The glimmer of success

A hill climb podium position and the power of small victories. It’s all relative, right?

The commute

Beauty can lie within the ordinary. The humdrum. The good old commute.

First ride: Clip-on aero bars on a road bike

A story more interesting than the subject. Clip on aero bars? Yawn. And yet my first ride took me by surprise. It was thrilling! My new found speed was electric, amplified by my new position closer to the ground. How quick?

A week in the life of a cyclist

A peek into the madness that is the amateur cyclist’s daily life. So Pro…

Being dropped

It will never happen to me. Yet it did. Humiliation, defeat, weakness. It wasn’t even a quick ride. Bump, gone, just like that. Dropped.

National Hill Climb Championship

A ride five years in the making and all over in 3 minutes and 12 seconds.

Are you mental? Riding off-road on a road bike

Off the map. The tarmac ends just like that. No warning. Mud, gravel and rocks ahead. Behind the ignominy of retreat, of surrender. Time to hit the mud.

Back to the hills

Back among the stick insects. Hill climb racing. Competitors so thin they almost disappear when viewed in profile. Sleek and minimal, it’s hard to believe a human is crammed inside. Widths and waists measured in millimetres in the pursuit of milliseconds.

Heat

Sun high. Hot. Not a cloud. The mercury rises and rises, heatwave headline writers twitch. A month earlier snow. Three changes of gloves in three days, goodbye heavy oven gloves, hello flimsy finger-less mitts.