I weighed 97kg and whilst I rode a bit ‘below my weight’ it was obviously more than was efficient (or healthy).

By September I’d lost 8kg and hills were becoming significantly easier. I rode one of my regular short rides at and average of just over 17mph which was the best I’d ever done it.

This gave me the confidence to enter some cyclocross races through the winter.

It’s worth saying that most of my desire to improve is a result of my son Lewis who started racing his bike last year and is really enjoying it. It quickly became apparent that in order to enjoy training with him I needed to get faster, particularly up hills…. hence the weight loss to improve power to weight.

Losing weight by cycling is a double edged sword. The weight reduction will make you faster but running in calorie deficit won’t. My training rides at that time all involved a bonk. Even the short rides came with a clear dip in energy followed by a slog home. (I’m in good health and never over-stressed my body – I wouldn’t recommend this unless you know your body can take it)

Now this did my weight loss no end of good, but, unsurprisingly, my CX race performances were flat.

At this time Lewis and I also started to train with father and son riders Barry and Mark, so now I was out with 3 riders all significantly faster than me when the ground went skyward. Barry showed me that time on the bike was precious and that riding hard was it’s own reward… obvious in retrospect but a bit of a revelation at the time.

I also hooked up with Andy Ralston who had been coaching the boys a couple of times a week through the summer. Andy is a bit of a phenomenon in that he went from non cyclist to Cat 2 Racer in a couple of seasons. He has a touch of the Graeme Obree about him, forensically researching cycling performance, analysing what he bits needed to perform at his best, devising a programme and then following it with absolute dedication. I was trying to persuade him to tell the world how he did it and work with us on a cycle coaching / training site.

By Christmas the Cyclocross was over and I weighed in at 85kg. I’d decided to try to hold this weight until the spring when I’d try to find my ‘natural’ riding weight.

At this time Andy suggested that the boys enter the Youth Tour of Scotland (see pervious post) and that they follow a plan he’d written.

One to two hours a day, six days a week for twelve weeks. They signed up and so did some of the Dad’s, me included.

In the past 10 weeks our rotuine has been Lewis arriving home from school and us both getting on the turbo trainers. On Sundays we ride out as Team Boys and Team Dads and on Thursdays we go to the Martin Boys’ garage and complete that session as a group.

Yesterday, after two very tough weeks of training the sun was shining and I thought I’d ride that route again. My expectations were that if I could maintain the same pace as September I’d be slightly ahead given the way my legs felt and given that I couldn’t go very hard because of a tough pyramid session later in the day.

This is the result:

To say I was delighted is an understatement. You see training with a group of people who are also improving feels like you’re standing still so seeing your improvement on paper (and knowing that there’s more in the tank) is very gratifying.

So what made me faster?

Less weight: It’s not just about power to weight it’s about self-image… feeling and looking like a bike rider.

Having a Cycling Coach: this sounds grand, it sounds (to me) like I’m getting above my cycling station but Andy has told us what to do, when to do it, why we’re doing it and what the results will be… and he’s been right. And I will pin him down

Having a Training Plan: I used to spend as much time thinking about what to do as doing it now 100% of my thought goes in to the ride / session.

Having Riding Partners: People who enjoy each others’ success are the best. I haven’t missed 1 minute of 1 session because I want to ride with the people around me and that means getting faster. The prize is much greater than the effort.

Having a Routine: Pressures of life have a habit of damaging the really important things. 5pm Turbo Time in this house has become as ingrained as breakfast, lunch, dinner or any other absolute and with 2 of us doing the sessions there’s always a helping boot to make sure you’re there…

Having Cycling Goals: Some of mine are: To start a club time trial (this happens on Sunday). To do sub 30 minutes on a 10 mile time trial. To start a road race. To finish with the pack on a road race. To hang on to Lewi’s wheel through a club APR… and there are others. All pretty small but all pretty cool

Loving the Bike: Better a bad day on the bike than a good day at the office. (to steal a phrase)

Finally, you know when you ride your first really long climb: at the bottom it looks insurmountable, the first couple of kilometres come with that fear-filled pain, then you settle in and get a bit more confident. Then it hurts again and you don’t think you’re going to make it but a chance look over your shoulder let’s you see how far your risen and how many people are still struggling to get to where your are.

Sure there are riders a long way ahead but you got this far and you know you’ll make the top of this one… you also realise that this isn’t the last climb… there are an infinite number after this and they get harder and harder… and this knowledge makes you happy.

Well that’s where I live…

We prepared by riding the course the weekend before and then came the snow, cancelling the event and delaying everyone’s racing season by a month.

But not this year. The Drumclog TT kicked the season off in fine style last Saturday with the Perth United CC Youth Team filling the podium and Lewi taking a first place. Just rewards for the boys’ commitment to the structured training regime they’ve been working on this year. What was even more impressive was the second session the team put in that afternoon as simulation for the back to back races later in the season.

Now all focus is on the Youth Tour of Scotland in 3 weeks time.We have 2 weeks of extremely intense sessions before a recovery weekend riding the Ronde van Vlaanderen (Tour of Flanders) Sportive and watching the race.

The rest of the season revolves around the excellent Skinny Tyres Race Series with some of the team also branching off in to Cross Country and Track.

We’ve also got a Club Confined Series, the Etape Caledonia, a day out at Ten Under the Ben, five days in the Alps bagging cols, a couple of weeks in the Pyrenees and the North West Youth Tour…. blimey before you know it it’ll be the cyclocross season!

This would seem like a good point at which to thank everyone involved with filling our diary, it’s a great thing that you do and we very much appreciate your efforts. Please keep doing it!

So maybe we’ll see you out there and whatever your plans are for the season we wish you every success…

As a small boy, before the advent of mountain bikes and well before indexed gears I heard tale of a sport called cyclocross. A sport where racing bikes were ridden off-road and the riders got off and carried their bikes. My reaction was one of considerable amusement, it made no more sense than girls or beer…

It took me rather longer to find cyclocross but in October at the tender age of 44 & 11 months I raced my first SCX race in Irvine on the South West coast of Scotland.

It was the first truly competitive race I’d entered since the 1983 Junior Army Cross Country Championship… I was nervous.

You turn up to a hive of activity, lots of people carrying out well-versed preparation rituals. You quickly work out that they know what they’re doing and copy them

Registration found and entry fee paid you go and ride the course. Practice laps – learn the course, watch the pros. Already you’re riding sections you didn’t think possible, is that good?

Practice over it’s food, liquid and warmth until the mass of bikes and riders begin to roll towards the assembly point.

Then to the start line… inevitably you cast your eye across the ‘competition’. Confirmation of worst fears as everyone is faster and more confident than you… fight or flight reflex in flight overdrive… beam me up Scotty!

They talk of tyre pressure and knowingly agree on a number, a number that you didn’t read on your pump this morning… game’s a bogey maybe you should call it now.

But wait, the Commissars (weren’t they the ones who ordered the shooting of retreating Russian soldiers? – better stay put) are calling people forward by name… not you, just the players.

30 seconds later and the gun makes you a bike racer, get you!

The start is frenetic, all you can do is worry about your own line and keep going… still upright you start to grin… then there’s lactic, gallons of lactic… you start to grimace.

The first two laps are an adrenaline fuelled pain fest, pray for a mechanical, break damn you! The bike hates you, it’s not going to break, it’ll do that later when you’re starting to enjoy it. For now you must gasp for breath through all available orifices.

People overtake you, you overtake others… this feels good, slightly less suffering for you, slightly more for them. You wish them more, but only because you wish yourself less.

Physical and mental weakness mean that the technical sections that were straightforward in practice now become monumental tasks, all the places you thought you be able to recover become the only places you can maintain any speed; recovery is a myth.

Then the world slows down a bit, the pain subsides, you recognise this part of the course and you start to think about how to ride it.

You find yourself in your own group, a meaningful race… you could beat these people, or they could beat you.

This is good. Cyclocross is really good.

You look at your watch, over half way, what have you been doing? Time to put some effort in. Legs aren’t so sure, muted screaming is still screaming… why didn’t you train harder?!

The leaders are passing you, while your pedal strokes drive you deeper in to the mud, theirs create lift: they are, quite literally, flying.

Loss of concentration and one of your mini group passes you, last time you lost concentration you crashed, that was better at least you didn’t lose a place then.

Hold their wheel, make sure they know you’re there, decide where to reclaim your place. Execute the move and it’s yours… the racer races!
People are cheering, they’re saying nice things. They’re saying nice things specifically about you… you should try harder; for them.

In the distance you hear the bell so someone is starting their last lap, soon you’ll be doing the same. Legs and lungs feel little relief but the head is just getting the hang of it, come on hold this position… no idea what position you are, might be last… take one place: to not be last…

The bell, your bell, one more lap. Not a nice one like the middle section. The adrenaline is back and so is the lactic, but there’s less than one lap to go, you will finish this race!

And finish you do, finding strength to ride the last few yards like you did the first. There they are again those cheering people, impressed by your performance and thankful for your efforts on their behalf.

You ride in to the assembled throng of finishers, the heart of your new home, among the crossers, you are a crosser for everyone to see.

Legs aren’t tired, could have gone faster! Starting to buzz… feels like discovering beer… and girls. This is brilliant, did you see what we just did? It was brilliant!

Let’s do it again! Now! Or next week!

Need to talk about it. How did you cope with that off-camber? Those steps were a killer! What about the sand?! Any crashes? Mechanicals? Shall we do it again?

The elation starts to fade but now but it’s Thursday and only 3 days until the next race… can’t wait.

Cyclocross: almost as good as beer and girls….

It’s a simple offer: we give you a private forum for your Cycling Club or Cycling Group, you administer it including membership and moderation. We’ll host it on Bicycles and cover all of the associated running costs.

You can use it as broadly as you wish – it might be simply for club notifications or you might want to expand it to be the main point of contact for your club (if this takes off we’re looking at a club website widget), it’s up to you.

In return we want… well nothing. There will be one link on every page that takes you to the price comparison section of the site but it won’t flash and you don’t have to click it if you don’t want to, we won’t be offended.

You won’t see any other cycling clubs and they won’t see you but there will be a general area where anyone can post so you don’t have to be completely antisocial if you don’t want to be.

You can find a sample of the Bicycles Forum here

So if you think it could be useful to you then please get in touch.

No doubt over time their outlook will change as the concept ‘normalises’ but there are also developments that could accelerate (or completely destabilise) this process.

The people at Parlee Cycles have worked with Prius to develop neural shifting, no levers just gear changes through the power of thought:

If you haven’t seen neural control before then you might assume some sort of elaborate hoax but it’s a real science that is being driven very seriously in the development of wheelchairs for quadriplegics, so this technology will be arriving in a usuable form some time soon.

Whether it can be scaled for the bike market and how much concentration you will need to divert from all the other things you need to think about whilst riding may be limiting factors but there are some other interesting ideas in the video.

One is using GPS to provide signals to your bike to make adjustments to gearing using the system’s previous experience of your riding… so it knows that your at the base of a climb, it knows your usual gear selection for that climb and it adjusts accordingly. I don’t completely buy this particular application unless it can also judge my energy level, state of mind and the company that I’m riding with but I think that there are other options.

We sell a lot of Rockshox Reverb Seatposts which enables remote adjustment of the seatpost height depending on whether the rider is ascending or descending. Couple the above tecnology with this and you could have one less thing to think about during your cross-country race… it’s an on / off decision that will very rarely differ and so may be better suited to the technology

This sort of stuff excites me. Not because I necesarily disagree with the sceptics’ cost / benefit analysis but because every step offers opportunites to be that bit closer something really clever.

Michigan based Inner City Bikes have taken the bike to an brilliantly compressed form with the Inner City Bike.

It’s minimal in almost every respect… but those 36″ wheels really make a statement!

At $3-5000 you could be buying yourself a piece of cycling design history… or a travesty of bicycle geometry

For our money it looks cooler than it probably rides – that saddle is a long way back (think Alpine descents) and the fork rake will surely make for a twitch filled journey.

That said it’s brave and thought provoking… it’s a better world for companies like ICB.

As Youth Cycling categories span 2 years there is often a wide difference in the strength and size of competitors so in an attempt to level the playing field the UCI require riders to ride using gearing that results in the stronger riders ‘spinning out’ meaning that the bunch stays together for longer.

The fact that the restricted gearing creates a peloton give the kids more experience of close quarters racing and ultimately makes them better bike racers.

The table below details the maximum ‘metres development’ for each category. In essence metres development is the distance the bike will travel during one full revolution of the cranks in the highest (hardest) gear.

The cheapest way to restrict gears for Youth Racing this is reduce the number of available gears on the rear cassette.

however if you want to have a full range of gears the most efficient (for Youth B to Junior) is to fit a cassette with a 14 tooth highest (smallest) cog and change the chainring: 42 tooth for Youth B, 46 tooth for Youth A and 52 tooth for Juniors.

If you want to play around with your options take a look at Sheldon Brown’s gear calculator but be warned you are entering the dark world of bicycle geekdom

As far as checking is concerned you can expect the Commissars to check before every race and at the end of the big ones…. so best to get it right… but if you don’t there will always be someone around who can help.

Those little bumps at the end of your forks that slow your wheel change and nullify (in both senses) the benefit of your quick realise skewer are commonly known as Lawyer Tabs to Lawyer Lips.

They exist because the quick release skewer is considered too complicated for you to use safely and this is why I object to them. I don’t really need the 15 seconds I’d save without them but why invent something really useful (and really simple) and then backward engineer it for stupid people.

You see when the QR Skewer first hit the streets (excuse the pun) they resulted in a number of US law suits brought by people apparently unaware that they should be tight when done up. these people were surprised when their loose wheel detached from the fork and caused them to crash.

Being the US the court found against the Bike Companies and so was born the Lawyer Tab.

Of course now that you know why quick release isn’t very quick you do have the choice of doing something about it – you can file off your lawyer lips.

But even as I type those words I feel a pang of fear and guilt – am I being reckless? what if someone suffers harm as a result of my suggestion? I feel I should offer some back-covering provisos but equally I want us all to make our decisions and consider the consequences ourselves…. what to do?

Here’s my snivelling middle ground: Don’t file them off if you don’t know how a QR works… and if you’ve got a carbon fibre frame be really careful of that dust or crashing could be the least of your worries.

And to bike manufacturers I’d ask that you stop putting them on our bike and instead use a sticker that says “if this isn’t tight you’ll crash and hurt yourself”

There is no place in the cycling world for the Lawyer Tab.

I assured him that I had actually been slowing down but he was adamant that this wasn’t the case because I didn’t have my hand on my brakes and I was still peddling…. he’d never seen a fixed wheel bike.

Now I’m not sure how I could have communicated that to him but it seems to me that much of the animosity that exists between riders and ‘cagers’ could be easily solved with better communication.

What Fraser Mort has done with this fabulous light is to develop the communication device that used to simply say ‘I am here’ and make it say ‘I am here and I am a person’. A small but vital step in creating mutual respect.

Apart from that it’s a load of fun and I want one!

We do this by making a purchase, contacting them with an enquiry and testing any claims they make about their service. It is inevitable that some will make mistakes and in these cases we consider how they deal with the mistake.

There is a lot of retailer review noise on the net but we find that this is usually extreme in its negativity or it is a retailer sponsored ‘trust’ type scheme that is overly positive…

We prefer to use our own experience which we will provide to you through the Retailer Profiles in our Guides Section.