oxfordsportive

Next sportive for me is the White Horse Challenge which is on 17 April this year, looking forward to this event which I’ve done each year since it started in 2007 – so this will be the fifth time around. The advantage of doing the same event each year is it gives you an indication of how fit you are. My personal best was in 2009 with just under 5 hours, last year in 2010 it was just over five hours.

The fastest time last year was 4:26 with an average speed of nearly 34kph which is pretty impressive given the climbing.

So  here is hoping 2011 will be a good year for all who are riding the WHC, all the profits go to WaterAid which is a very good cause, the total amount raised for WaterAid by WHC 2010 was £13,328.21 which is pretty fantastic!

The event filled up pretty quickly as it always does, however here are some places still available for those willing to do some fundraising:

Standard entry (450 places) has filled up. There are still some additional guaranteed entry places for those who commit to raise at least £100 sponsorship for WaterAid. Please e-mail us if you are interested and we will send you an application form.

It was a bit cold and grey driving down to Ditchling for the Puncheur but hey it wasn’t raining and the roads were not frosty so everything seemed set for a good day out.  This is an early season event over 69 miles (109 kilometres) that is billed by the organisers as:

The challenge of the PUNCHEUR Sportive is not a long list of testing climbs, neither is it mega-endurance. The challenge is to keep up a good tempo across a variety of terrains. There are long, flat stretches; draggy climbs; fast descents; and short, sharp, steeper hills to get out the saddle and punch your way over. This is a course to be attacked, knowing you don’t have to hold back due to 100 miles or more ahead of you, but can you pace it so you don’t blow up early, AND, also make sure you have something in your legs to get you up Ditchling Beacon at the end? If this blows your skirt up, sign on.

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Flavio Zappi is an ex pro cyclist who wore the green jersey in the Giro d’Italia and rode the classics such as Milan San Remo and Paris Roubaix in the 1980′s.   There is a Team Zappi’s Cycling Club page on Facebook.
There is also the Zappi Cafe upstairs in Bike Zone, and this also has it’s own Facebook page.

Zappi’s Bike Cafe is now open upstairs at Bike Zone where you’ll find great coffees, Jeeves & Jericho Loose Teas and Fantastic Cakes.

BikeZone Oxford

There are club runs starting outside Bike Zone in St Michaels Street on Saturdays and Sundays at 9am and there are training rides at the same time on Tuesday and Thursday during the week. If you live in Oxford and fancy joining in a friendly all inclusive atmosphere then why not come along. There is good Italian coffee and tasty food on offer at the cafe as well to allow everyone to relax and have a chat at the end of the ride.

The passion of Fausto Coppi

Recent revelations that Gino Bartali hid a Jewish family in Florence to protect them from the Nazis as well as smuggling documents hidden in his bicycle frame past German roadblocks add to the legend of this great rider. Yet Bartali’s career was overshadowed by Fausto Coppi and it was Coppi who was and still is revered almost like a god by the Italians. Coppi who captured the hopes of the Italian nation after the disaster of the second world war.

Fallen Angel

Bartali, a devout Catholic, solid,  a strong powerful rider who could stay up all night drinking and ride strongly the next day.

Coppi, agnostic, nervous, fragile, lived a scandalous life for the time and the place to the extent that he was put on trial and could have ended up in prison for his affair with a married woman.

Coppi died when only forty years old from malaria contracted in Africa, this has added to his legend to the extent that over 10,000 people turned up recently to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of his death in 1960.

What Coppi had was charisma, it shows even looking at photographs of the man today, that sense of strength and fragility, slim, almost always withdrawn, the ten thousand metre stare. And he died young as well, he is in Italy the equivalent of a rock star for many people.

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by Paul Howard

The remarkable life of Jacques Anquetil, the first five-times winner of the Tour de France

The story of Anquetil’s life has everything, he was the first to win the Tour five times, and his private life was sensational to say the least.

Sex, Lies and Handlebar Tape

Paul Howard also wrote Riding High about riding the Tour de France route in 2003, setting off early each morning to stay ahead of the bunch.

The book kicks off with a prologue in true Tour style with a description of Anquetil’s funeral where political and cycling greats gathered amongst thousands of people to see off one of the most famous Frenchmen of his day.

The next chapter deals with his humble origins, his father became the breadwinner in his family while still only twelve years old. This is something Anquetil had in common with other great champions, Coppi for one and Armstrong in our time.

Like Coppi before him Anquetil grew walking, running and cycling and also doing hard manual labour from an early age, and he attributes his superiority over his peers to this rather than to any inborn genetic advantage. Perhaps, but what all great cyclists seem to have in common is the desire to win as I’m sure not all of them grew up doing heavy farm work with long cross-country runs to and from school as Anquetil and Coppi claim to have done.

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The Garmin Blogs mention that there have been updates to Garmin Connect that include a change of map supplier to Microsoft Bing. The maps look attractive enough and look to have the same level of detail as the Google versions that were used previously.

I download my rides from the Garmin to SportsTrack which has some great features for tracking activities and also an active community of users developing plugins.

It does however have some problems, it is a Windows application that runs on PCs and does not have a web based interface. The other problems are that it does something strange to elevation data and up until recently did not show timed stopped or paused. Read the rest of this entry »

Laurent Fignon died of cancer on 31 August of 2010, so this book is his last word on his life and career. It was published in June last year in France and this translation by the always excellent William Fotheringham was published this year.

We were young and carefree

The title of the opening chapter is Eight Seconds, the famous eight seconds by which he lost the 1989 Tour de France to Greg Lemond. He starts the chapter with the four words “We knew no fear” which summed up his attacking approach to racing and implicitly criticises the modern calculating scientific approach were everything is controlled and there are no surprises. And of course criticises the use of aero-bars by Lemond as this was modern and calculating at the time.
He describes the last day of the 1989 Tour as a day of immense sadness, a day of monstrous defeat, as a turning point in his life.
“Ah, I remember you, you’re the guy who lost the Tour de France by eight seconds” “No monsieur, I am the guy who won it twice”
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The weather forecast for the Exmoor Beast 2010 was for showers or light rain with a easterly breeze, on the day it was pretty wet when arriving in Minehead for the start. I rode the inaugural edition of this sportive in 2007 and was back to try it again. The start venue had moved from Dunster Castle to Butlins which was a positive move as there was plenty of parking and other amenities at hand. This made up for the lack of Dunster’s undoubted attractiveness and old worldly beauty.

Exmoor Beast crossing the ford

The ride was wet to start off and very misty once the route turned off the main road and started the climb up to Exmoor. It then climbs steeply over to the top of Exmoor, one of the highlights being crossing the ford.

There are plenty of cattle grids on Exmoor, some of which felt pretty slippy in the wet. The ride then descends very steeply down Countesbury Hill to the port of Lynmouth in Devon, which is very pretty and has a water powered funicular railway. Then there is a long steady climb up the Gorge of the East Lynn river up Watersmeet Road back up to Exmoor again to the high point of Span Head before descending down to Dulverton on the Barle river.
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The problems with waterproofing that the Garmin GSC10 has led me to search for replacements.
There don’t seem to be many options but one that seemed possible was the MACRO2SXcom from German company o_synce. These units are ANT+ compatible and should work with the Garmin 705. They are also cheaper at £29.99 each versus £39.99 for a GSC10 (prices are from Wiggle, there may be cheaper deals elsewhere).

MACRO25SXcom speed and cadence sensor

In the box there is a speed sensor and separate cadence sensor that are linked by a short length of cable. The speed sensor has a separate rubber base that protects the chainstay. There are also wheel and crank magnets and five zip ties to attach all of this to the bike.
The separate speed and cadence sensors do make it more fiddly to install, but on the other hand it does allow for more precise positioning and makes it easier to get the sensors within the specified 2-4 mm distance from the magnets.
To get the unit paired with the Garmin 705 was easy once I had read the instructions that tell you to open the lid on the speed sensor and flip the battery over. It was then found by the 705 with no problems. I did have to replace the Garmin wheel magnet with the one supplied by o_synce to make the speed sensor work. The cadence sensor manages fine with the original magnet from the GSC10. Read the rest of this entry »

The Shakespeare 100 sportive took place on Sunday 11 September 2011 starting and finishing in Stratford-upon-Avon. This event is a charity ride in support of Macmillan Cancer Support so it is for a good cause. The actual start location was in the Stratford Park and Ride which is quite a good idea as there are obviously no problems finding a parking spot.

Registering was fast, this sportive does not use electronic timing but does have a brevet type card you can get stamped at the feed stations. I did the 100 miles route which has 1,700 odd metres of climbing although my Garmin claimed it was more like 1,200 metres which just goes to show how imprecise these figures can be.

The route is fairly flat for the first 80k until the first climb at Saintbury which was fairly demanding, then there is another series of climbs at the 100k point around Barton on the Heath.

There were one or two problems with the signs, even riding with the GPS route loaded it was quite hard to follow at times. The organisers have said they will drive around checking the signs ahead of the riders on the day for next year’s edition, sadly this has become a necessity lately because some morons find switching the signs around amusing.

The route is excellent except for the last section returning to Stratford that winds it’s way around an industrial estate, not quite what you’d expect. In fact the Shakespeare and Stratford connections are rather tenuous as you don’t actually get to see anything of the town centre, just the Park and Ride which was slightly disappointing.