Grid of Posts 3×2

  • “Training” for Brevets

    When I started aiming for long distances (200km + at randonneur pace) I used to ride about 150km + per week. Much of that riding was fairly challenging, as I lived in Sheffield, itself built on seven hills, and embedded in the ‘scenic’ Peak National Park. Scenic is a word much beloved by the UK randonneuring cognoscenti:… Read more

  • Vroomen visited my steerer tube…

    Has @gerardvroomen has been at my new Kinesis Grand Fondo? seriously though, I did cut off 3cm to avoid being too unslammed and find a nice compromise for my dodgy back… Read more

  • We say audax, you say randonnée…

    Having failed to enter a single event in the last few years I have finally cracked and entered into what I hope will be a more continuous engagement with allure libre long distance cycling. I rode my first ‘audax‘(as us Brits wrongly call them for historic reasons) or Brevet Randonneur in the early 1990s, and… Read more

  • Drugs are bad, mkay: why I still care about dope in cycling

    In Paul Fournel’s wonderful essay on doping in Need for the Bike (Trans. A. Stoeckl, 2003: 123-125) he notes that it is doping that often makes racing hard, rather than the opposite, and that the effect of doping on onlookers can be more potent than its effect on competitors. Fournel is pretty agnostic on a personal… Read more

  • Who will profit from the Tour of Beijing: what does the I Ching say?

    Many learned minds have been debating the implications for professional cycling of the of the forthcoming Tour of Beijing. David Millar (@millarmind) suggested on twitter that some of the discussion was lacking Asian context: @TheRaceRadio @Vaughters This discussion is very western. Some discussion with @accidentobizaro led us to attempt to divine who will profit using the ancient… Read more

  • Bicycle racing, doping and crucifixion: Alfred Jarry revisited

    The Passion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race When Alfred Jarry wrote his interpretation of Jesus’ crucifixion it must have seemed a neat metaphor: the self-imposed yet stage-managed torture of the hill-climb is an apposite image to evoke self-sacrifice. Jarry also accentuates the technical and media-saturated aspect of this crucifixion: the crown of thorns becomes… Read more