London to Cambridge, not to mention Wiggins and Cavendish

In 1986 I worked in a local warehouse until I had enough money to buy a proper bike and then set off around the south coast of England. At Land's End I met a lot of people who were about to start their 'End-to-End'. There were a lot of worried faces because the prevailing south-westerlies that would normally blow them out of the west country and up towards Scotland had been replaced with severe north-easterly gales - a sort of aftershock from a recent Atlantic Hurricane. Anyway, I set off through torrential rain and rode slowly up the coast road to St Ives at which point the wind got strong but, mercifully, the rain stopped. I decided to dry off in the laundrette and struck up a conversation with a local elderly man. We discussed the difficulty of the weather and it turned out that he was a keen cyclist. "You don't see many lone cyclists these days" he commented, with clear approval of my solo riding habit.

How things change, cycling is a lot more popular in 2012 and I often see solo cyclists out on the road. But this popularity contrasts with a similar rise in the popularity of mass participation cycling events. The web seems to have a blind spot for the history of the London To Cambridge bike ride though it seems likely that it started after the London to Brighton as there has been such a long tradition of holding events (not just bike events) between those two cities. That event even has its own wikipedia page and it appears to have been running since 1976 - judging by this article and accompanying poster. It must have been held during one of the UK's most famous droughts. These days, around 30,000 people participate in that annual ride. According to one report Sunday's London to Cambridge ride had 5,000 participants. The official site makes the more modest claim of "around 4,000". Either way, I had no idea these events were so popular.

Out and Back

So in all innocence, on Thursday night I decided to sign up online for the 2012 London to Cambridge. The plan was to rise early, cycle gently down to the start thus ensuring there was plenty left in the legs for the return journey. This would also be the first time I'd be riding my new Cinelli bike over 100 miles in a single ride - a chance to find out if the frame is forgiving enough to remain comfortable over longer distances.

I did wonder if I'd see other riders on my way down to London but I didn't expect it within 5 miles! I rode the remaining 42 miles to the start with Simon and Chris who are veterans of this event and have clearly paced each other over many miles together. Despite this experience we did take a wrong turn in the last few miles and ended up riding against the flow of the event to get back to the start. At this point, it really brought home to me just how many people participate.

The event has been in the hands of bike-events.com for many years so, as you might imagine, the organisation is very slick. It wasn't long before I was on my way with that unfamiliar feeling of having a number pinned to my shirt.

With so many riders on the road it was a case of move at the pace of the group on the flat but as soon as the road started to climb the riders started to bunch up and I found myself in the fast lane. At the top of the first climb I saw Chris and Simon up ahead but I quickly realised that experience counts for a lot when you are cutting through the traffic and they disappeared off into the distance.

Official photo thanks to  

www.thomasmayorphotography.com

After about 10 miles things started to settle down a bit, riders were getting stretched out a bit more and I found myself mainly surrounded by people of a similar pace. There were still a few hares who come racing past on the flat (or the descents) only to slow to a tortoise pace on the next climb. Hats off to the guy on an old black Cinelli Gazetta track bike though: any lack of speed on the climbs was more than made up for in style.



This event clearly has a significant impact on motorists who are used to travelling much faster. It is almost impossible to overtake the riders once you get in amongst them (there are just too many). Hopefully most were successfully warned and managed to avoid the route completely as the roads were de facto closed, at least in the direction of travel. When cars did get on to the course they tended to have to move at the speed of the slowest and this resulted in serious bunching of the riders behind them - especially on the hills. It is a shame that a tiny minority of riders show a lack of patience in this situation and end up doing risky overtaking manoeuvres because this is exactly the sort of thing that upsets cyclists when the situation is reversed. Still, despite all the talk of road-wars in the press it really is a tiny minority of people (whether on two wheels or four) who show their frustration. My top tip for these events: best to just ignore the average speed on your cycle computer and enjoy the ride.

The route seems to be chosen more for the practicality of minimising the impact of traffic than for taking in particular climbs. The above picture shows the total elevation profile of my ride (created with MapMyRide). The left-hand side is the southward journey to London via the hill at Barkway. As you can see from the right half of the picture the official route has the typical saw-tooth profile of a ride through England's rolling landscape but there are no long climbs and the maximum elevation is never more than about 450 feet. MapMyRide has a climb classification system but it fails to register for this route - there are a few steep bits but they're way too short to show up on this sort of system.

Sadly the last bit of the ride directs people through the centre of Cambridge which is notorious for its traffic. Yesterday was no different - stationary cars for the last 2 or 3 miles on roads with no reserved space for cycles. Cambridge prides itself on its cycling credentials but visiting Londoners must have wondered why.

The ride finishes on Midsummer Common which gives it something of a summer fair feel and provides a way for a non-cycling spouse to share in the occasion. The weather was perfect for resting on the grass and replenishing energy supplies from the various catering vans. I must also mention the commentator who started the riders off in London with a carefree "be off with you" and was transported to Cambridge in time to welcome them to the common with various comments ranging from the sartorial to the frankly bizarre. He certainly brightened the afternoon and made it a bit less boring for the people waiting for their friends and relatives to arrive.

Hats off to Cavendish and Wiggins!

With such an early start I had plenty of time to eat lunch on the common and peddle slowly back to my house in time to watch the end of the Tour de France. It was a tense last lap of the Champs Élysées but the finish, with Bradley Wiggins in yellow leading out Mark Cavendish to win the stage completed a fairy-tale ending for British riders in the Tour. I know that there seems to be a huge gap between these super-elite athletes and the people who participated in the London to Cambridge but to me they are still connected. Sport is like a pyramid, if you want to build it high you have to start with a wide base. The fact that British riders have won the Green Jersey and then the Yellow Jersey in consecutive years when no British rider has ever won either of these competitions before is not just a stimulus for future riders, it is also indicative of the growing interest over the last 20 years. Who knows, perhaps some of the younger riders who took part on Sunday only to realise that they could keep up with the fastest riders might now think of taking up cycling as a sport too.

"Just ride and be happy"

So am I a convert to mass participation events? Would I consider doing the London to Brighton for example? It is a similar distance to the London To Cambridge (though with more climbing) and it might just be possible to start the ride in Cambridge, thread my way through central London and still have enough in the tank to get up the Beacon at the end. Or do I feel like Matt Seaton whose quote I've borrowed for the sub-heading. He said on the Guardian Bike Blog:

I often get asked: "Oh, have you done the London-to-Brighton ride?" To which my answer is, no, I've never done it – because it means sharing the road with 30,000 other cyclists and no one can even ride up Ditchling Beacon (the big hill behind Brighton, and the best bit) because of all the folk pushing their bikes. OK, so that's a tad snobby, but I do ride to Brighton (and back) at least a couple of times a year

I'm sympathetic with much of what he says in that post but, like him, I've ridden solo to London (and back) several times for pleasure and yet this time there was the added sense of occasion that the event organisers are so good at generating. For me, it certainly isn't about the charity sponsorship. I don't need that motivation to ride my bike (or to give to charity).

I think my enjoyment at doing the London to Cambridge stems mainly from the fact that the Cambridge end is home. One of our biggest local companies, ARM (and I'm talking as a resident of Cherry Hinton here) had over 100 riders taking part. I also saw plenty of riders from the other big local name, the Marshalls engineering group. If I did London to Brighton I wouldn't feel the same connection and I'd have the added inconvenience of having 7 times less room between me and the person in front.

Would I do London to Cambridge again? Yes, definitely - the out and back route combines the advantages of both solo and mass participation riding. But keeping this type of thing as an annual event feels about right to me.

The Build Part IV: It's a wrap!

This is the final post in what turned out to be a four-part series.  In the last part I got the chain fitted, all that remained was for me to check the position of the brifters and handle bars before taping up and make those last minute adjustments to the gears that are inevitably necessary.

I did have one little niggle with the front derailleur adjustment before I could close out the build.  When I first connected the cable to the front derailleur I had an issue with a bit of poor alignment in the lever body.  The outer body of the lever has a hole through which you feed the cable for the gears, this is supposed to line up with a hole on the inner body but mine were misaligned and the gear-cable end caught at the interface.  I pulled the cable tight from the other side and didn't notice until I came to adjust the front derailleur - it was clear something was wrong but it took some searching to identify this as the problem.

With the cables connected and adjusted and the rain stopping I took the bike for a quick spin around the block to check I was happy with the position of the levers and the tilt of the bar.  Sadly, with a strong wind blowing up the nearest gradient it was impossible to really get out of the saddle to get the feel for the position.  Also, the rain only stopped for about 20 minutes before the weather closed in so I did a few tweaks and then had to run inside before I got drenched.

Still, impatient to finish the job I turned to the last task: taping up the bars.  The wintry weather had given me plenty of time to read up on this task.  Here are my three main picks for a description of how to do this job...

Installing Handlebar Tape - Sheldon Brown

This one had to be top of my list because, on a Cinelli frame with a Cinelli bar it simply has to be Cinelli cork handlebar tape to finish the job. The author even describes himself as "Sheldon 'corker' Brown" here so he is clearly aiming the article at people like me. Sadly, the article is incomplete. It is possible to get a few glimpses of his approach though.

The key to a reliable taping job is tension. As you wind the tape onto the bars, you should hold it under constant tension, never letting it go slack. The amount of tension should be quite considerable, enough that you might actually worry about breaking the tape

and on the important issue of winding direction:

Generally, handlebar tape should be wound on starting at the ends of the bars and winding toward the middle....

...I generally start from the underside of the bar, with the tape feeding outwards. You can do it the other way too, but make sure you follow the same pattern on both sides.

Handlebar Tape Installation (drop bar) - ParkTool.com

In general, you can do a lot worse than following ParkTool's advice on most matters I find. Perhaps the most accurate advice on the internet...

Handlebar wrapping is a skill that takes practice and patience.

This bike build introduced to me to a lot of new tools and components but in most cases using the right tool, following the instructions and using the correct tension when tightening fasteners means that no particular skill was required. Sure, it took me much longer than an experienced bike mechanic but the results have been similar up to this point.

On the issue of winding direction ParkTool's blog is more definitive:

Looking from the rider's point of view (from the back of the bike) wrap each side the tape rotates inward from the top. In other words, wrap the right bar counter-clockwise and the left bar clockwise.

How To - Handlebar tape - Sprinta Della Casa

My final pick is the more quirky Sprinta Della Casa. This article goes into a little more detail. It's less emphatic about the correct winding direction:

I wrap from the inside, over the bar. If you do it the other way it's up to you, but I've found the "over" direction works well.

This is the opposite of Sheldon Brown's preference and ParkTool's recommendation which suggests to me that it probably doesn't matter that much. I like this article for the conversational style and the number of pictures.

In conclusion, the golden rules seem to be:

1. Clean hands
2. Tools within easy reach (so you don't have to let go)
3. Wind from the bar end towards the centre

My first attempt

Sadly, my first attempt was not very successful. It is a long time since I wrapped my bars and I'd never used the Cinelli tape before. I was worried about breaking it and didn't pull hard enough to get a snug fit. I was also using the Gel variant of the Cinelli tape which has two adhesive stripes rather than a single central strip. This reduced the traction on the bar during the job and meant that a couple of times, where I'd broken golden rule number 2, the tape started to unwind.

After the first half of the bar was done I had more tape left over than I expected - I could have increased the overlap, particularly around the tight parts of the bend. I did the second half of the bar better and when I finished the job the tape looked fine but I could have usefully gone back and re-wrapped that first bar with hindsight.

The result, after 500 miles the tape was already coming loose. After 750 miles I gave up and rewrapped. That gave me an opportunity to change the colour of the tape too (on reflection, the white looks better than the blue).

In summary, I'd add a fourth golden rule to the three above. If this is your first time with a particular type of tape:

• Buy two lots of tape, that way, if you mess up you have some spare tape to help you finish the job properly.

Shake Down

With the bar wrapped and a small break in the the weather a few days later I was able to finally take the bike for a shake down ride one evening. The only problem I had was a consequence of the problem I described with the gear cable on the left brifter (the cable that connects to the front derailleur). Clearly the last minute adjustments to fix the cable tension problem (see above) had screwed something up.

I was just starting to ascend one of our local climbs (or what passes for a climb in our area) but the Centaur's release button was jammed and wouldn't drop the chain onto the small ring. Fortunately it wasn't too steep and I could use the right-hand lever to get comfortable. I figured that, for the button to jam, there must be some unwanted tension in the system. I loosened the barrel adjuster as much as I could (by screwing it into the frame lug as far as it would go - being mindful not to put my fingers through the spokes of the front wheel). This seemed to do the trick and the button could then be pressed and the chain shifted down. Of course, at this point there wasn't enough tension in the cable to shift back up. After a bit of fiddling I found an adjustment point that seemed to work enough to get me home but the whole thing had to be redone from scratch. That is, I had to remove all the tension from the cable, remove it from the clamp on the derailleur, reset the barrel adjuster (by screwing it in) and then reattach and tension the cable as per the instructions.

What happened? I'm not 100% sure. It seems likely that the cable had become too loose (as these things don't usually get tighter by themselves) and that I had pushed the level too far beyond the third click at the previous up-shift (the lever itself also appeared to be jammed). Either way, the levers feel a little more fragile than then old 105s I'm used to - a result of their lighter weight I expect. They're also quite expensive so I was pleased to get through this glitch without the need for more expensive spare sparts.