Armstrongalypse

It will not have escaped your attention that Lance Armstrong is now a confessed doper.
It will not have escaped your attention that Lance Armstrong took EPO and possibly forced others to do the same.
It will not have escaped your attention that Lance Armstrong lied, cheated and bullied his way to seven Tour de France titles.
In short, Lance Armstrong will not have escaped your attention.

The internet is now saturated with articles such as this one, which comment on what I have come to term Armstrongalypse. Everyone has an opinion on what he did or did not say in his interview with Oprah Winfrey and this has been flashed at us from every screen in the nearby vicinity ramming it to the forefront of public conversation. However I am not a scientist, economist or professional cyclist, so to try and come to some sort of informed conclusion regarding the case using the never-ending stream of evidence would be a fallacy, so I won’t.

My point is this: That I didn’t, don’t and will not care about Lance Armstrong.

I started riding my bike when I was 4 years old. At this age I couldn’t even spell Armstrong and the fact that my favourite colour was yellow was dependent solely on the fact that yellow is the same colour as custard. I then sparked my cycling interest proper when I was 16. I had a twelve week summer holiday, no job and no car and nothing to do; I rode my bike solely as a way to relieve boredom, but it soon became more than that. Cycling soon became an embodiment of freedom, both of myself and of my surroundings, it didn’t matter that I didn’t go very fast, but that I was perfectly happy just riding around. I started riding with groups and although I started to race and ride with other racers, cycling still had that foundation of freedom: Freedom from work, freedom from family, freedom from the computer screen nature of modern life. Cycling was a release and my passion.

Now these may not be the reasons that everyone starts cycling, but I’ll bet a fair amount of my student loan that that is the main reason a lot of people stick with the sport, not because Alberto Contador smashed everyone in the Giro or that Lance won his seventh Tour title. The recent success of British Cycling in all its forms may do the job of getting a new audience involved, but if these people start enjoying the sport for its purity and simplicity then there is no way they are going to stop because Chris Hoy retires or Laura Trott only wins silver in Rio. This is the exactly the same with Armstrongalypse. I don’t care that this man doped, yes it puts a smear on our sport for the uninitiated, but ask any cyclist if they will stop riding because Lance Armstrong has confessed to doping. I defy you to find anyone that says yes.

It has often been said that due to his international celebrity status Lance Armstrong transcended cycling. I firmly believe that this is irrelevant, and that instead Cycling transcends Lance Armstrong.

On the first day of Christmas Santa brought to me….Bradley Wiggins’ autobiography

This year for Christmas some of my standout gifts were a packet of Fisherman’s Friends menthol throat sweets, a packet of Aldi’s Mixed & Dried Fruit and two individually wrapped copies of Cycling Weekly. Thanks Santa. However the big man redeemed himself slightly with a copy of Bradley Wiggins’ autobiography which enabled further procrastination from course set texts and provided a somewhat varied account of the side-burned cyclist’s incredible rise from a decent cyclist to one of the most recognisable faces of 2012.

Being both an English student and a Cyclist, reviewing a book seems like the perfect starting point for anything Bradley Wiggins related. Over the past 12 months, Bradley Wiggins has been rammed to the forefront of the British collective consciousness through a culmination of incredible determination and questionable haircuts. One thing that has stood out though is the Wiggins’ bucket-load of wit, manifesting itself at almost every opportunity and is one of the things that make him such an enigma, not just within cycling, but in everyday culture.

Based upon this then, I must admit that his autobiography was something of a disappointment, as the style of writing and the content to which he referred to seem to be separate from the innate humour that he appears to possess in the public eye. The book came out faster than a bullet from a gun, being published within 6 months of him winning The Tour, and given the title page states it was written “With William Fotheringham” there is a suggestion that it was ghostwritten (Don’t quote me on that). This does not mean to say it is not an interesting read, it is – and I will come to that later -, my point is that in prioritising sales above content, and by publishing it in time for Christmas, Wiggins has missed an opportunity to put his personality and opinions across in a more personal way, leaving the text somewhat soulless.

As I mentioned, and as his Sports PERSONALITY of the Year title testifies, Wiggins is an incredibly interesting individual that has the potential to appeal the Great British public on a plain way beyond cycling. However his autobiography is oversaturated with references to VAM, Watts at Threshold, VO2 max etc. Now, I am a cyclist and this stuff goes straight over my head, I cannot imagine how, an uninitiated member of the public, who has a newly sparked interest in cycling would feel confronted with this jargon. I appreciate the data is very impressive, the man’s an animal, but that’s because I know how much better than me he is, the figures will mean nothing to the non-cyclist, and for a book that should be appealing to the masses this is, in my opinion, a mistake.

Criticism aside, it is evident upon reading the text how much work Wiggins has put in, and the sheer level of sacrifice it took him to win the Tour de France, particularly when considering his background (absent and possibly abusive father, grieving over his late grandfather) his turnaround is something to be greatly admired. To shed some light on the level of sacrifice necessary, Wiggins states that his wife is essentially his luggage mule, carrying his bags to and from the car at the airport, so as to avoid injury. He also stated that in order to rest effectively between sessions he would go as far as to avoid the sun to the extent of not playing on the beach with his kids; #dedicated. However, even Wiggins admits that this is extreme and not something he wants to do forever. It is evident throughout the text that if Wiggins wants to put across one thing to his readers that he is a normal bloke, and he is clearly a dedicated father and a top man.

However one thing that really stood out for me in “My time” was Wiggins’ portrayal of the Tour de France, particularly the dynamic between him and Chris Froome. For anyone who watched the 2012 tour, some of the most interesting parts of the race were those when Froome seemed to be eager to attack and seemed to be able to with apparent ease, whereas Wiggins either wouldn’t or couldn’t; either way it’s not ideal when the leader of the team and his right-hand man appear to disagree. It appeared that there wasn’t really an issue though when you looked at the way they talked about it in the media. For example, “It was there, I was doing it. And we had set off with a plan in Liege…you can’t suddenly change it…why jeopardise the race lead? I didn’t quite know what to expect from Chris when it got into the heat of the battle…I became very wary”. Although Wiggins acknowledges Froome’s natural physiological superiority when it came to climbing, the language used in the previous extract is symptomatic of the way Wiggins portrays their relationship within “My time”; there appears to be less love lost than the Tour footage suggested.

In short, Wiggins has produced a text which creates some ambivalence within me, on the one hand his account of the best year in British cycling’s history and his own personal victory over his own battles is fascinating and admirable. However I definitely think that Wiggo has a lot more to offer, and it is my fervent hope that perhaps after he has retired he takes another shot at an autobiography because I am almost certain he will produce a blinder.

Cyclocross: Or, the story of how iwrestledabearonce.

What the hell is cyclocross? I hear you ask! You have probably heard of motocross and you’ve probably heard of cycling…well, you’ve definitely heard of cycling, and Cyclocross is a wonderful amalgamation of both. Popular in mainland Europe, particularly Belgium, Cyclocross is basically an hour of kicking crud, cycling through crud and running up steep steps… covered in crud…in November. Cyclocross bikes are identical to road-bikes to the uninitiated but have chunky tyres, different brakes and greater frame clearance, however being a student, and poor, I rode this year’s BUCS event held in Durham on my friend’s mountain bike and O. MY. GOD. the pain.

I wrote in the summer about watching the Olympic Mountain Biking and being astounded at the amount of pain the riders appeared to be in. I remember describing it as wrestling a bear. This time I was wrestling a really muddy bear, and the bear had me in a half-nelson and pounding me into submission after the second lap.

I have never raced off-road before in my life so it was somewhat of an unknown entity and it was with major apprehension that I took to the start-line on a cloudy day at 3pm on 18^th November. I’d been talking to my friend Dave about how to ride ‘cross given his far greater experience in the discipline, but as soon as the starting bell went it went straight out the back of my head as the first lap progressed, and resembled what can only be described as the opening scenes of “Saving Private Ryan” …on Bikes. The course itself was “apparently” not very technically challenging but whoever told me that is apparently unaware of Purgatory. I was sodden and mud-coated by the end of the first lap and by the second lap the unfamiliar position on the borrowed mountain bike caused my back to seize up leaving me to hobble up the banks and steps like someone who had just crapped themselves whilst making the noises a newborn Pterodactyl would make. Fun Times.

In my defence I do think I did myself justice coming halfway down the results after 3 weeks training and on a mountain bike, but I was 1.5 mins a lap slower than the leaders. With regards to the leaders the race was fought out between three riders, Dave Nichols from Loughborough and his brother Andy from Sheffield and Liam Glen from Bath University. In the end it was my good friend Dave who pulled clear in the final lap to win by 10 seconds ahead of Glen with Andy Nichols coming third to bookend the podium for the Nichols’. Team honours were again contentious with Sheffield being given gold on the night but a second amendment putting Loughborough 1^st, Edingburgh 2^nd and Sheffield 3^rd. This rounded out a cracking day for Loughborough (who, incidentally, walk on water) with Christina Wiejack also being the fastest female on a mountain bike.

All in all Durham University CC put on an excellently excruciating event, opening my eyes to yet another facet of the wonderful sport that is cycling, although it was absolutely freezing. In short Cyclocross is a race equivalent of a glass of MTFU.

Turning the off-season On

After a solid effort of 10 weeks off the bike (mortally painful) due to some form of illness and lack of cojones, I am finally getting back into training. However I’m going to do this properly and not ride myself into the ground like last season. This off-season I’m diversifying, screwing the mainstream mantra of MILESMILESMILES and going all alternative. This off-season with the help of my friends (and better bike riders) Sandy King & Dave Nichols I’ve started doing yoga, hit the gym, and begun interval training…in November. I’ve also grown a mustache.

You might be reading this wondering why the hell you should care about what my off-season consists of… you might be right, and I might sound like a complete douchebag saying this, but this diversification me and my friends are doing challenges a lot of age-old cycling concepts. In a way we are bikeoneers, bikericks, bikesplorers. Okay maybe not that extreme, but it’s something different.

Firstly Yoga.
I have taken up Yoga mainly because Sandy suggested it as a laugh. I audibly farted halfway through my first class, so he was right. It has also helped address my many anatomical discrepances, lack of flexibility and EXTREME lack of balance, and although this was hilarious initially, it has, accompanied by a new position suggested by bike-fit hero Sandy, made me a more comfortable rider and a less awkward walker. It’s also one of the few places in Loughborough with a male:female ratio anywhere close to 50:50 and more like 30:70 #winning.

Gym.
I know, cycling sacrilege, and I’ll admit its taken me a while to leave this attitude behind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4i8SpNgzA4  (first 15 seconds) and actually get stuck in. Its pretty sweet, and it is definitely helping all round fitness, strength and going further to helping me balance properly. However it does give you an over-inflated sense of “ripedness” given that initially your body is so unused to it that your muscles immediately become hard and feel shredded. So you feel like this…

I actually look like this:

and I spent the following week walking like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF3R6meBvTU&feature=related

but yerr…I noticed rapid improvements, and its nice knowing I’m an absolute tank…maybe.

Intervals:
I mentioned previously the old cycling mantra “milesmilesmiles” over winter. Dave is of the opinion (and I totally agree, despite initial and continuous appearances he is pretty smart) that miles just train you to do miles…slowly. If you want to race, train to race all the time. It’s hard, but you spend less hours with frostbite and wondering why the hell you are up before everything’s defrosted, its also more interesting and you get fitter, faster and leaner #winning. Get on it.

Finally, I acknowledge that everything I have said makes it sound like I’m becoming a monk (albeit a buddha) but at the end of the day it is November and I can still indulge. In that vein then I’d like to direct your attention to Chocolate Alchemy: http://www.chocolate-alchemy.co.uk/ a coffee and chocolate shop in Loughborough that blows my mind and my student loan. They have an online shop so if you aren’t from the Leicestershire area buy online. It’s awesome.

Cheerio.

BUCS Hill Climb: Annual Agony Day

Saturday 27^th October was the date of the annual BUCS Cycling Hillclimb, an event which (I am sure the riders will testify) should be re-named, Annual Agony Day. A hill climb is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, a timed run up Curbar Gap in Derbyshire with an average gradient of 11% with parts ramping up to close to 20%; for a mile. In layman’s terms, that’s really f****** hard. The leaders will do it in around five and a half minutes and people can take up to fifteen minutes of spluttering and wheezing noises before they collapse in a decrepit heap at the top. This year’s event was organised by Sheffield University and took place in glorious sunshine and autumn chill, and with Loughborough’s tunnel of support lining the road looking out over spectacular views over the Derbyshire Dales, the scene was set for some serious pain.

The competition was divided between the women and men with the first woman going off at 12.15. The women’s event was a closely run-affair for places 2 through 11 with only 31 seconds dividing those ten competitors. However Loughborough’s own Molly Weaver, obliterated the field by 25 seconds, even with what she claimed was a wheel which was rubbing against the brake; a very impressive performance for a fresher. This nicely rounded off a Loughborough 1-2 with National u23 Women’s Time Trial Champion Eli Thorogood coming second and Warwick Uni’s Claire Hansell coming in third, four seconds behind. This strong showing from Loughborough also meant that the women claimed the team prize, giving them two golds and a silver

The men’s competition saw a great turnout with a full field of 150 riders taking part, many of whom were trying the discipline for the first time whilst others had been training for the last few months specifically for six minutes of death. Regardless of how good or not they were every single competitor got great support on their way up with spectators sprinting alongside them and creating a tunnel of noise in true Tour de France style (this may have been very off-putting (sometimes deliberately) but it was awesome fun) and greatly contributed to the atmosphere of the event.
The race itself was incredibly tight, with only 6 riders going sub 6 minutes in impressive displays of power and lack of upper-body. The podium was topped by The University of Bedford’s Jake Hales in an awesome time of 5.42.7 with David Griffiths and Thomas Stewart from the universities of Glasgow and Sheffield respectively being separated by a mere second. In a combination of divine providence and intense sibling rivalry fourth and fifth place was taken by the Nichols brothers with Loughborough’s David just pipping Sheffield’s Andy by two seconds. I spoke to both of them afterwards and it was evident there was no love lost and Andy was put on suicide watch as a cautionary measure. The team prize was won by half a second by Sheffield who slightly edged out Loughborough,

who were not given medals, as for some unbeknownst reason they were believed to have come fourth.

This concluded a fantastically awesome day of sunshine, sweat and cardiac arrest, providing evidence that despite the doping induced media shambles that is Professional Cycling, the British domestic scene and University cycling is still thriving and providing cracking  days out. 

The Biketionary

Cycling is full of crazy specific words that have literally no function and purpose outside the Velominati. Logic dictates therefore, that you could tell the uninitiated anything you wanted about the meaning of any of the words included within the Biketionary, and you could probably pull it off. This has led me to reinvent some cycling specific words with some more interesting meanings.

• MAMBABOOHRATKIL: Middle Aged Man Balding And Breathing Out Of His Ringpiece At Ten Km In Lycra.
• Coffee Ride:  A predominantly male mothers meeting…in Lycra.
• Nipple Spoke: A conversation you had with your nipple when you were 6 hours into a ride and a glycogen depleted mess.
• Anti-Bonk: The idea that you are unable to get laid based purely on the basis that your greatest hobby is spent behind another man with his ass in your face.
• Glass Cranks: This is not a simile, there are in fact cranks made of glass.
• Time Trialling: The Cycling equivalent of Live Action Role Play.
• Domestique: The Bitch.
• Peloton: Jens Voigt’s Bitch.
• Chain Gang: Where riders get together to admire one another’s chains and components.
• UCI: International C**T Union
• Aerobic Effort: An effort done whilst dressed as an 80’s throwback/ Mr. Motivator.
• Carbo Load: Fart Day Preparation.
• Intervals: Unlike its use in Theatre productions, cycling intervals involve turning your eyelids inside out with effort whilst turning the kitchen into a hot box, in which your sweat replaces an illegal substance.

Testing Testing

Cycling is a multi-faceted, multi-discipline sport with something for everybody and I am mad keen for almost all of them, MTB, Cyclocross etc. But there is one which I cannot for the life of me abide, and the next 500 words or so will provide (for the most part) a damning report on the subject. The subject in question is that most unique of communities/ sports/ disciplines, the Time Trial. I should also write a disclaimer here, and state that for those pro’s and amateurs that dominate TT’s I have the utmost respect, I have no doubt in my mind that you will fuck me sideways in any event, on a tricycle, but my disdain is many-fold for the most part, and for that  I do not apologise.

Here is my list of reasons why I hold TT’s in such low regards:

• YOU CAN BUY YOUR GAINS: God knows the number of times I’ve seen a fat MAMIL with full TT rig, disk wheel etc and then gone straight past him. For the Pro’s such lavish kit is understandable, but for the most part people are being conned into buying too much kit which is ultimately being handled by a bad engine.
• “CHEATER COURSES”: In domestic time-trialling, I feel too much regard is held for time over competition. If you break a PB on a course you do regularly, great, you are obviously improving. If you break your previous PB on a course that is pan flat/ with a twatting great downhill in it when your previous PB was held on an undulating Sufferfest, comparing the two seems to belie reason, and seems only useful for bragging rights, (bragging rights are still pretty awesome though)
• DEATH: No joke. There are too many deaths and serious injuries caused by TT’s on busy dual carriage ways on courses as described above, which begs the question, what’s the point? You could argue “YOLO” but I think that chasing a PB at 7am on a Saturday morning is not a justifiable reason.
• WEIRD PEOPLE: I know quite a few time-trialists, and they are good friends, but you get some right odd-balls (Greame Obree excluded, he’s a hero and my best mate. True story (-ish)) the whole thing with courses being known only by a code and done at horrific hours of the morning, was a nice blast from the past, but now it just serves the purpose of excluding new-comers and making it so confusing that I cannot find the bastard.
• THEY HURT!: Call me a pussy, tell me to MTFU, whatever, put simply, I just find it easier to push myself when there are other people there. I appreciate this is more subjective, hell, my friend Will said he goes faster when there are “hot girls” watching. Having seen Will’s pain face I can only assume that it makes them run away faster too.

This is my opinion, TT’s are great training, but in order to be a great rider, you have to be able to tear up the road races as well. Tony Martin can suck my dong. ‘Nuff said

The Fat Free Facade

For the last decade or so, there has been a growing fashion in the use of fat free products, which all the uninformed and blindly led, and the Weightwatchers posse of 30 somethings have been jumping on. I cannot stress enough how little blame we can place on the individuals, when it has been the barrage of advertising and myth making on behalf of the food industry which has had 99% of people thinking fat free is good. Fat free is bad, full fat is the secret hero of heaven. To illustrate why this is the case I will write for you the following (and even if I say it myself, GENIUS) analogy.

It all begins with steel.

When you make Steel you take Iron ore, which you melt down and then add other metals to to make different types of alloys including steel. Now the more alloys you add to Iron ore the more you mess with it and the more brittle the metal is.

The same is the case with low fat products. If we have a full fat product then we will consider the fat to be the iron ore, the strong bit, what makes steel steel, milk milk, yogurt yogurt. Now if you take this iron out, then what have you got??! If you take the fat out of yogurt, what the hell do you have? A vague white substance. Now at this point the food manufacturers start to add all their other chemicals (preservatives, sweeteners etc) just in the same way that forgists (??) do with metal, they start adding random and unnatural crap until you get to the point where you have an unstable product that is worthless and downright dangerous.

Look at it this way, humans have been around for 10’s of 1000’s of years; we have been putting chemicals such as those in low fat products for the last few decades only. Common sense dictates that the ones our bodies are better at processing are the old skool things like the fats in milk and not the long list of chemicals found on the back of a low fat Banoffee pie including the increased amount of sugar and sodium to counter-react the blandness of low-fat crap.

Maybe I’m trying to come up with excuses for eating food that doesn’t taste like ass, and maybe all the science shit is over my head, but a lot of its common sense, people have only been eating low fat for the last few years but the developed world is the fattest its ever been. I’m not saying its the crux of the matter, but it’s certainly a contributory factor.

The Plague

I have been riding now for just short of three years, and whilst I have learned a shit-tonne since then, there is one aspect of training and fitness that I am yet to get the hang of. Training when ill.

I am currently writing this post from my sick bed, in the throes what I genuinely believe to be left over freshers flu. It is now nearly 12 months since freshers and I have spent most of the year on and off with illness. This is pretty much how my season has gone: Three weeks training, die, time off the bike. pretty much consistently for the entire season. I have tried every single approach to the bastard from #MTFU and trying to ride through it (not recommended as you are rewarded with much death) to sticking effervescent Vit C tablets in my mouth three at a time (again, unless you want to unleash orange foam on your walls this is not recommended). One week off the bike, two weeks off the bike, no change. The doctor keeps telling me to rest. The doctor can jog on, I tried that, it didn’t work and I am currently so unmotivated that I had a Snickers yesterday (!!!).

I have found that everyone is different, and some people just recover better, or maybe I’m just a retard. The fact of the matter is, that maintaining race fitness and race motivation (that’s a thing (I think)) when ill, is a herculean effort, and as any cyclist knows REALLY f****** frustrating, I find driving a right pain in the arse, mainly cause I find roads genuinely appealing! I don’t know if other cyclists get this, but If I’m driving up or down a beast of a hill, I get genuine cravings to get out and ride my bike up it. When you are resting from illness there is no satiation of these cravings and my head is liable to explode.

So at the moment, I am kind of at a dead end, I’m scared to get back to training for fear of possibly coughing up my own kidneys but at the same time I have the British Universities Hill Climb at the end of October and am desperate to get back to training. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Fat = Good (Maybe)

High carbohydrate diets have traditionally been the norm for endurance athletes where fuel is obtained from glucose (stored in the muscles as glycogen) and then burned in various ways depending on the intensity of the efforts you are putting in

However studies in recent years are challenging these traditionally held views and suggesting that having a high-fat diet may improve endurance performance, particularly for events over 3 hours in duration and where the great majority of exercise is performed at an aerobic capacity.

During aerobic exercise our body breaks down both carbohydrates and triglycerides (obtained from fat) using oxygen to utilise them as fuel. However fat has the edge over carbohydrates in longer endurance events in two ways: Fat is stored in the body in much higher quantities than carbohydrate. Glucose stores are limited to 300-400g (3-4 hours) and in reality cannot be topped up quickly enough to meet demand at aerobic capacity. Fat however is almost completely unlimited, for example a 70kg athlete with 10% body fat has 7kg of stored fat to be utilised which equates to about a weeks worth of exercise as opposed to just a few hours.

This idea is one that is particularly applicable to sportive and audax riders where the events involve the rider being in the saddle for very long periods of time. Take this year’s Etape du Tour as an example; the majority of riders completed the parcours in a time somewhere between 7-10 hours. Even with carbo-loading most would only get halfway round before their initial glycogen stores became depleted, and given the bodies limited capacity to take on carbs while riding even eating wouldn’t provide enough fuel to get all the way round without becoming seriously depleted.

Studies undertaken in the last 20 years such that by Lambert et al. in 1994 in which 5 endurance trained cyclists were fed either a high-fat or a high-carb diet for 15 days; before and after which the subjects were asked to ride at 65% of VO2 max until exhaustion. It was observed that those on the high-fat diet showed a much greater level of fat-oxidisation for than those on a high-carbohydrate diet, and this greater level of fat-oxidisation is a fairly consistent finding among studies on the subject.

However, studies looking into the effects of a high-fat diet versus a high-carb diet show that in creating a well-adapted fat burning body we compromise performance at higher intensities, so that if the event called for it, we won’t be able to up the intensity, and although we may be far more comfortable at the finish we may not be there as quickly. Recently however, sports and exercise health scientists have been looking towards a compromise enabling endurance athletes to go for longer without compromising speed.

When the body becomes reliant upon fat the glycogen stores necessary for higher intensity exercises are depleted and become a hindrance to performance, but it is still also necessary to maintain high levels of fat oxidisation for endurance. To get the best of both worlds researchers have suggested that in the weeks leading up to an event an athlete should have a high-fat diet (around 70%) followed by a high-carb diet in the 2-3 days preceding the event to top up the glycogen stores should they be needed. The result is a body that has the necessary fuel supplies to complete a 7-hour event without hopefully bonking but with still the capacity to ride at a high-intensity should the rider want to.

However the jury is still out on this one, although it does go some way to justifying choosing full fat milk over fake milk and yoghurt that doesn’t taste like…well, it just doesn’t taste.