And Then I Got High

I’ve just realised I’ve been living in Nice for almost 2 months now doing some amazing roads and climbs...and haven’t blogged about it. I know! Big oversight on my part. Anyway, I’ll avoid all the ‘filler stuff’ and skip straight to the big one. Today I did the Col de la Bonette. The highest paved road in Europe at 2,715m (8,907ft). Oh wait, what’s that? The Stelvio Pass is 2,757m? Balls. Ok well it’s actually a little loop of road at the top of the Col de la Bonette called the Cime de la Bonette (2,802m) that’s the highest paved road in Europe (the French basically decided to build a little loop just to get one over on the Italians. Good on ‘em), however much to my dismay (ignoring all logic with all the snow around) that was still blocked! So unfortunately I can’t say I’ve ridden the highest paved road in Europe today (but I’ll probably see if I can get away with it until I can go back when the Cime is open...)

Either way it’s a cracking climb. 17 miles and about 5,000ft of ascent (sorry for switching back to imperial-I’m programmed!). I was a little apprehensive of the whole altitude thing, as I’d never gone over 2,000m before and that’s apparently where ‘funny stuff’ starts to happen, so I paced it slightly conservatively. Which actually isn’t entirely true. I paced it over conservatively on the lower sections in anticipation of getting my ass kicked once I passed the 2kM mark (I genuinely had this image of there being a line painted on the road with something like ‘start suffocating now’)-I still wanted to do a decent time! As it happens it wasn’t too bad, maybe I’m one of the those people who don’t feel the effects quite so badly. Although having said that, I did try to lift the pace in the last mile or two and was strangely lacking oomph...altitude or just 1hr 15 climbing in my legs? We’ll never know. I did however pick up a couple of KOMs for the last couple of miles, which I’m pretty chuffed about. Although that is always an accidental thing right ;)

The descent was awesome as well, as I’m sure you can imagine, half an hour of sweeping good quality fast roads. Heaven! I also saw some random Beaver-ish mammals that turned out to be Marmot. I must have seemed quite the ignoramus not knowing they were Marmots, but hey-I live in Wales for half the year normally so give me a sheep and 9/10 I'll correctly identify it.  Apparently it’s actually quite rare to see them (Marmots not sheep); not if you ask me though, I saw about 10 on my way up and down!

I’ll leave you with a few pictures, they speak better than words...

Saint-Étienne-de-Tinée. The bottom.

Going up.

Going up but looking backwards just to keep you on your toes.

Going up and looking forwards but in the 'backwards' direction. Switchbacks see.

I've lost track. 

Getting close to the ass-kickin line.

The top! In the distance.

Had to resist the urge to 'melt' my name into that. If you get me.

The view from the top (Col top) back down where we'd come.

The elusive Cime. I'll be back for you Monsieur!

To the rest of the Alps.

Pro photo bomber.

Mountains. Can't beat em!

Although this came close. Officially Best Ever Pizza. Honestly! Recovery food innit.

Getting out of the car in an alpine downpour to test a prototype. Dedication!

So to sum up: rode a big climb, loved it, got a headache and a cough from the altitude, achieved inner nirvana on the descent, had a massive Reco Pizza (TM), came home. Not a bad day way to use a public holiday!

Ciao.

That 25mm Thing

The 25mm Thing. (originally published December, 2013...reworked slightly now ;)

You’re probably aware that the latest ‘big thing’ in cycling that isn’t to do with disc brakes is the shift towards running larger section tyres. This flies in the face of pretty much all previously accepted racing wisdom and tradition and may be hard for some to accept, but it’s based on hard science. For a given tyre pressure, a 25mm tyre will roll better than an identical one in 23mm section.

So. According to various sources, the long and short of it is that 25mm tyres run at the same pressure generate less rolling resistance than 23s. Simple! Well...in that sense it is. However, we’re not talking like 20w savings or anything like that, really just percentage points. There are a few important points that should be considered:

·         There is variation in rolling resistance within models and even batches of tyres due to the manufacturing processes involved- so- it is possible that a ‘good rolling’ 23mm could generate less rolling resistance than a ‘poor rolling’ 25 of the same model.

·         A good quality 23mm tyre would almost certainly roll better than a lower quality 25mm tyre.

·         A 25mm tyre designed for touring, or designed to be puncture resistant first and foremost (think Gatorskin and the like) will not roll as well as an out and out race 23mm tyre (think Conti GP Supersonic etc) by design. Think back to my posts on TPI etc, there are a lot of contributory factors to rolling resistance.

·         Tyre pressure is critical. You will note that I always say ‘at a given pressure’, because a 23mm tyre pumped up to 100% of recommended pressure, eg 120 PSI, will roll better than a 25mm tyre only pumped to say 80 PSI (or about 67%) of recommended pressure.

·         A 19mm track tubular tyre pumped up to recommended pressure of ~200 PSI will roll better than a 25mm road clincher pumped up to 120 PSI. Not the most realistic of comparisons, but worth mentioning.

It is quite clearly not correct to just say ‘25mm tyres are faster, end of’ as a blanket statement. There is however more behind the shift towards wider section tyres. If a 25mm tyre rolls better at a given pressure, then logically it is possible to lower the tyre pressure and, overall, experience no respective loss in rolling resistance. Lower tyre pressures equal more comfort (which is always nice), and also mean more grip (due to the carcass being able to deform more to the surface of the road-more tread in contact with the ground=more grip). Lower pressures also, considering Boyle’s Law (I think), could mean safer riding for those deciding to risk using carbon clincher rims on big climbs. Allow me to elaborate/go off on a potentially incorrect tangent: 

·         Every beaded (i.e: clincher) tyre has a pressure at which the outward pressure will exceed the force of the bead keeping it on the rim-and will jump off the rim/blowout. Carbon clincher rims suffer from poor heat dissipation under breaking and you have no doubt read the many horror stories of people descending big cols and blowing out/off whatever they were running on their carbon clinchers in the process. Blaming incidents on these on equipment is unfair. It’s not the equipment’s fault-it’s the choice of equipment! Tyres for example are engineered with as much headroom between the recommended pressure to absolute max ‘this-will-now-blowoff-the-rim’ pressure as feasible bearing in mind the other characteristics required for its application. Going back to Boyle’s Law: ‘for a fixed amount of an ideal gas kept at a fixed temperature, pressure and volume are inversely proportional.’ So, if temperature increases for a given volume, so must pressure; hence the known issues regarding long heavy breaking on carbon clinchers. Or at least that’s how I interpret it/remember GCSE physics (please correct me if I’m wrong). So if you insist on taking your carbon clinchers to the Alps/Pyrenees etc then can I suggest also packing some 25mm tyres? You’ll be able to run them at a lower pressure (without going any slower as explained previously), but more crucially will also therefore give yourself perhaps 5-10PSI extra safety headroom. Which could mean the difference between you getting to the bottom of a long descent upright, or not.

Whether or not 25s would have increased in popularity without the concurrent advances in wheel technology pushing wider more aero rims or not is another point worth considering. Wider rims are more aero (or at least, react better in a wider range of wind yaw angles. A.K.A ‘real world not wind tunnel’ riding and so require less energy input from the rider to continue riding in a straight line) and wider tyres fit this wider profile better, ensuring a smoother transition from tyre to rim for the air-so it’s win/win. Would a 25mm tyre be more aero on a ‘standard’ narrower profile rim? I can’t answer that, but what seems obvious now is that it would roll faster than a 23mm version of the same model at the same pressure.

That’s the key to the whole ‘25mm thing’, they are indeed faster-but only in certain situations. If your bike has the clearances to take 25s (sadly my race bike doesn’t...or at least not with any safety margin), then next time you need to replace your tyres, try the same model in 25mm. Go as fast for more comfort and grip, or go faster for roughly similar comfort/grip? I’d take that for something as simple as swapping tyres.

Thanks for reading. I hope that helped you better understand ‘the 25mm thing’, and if it did maybe consider sharing it with others who might be interested? I think it’s fascinating personally, and would like to think I’ve helped people better understand it!

 

'When all else fails, you will find inspiration in music'.

Dream Theater

I like listening to music. I like writing. I like writing about music, and have been wanting to get my thoughts down on this particular band for a while now. Plus, I was supposed to do another 'Tyre Tech' post and really couldn't think of what to write. Hence the title.

There are two types of people in this world: Dream Theater fans, and music fans who just haven’t heard Dream Theater yet. Being classified by many and labelled as ‘Progressive metal’ is, I believe, doing them a great disservice. If you must classify and sort them then they are without a doubt progressive, as anybody who appreciates the likes of King Crimson/Pink Floyd etc will immediately recognise when listening to 20min epics such as The Count of Tuscany, Octavarium or Illumination Theory (off their latest album); and likewise nobody with even a passing interest in rock music could listen to John Petrucci’s playing and fail to pick out the metal style/influences. It is my opinion however, that Dream Theater are a band that transcends categorisation. The sheer range, diversity, volume-however you choose to express it-of musicality, creativity, skill and deep understanding of music that they bring to the table with every release seems to redefine the genre of what could be loosely described as ‘progressive metal’.  They don’t worry about fitting into any specific mould, they don’t worry about (or indeed face) criticism from fans and the media when they do something different (like many well known ‘metal’ bands) and they most certainly do not follow any sort of trend. They are, and have been since inception, on their own rather unique trajectory; and whilst they undoubtedly take nods from other artists, contemporary and otherwise, they are one of those rare examples of a group of hugely talented professional musicians coming together and gelling perfectly. Why is it that ‘supergroups’ (as I’m pretty sure examining the component parts of DT would ordinarily result in their being classified as a ‘supergroup’) normally don’t last very long? I would say it’s because you can only really have one or two strongly driven creative forces in a group...ordinarily. Lennon and McCartney, Plant and Page, Lynott, Mustaine, Bellamy, Hetfield, Grohl-all strong creative minds that drove/drive their respective groups’ directions to success-yet Dream Theater’s work as a collective is always just that, collective. Most of the band members have pursued other projects (which gives you an idea of what they bring individually to the DT writing process), yet they somehow still manage to come together and successfully fuse all that creative genius time after time. And I don’t think there is a word better than ‘genius’ in this case.

I must admit however that I am only a relatively new fan, having only bought their last three albums as new releases-but how they manage to consistently create such masterpieces is beyond me. Not only do they craft songs with catchy riffs and passages each time, and not only do they manage to evoke a unique ‘feel’  to each album-but they also manage to write songs with real meaning, or as I heard a musician once say-real ‘heart’. And while it’s nothing new for artists to really reach out to and connect with fans with their work, it is rare in my personal experience for an artist(s) to bring something so finely polished and with such a strong unique direction with each release.  They simply never miss a beat. I am yet to come across a ‘filler track’, I am yet to think ‘oh come on, this was clearly written in half an hour the day before recording deadline’-and this is made all the more impressive when you consider they have just released their 12^th studio album, with a largely unchanged creative core. Their work follows broad templates, or perhaps I would do them better service by saying each album has their unique ‘sound’. With each album you can expect among other things orchestral flavourings, thunderously heavy 7-string riffage and...keyboard solos. Don’t let that put you off though, think more Pink Floyd than Emerson Lake and Palmer (apologies to ELP fans out there, but you can probably appreciate what I’m driving at.)

One of the noteworthy things for me is that I don’t have ‘favourite’ Dream Theater tracks. I also hardly ever skip one when it comes up on shuffle (only my iPod will know what praise that is). I arrive at the explanation that despite being a fluid creative force that changes, develops and adapts; they remain very strongly true to their form, their sound and their true nature. They are Dream Theater and everything that has come to mean (to me). If I pick one of their songs to listen to I do not do so necessarily because I want to listen to that song per se...more that I want to dive into the rich musical experience that is DT. I thought about using some sort of ‘rich hearty soup’ metaphor there, but was pretty sure it would sound a bit shit, and would also be a bit out of place talking about music. (FYI).

They are not a band to listen to if you are after background music and they are most certainly not a band for your fan of contemporary processed ‘clone’ music; but if are willing to just sit down, listen and let your ears soak it all up then you will be rewarded with something quite special. They are not a band to listen to with preconceptions of what ‘progressive metal’ should sound like, and are, I find, best listened to with a ‘clean mental slate’ if you will; and will definitely not appeal to fans of ‘quickfix’ music. You have to surrender yourself to the music, feel your way through it, engage with it, understand it and take what it has to offer. If you can, then I trust and hope that you will enjoy as many wonderful music experiences listening to them as I have.

Thanks for reading. And congratulations if you made it this far.

Tyre Tech #2: What Actually Makes A Tyre?

Tyres are made of rubber. Easy right? Not exactly. Hopefully this post will help you understand just exactly what product info like ‘3/180 TPI Casing’ or marketing spiel like ‘High Quality High TPI Construction’ means.

Put simply the carcass of a tyre (the main body of the tyre), nylon sheets of varying TPI (threads per inch) are impregnated with rubber and then layered up as desired (that’s the whole ‘ply’ thing) and then finished off usually with some sort of puncture protection and a tread surface. The desired application influences the number of plies, the TPI of nylon used in those plies, the level of puncture protection used and the design and construction of tread surface. That’s the Ladybird Book Edition anyway.

TPI Talk:  Some manufacturers use TPI as a marketing tool, but don’t be fooled-there is a lot more that influences how well a tyre performs than its TPI. For example, a higher TPI is often seen as a selling point, but a higher thread count just means thinner strands of nylon that are more easily broken-i.e: the potential of having a tyre that is more prone to punctures. However, the flip side is that generally a tyre with a higher TPI will have a more supple carcass which will usually give a tyre that ‘feels’ better on the road and rolls better. A high TPI tyre with a poor rubber compound could easily be outperformed in the lab and real world by a tyre with lower TPI but a better rubber compound.

Perhaps my crappily drawn Paint diagram may help you visualise...!

Ply Talk: Nylon threads run in one direction, so manufacturers layer nylon sheets over one another in plies, giving a lattice like construction to, for example, end up with a tyre that is supple, rolls well but is also reasonably puncture resistant. Increasing the number of plies reduces the number of gaps in the Nylon, so increasing the durability of the carcass and the puncture resistance. As in basically making it harder for stuff to just poke through. Mountain bike tyres for example will sometimes have more plies of nylon with a lower TPI in order to get a tyre with the best of both worlds. The TPI of the nylon used in the plies and the number of plies is where the real clever work comes into play-and my limited knowledge extends no further than the basics that low TPI=’strong’ and high TPI= ‘quick’. In a nutshell. Ladybird Book again ;)

Rubber Talk: Before the nylon is layered to make the carcass however, it must be impregnated with a rubber compound. This is relatively simple for me to explain, as the science is too complicated-so I can’t! Typically though with current rubber compounds, the engineers can choose to either have something that is fast and lightweight, or durable and heavy. I say typically, as that is not always the case as I will talk about in my next post...The compound for the tread surface will typically be tuned for slightly different characteristics than that used for the plies that form the carcass/sidewalls etc; which again is pretty obvious, but I hadn’t actually realised how much thought and specificity actually went into individual tyre design and construction until I saw a bit behind the scenes.

Every tyre is designed for a different role, be it speed, durability or even just affordability. Do not be fooled into thinking that just because Tyre A has a higher TPI than Tyre B for example, that A will outperform B in the wet or last longer. Also don’t automatically think that cheap tyres will be more puncture prone than more expensive tyres; more technical know-how is required to make two tyres that have similar levels of puncture protection but for one to be faster/lighter. Typically, you pay more for a tyre that outperforms cheaper contemporaries in one of the three areas: speed, durability or puncture protection. Again...typically. But you’ll have to wait until my next post to see what I mean by typically ;)

Tyre Tech #1: Basics

Tyre Tech-Basics

There are a lot of technical terms used in advertising at the moment and I daresay quite a few ill-founded opinions floating round; and being of the opinion  that understanding what a product should be will ultimately result in people making the right purchase choice.

Let’s start by going back to basics. Tyres are important. They are your point of contact with the road and they arguably govern your speed far more than any other part of the bike. A good set of well-mounted and pressured tubulars for example could probably make a 40 year old ‘vintage’ bike ride better than a modern stock carbon jobby with poor quality clinchers incorrectly inflated. I am sure that everyone, given the choice, would take riding faster for the same effort-and good tyre choice can do just that. Going faster isn’t just a matter of choosing tyres that roll faster for a given input (ie: have lower rolling resistance), grip also plays a crucial part. It’s no good having the best rolling tyres in the world if you have to slow down to walking pace every time the road is anything but straight. Anecdotally, when I asked an ex-pro what pressures he used in the wet for example, he said he would go as low as 75-80 PSI in the rain, as he found being able to corner as normal thanks to the increased grip the lower pressures gave, gave him more of an advantage than the increased rolling resistance took away.  That’s perhaps slightly extreme as an example; but take mountain biking-going fast off-road is as much about having tyres that grip well as anything else, so some of that principle is obviously transferable to the road. Think about the cobbled classics, tyre choice for these races is crucial, and it’s probably not exaggerating to say the wrong choices could mean the difference winning and losing (perhaps not between Cancellara winning and Contador winning admittedly). All this is all pretty logical and probably nothing new, but I personally find it helps to get my head around basic needs/demands when trying to understand things. The skill in tyre design and manufacturing is finding the right compromise between speed, grip, and durability depending upon the desired application.

Rubber compound, tread patterns and tyre construction all play their role in making a tyre what it is; and ultimately on how quickly you go, whether you stay upright in the wet, and how sore your bum is after 5 hours in the saddle.  In my next post I’ll talk a bit about what actually goes into making a tyre-which is actually a lot more interesting than you may think!

Sometimes I feel like Noah...

...when I'm sat there waiting to race and thinking 'I don't need a bike, what I could do with right now is an ark.'. Ok, it's only happened three times if I'm being honest, but it was (I thought) a nifty way of segwaying into talking about today's race, beginning with the conditions. I won't attempt to over-exaggerate said conditions to make your aware of just how tough/ard as nails/not a pansy/northern I am, I'll just say they were on the 'inclement' side of 'diabolical'. The only reason I mention these aforementioned conditions is to justify writing about today. I have seen far, far too many bloggers subjecting their readers to a punishing blow-by-gear change account of races that are, in the objective grand scheme of things, nothing important. I include myself in that sweeping statement your Honours-guilty as charged. I like writing about these things, but am well aware that if people thought 'oh no, another race report' and stopped reading then they might miss out on my witticisms and highly informative photo captions. I see it as my public duty in a way to lure my loyal (ahem) readership into my pretentiously woven web of wordsmithery through tactics, the more devious the better, such as those that have kept you reading this far without actually learning anything useful or interesting. 

So, without further adieu, here are some facts to make this seem like a proper thoughtful blog post.

Border City Wheelers Hill Climb up Hartside, Melmerby:

• One of the highest roads in the country topping out at around 1900ft.
• 4.9miles climbing approx 1300ft at an average gradient of 5.1%.
• Previous performances: 3rd last year in 18:40something VAM around 1200/1300 (google it).
• This performance: 4th in 18:26 VAM around 1300.
• Some rough number crunching suggests power of 350-370W for today, which would be a PB by a loooong way so yay for not racing with a power meter :(
• Strava (yeah 3 KOMs, no biggie. Just pointing that out. Who cares about results when you have KOMs!) I'm serious. Not really. But I do like getting KOMs. 

All in all not a bad morning's work. I was only 6s off James Dobbin, which is a pretty big deal. He's a former National Hill Climb champ and has a few course records I'd like to nab in the future (when I stop eating cake) so ignoring the fact that he probably had a bad day I'm pretty pleased! Talking of bad days, I'm lucky enough to very rarely experience them; but within the first minute today I was convinced the patron saint of Massive Peaks in Form was having a lie in. Thick, heavy, slow legs had me struggling to make much headway at all up the first third or so of the climb (an impression confirmed by comparing GPS data from last year) but luckily eased for the finale resulting in me overhauling myself (so to speak) by a decent margin by the finish.

Speaking of TT bikes, (lazy irrelevant segway) I used mine today. Last year I did it on my road bike but with an 50/82mm wheel combo and on finishing thought 'damn, should have been on the TT bike.' Today I used the TT bike with the same wheel combo and on reaching the first bend thought 'damn, should have been on the road bike.' Ho hum. Thanks to today's tailwind however (bit stronger than last year I think), once I reached the shallower gradients towards the top I was (relatively) flying along which managed to compensate for my earlier wallowings. 

An interesting example of the gamble that is equipment choice. I went slower on the steeper bits (heavier bike) but faster on the shallower bits (aero position) resulting in an overall faster time than last year. But...the question is, as all the people that beat me where on road bikes today, would I have gone significantly quicker on the steeper bits and still pretty quick towards the top and been overall quicker? 

Answers on a postcard. 

I've got to wait a year now to find out. Balls.

Have a gander at a pic or two on my Instagram if you fancy.

In the meantime, here is a picture of me getting soggy feet in another hill climb earlier this week: 

I'm not in pain, I'd just ridden through some wet cow shit on a sparkly clean bike and was rather upset. It's not rain, they're tears.

I'm a man of many talents, I hold a mean umbrella.

A strange shape loomed out of the mist making progress into the wind reminiscent of Jens when he explodes.

Rather him than me! Dad obviously thought I was going faster as I'm still out of shot. Ahem.

Extensive wind tunnel testing has shown that riding with one arm raised and one knee sticking out is, in fact, very aero.

Got a tenner for my troubles an'all! Though you'll have to trust me on that thanks to Mr.Wet Jacket ruining my presentation photo-op. Oh and the cakes were excellent.

Not that they'll read this (well, it's possible but unlikely)-but a big thanks to Border City Wheelers for organising such a good event and for timekeepers/pushers off for braving the conditions!

British National Time Trial Championships.

Five days on and I'm still unsure as to exactly how to put my experience at the National TT Champs into words. It was mega. Epic. Amazing. Daunting. Scary. Painful. Frustrating. Draining. Attempting to explain why it was all that is a little tricky; I've done National Championships before, I've done many Time Trials before, I've raced in front of crowds before, I've raced against top level athletes before, I've gone to the limit of my abilities before, I've been slightly overawed by people I've seen walking around the car park pre-race before...but never have I had everything at once. Never have I done something so important before. I've done the National Hill Climb champs twice now, but this was different-this was the British National Time Trial Championships. I wasn't just racing against flyweight specialists that only come out of the woodwork in October, I was up against Professionals, Olympians (kinda), British Cycling U23 Academy riders. This was way, way bigger than anything I'd done before. I won't bother giving you details of the race itself, just the result.

The race:

• 35.2km/21m in 51:32 at an average speed of 41kmph/25.5mph. First lap (of two) in 25:22. 
• 18th out of 22. 6:45 down on winner Sam Harrison. 1st/2nd out of the 'privateers' if you will. 

It may seem odd for me to look at my position relative to others I can establish are 'privateers', but it is important to know where I truly stand. I ride for a team, but it is a shop team supported by one man: Bill Nickson. He gives us as much help as he can getting us cheap bikes through having the Raleigh name on our kit and giving discounts on componentry etc; but he can only do so much. We don't do Premier Calendar events, we don't have a team car, we're just a bunch of mates racing. Safe to say though, that without Bill's help/guidance over the past few years I would not be writing this. Which brings me back to my point, I know what a difference a small amount of support makes so can only imagine what having the support of a fully fledged team/organisation would be like-and that has left me with two impressions:

• To *only* lose 6.75 minutes over a 45-50 minute TT to riders of the calibre of Harrison and McLay and Perrett, and to only lose 2 and a bit minutes to some other domestic professionals makes me really quite happy.
• Only losing 2 and a bit minutes to domestic full time professionals leaves me wondering just what I could have done had I had time to do as much training/had the support they have had.

It's good to have those two dominant thoughts remaining after the event as this is exactly what I need as motivation. I took on the best U23 riders in the country (ok, the best U23 riders who entered!) and I didn't come last (which was my initial fear!), I didn't get caught out on the course by anyone; I did the best ride I was capable of on the day and got a representative result. I didn't finish 10 minutes ahead of everyone else and get showered in Pro contract offers, I finished near the bottom of the results pretty much where I predicted I would. I haven't had the support the full timers have, I haven't been able to do the training they did-but I did the best I could and am content with that!

Strava file

Official result

Some pics:

Warming up and trying not to be psyched out.

Bike check/start.

Bike check/start.

Mr Porter had done his homework, had a few things to say about me!

Decent crowds at the start. Big adrenaline rush helped me over the starting 'hill'!

Sponsor spot ;)

Coming up to finish lap 1. I somehow quite like me being out of focus here. Means you can't see the dribble.

How I was able to sprint for the line I don't know. #fackered

I was in a much worse state than I look here I can assure you!