Lessons from a born-again Cyclist

Just over a year ago, buoyed my Olympic enthusiasm and environmental energy (as well as the chance to put more pennies in the ongoing Arsenal season-ticket fund) I decided to try cycling to work for a week. I even wrote a blog on this esteemed website about my 'Get-to-work-on-time-trial', and as you can see from my final paragraph that day, seemed fairly confident of continuing:

‘So in conclusion, it seems that if I'm happy to get up five minutes earlier and get home five minutes later, I can get fit, save the environment, have a more comfortable commute and save a fair amount of cash. I've felt wide awake and full of energy at work, and my suits should last longer too. I'll need some car-lift favours from my wife occasionally, when I need to be in early or home late, but in return she'll get a fitter and slightly sweatier husband. The big unknown is the weather - it was fine for the whole week, with barely any wind or rain, but I'll keep going until either my colleagues subtly move their desks away, or I have to be rescued by the Buckinghamshire Ambulance service, peeling me off the bike that I'm frozen to, covered in oil and muttering about improving my cadence.'

Well, 12 months on and I'm still loving cycling to work. The weather has been tamed, and my fears of co-workers finding my cyclists' smell repugnant has proved entirely unfounded - they even gave me a new desk in the corner! However, the year hasn't gone by without a few hard-learnt lessons...

1. You’ve got to get the right gear

I started out planning to use my existing array of unused football shirts, running shorts, and ancient Red trainers (which I’ve been trying to throw away for years, but their sad holely appearance always persuaded me to keep them for gardening or the like). However, after just a week of cycling to work I decided to treat myself to a new backpack - a beautiful sleek red racing bag, complete with tuck-away rain cover and pockets. Lots of pockets. Now, this may sound weird but I’m pretty convinced it made me cycle faster, which I wasn’t previously aware a bag could do. Sadly, that can’t be said for the waterproof shorts I bought at the same time. Whilst they did a sterling job at keeping the water away from my shivering legs, they also doubled-up as a full orchestra, making a tremendous noise which saved me having lights on my bike, as anyone could hear my approach from 100 yards away. On advice from my 30km-a-day Cousin, I also bought some bright reflective winter gloves. At first I thought it was a cruel cyclist initiation joke as I pulled on the over-sized bright yellow monstrosities, but soon found they were incredibly effective at getting across your message to those drivers who enjoy squeezing me into the gutter.

2. You’ve got to avoid the wrong gear

The first day I cycled in real rain, I was strangely excited. Ready to brave the elements in my noisy shorts and showerproof jacket, I strode out ready to give up my wet-weather virginity and become a cycling man. However, it turns out that ‘showerproof’ and ‘waterproof’ are two different things. Within a minute of cycling head-first into a beautifully created low-pressure weather system, I was desperately trying to turn the sleeves of my already-soaked jacket around to give my arms another minute’s protection, to no avail. Still, I did get a seat on the train that day. The Red trainers finally gave up the ghost a few weeks in to rainy season, their persuasive holes having their flaws brutally exposed and leaving my socks to fend for themselves. I also learnt that it gets warm, quickly. The jacket-and-long-top approach, so snug when stepping out of the back door, quickly becomes a self-contained sauna with no hope of escape until your destination is reached. 

3. Time is of the essence

I’ve always been someone who likes to be on time and, being a professional commuter, adept at saving time wherever possible to give a precious few minutes more in bed. However, this reached new, almost obsessive heights once I got into my cycling rhythm. It started sensibly, planning my clothing the night before and laying them out (in put-on order) on the spare bed ready for the morning. It started to get more worrying when I began trying the recycling boxes in different places, to get them out of the way of my bike and allow me the quickest route from the garage to the back gate. But then I realised I wasn’t alone, when I accidentally entered the ‘changing room wars’, a seamlessly ongoing battle with fellow respectable colleagues to get your kit on the best hook, close to the door, near the showers, and with a covered shoe-holder rack, but not in the area where the changing rooms narrow and, well, you essentially become part of someone’s drying-off routine. I like to think I’m winning at that, having finally got my stuff on to the prime corner hook, allowing me walled protection from others and being equidistant between the entrance and the wash area. 

Having re-read that paragraph, God help me.

4. Lance Armstrong isn’t all bad

Ok, I’ll admit that it does seem the remarkably successful Lance may have had some kind of help in his multi-million dollar career, and that in some people’s eyes, he’s not really someone to be seen as a role model. But when I was hopelessly failing to conquer the steep hill on the way to the station, who was there to help me but Lance! Or at least, his website, which for some reason unbeknownst to me has been cleared of all cycling-related content and replaced with a single picture of him running (as well as contact details if you want to book him for speaking engagements…). I watched a two minute video on his site which talked about the importance of a high cadence, lowering gear before hitting the hill, and avoiding gear-shifts when standing up, all of which worked beautifully and turned me from a guy being overtaken by a 75-year-old on a vintage Raleigh (that genuinely happened) to a guy who can now make it home without having to spend the next hour in close proximity to the bathroom and unable to eat…

5. Never, ever go to Halfords

I did. I wish I hadn’t…

A week in the life of a Halford’s Gift Voucher

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So there we have it, a year down the line and I’m certainly fitter, have grown to become weirdly fond of rain, and have no plans on giving it up. I also get quite a kick out of telling other people - the other day, a Sustrans rep approached our ‘huddle’ waiting for the train, surveying who cycled to work and trying to persuade people to try it. Despite that being a non-cycling day due to evening drinking commitments, I felt a huge sense of pride and righteousness when I loudly proclaimed that most days, I jump on my bike and battle against nature to reach my destination. If anything, I felt even prouder when I heard the gentlemen in front giving their reasons for not cycling- the word ‘lunatics’ was used at least twice…

And if nothing else I can say that in the last year, at least I’ve managed to persuade the girls next door that Arsenal isn’t all I care about:

John (@johnJsills) +John J Sills 

Was Lance Clean and Did He Need To Cheat?

What an emotive subject Lance Armstrong is. He has inspired millions, whether they are cyclists, armchair sports fans or cancer patients his story has touched so many across the world. The man who dominated cycling to such an extent that it's probably better to describe him as crushing rather than dominating his opponents. Lance was everything the sport needed and he was everything that was needed to win at the sport. His nationality and mother tongue made him perfect for the media and his dynamic personality filled inches after inches of sports columns, hours and hours of TV coverage and flogged products to their readers/viewers. So was it all a sham, did he take drugs and that was why he was so good? Well the answer to the those two questions is "probably" and "no".

First of all let's rewind to before Lance had cancer, he was a strong rider from a young age and was the youngest rider to be road race world champion. Then cancer hit. Armstrong hit back at cancer with everything he had, he researched cancer to the nth degree and went about it in a way that he would be famous for attacking cycling when he made his comeback. He was methodically, looking at everything at the heart of that was nutrition. Coming out the other side (if you want the whole story read his excellent autobiography) he must have then analysed cycling with a new lust for life. I imagine him saying "right what do I need to do to win the Tour de France" and then researched it massively. This is where the grey areas start to come in. The Tour at that point (late nineties) was a dark place, running a two speed peloton - those who took drugs (doped) and those who didn't. There wasn't yet a test that could detect the most popular drug EPO and so it was rampant amongst cyclist. This description from bikepure.org explains how it works

"EPO artificially boosted the body’s red blood cell count . Boosting an athlete’s red blood cell count (and thus the efficiency with which oxygen is transported around the body) in order to improve performance, is done by injecting erythropoietin – a hormone produced by the kidneys that stimulates production of red blood cells – and it gives a massive advantage in performance."

The only cyclist and those on the staff who had been caught were those caught in possession of the drug rather than through drug tests. So before we go any further those who claim that because an athlete has take "hundreds of drugs tests" it doesn't mean they're not taking drugs. There wasn't a test for the third generation of EPO until May 2008, three years after Lance won his last Tour.

So back to Lance and his outlook in 1997/8, all the top cyclists were doping. Evidence? Let's look at the three winners before Lance, they were Pantani, Ullrich and Riis. Bjarne Riis has admitted he took drugs, Jan Ullrich has been done for drugs and, if you have the stomach for it, you can read The Death of Marco Pantani, a biography that uncovers his drug aided career from start to cocaine overdose finish.

Faced with a Tour that was fuelled by drugs it is feasible that Lance thought his only way of winning the tour during his generation was to use EPO.

However, Lance wasn't just EPO good, he was amazing. This is where the non-drugs side to Lance comes through. He was the complete rider. Let me explain in more detail.

He trained hard, he was one of the first riders to bring in reconnoitering the major stages of the tour before hand. Knowing how the route was gave him that extra edge, knowing exactly when to attack, knowing which side of the road to be on when descending. It all added up.

His diet was followed strictly, unlike Ullrich who would crash diet before the race Armstrong would turn up to the tour looking lean and but would stay lean aiding his training. Why is that important? Before cancer Lance had a lot of upper body weight in the form of muscle (he used to be a tri-athlete), the new slimmed down version meant he was a lot lighter and that aided him when climbing mountains. As you can imagine the lighter you are, the less weight you have to drag up a mountain.

Everything for Lance was down to the little detail, he wouldn't walk around in bare feet in his house as that was a way to catch colds. Everything was thought of. You may have heard David Brailsford talk of marginal gains to do with British Cycling and Team Sky but it's Lance that really brought that thinking on a step. He looked at everything, I've mentioned nutrition, training, health but his team also looked at his bike making sure he gained every advantage where he could.

Tactics wise he was spot on, at the start of his dominance he seemed easy to read, he would attack on the first mountain summit finish and then just keep eating away at time after that. Yet, it wasn't that simple. First of all, knowing when he would attack wouldn't help if you could keep up with him but he controlled the whole race from start to finish. He would carefully choose who would have the race lead by allowing only certain breakaways to have success (by his team not chasing them down) and would then hold them at a certain length so they weren't a danger to him but meant he wouldn't have to defend his lead too early. Team Sky are still learning from Lance today. They looked at how he never got in any crashes - something Bradley Wiggins didn't avoid as he went out of last year's Tour with a broken collar bone. Again it seemed easy to read him, just stay at the front and you don't end up in a crash. Yet when 200 riders want to be at the front for that very reason it actually causes the crashes so how did Lance do it? He got his team to ride a fast pace even on stages where there was nothing at stake, this stretched out the peloton and meant that the scrum for the front was no more.

Drugs may have helped with the implementation of his tactics but it didn't help form the original thought. That really sums Lance up, it may have helped his implementation but he was head and shoulders above the other drug takers. Does it make it right? No but he's still the best rider of his generation. That I'm sure of.