no longer enhancement by degree, but a new sport which goes well beyond the metaphorical Lance-as-cyborg narrative.

Human beings are fairly inquisitive: I’d guess around .7 on the cat scale. Their desire to gather and interpret data is not always matched, however, with the intellectual capacity to come to conclusions that bear much relation to reality. Whether it is rappers thinking the Earth is flat, or the mistaken belief that there is a causal link between autism and the MMR vaccine, our desire to explain what we observe can outstrip our ability to interpret. Of course, it’s worse than this: the desire for an explanation may not drive us to seek information upon which to ponder; and it can be manipulated by the unscrupulous. It may drive us to select information which reinforces our existing beliefs; or to reject information gathering and rely upon solipsistic deduction of a kind Sherlock Holmes would be distinctly uncomfortable with. And sometimes, the explanation is so seemingly crazy it can lead to madness…

The detective novel plays with this desire for explanations, and also the pleasure we gain from being just one step ahead of the detective (or one step behind). And although we often look to be searching for the smoking gun, its discovery often disappoints as well as befuddles. The reveal undoes the setting up if explanations, unless through shock (Seven) or unexpected confusion (Usual Suspects) it itself sets up a new set of questions. It takes a deft artist to tell a tale which simultaneously unfolds into a rational state of closure yet still leaves us questioning: perhaps this is why the confusing “reality” of time travel narratives, whether hysterical (Interstellar) or creepily whole (Predestination) are so fascinating.

So where does this leave the inquisitive cycling fan? All sports fans have some degree of fascination with the causes that sit behind winning. However, many of these factors are hidden, either because they are forbidden by law or rule, or because they are too complex for any but an expert to really grasp. These ghosts in the machine of sporting excellence lead many of us to express our inquisitive nature in fantastic, ill-evidenced speculations worthy of the X-Files. The truth is indeed out there, however, and it isn’t our fault that the UCI have to use ghost detectors to combat technological fraud. Who can blame us for retaining our tin foil hats when if turns out that a form of cheating much derided as fantasy turns out to be both actual and invisible, yet needs only the right tool (a free EMR detector app) and a tip-off to find.

 

Further reading:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15157120 (paywall – a review from 2004 of the state of the art in gene doping in sports)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/sports/playmagazine/0603play-hot.html?_r=0 (NYT from 2007)

http://www.wired.com/2010/02/gene-doping-detection/ (WIRED from 2010)

http://cyclingtips.com/2016/01/more-details-emerge-about-motorized-doping-at-cyclo-cross-worlds/

http://cyclingtips.com/2016/02/cyclocross-motor-scandal-belgian-rider-blames-mix-up-claims-bike-belongs-to-a-friend/ (Two CYCLINGTIPS articles on the Van den Driessche affair)

Let’s Get Lost

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riders ahead on straight road

Follow them!

I had  a Dutch colleague once whose practice when travelling abroad was to get lost. Intentionally. At a conference in Liège in the early 1990s I accompanied him on late night walk off the University campus (which is out of town at the top of a hill). I hadn’t quite appreciated the extent of his dedication to lostness, and the combination of pitch darkness, unfamiliar territory and dry Dutch humour will stay with me for ever.

blackpool sign and bike

A sign!

I have been lost many times, and mostly on ‘audax’ rides (or randonnées as they really should be called, as on an actual audax, with a road captain getting lost is virtually impossible). My night-time navigation skills are becoming legendary in their inaccuracy, but I am equally capable of turning the wrong way or missing a cue sheet instruction during the day. Recently, Gavin Peacock, who wrote this account of his first 200 here, suggested to me that the absence of yellow arrows, the potential for navigational failure is a feature, not a bug, in the allure libre model of riding that characterises the brevets randonneur organised by Audax UK, and that this was something that positively differentiates this model of riding from the cyclosportive. Despite the cursing that results from my lack of ability to follow a cue sheet, I think he might be right. Even when I have tried to reduce my off-route wandering by using a GPS device I have been foiled by software and hardware failures, or lost signal: it is as if the gods of audax intend me to be forever questioning my progress from control to control, hoping for a sign.

straight road into distance

We’re on a Road to Nowhere

There is getting lost, and the fear of getting lost. Actually being lost is disturbing, but is a problem to be solved, and as my Dutch friend would have argued, a means to finding the unexpected and unplanned. The fear of getting lost is quite something else, and because of the strict time limits on brevets, can lead to a level of stress which takes the fun out of what should be a challenging adventure, hence my attempts to limit my failings using a Garmin. When added to the uncertainty (due to inexperience) of calculating average riding speed versus sleep on my first Brevet 600 (The East and West Coasts) I nearly allowed it to corrupt my enjoyment. Strangely, despite getting lost quite significantly in the Fylde after the Glasson Dock control, and thinking I was lost looking  for it, I managed my time very well, completing the ride with two hours left to spare. As per usual, my efforts to stay on course were stymied by lack of confidence, failure of said Garmin at the 400km mark (which wouldn’t even hard reset), and the loss of my watch at the HQ after my one hour sleep stop. Following a route sheet after 4-500km gets pretty tough even with a functioning odometer, but without even a watch I found judging distance and time almost impossible. Two things stopped me from becoming a latter day Flying Dutchman of the Fylde: my phone (which was still charged and working, I had plenty of external power) and, unsurprisingly, fellow riders (often as unsure of the route as this stage as I, but there was safety in numbers) on the same route, and at one point a random racer who actually waited at the next junction and directed me like a race marshal. I was so addled at this stage that I cannot remember the names of the cycling couple who allowed me to suck their wheels just before and after the mysterious Cartford Toll Bridge control, but they were a high point of my ride – I hope we meet again and I can redeem my embarrassment.

bridge in middle of field

Take me to the bridge…

In the main, I kept to the route, however and despite the agony of the last 100km, where my lack of preparation and limited sleep caused me to lose position on the bike and end up with battered hands and arms and sore shoulders (more on this in a companion piece), this was a wonderful and magical experience. I had no mechanical or lighting problems (new Exposure light was very good) and felt great on the bike for most of the ride. This was a wonderfully organised ride, and a credit to Audax UK, Chris Crossland and his helpers. My second high point after the kindness of others was the experience of eating fish and chips in the LANTERN O’ER LUNE CAFÉ at Glasson Dock. Quite extraordinary, and every visit I have made there has been on an Audax, and each one magical in its own way.

 

 

Haunting Malcolm Elliott

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Kellogg's Tour of Brittain 1988. Winner Malcolm Elliott

Photographs are obvious catalysts for memory. They sometimes deliver more than one expects. Someone I follow on twitter posted some old pictures of the Kellogg’s 1988 Tour of Britain (which spookily include a blurred Jimmy Savile) today. I was there at the final criterium in Westminster,  and my hazy memories are formative in my passion for cycling (this was the first international racing I saw in the flesh). This photo of Malcolm Eliott,  who won that edition, is one I have seen before. However, I never noticed that I was in the crowd in the blurry background until today (unless I am seeing what I want to see)… and indeed Elliott was the first pro I had an on road encounter with (a few years later), in Sheffield, stopped at the lights.

It’s been a good year… for blogging

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Prior to joining twitter and starting to post here I became a regular visitor and sometime contributor to the clinic, over on cyclingnews.com and hence my outlook was dangerously skewed towards the effect doping was continuing to have on both professional and amateur road racing. However, over the past year I have written about music, about depression, and most recently about my own cycling efforts and ambitions.

I started this blog for two reasons:

  1. to learn how to use Twitter and WordPress to reach an audience; and
  2. to contribute to online discussion of cycling.

I wonder how I did? Continue reading →