Run Like Froome

July 1st this year marked the start of 2 key cycling events, the Seaton Cycle Fest and the Tour de France and how better to celebrate such an occasion than with a run. Yes, OK, not the first thing that would come to mind for a cyclist but was perhaps a precedent set for this on last year's TdF.

The idea for a run to mark the start of the CycleFest was one hatched by fellow club cyclist, press officer for British Athletics and Event Director for our 5km Seaton Park Run, who thought it would be good for existing runners who were also cycle club members, to wear their cycling jerseys for that Saturday's Park Run. Then a few weeks prior to the day, I happened to be unwrapping my TdF programme and the page fell open to a picture of Chris Froome running up Mont Ventoux, having just had his bike written off by a camera motor cycle during last year's race. Three words came to my mind 'Moves Like Jagger"? .. no but close, it was "Run Like Froome" .. and from this tag line I started a social media frenzy which galvanised my Cycling Club to do something that most would never normally do, and this was to enter a running event!

I mention Social Media, as I got two very impressive mentions .. Artist and author Mark Fairhurst tweeted me a picture of Roadrunner in lycra with the words Va Va Froome ...

And Froome himself 'Liked' a picture I then posted of our 'Friday Flyers' group out on a training run!

On the day itself we had an amazing turnout .. here are some snaps and yes, I'll probably be back to do it again sometime, but new shoes will be required as the soles on my 10 year old trainers self destructed after the first few metres running on cobbles! 

The AVP Runners

I think I'm happy to have finished! 

And the route .. 

An Update in the eTAP

Getting dangerously close to doing a product review, I thought having been asked by fellow blogger The Book Munchin, that I would do an update on my dramatic move to going wireless!

It's been 3 weeks now since I set to work, in the back of my local cycle shop, stripping out all the Shimano cables, wires etc to replace them with, well, air! Yes, I took the brave leap into the world of SRAM's wireless gear change.

Before I go on to share my experience of this leap into the brave new world of wireless cycling, it won't surprise you to learn, that my evenings are currently devoted to catching up on the goings on of that little cycle race taking place over there in France. Interspaced between the racing and ads, one of the presenters, cycling star Chris Boardman, will take to his bike to share a mountain climb, descent or sprint section and to cover a magazine slot looking at a piece of cycling technology. It was during one of his spins along a sprint finish that I spotted the tell tale battery blister packs on his derailures that could mean only one thing, he was running the same SRAM eTAP as I now have. It surprised me then to hear him say,  in his later magazine pitch about the evolution gears, that he did not see the point of electronic gear change .. until, that is, I let him finish his sentence when he added ".. until SRAM released their eTAP"! Like me, he agreed that getting rid of wires and cumbersome batteries in down tubes was revolutionary. I felt vindicated in making my leap. Since then, I've seen that in addition to Boardman Bikes, many frame manufacturers have quickly taken to adopting eTAP.

The Tarmac eTAP en route to Dartmoor

Anyway, back to my experiences on the Specialized Tarmac, has eTAP lived up to expectation. Well yes and no. Firstly, the not so much: I've had a couple of times when the chain has dropped off the outside of the chainset. To be honest, I think this is just the way things are and it's probably both user error and a some slight adjustment that's still required. My Roubaix does this quite a bit too, but with a bit of quick thinking it's easy enough to get it back on the small ring while keeping the pedals going.

The other disappointment is that it is not 100% silent in all gears, there is still a little chatter in the mid range, particularly on the big ring.

But, on the plus side, there is no chatter either side of this, and in the small ring which I can stay in for much of the time, it's smooth and quiet. Also the move between gears with the flick of a finger is awesome, as too are the glowing gear numbers on my Garmin, letting me know just how many teeth I have left on my gears during a climb, avoiding that embarrassing moment of going for the next gear only to find I'm already there! Yes, I love my SRAM eTAP.

The Venge .. must remember it's not eTAP 

There is one other challenge I've come across. When out on the Venge the other day, it was a blue sky day, so definitely a day for the orange Venge, and it was a Team Time Trial ride, so definitely a day for the aero speed machine. I got on the wheel of my mate in front and then proceeded to forget how to change gear! I got dropped in my failed attempts to shift to the big ring and had to put in a mammoth effort to catch them back up. There's only one answer, I'm going to have to fit eTAB to the rest of my fleet! "Dear Bank Manger ... "

I've Gone Wireless

I didn't write about this last year, but I've had an absolute mare of a time with my 2013 Tarmac gears, pretty much since I got the bike. Although running one of Shimano's top of the range sets, they have always been difficult to tune, suffer from frequent chatter, stiff gear change and chain drop. Last year I tried replacing all the cables; no small deal as they are integral and my local bike shop were less than pleased with how long this took. I even had to return it to them to do it all again! Still the problems persisted.

One option considered was to scrap the whole thing and get a new bike. A bit rash may be? Well, I thought so too, so I've taken the plunge and invested in a wireless electronic groupset running SRAM eTap. Although still pretty revolutionary, I preferred this over Shimano's Di2, as the latter would have had bulky cables and battery packs to thread through those dreaded down and cross tubes, and wireless seemed so much more forward thinking.

I went for the SRAM Red eTAP with the WiFli rear mech to handle cassettes up to 32 teeth. This enabled me to reinstall the Tarmac's original semi-compact chainset (52x36) which I replaced with a compact back in 2015 to handle the Devon hills; the reason being that I would be able to have more teeth on the rear due to both moving from 11-28 to 11-32 and from 10 to 11 speed. Trust me, this is the perfect setup for this area. This will allow me to spin on a climb and still pedal on even the steepest descents.

I set up in the corner of my friendly bike shop; more for moral support and having access to all the right tools. I felt the real bike mechanic! I had booked 2 days off work to complete the installation; I'm a project manager by profession, so knowing my mechanical capabilities, having plenty of contingency was key! As it was, the removal of old and the fitting of new bar tape, leavers, cassette, chainring and derailures, including tuning, took around 5 hours, so I was done and dusted before closing time.

I still have a little bit of fine tuning to do, but the change is dramatic. No more sore wrists pushing on cables and no clunking, rattling, missed gears to contend with. Yes, I'm going to have to keep an eye on battery levels so as to avoid returning from rides on a fixie and walking up hills, and I'm a little lighter in the pocket; but I now have the equivalent of a £6k bike for a fraction of the cost and one that works, looks great and should at least last me another year!

Hottest Ride of the Year

'Twas an epic Coffee Club Ride today in so many ways .. definitely the hottest ride to date, with Andy's Garmin recording 28 degrees in the shade! It was also the longest, as we broke with Coffee Club tradition and headed out to Honiton via Sidmouth on a 50+ mile pedal. We also added in 2 additional feed stops .. ice creams in Sidmouth and coffee in Honiton.

The plan had been to stop at Escott (a superb Country House coffee shop) as it was rumoured Dawn's ladies may have been calling in on their ride; as it was, we arrived just as they were leaving and so agreed to delay our next stop 'till Honiton. It was amazing to see so many ladies out today, the peloton seemed to stretch on for miles!

After Honiton we climbed up to the Stockland 7 mile straight via the Tue TT (Time Trial Club) route and an added narrow hill climb; which it's unlikely I'll ever find again. It was then a dash to the A35 and the most direct routes home for all.

A top ride, incredible weather and proud to see so many Pedallers crisscrossing the Devon lanes today

2017 AVP Treasure Hunt

Last week I held my 3rd Treasure Hunt for the AVP, you know the crowd, the Axe Valley Pedallers, my cycling club. Before writing up this report, I checked back to last year's event and saw that we had 22 participants forming themselves into 9 teams. For this year's event, we had 20, making 5 full teams of 4; it couldn't have been planned better.

This year, we also had a change to the format, with a minimum £5 donation per team going to my club's charity, DAAT - Devon Air Ambulance Trust. Before continuing with the ride report, let me digress onto a related topic of charity donations. The AVP has always been a supporter of DAAT, indeed, I understand this dated back to the formation of the club in 2005. In recent years, however, the DAAT logo on all our jerseys has not necessarily reflected the level of financial support we've given to this great organisation. Last year, we agreed to increase our subs by £1 so that we could guarantee a flow of at least £100 of donations to them. This was certainly a step in the right direction, but it had the effect of removing any further incentive to raise more. So, in this year's AGM I fought to remove the sub levy while still committing to guarantee we'd donate at least £1 per member by the year end. So, what difference has this made? From all the events we've so fare run this year, we've already raised 2x our 2016 achievement, with £45 coming from the Treasure Hunt!

Back to hunt .. the route was mostly a well pedalled one for us pedallers; from Seaton, via Seaton Hole, to Beer, up past the caves and down to Branscombe beach. From here we climbed collecting treasure all the way to the observatory returning to the famous Donkey Sanctuary in Branscombe for refreshments and the debrief!

Our treasure hunters went on safari through the seasons in search of sculptures, counted petrified fungi, made calls from green telephone boxes, stared at skulls and journeyed back in time to when St Winifreds School Choir sung Grandma! Yes, it was a surreal adventure for our brave Pedallers! And if you're interested to know if our champions, Roger & Becca, walked away with the yellow jersey again, the answer is, no, we have new victors for 2017. I think teaming up with a fellow pedaller to devise the fiendishly challenging clues, threw all, just, I guess happens when the Times crossword changes its question setter!

I guess with the continuing success for this event, I'll be back again next year to do it all again.

Cafe Network

Cycling and coffee are synonymous, so the creation of the virtual Cafe Network is truly inspired. Accessible and updated via a Facebook community, this network runs on Google maps and even has its own app!

I used it for the first time in planning where to stop on last weekend's Rapha 100 and would recommend it to any cyclist looking for a cycling friendly cafe. Just make sure you feedback you appreciation to both the cafe and the Cafe Network, and if you come across a cafe not yet published, make sure you recommend it via the Facebook page .. it's a revelation!

Rapha 100

On the 23rd July there is, so I have learned this week, the Rapha Women's 100. This event has been run since 2013, coincidentally when I returned to cycling, to inspire women around the world to come together to ride 100 km all on the same day. Why mention this? Well, this weekend, I with 3 cycle club friends, rode the 50 miles out to the Rapha Archive store in Shepton Mallet and back; a ride I had planned earlier this year to coincide with my wife's 'girls weekend' away. Such rides have become something of a tradition, but it has been 2 years since one of these reached the100 mile mark, the last one being my  Portland 100, which I rode with another 3 club mates, through Biblical weather to the Portland Bill lighthouse and back.

There was, however, no altruism in my Rapha 100, indeed when I came up with the idea, I had honestly not even realised that it was 100 miles. It was an idea hatched after visiting my favourite cycling apparel supplier and overhearing that cyclists arriving on 2 wheels may be given a cherished musette bag to carry home any purchases. Yes, we could have parked down the road and rolled in, but that just would not have been cricket!

Rapha 100 at Glastonbury

So, it was with 3 fellow Pedallers, Nick, Mark and Glenn, our Near Naked Man (a male charity thing), that we formed up on Saturday morning to pedal east into Somerset. Our route out took us through the market town of Crewkerne with a very welcomed tailwind. It was here that we made our first coffee stop at the cycling friendly Number 7 the Cafe we'd selected from the very useful Cycling Cafe Network, something which I'll share more on in the future.

Once on Somerset Levels, a very different landscape from our usual undulating Devon lanes, we enjoyed the rarity of being able to chaingang along pleasant straight and level roads. One challenging aspect of this type of cycling, however, is that one has to maintain a steady cadence over quite some distance without the respite of a down hill section; this places quite a different stress on your legs!

Pedalling Through the Rapha Store

We arrived in Shepton Mallet in time for lunch, but not before Nick and I had opportunity to fill musette bags with Rapha goodies! Rapha had its usual array of bubbly assistants keen to talk cycling who welcomed us to stow our bikes securely at the back of the store; what a welcome! After a lengthy shop and lunch, we set out on the return leg. The benefit of a tail wind on the way out was to be our nemesis on the way back, as our tanks were emptied pedalling into a strong headwind for most of the miles back to Axminster. At 75 miles, we had one more welcomed coffee & cake stop, at the Art Tea Zen in Langport, a much welcomed oasis as with the hours moving on, other establishments had long since closed for the weekend.

The final 25 miles were quiet ones, we'd shut down all non-essential communication services to redirect vital energy to our legs! It was a fantastic day spent pedalling across some lovely countryside. The weather was perfect throughout and although 5 miles from home, rain started to fall, even this was greeted with joy, as I was able to pull from my musette bag the newly acquired Rapha rain jacket. As I rolled into to Seaton my Garmin's digital display flickered back 109 miles, my Rapha 100 completed!