Category: Cycling
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Bikepacking King Alfred’s Way
Here’s a trip I made earlier this year, but didn’t write about at the time. I’m publishing this piece now because I did always mean to write about my experiences, but also because I made a podcast of my trip, and that podcast has just been published as an episode of The Cycling Podcast’s Explore…
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90s MTB to Singlespeed Conversion
Sometime around 1995 or 1996, I bought a Giant ATX 850 mountain bike. This was a rigid bike – not even any front suspension. It had an aluminium frame and 3 x 7 speed chainset. That bike went a lot of places with me. In late 1996, I rode it in the Moroccan Atlas mountains.…
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Making the Most of 2020
This post is a bit unusual, since it’s very much about me, and I don’t usually write that much about myself. In many ways, everything I write is about myself, but this is explicitly such. 2020 has been a tough year for just about everyone, and while I’m fortunate enough to have a secure job…
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Froome at the Giro in 2018
I don’t mention it here as often as I should, but I do work as one of the producers on The Cycling Podcast. It’s has once again been nominated in the sports category for a British Podcast Award, and if it’s the sort of thing you do, you can vote for us in The Listener’s…
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Using a £20 Lidl Ultrasonic Cleaner on a Bike Cassette
In my local Lidl this weekend, I noticed a stash of ultrasonic cleaners retailing at £19.99 each. Usually they’d be used for things like jewellery. But I’d seen a couple of videos online with people using them to clean bike components – particularly cassettes and chains. So I bought one, removed the cassette from my…
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Playing with GoPro’s TimeWarp Feature
TimeWarp does a kind of timelapse for motion, but smooths everything out. I still wanted a ride that took over an hour to be faster, so there’s some post-processing here to further speed up large sections to get a video under 90 seconds.
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Driving Under Lockdown
As the roads are currently much emptier during the UK coronavirus lockdown, in general terms it’s actually somewhat safer out there. The air is clearer and there’s much less traffic. Of course only those who are doing work that can’t be done from home, and those either shopping or doing other critical chores are supposed…
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Just A Regular Cycle Ride Home
I turned on my bike camera this evening for the first time in ages, and a single ride pretty much captured everything in a single shot. Two separate cars turning across me either not indicating at all, or indicating half-way through the manoeuvre. A bus entering a box junction before it can ensure it can…
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UCI World Championships – Harrogate 2019
With the first home cycling World Championships since they were at Goodwood in 1982 (which very much predates my interest in cycling), I was always going to be spending late September in Yorkshire. There were a series of events held over a week, but I headed up after the time trials had taken place, reaching…
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Eight Seconds
This year is the 30th anniversary of what in my lifetime has been the greatest Tour de France of all time. In 1989, American Greg LeMond defeated Lauren Fignon by just 8 seconds with everything coming down to a unique final stage time trial. Usually, the end of the Tour is a processional stage followed…
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Need For The Bike by Paul Fournel
My Tour de France inspired cycling themed book marathon continues with Need For The Bike, a classic that I’d somehow never heard of. Paul Fournel is a French writer, poet, publisher, and cultural ambassador – a wonderful job description to have, I’m sure you’ll agree. He’s also been in love with bikes since he was…
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Racing Through the Dark: The Fall and Rise of David Millar
Continuing my non-stop cycling reading during this year’s Tour de France, I turned to a volume has been sitting around on my bookshelf* for a number of years – David Millar’s book where he digs into his life story, and in particular the years that he doped. I’ve always liked David Millar, and latterly he’s…
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The Cycling Podcast Mug
I was delighted to receive this in the post today. Stacey Snyder has been making these mugs during the Grand Tours this year to help raise some money for good causes in association with The Cycling Podcast (on which I am a producer). They sell out quick, so listen to The Cycling Podcast and check…