This is how to ride your bike in snow

Posted on 21 December 2009 by Alex Murray

With London struggling under the weight of a bit of light snow, the place has ground to a halt. It’s pretty embarrassing that it took me an hour to complete a ten minute journey on the bus in one of the world’s major cities.

Lots of people will probably be leaving their bikes at home or at work tonight – I left mine at the office – as all but the main routes haven’t been treated so are essentially nothing more than sheet ice. It’s not just that the roads are impassable, it’s that other traffic is entirely unpredictable.

So, here’s a big hat tip to Andy Waterman for flagging the amazing conditions and riding at the Cyclocross World Cup race in Kalmthout

We both rode the London League race, he finished third, I finished about third from last. But it was a lot of fun, if really tough on the concentration and bike handling. to be honest my mind’s still a bit fried from it.

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The 2010 Professional “shit kit” competition is on

Posted on 8 December 2009 by Alex Murray

Opening entries are from Team Radioshack and Omega Pharma Lotto.

Hitting it hard for the first batter up to the plate (baseball metaphor? WTF?) “The Shack” are putting it into the bleachers with this number.

Lance Armstrong RadioShack kit 2010

Where to begin?

  • The arbitrary nipple high divide making it look like a boobtube
  • The stuck in the 90s grey-on-grey patterning last seen looking pointless on the USPS kit
  • The use of grey in cycling kit

Note: Rich Land on twitter says “Grey along with denim should never be seen anywhere near cycling kit. I bet the podium cap is a Stetson”

Exception on the grey rule is the ACBB kit for historical reasons.

Meanwhile Omega-Pharma Lotto (isn’t that an american college fraternity/sorority?) seem to have tried to press home the finer details of melding the “brand imaging” of a national lottery to that of a pharmaceutical giant and driven their designer to despair.

Omega Pharma Lotto team kit 2010 modelled by Philip Gilbert

End result is that poor Pip and the gang are going to spent the whole of next season being labelled Colgate by the rest of the peloton. It’s either that or Aquafresh.

colgate toothpaste

I suppose you could excuse it by saying it resembled pharmaceutical packaging, but that’s like saying you prefer stubbing your toe to poking yourself in the eye.

And the worst thing about this all? There’s a whole load more of them to come :((((((( *cries*

Garmin Transitions: you just know that somewhere someone is thinking to themselves “You know we really should think about how we can represent the transitions thing with a gradient fade.” With light blue, orange and argyle checks.

Coco The Clown’s outfit is pretty “visible”, it doesn’t make it cool either.

Columbia-HTC: After last year’s spectacular win in the “winning races dressed up as lego” classification, can it actually get any worse? No chance that this year the Stapleton gang will be wearing something that makes them look less like cannon fodder in a badly conceived sci-fi series.

There’s a reason that lots of people bought last season’s Cervelo Test Team kit and it’s that it actually paid some attention to being wearable. And it did it without losing brand identity.

So if you spot any new kit, let me know so I can see just who is going to be the worst dressed team in the peloton next season.

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Imperial Winter Series 2009/10: 4th Cat, 05 December 2009

Posted on 7 December 2009 by Alex Murray

Well that was a pretty miserable and frustrating experience for me. How was it for you? I look forward to the Imperial Winter Series as motivation to see me through the winter, but it got off to a mediocre start as I made all my usual mistakes:

  • Not holding my position and drifting back through the bunch
  • Getting stuck behind dodgy handlers
  • Relying on my cornering skills to stay in touch with the bunch
  • Losing concentration at key points
  • Getting caught the wrong side of splits and wasting energy closing gaps

Net result = Got dropped at some point and rolled in a lap and quite a bit down.

Really frustrating as I’m not feeling that out of shape and didn’t feel like I was struggling until the bunch started going away from me. I wasn’t alone in going out the back though, James Curry and Lance Woodman, two other habitual 4th Cats like me, both slipped off the back. James and I tried some through-and-off to try and make the most of our time by getting some extra training in.

Lance’s analysis is pretty accurate in citing the point at which we got lapped by the 3rd Cat race as where the problems started for the both of us. The Cycling Silk, Martin Porter also reckons this as the bit of the race that created difficulties.

The problem as I saw it was that instead of sitting up and neutralising our race when the 3rd cats came past, the riders at the front lined it out meaning that it took nearly a lap for the whole of the other race to pass us. This wasn’t helped by a split in their field and the annoying habit of shouting at our race to keep left and then diving across the front of us rather than staying on the right.

So I got caught behind that split and couldn’t move up while burning matches as our race upped its pace to chase riders who’d jumped on the 3rds, despite being told not to.

It’s bitterly frustrating getting dropped but better it happen now when I haven’t been putting in any effort rather than come Spring. In all honesty I need to ride a decent amount more than the once a week which is all I seem to be able to fit in at the moment.

I can’t make it next week so need to get my motivation up for the third round on 19 December. I’ll be wearing the bright yellow 68 until I can muster the ten points to move up to 3rd cat (how long have I been saying that?).

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