It’s all cycle-logical.  T-minus 32 days to launch.  Part 3: The Great British Bike-Off

“If constellations had been named in the 20th century, I suppose we would see bicycles.” ~ Carl  (Peter!) Sagan

Dear Readers & Team, I need your help!  Please post pun comments on a cycling/cake theme at the bottom of this thread.  I'll kick you off: cream (bike) horn... 

A recent daylight raid of Inverness yields trophies of aerial voyeurism: Lake District

Plugging away...

Another solid team week, particularly behind the scenes where we have a crack team.  We can all imagine how much effort it inevitably takes: a mile on the road is preceded by two on the phone etc.

A slightly frustrating (but still positive) week for me.  All attempts at training partially thwarted by a combination of all of the following: sickness, expectation, commitments (not the Dublin band), the fading light & a need to get to sleep in order to be up at 0400 for work.  The rollers have come out of the garage and I have definitely felt the hunger spiking up as a result.  Those evil Kit-Kats are staying at work too.  This must be serious.  There was definitely some sparkle in there so I'm staying upbeat, but it would be an ironic way to passively observe the best and last (take it as official from a pilot) of our Indian Summer drift away. 

Speaking of drifting away, I randomly chanced upon this one and it struck a chord...  Philosophy of the week comes courtesy of Sir George Martin of Abbey Road fame, on the subject of his recording studio on the Caribbean island of Montserrat being trashed by a hurricane and then flattened by a volcano.  Bear with me…  I paraphrase the musical genius slightly but he says: it takes a lot of energy to create something from nothing, then just as much to stop it returning to nothing again.  This entropy is as close a metaphor for the all-elusive 'form' as I can find.  My uber-keen triathlon brethren will tell you more of this I'm sure.

Duncan makes a good point in his intro (see Meet the Team page) about 'cleaning the steed' I'm sure we can all relate to.  That pressure to get home, dismount (a challenge in itself after fusing your feet and spine into position for hours), find a decent snack, wash (please!) and a proper refuel.  Only then do you catch a glimpse of said discarded steed in the garden, round-shouldered in shame and covered in mud, like a forgotten old dog.  So out come the buckets and hose, running the risk of getting muddy and wet all over again.  Mine was a bit like this last week; buffed white sheen now reduced to a dubiously aerodynamic grey crust and creaking suspiciously like an old galleon.  I find enlisting my four-year old helps, but this does mean more water everywhere.  Lo and behold, some patience and application was rewarded with a clean four-year old and a creak-free bike again.  And a recreation of Lake Michigan in a small Hertfordshire street. At the risk of sending the pilots into a wave of dewy-eyed, air-brained nostalgia, the degreaser and silicone smell of a clean bike is up there with the hot oil aroma, ticking engine block and creased leather of an old biplane.  Back me up on this one guys & girls…nope, just me then.

I forgot to mention in the initial discussion of the route last week that as we're doing this south-bound, we'll also be fighting into a prevailing south-westerly wind.  Chalk that one up as another little challenge to overcome.  Which is akin to telling the SAS, 'By the way lads, there are lions in the drop-zone and the signs are that they haven't fed for a while...’

So, we can all start to wave goodbye to the high pressure and get used to the wet again.  There are four weeks to go and three and a half of those are without the hindrance of a clock change so there is all to play for.  Hamstrings not hamstringing.  Game on!  (Kudos Wayne’s World).

It’s all cycle-logical.  T-minus 37 days to launch.  Part 2: Geography lesson.

“Whenever I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the human race.”  HG Wells.

The gold and the blue; Bedfordshire countryside this week

Autumnal high pressure keeps team buoyant

Progress report this week.  The team has logged some amazing mileage: between the twelve of fifteen members you can see online (use the Strava box: This week totals…in the top right) there has been over 2500km of training over 45 rides in ONE WEEK.  That is just the training that was logged, there will be more conducted on the rollers in secret!  Such is the intensity of activity I am quite happy to confess I was ditched from pole position to fifth last week in the space of one day.  Motivation is high and morale is good; the only high pressure is atmospheric, hence the activity.

I recently met a lady who took a sabbatical to cycle 4000 miles around the coast of the UK, solo in ten weeks and then write a book about it.  She said that her philosophy was: why go abroad when there's so much you haven’t seen of your own country?  Granted, we are not going to be sightseeing here, but even to lay eyes directly on all those counties and UK sights of interest: Peaks, Lakes, Gretna Green…well, that is a rare opportunity.  Easyjet gives us the chance to look out which is a wonderful thing…but we often forget to look in too.  The team will gladly remind me of this in five weeks time; there will be plenty of time to look in, in pain, once in the saddle.  Kudos Nietzsche and Freud.

A small geography lesson.  Disclaimer: the route is subject to minor tweaks depending on exact hotel arrangements, still to be locked-in.  The hotels that is, not locked-IN-the-hotels.  That would be embarrassing.  This is 98% of the route as designed by our Yoda of Cycling and Team Coordinator.  Attention Sir Dave Brailsford; are you getting twitchy yet?

Day 1 – Glasgow to Gretna: The Tartan High Roller

150km

1387m ascent

Depart Glasgow airport.  On-time, naturally.  We hope some of our orange brethren in the Glasgow base will be there to send us off in a skirl of bagpipes.  Head south through Paisley towards Strathaven on the southern edge of Glasgow, where we head east to draw alongside the M74 at Lesmahagow.  The terrain gets lumpy between 30 and 80kms.  We then parallel the M74 south through countryside, along A & B roads, over the highest point of the day outside Moffat, 320m at 86km in.  Then turn due south pointing towards Lockerbie and the finish in Gretna, downhill more or less all the way from here.  Witness a wedding conducted by Elvis.  Possibly.  Counties count: Lanarkshire & Dumfriesshire.

Day 2 – Gretna to Clitheroe: The Cumbrian Climber

156km

2226m ascent

Parallelling a different motorway today as the M74 morphs into the M6 north of Carlisle.  Pass closest to the sea on the eastern tip of the Solway Firth.  Funnelled uphill between the Lake District to the West and Yorkshire Dales to the East, then reach the top of the descent into Kirkby Lonsdale.  The terrain then kicks up to the high point of the day at 420m, climbing 350m inside 10kms.  There’s a last little spike on the run-in to Clitheroe.  Counties: Cumbria & Lancashire.

Day 3 – Clitheroe to Derby: Post-Industrial to The Peaks

150km

2543m ascent

Due south today through Blackburn, Bolton, Manchester & Stockport inside the first 65km.  Run south-east into the Peak District towards Bakewell and the high point of the day at 400m.  Punchy up and down until leaving the Peak District where the road points down and we cruise into Derby.  This will be the hardest day for my money, only half way at the start, with two hefty days down and the greatest amount of climbing to get through.  Counties: Lancashire & Derbyshire

Day 4 – Derby to Luton: Countryside Crawl

184km

1834m ascent

Day of pointing south-east today following our noses for our (spiritual) home of Luton.  A taste of the countryside again after yesterday’s initial industrial flavour.  A rough tracking of the M1 as we pass between Leicester & Lichfield, Wellingborough & Northampton.  Home turf starts at Bedford as we pass Cranfield Airport & Millbrook Proving Ground.  Mobilise that last day adrenaline for the extra 35km to get through today, the only day of over 100 miles.  Stop traffic and arrive at Hangar 89 in time for tea and sticky buns.  Counties: Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire & Bedfordshire.

Remember, all of this can be done in 50 minutes with the help of an Airbus A320 and 5 tonnes of Jet A1.

As the crow flies, the route is about 60% of the length of the UK.

It’s all cycle-logical.  T-minus 43 days to launch.  Part 1: musing on a theme.  

“The bicycle is the noblest invention of mankind.” William Saroyan, Nobel prize winner

View from the top, to be temporarily exchanged for the view below...

Picture the scene.  I was on standby in H89.  The nerve centre of easyJet to those unfamiliar with it and the only building in Luton you can identify from 39,000 feet.  We’ve tried.  Regularly.  An email popped up, just the usual news and trivia.  Except for a small missive from a mad man who was arranging a 400 mile charity cycle from Glasgow to London in four days and seeking a dirty dozen to represent.  You know how an idea catches the mind and you can't let go?  That was it.

So why?  Assorted reasons, all boiling down to: why not?  We all have our own.  It will be a particular delight to unite colleagues across some very disparate working groups (have you tried pinning down a pilot; you can’t get hold of us some days for in excess of thirteen hours) and cities.  When a jolly Cypriot shipping tycoon thought he’d start a quaint, little airline in 1995 he could have picked a better month than November, anticipating somebody MIGHT want to do something memorable…like sit in the rain for eight hours a day, on ten pointy kilos of metal and carbon, clad in oilskins, whilst aiming south from somewhere in the Lake District.

We have a wide range of abilities, experiences and fitnesses (have you tried sitting in a plane for thirteen hours a day?  Oh, I already said that, that’s the perfectly balanced chip on my other shoulder).  What did Kennedy say before the start of the Apollo program in the mid-1960s?  I’ll tell you, because I find it very revealing and it gives an idea of the madness we are attempting to tap into.  “We choose to go to the moon…not because it is easy but because it is hard.”  Whilst I’m on my soapbox, culture is perhaps a bit too full of an expectation of disposable, air-conditioned, skinny-latte’d, contactless, instantly gratified, X-factor success.  Sometimes going about things the hard way is the only way.  We'll uncover hidden depths (of potholes) and hidden strengths and come back changed in small but significant ways.

We’re all martyrs to the cause now, bonded in….bike oil, so we intend to prove it.

You might say: ‘all these people are hardened cyclists, this will be no challenge for them’.  Think again.  You can do 100 miles in an afternoon with the right bike and the right attitude.  But to replicate that again.  And again.  And again.  When all the muscles are already screaming that once was enough for the week.  Neck.  Knees.  Back.  Add in doing some of that under the cover of dawn and dusk once the clocks go back.  Through unfamiliar territory with some big lumps of rock.  Lake District anyone?  Now consider what the weather does over any four days in November, including a leg in Western Scotland.  Heard that cliché about the Lake District being the wettest place in the UK?  We’ll validate it for you.  We could have the pilot’s four horsemen of the meteorological apocalypse: fog, wind, rain and storms.  We might even see some snow up there.

Ultimately, a four hundred mile traverse of Provence & Tuscany, nursing cheese and pastry just isn’t going to cut the mustard in this company.  Our business is accruing hard (air) miles, so how about we try and replicate that, albeit in a more tortuous format.  We will do it, because we can, and not only that, but because it is fun too, we’ll show you.  ‘Because we can’ is an especially loaded sentiment given we’re doing this for UNICEF who can help us all supply a little more ‘because you can’ to those who currently can’t, topical given what is going on 1000 miles east of here…

Preparation has actually started, only seven weeks to go, which is a bit like casually mentioning to Wiggins in mid-May that he might like to get out his Atlas of Southern France.  In Team Sky they start about a year ahead.  We don’t have that luxury, but then again, we can all ride a bike…a lot and pretty well, judging by the pedalheads that make up our motley crew.  We’re also well versed in these parts at putting some orange shoulder to the wheel and cracking on. 

The other day, Rich & I were thrown into the watery end.  Out in excess of four hours we thought we’d cracked it, no strangers to tearing around country lanes together, but now reunited in pursuit of a common goal.  The stubble fields were golden, the breeze was soft…and an immense, dark wall of cloud drowned us both inside fifteen minutes.  No waterproofs, no lights, with rush hour commuters ducking down the back lanes attempting to flatten us.  It then kept raining for an hour by which point my shoes overflowed and the cars were making bow waves as they fought through it.  I joke to passengers leaving my flights that there is no such thing as poor weather, only inappropriate clothing.  I am about to have this philosophy thrown straight back at me.  Rich & I found it quite funny; you had to.  Only two highly trained, risk-managing professionals could find themselves in such a situation…but you have to leave that aside from time to time and just hit the road.  Just pray that the thorn stays in your side, not a tyre and keep going!  We joked about looking back in eight weeks and referring to that point as ‘the stupidity datum’.  So it shall be.

Van Gogh's wheatfield with crows…about to become an almighty flood & define my stupidity datum

Allez, the road awaits, yet waits for no-one...

Robin

Bit of a blog test

Just putting a post on to see if this all works!