from balance bikes to racing bikes; on-road and off-road
🚲 94.5miles, 5279m climbing, Cols: 🏔 Pic Arthaburu 1156m, 🏔 Col de Bagargi 1327m, 🏔 Col de Soudet 1520m, 🏔 Col de la Taillandère 1836m After a good meal and a sound night’s sleep we set off early in only slightly damp kit, well aware that the day ahead was likely to be tough, but full of optimism. On day 1, our off-road […]
🚲 59.5miles, 2261m climbing, Cols: 🏔 Col d’Ibardin 317m, 🏔 Urtsualdea 550m, 🏔 Collado Anzola 585m, 🏔 Col d’Ispéguy 690m A la gare After being dropped off by Dad at Poitiers, we found that the TGV, legendary for its speed and punctuality, was running an hour and 20 minutes late. We managed to book new tickets for a later connection in Bordeaux and, partly […]
My quest to be better at 40 continues… (part I here) More skill at 40! At work I find my that, through teaching, my depth of understanding and therefore my ability improves. This seems to translate to cycling. Writing The Cyclocross Bible helped me think carefully about technique and this year I put that into […]
The cyclocross season is drawing to a close so it’s time for all those end-of-season blogs, photo montages and messages of thanks to sponsors! I feel I have a good excuse to write a season wrap-up blog (or two) this year though. Following surgery last week, I’m not fit to do anything else! I am […]
Yet again I feel compelled to put down on paper my Three Peaks story – for the three-fold purposes of therapy, self-publicity and, of course, hopefully, your enjoyment. If you’d like more information on the course and how to tackle the event, there’s a large section devoted to it in The Cyclocross Bible. As always […]
The change This season I decided to go over to the dark side and get disc brakes. I did this for a few reasons but the main one was that I wore through four carbon rims in one weekend of sandy Belgian mud last year (Superprestige, Diegem and GP Sven Nys, Baal). So, what to […]
What a whirlwind… not quite sure it wasn’t all a dream now we are back. Maybe that’s just because I’m now pretty tired, but more likely it’s because I can’t quite believe that a couple of days ago I was racing up the Muur van Geraardsbergen after some of the best cyclocross riders in the […]
Sorry – this post isn’t ready yet! However, I’m publishing it now so one of my students at university can use the power data in his project on human-powered aircraft. Feel free to check out my stats from 2016 and 2017 for now though (I’m quite proud to have data for rides over 10 hours in […]
I recently came across this bit of wind tunnel testing by Hunt. It led me to dig out some wind tunnel testing I did for my aerospace engineering undergraduate project 18 years ago. Testing wheels is rather tricky! The aerodynamic drag of a rider and bike as a whole is pretty straightforward: you put the […]
I’ve been off the bike and mostly off work with flu for a month now. I thought I would find it therapeutic to write a brief review of my ‘cross season. Upon starting to write, it has quickly degenerated into an outpouring of my Three Peaks Cyclocross experience. Part II will be a more balanced […]
How to Ride a Bike 