I’ve ridden track all summer, the local league and the National Masters Championships, everyone races hard, and I mean HARD (18min 15km scratch race at Nationals!) But everyone is laid back, chatty, relaxed, and helpful – sharing rollers, helping my trying to get 160psi in my tubs, etc.

I’ve just started my ‘cross season, and the first race was just like a big ‘boys club’ hangout, chatting, joking and laughing, but the racing was just as hard as on the track. I lost by five minutes so it must have been really really fast…

So after a year back racing, the track season is about to end and the cross season about to get into full swing and I am left wanting more from both. Sadly road racing has left me wondering why I entered any.

I waiting until mid-summer to start racing, so I was fit enough to get round, then entered two 40/50 mile road races and two open crits. In the first crit, the last corner was carnage and there were riders spread across the pavement after one rider decided that dive bombing up the inside on the last corner would get him the win ‘at all costs’ to other. In one of the road races we got the commissaires briefing on the start line, and were given the strict instruction not to litter the roads and villages with gel wrappers etc., put them in your pocket (isn’t this just common sense anyway?!), and also there was a car parked right on a corner that they were trying to move but we had to race around and be careful of. This was a fifty-mile race, and I kid you not, two miles from the start line (and still in the neutralised zone) I watched a rider pull out a gel, gulp it down, then drop the packet on the road in the middle of the village.

I’m proud to say a couple of my local chain gang guys got in the break and got 2nd and 6th so it worked out nicely, while I got 3rd or 4th in the bunch sprint. After the race I watched from the changing rooms as once of the other riders put his bike in the ‘dangerously parked car’ and drove off… no honestly I am not making this up!

In my final crit of the season, and we’ll see if I ride any next year, I sat on the back of the bunch all race. I’d had food poisoning the night before but felt better so started, I just had no power, so I jumped from wheel to wheel as the bunch split and whittled down to six men. In the mean time at the front there was a break of three and another group of three riders chasing them. Sadly the second half of the race was spent listening to a rider shouting at the group to ‘get through’ or ‘go harder’ and other such motivational quotes.

After a while I decided to offer some assistance, in the form of “Shut up, for God’s sake,” which wasn’t too well received, so I decided to venture forward a few places in the bunch and offer my overview of the situation, which went as follows: “Hey ‘mate’, don’t try and blame us for you not being in the break. The only reason you’re not there is you, try pressing the pedals harder next time. Plus, no one else in the bunch is whinging about being here, I’m actually quite happy to be here the way I feel today.” This message seemed to get through and the guy decided to finish the race quietly and save his frustrations for his next race.

So the point of this ramble is that as bike riders we all have a nation-wide group of friends that we meet every weekend and race against all over the country, and if cross and track riders can smash each other to bits between the gun and flag and be friendly off it, why can’t road riders???

Sure everyone wants to be Chris Froome or Philip GIlbert, but to be them, but need some results like theirs, not just an ego and an attitude. I guess the old adage is still true – let your legs do the talking, others can manage it easily enough.

I think we need to talk… I love the fact that you’re a ‘pro’ sport/health/exercise/cycling business, and I can see that you’re doing your best at encouraging people to just ‘get out there and do it’… BUT… it’s just not going to work out between us.

It’s not you, it’s me… actually no, I take that back. It’s the way you make people behave, that’s what does it. I know I said I ‘love’ a few things about you, but I’ll be honest, I’m not a Strava disciple, and I won’t be becoming one, sorry but it’s over before it ever got started.

For me, riding my bike is about the outdoors, the effort, and is just as much about the camaraderie. I do have rides where I want to do something structured, which I do alone with an iPod, but those rides are for me to do ‘my efforts’ not for me to see if I can steal a KOM off somebody I don’t need to know who did it on a different day, in different weather and on a different ride. When I do a group ride, it’s for a recovery spin and a chat, or a club crit race, or the local chain gang, during all of which there is interaction with my friends and we ride according to the conditions. I don’t want to be comparing every pedal rev I do in my life with the online world.

(Laurens ten Dam’s Strava page for the stage to Mont Ventoux)

The worst habit you are responsible for, though, is the creation of the ‘unsociable group ride’. In the middle of a nice relaxing group ride, usually mid-conversation, someone takes off at full speed like they’re being chased by a pack of rabid dogs, followed by other Strava warriors who will sit on then outsprint them for the end of the segment!

The epitome of this was a recent chain gang ride I was on. Halfway round there is a 1-2 mile section where the smoothly-operating line falls to pieces and race mode kicks in, and all because some idiot made a Strava segment in the middle of the route and the ‘disciples’ can’t bring themselves to overlook it on an organised and well-drilled paceline ride, and instead blast it flat out even with a sprint for the ‘win’ at the end.

And when I say win, I don’t mean a pay-to-enter, pin-on-a-number, have-a-PROPER-race, take-home-some-prize-money WIN! I mean they get the chance to go home, upload their data, and be the best sit-in sprinter on that ride on that day and see if they are faster then anyone who ever rode that section of tarmac…

While I am on the subject of racing and winning… you can’t win a club run, or a chain gang or a sportive… THEY’RE NOT RACES.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good sportive, I’ve done them all over the UK, plus the Swiss Alps and the Italian Dolomites. Seven hours riding up and down stunning mountains is an incredible day out, but racing them? Nope not a chance… My strategy is to start almost last, riding as fast as I feel like, pass a few people, then after four hours go and sit in a restaurant for lunch, watch them riding by looking bemused, then finish the ride and catch a few people who were looking at me funny as I sat at a table outside a bar eating a pizza!

Although in many ways (usually during a media interview) Cav can be a bit of a loose cannon, on the whole subject of number crunching, power tests, and virtual racing he is a shining example. During his younger days he could not produce a SRM test result good enough to qualify for the GB team, but when you put him on the start line of a ‘proper’ race it’s like he was hard-wired to turn himself inside out to do whatever is necessary to cross the line first. NOW THAT’S RACING.

I want to ride my bike to get out there and turn some pedals, disconnect from an endless online barrage of emails, tweets and DM’s, get fit and enjoy myself, but I never forget that it is ‘training’ – as in training yourself to be a better cyclist ready for RACING.

Strava, you’re blurring the lines between a training ride and a race by making all rides ‘races’ – or should I say ‘raceable’ – even though your disciples aren’t racing against someone there and then, not holding a wheel, sheltering in an echelon from a cross wind, waiting for an attack, or making a winning move. They’re riding on their own, blanking the guy next to them hoping he doesn’t win, then uploading their ride to see if they’ve beaten people who weren’t even there.

When it comes to knowing what is and isn’t a race, here are three simple ways to tell what you are riding:

1. No numbers worn – training ride – NOT A RACE
2. Numbers on handlebars and helmet (& sometimes front of jersey) – NOT A RACE
3. Numbers on rear pockets of jersey (& sometimes frame but never handlebars)  – RACE

So, Strava, I’m sorry things didn’t work out between us…. Even though I am a technology-loving Internet nerd who does this for a living, we just never stood a chance, and we need to go our separate ways…

XOXO (no really, I mean it)

Dan

Let’s be honest, do you think a Tour winner doesn’t work to a plan from at least 8 or 9 months out? Working backwards from the start date, they figure out their race programme and their training schedule and everything else. So club guys – if you want to ‘do a ride’ in a certain race, figure out your programme, set some goals and don’t ride every single race like it is the one you are peaking for, you will have to train ‘through’ some rather than get stuck into the same rides and rest days each week with no progression.

Locally we have a club crit on a Wednesday night, with riding there and back I can get up to two hours on the bike, and 30 minutes of it is flat-out, so it’s a good ride. On Thursday there is a two-hour chain gang ride, another great session. Friday there is an outdoor track league with four races and some good riders to make it a great workout. But if you want to ride on a Sunday or there is a mid-week road race on, too, it becomes a matter of which is more important to you. Some guys want to win everything every night of the week, they inevitably win very little, but almost certainly their weekend racing (the open events that actually count, not the training races against club mates) is what suffers.

The same guys tend to follow the same routine every week and come the end of the season they wonder why they’ve been consistently ‘flat’ in their form. Been there, done that! I’m using some of these sessions as ‘races,’ some as training, and sometimes I do a gym session or a trainer ride in the morning, so anyone watching how I am going in these club events must be convinced my form is nothing short of erratic!

Taking to the race day example, it’s not hard to figure out how to be there on time and prepared properly. For a local cyclocross race an hour away it’s this easy:

12:00pm – Race Start
11:00am – Change into race clothing and warm up on trainer
10:00am – Sign on and ride the course
9:00am – Leave and travel to race
8:00am – Breakfast and load car

Now go look at your race schedule, pick out the important ones, and work backwards; if your piece of paper has the same rides on every week you can expect not to peak, and if you’re training through races don’t be expecting to win every week!

One final thing… relating to thinking but not season planning – when you’re ill with man-flu riding the midweek crit ‘because it’s in your schedule’ is nothing short of dumb. Planning is good, but being flexible is a necessity. If you can barely stop sneezing long enough to gasp for breath through your mouth because your nose is blocked, do you think 45 minutes at 200bpm is going to do you any good? Or going to be a good performance?

I know sometimes pros continue in a stage race when they are ill, but don’t forget they have team and race doctors looking out for them, and more importantly, bike racing is their JOB! If you’re not paying your mortgage from your bike riding it’s probably not worth trashing your health for…

Let’s clear something up, I can’t climb, well to be factually correct what I mean is I can’t climb QUICKLY. When it comes to racing, falling down hills is much more of a strong point of mine than scorching up them ‘polka dot jersey’ style. However I have been planning a weekly two-hour ride involving twelve seated climbs at a threshold effort; they aren’t long climbs, but with some riding on the flat at the bottom and top I can stretch the effort out and get used to riding at that threshold level rather than a quick 30-second sprint (which just about covers most climbs around my local patch).

A few people have said I am mad… why does a self-confessed non-climbing flatlander go out and ride as many as possible in two hours at least once a week? The answer to that is simple – despite my inability to move rapidly uphill I have known for a long time that this type of ride works wonders for my form, so I go and do them on my own to get the suffering out of the way with my iPod on as loud as I need it to drown out my wheezing lungs!

It’s too easy to fall into the mistake of ‘can’t climb won’t climb’. By that I mean, I know I am slow uphills, therefore I find riding up hills painful as I am on the receiving end of a battering from the group, which inevitably means I don’t enjoy them and the temptation then is to just do rides around the bulk of the Lincolnshire lanes (a notoriously flat agricultural county!). The problem with this is that if you can’t go fast up hills but you’re OK on the flat, all you are actually doing is training your strong point and ignoring your weakness. It’s even worse if you know that the training you are deliberately skipping is effective.

Which is where a lot of guys and girls I know tend to get caught out, even cross riders – they can’t bunny hop a hurdle so they don’t ever try, or they can’t run fast so they simply don’t do any running training.

So you climbers who can’t time trial… get out there and do it more often, and anyone out there who says they can’t sprint and never train for it or even try in a race, you’re your own worst enemy.

I know bike riding is a hobby, and enjoying it is incredibly important, but there is a grey area when you move from getting your enjoyment from ‘riding’ a bike, to getting it from ‘racing’ a bike. When it comes to enjoying ‘racing’ it’s derived from the result, which unfortunately means a compromise in the enjoyment of training and in my mind that seems to be where the distinction between the categories comes from. If you want to enjoy riding your bike every time you ride it, you are highly likely to find yourself a perpetual 3rd/4th category rider. If you’re happy to go out and torture yourself every now and then you stand a chance to move up a category. I am sure here is a direct correlation – more torture, higher category – however more reward, a result in a higher category race brings a bigger smile, and before you know it you’re hooked and you’re ‘weighing your lettuce portions’ to get your power-to-weight ratio optimised.

We all take what we want from our love of riding our bikes, it’s just a matter of juggling real life, and an inexplainable addiction for self-inflicted pain..

Riding up the Col Du Galibier with Ex-England Football player Geoff Thomas who was raising money for Leukaemia by riding the whole Tour De France route 2 days behind the pro’s. I did the middle week of the ride through the Alps… If you’re going to raise money for charity you may as well get right out of your comfort zone!

Another Alpine crawl, but I look like a natural at this speed right?

Bellowing grey-hairs Scott Sunderland (in Hot Chillee kit) and the author (in Unity kit) getting the line working efficiently…

Hold it right there. So the whinging guy is doing what? He’s doing his turn, breathing just as hard as you AND making his life harder by trying to tell you what you’re doing wrong so YOU can suffer less. Suddenly telling him to #@*% off isn’t sounding like the best plan, is it? At least I hope not…

My local chain gang has been running all winter, riders have been smashing each other into the ground, and from what I’m told it was ‘as hard as nails’. So I went; I’m not fit, but I’m working on it, and although when you’re not fit a hard chain gang can be as much fun as sticking a needle in your eye, I am well aware that is it a really effective way to get fit.

As the club coach, I soon slipped back in to the role I’d had before I took a year’s sabbatical, and found myself telling guys not to “kick through” and to “shut the gaps” and other subtleties that make life in the line easier. Week one saw the kind of reaction I mentioned above from guys who didn’t know me.

The next week I arrived at the ride greeted by a ‘not him again’ attitude, so I offered the choice of learn to do it properly and go faster, or do as you please and I’ll join in making the ‘line’ choppier than the English Channel in a Force 9 gale. I’m pleased to say they were willing to give me another go at educating them into tempering their enthusiasm.

By week four, on the warm-down ride back into town one of the guys told me that he was going home fresher after the ride, his pulse was around 10bpm lower all ride, and the average speed was 2mph higher. I’d like to say my work here was done, but then I wouldn’t get fit, would I?! My pulse is lower now, though, as I’m hardly having to give out any instructions.

Something else I have experienced in my coaching is that while I raced and coached, people were all ears, the kids can see you ride a bike so listening is easy. I ran a winter cyclocross clinic for about 15 years, in the middle I had about five years off, and during that time as the new riders came in it gradually became harder to get guys to listen. It’s similar to the chain gang, you become a grey-haired guy who bellows instructions and nobody thinks “It’s great that this guy gives his time up to come and teach us things,” its more like “Who is this guy and what does he know anyway?”

For me the cure was simple, and pretty enjoyable as it got me back on a bike. I sorted out a cross bike, trained during the summer and rode CrossVegas and a few UK events, and even rode the World Masters Champs in Mol, Belgium. Funnily enough that winter, my advice (which hadn’t changed) was worth listening to.

The point of my rambling is simple, there are a lot of people passing on knowledge of skills like riding in echelons, riding a line, or cyclocross. They, too, were likely taught those skills by someone from the club. And more than likely, they’re giving up their time and passing it on to no benefit of themselves, and quite probably they’re making their life harder or are freezing their arses off for nothing…. so pause just one second and spare a thought before the testosterone takes over your reaction!

You don’t use ‘being a cyclist’ as a means to excuse yourself of manners or common sense, or consider yourself a successfully sociable human being. What I mean is, as a pedestrian would you just walk out across a junction ignoring the traffic lights? No! So why exactly don’t the rules apply to you any more when you swing a leg over your bike, allowing you to think it’s fine to jump red lights?

More than the traffic scofflaws though, the thing that really bugs me is cyclists’ obsession with weight. Don’t get me wrong, there was a time in my life when cycling was more important than… well, life, I guess. Everything was orientated around cycling, payday was for new parts, weekends were for races, skipping off work early, traveling up and down the country or across Europe. At that point, power and weight and speed were ALL that mattered.

The author (left) at the 2010 World Masters CycloCross Championships, Mol, Belgium

However life goes on, and cycling has gone back to being a hobby. Which means it comes after work, family, dogs, and whatever else pops up unexpectedly. For me it meant 12 months off; developing my business and sorting out some family issues meant the bike was left dormant and the sun didn’t come out to tempt me all summer, so a short break eventually became a year.

I recently began riding again, and it rapidly became obvious that I wasn’t fit… and also my kit was tighter. The solution is to ride alone for the first couple of weeks so you can see straight and catch your breath before you contemplate riding with anyone. But then be prepared at that point for your club mates to skip the ‘nice to see you back on the bike’ comments and just come straight out with ‘you’re not at your racing weight mate’ and various other tactless comments.

I simply don’t understand why it is ALWAYS the perpetual 3rd or 4th cats that are like this – they of all people should realise cycling is a hobby, and that a day job or other important things come first. If it didn’t, and they were pro’s, they’re doing a pretty crappy job if they never ever get higher than a 3rd cat license.

I’m lucky, I’ve worked in cycling in some shape or form since I left University, so I know a good few ‘pro’ riders including names like Wiggins, Hoy, Cavendish, and Millar plus most of the domestic scene in the UK. I’ve ridden against most of them at some point or another after reaching the heady height of 1st cat just before the Elite category was introduced. I’ve also been soundly beaten by these guys which is why they are bike riders and I’m not!

British National Elite Madison Championships podium 1999
1st – Brad Wiggins/Rob Hayles
2nd – Russell Downing/Jon Clay
3rd – Dan Ellmore/Chris Bush

I’m also privileged enough to have ridden a few hundred miles with Sean Kelly, Scott Sunderland, and Stephen Roche, all incredibly stylish guys on a bike. The thing about these guys, who we all know are (or were) obsessed about their own power-to-weight ratio is they can spot an amateur and treat them like a human. I’m sure it’s abundantly clear to them I ride when I want, for as long as I want, and I eat what I want.

Cyclosport End of Season Ride 2011 (l-r) Yanto Barker of Team UK Youth, Dan Ellmore, Triple Crown Winner Stephen Roche, and Kieran Frend of Anpost SeanKelly

The sad thing is that there are plenty of people who like riding their bikes, or are missing it after some time off and instead of being encouraged to get back out there, get fit and improve their health, they just get rude comments about not being thinner than Wiggo! I alone know of a handful of people that have been put off from riding again because of this ridiculous attitude; personally I have a different approach, suffering as quietly as I can while keeping a mental score until the form arrives.

Then I intend to make them eat every word with interest…