REVIEW: Dugast Rhino cross tubs

REVIEW: Dugast Rhino tubular cyclo-cross tyres, Condor Cycles, £79.99 EACH

Cotton sidewalls: crazy but lovely

I'm already two races into the Elmy Eastern Cross League, plus two crashes and a running incident that left me sprawled face first on Hackney Marsh having sprinted into a rabbit hole.
So it seems quite correct to make an early report on my current set-up, at the heart of which lies a big change from clinchers to tubs.
This big change follows five seasons of racing clinchers -Specialized Houffalize before it was discontinued, then Michelin MudPlugger 2, which is a very robust, excellent mud tyre but not the lightest.
I was talked into tubs because whereas on the road scene the advantages are quite slender, in Cross, so the theory goes, the ability to run a tub at 30 psi without getting an immediate snakebite the minute you hit a stone or ridge, is a huge advantage. This advantage gets better the muddier it gets, which is why I will have to revisit this review later in the season - the first two races have been 50 psi affairs and virtually grass crits. Very fast, very hot, and very pumped up, in all senses.
But it's not too early to say that I really love these tyres. OK, OK, so you can see my whole rig here: this is the culmination of a terrible ownership experience of a succession of not-quite-right cross bikes, where fork judder was always terrible, the braking sub-standard and so on and so on. I went from an adapted Dawes Audax bike to a Condor with terrible brake judder; to an Alan that was stolen; to a Focus Mares that served also as a commuter; and finally to what you see here, a top-of-the-tree Ridley X-Night. Even this has not been trouble free. There are several hex-key bolts that hold the derailleur hanger in place. Beautiful little things, but they wear lose at the first sight of a rough track. This caused funny creaks and ticks in the frame that nobody could locate or understand. Finally, I spent £300 changing the entire chainset and BB to a dedicated BB30 set-up, SRAM Force. The noises continued unabated and only then did the bike shop locate the noise to the hex-key bolts.

This all goes to show that like cars, the tricky problems can be really horribly tricky. And expensive.

So was it crazy to add another whole layer of experiment, ripping my time trialling Ultremos off the Zipps and re-purposing these carbon wheels to the derby demolition scene called 'Cross?

And was it not even crazier to mount tyres with cotton sidewalls so delicate you have to waterproof them yourself with Aqua Seal to stop them rotting in the rain? This, for the single discipline in cycling where you are guaranteed to get wet and muddy?

And they're £80 a pop, which until oil went up, was more than most people paid for car tyres.

And, because I have V-Brakes, I had to buy Swiss Stop yellow pads for V-Brakes, which are quite unusual, had to be special ordered, and cost £39.99 - for four pads no shoes. That's a lot of money.

But the first results are worth it all - so far. They're incredible lithe and light and feelsome, and mounted on Zipp 303s, the front one being the Cross specific build that Zipp did, with 24 spokes instead of 20 (adds almost nothing in weight but some in stiffness and strength), the whole bike is transformed.

I'll add to this blog as the mud rises and the tyre pressures fall.

All sorted: Ridley X-Night 2012 model, with Zipp 303 Cross wheels and Dugast Rhino tubs

REVIEW: Pearson fixie: A fine addition to your urban armoury

Salmon guards go 'clonk' on big holes

REVIEW: Pearson Touche (AKA: Once More Unto The Breach)

Guy and Will Pearson preside over the oldest continuously open, family-owned bike shop in the UK, and have recently opened a smashing new road shop on the northern edge of Richmond Park.
When I took my 'Cross bike down for a service, they kindly lent me one of their fixies. Not being able to part company with their main, current model demo bike, Guy kindly gave me his very own - older and a tad dustier, but the same frame as the 2012-13 model. In keeping with the rest of the range the current model has a quirky, English name drawing a curious parallel between the battleground and London traffic - quite apt when you think about it, especially in Richmond where despite millions of cyclists, the provision of bike lanes is way behind other boroughs, and certain magazine editors think cyclists are best off dead.

(** Richard Nye, The Richmond Magazine, Sept. 2012) see:
http://www.freespeed.co.uk/2012/09/the-only-good-cyclist-is-a-dead-one/)

My immediate impression was that this is racier than your average commuter. It was a lovely fit for me, with a nice, stretched-out position, but it was much closer to my road set up than my daily donkey. Accordingly, it felt really fast, straightaway. Admittedly, I'd just ridden right across London 24kms from N16, against the prevailing SW breeze, so with the wind at my back I was right on top of the gear. I whizzed along the horrible Upper Richmond Road, where cyclists are pinned like flies against the edge of the highway by huge SUVs being driven by crazy public school types. The other immediate impression was how lovely and tight and stiff the alloy frame felt. It might not have pencil thin stays and all the other aesthetic accountrements of high end carbon, but then no street machine should be trying to do that. It's strong, it's lean enough, and it goes better than well.

I enjoyed every minute on the Touche, and I particularly liked the special mudguard eyelets, but have reservations about the alloy guards fitted, so-called salmon guards. At first glance they are very rigid, durable, well fitted and kinda cool. Yes, they are all those things. But they go clonk on big holes, and to prove the point I rode the bike as fast as I could up a cobbled mews I've discovered in N3. Clonkety clonk. Initially this was actually just the front top guard kissing the Conti Gatorskin tyre, but having adjusted it, I think the noise was from the actual mudguard fittings. This is a small detail and it might have been fixable - these things usually are. As for tyre choice, Gatorskins are well known to me. They have a limp, feelsome quality which is great but not the greatest. In my view they fall between race tyres and real commuter tyres. They're not good enough to withstand London glass, especially in the wet. I'd instead fit Schwalbe Duranos, or maybe a combo of Durano front, and Durano Plus at the back.

Summary thoughts: there is nothing to compare with the thrum of the tightened chain on a fixie sounding through the frame, with none of the drivetrain noises from a derailleur and a chain that can hit the chainstay on bit potholes. It's a magical way of riding the town and the Pearson is among the best I've ridden.

April 1, 2012: Matt Richardson as Roger de Vlaeminck

Paris-Roubaix Challenge, April 1, 2012

Now that Tom Boonen has ridden away to a historic 4th victory, which puts him on the level with Vlaeminck (recreated by my new cycling acquaintance Matt Richardson, pictured left, following his own conquest of the cobbles last Sunday), I feel (almost) ready to put Paris-Roubaix away again for another year and cast my sights forward to other rides and races.

But what a passionate, emotional event this is, and how it seemed to get to us all this year, the first year that organisers ASO got the formula right and allowed the 1300 or so riders to turn right into the Roubaix Velodrome - perhaps the most famous right turn in cycling. Granted, we did not ride the full course from just outside Paris. It was 148 kms from St Quentin, beginning at 7.30am. This is different from getting on the 5am bus up to Bruges and completing the 255kms Flanders - and different from the June event when you can ride the full Paris-Roubaix (although being in June, it can't possibly be Paris-Roubaix can it?). But for these failings, the ASO Challenge includes all nineteen pave sections and immaculately marshalled road closures involving hundreds of gendarmes. It was an unbelievable effort for the comparatively small field of 1300 riders, and one wonders whether ASO have the vision and pockets to keep it up for the next few years. Are there enough people who want to ride dastardly cobbles in dastardly weather?

Like last year, the conditions were hardly atrocious. Instead of rain and filth, we had cold, dry and ultimately sunny conditions. But there was a stiff northerly breeze sweeping a course that tracks due north, and on the start line it was hovering just off zero, which made it difficult to know how to dress. It was certainly no relation to the mini-heat wave of the week before. It was a case of full winter kit and over shoes, and until the blood was truly pulsing I had completely numb hands despite three pairs of gloves.

There's no point rehearsing this event bit by bit. It follows a well-rehearsed formula. You hammer the initial 38kms in a peleton; then you hit the first of 19 sections of pave and the whole thing splinters to pieces. You try and stay in groups and you decide how to ride each cobbled section, sticking to the puncture-ridden gutters or slogging it out down the crown. Most people do not suffer massive, ride-ending mechanicals and even the lightest carbon fibre bikes seem to be strong beyond belief when you consider the terrain. Someone reportedly hung up a Di2 rear mech. I saw a saddle, seatpost and seatback bag all connected, lying in the road, which was a bit stunning. The rider continued without them, though for how long I don't know. As usual, the first section of pave was bountiful for spectators, since anything remotely loose flies off and is ripe for taking. Minipumps, sunglasses, spare tubular tyres incorrectly attached with toe-clip straps; lots of water bottles and some articles of clothing. Cross racers have an advantage in the handling department. Some of the elite riders were on cross bikes, which led them to wear camelbaks for water (since top cross bikes typically lack any bottle bosses -). I followed this formula and even if I had not taken my Ridley X-Night, I would recommend a Camelbak. I took 1.5 litres in a 2 litre Camelbak, and it meant that I could avoid all the feed stations.

The biggest debate is around tyres, tyre pressures and punctures. Roughly 50% of riders puncture whether from pinch flats or from sharp stuff in the gutters. Nice to see yesterday that the Pros aren't much different. There's a lottery element to Paris-Roubaix. I punctured 25kms from the end, despite a brand new set of Vittoria Open Pave 700x24c tyres (clinchers - there is also a tubular version of the same tyre). In terms of pressure, there is a trade-off between comfort and handling, and resistance to pinch flats. Too hard, and you bounce so much that the bike is uncontrollable. I nearly lost it once from uncontrollable bouncing, and my tyres were at just over 80 psi. This, I came to realise later, is too low and partly reflected reliance on a hand pump, having forgotten to bring a track pump. An unforced error. 100 psi is probably about right, but I'd opt for 90 psi if wet. Tubulars are the choice of the pros but you'd better carry some cans of Pitstop and a fully stretched spare, and be able to de-mount and re-mount a tub in the field. Quite alot of riders, mostly French given the club strips I saw, rode with tubs. It's the higher religion and something I'd love to try next year.

If anyone else has views on this subject of tyre choice and pressure, I'd like to hear. It might be a good idea to get larger volume 700x25, x28 or even x32 tyres, although there's a point at which weight and rolling resistance weigh on your overall time. The folding Continental Grand Prix 4 Seasons comes as a 700x28, and is one contender, but the Vittoria Open Paves have a 320tpi carcass and a supple but solid thunky feeling when you hit the rough stuff. The Four Seasons are a bit tinny in comparison, despite no real weight difference. In my case, without a CO2 canister (poor experiences in the past have put me off, like blowing the valve nipple off) I lost seven or eight minutes and in particular lost the group I was in. So it was a lonely ride into the headwind for the last 20kms and it robbed me of a sub-five hour time - I finished in 5 hours 13minutes, which ranked 211th overall and 88th in my age group.

What's the point and what's the magic? The local paper asked the same, very philosophically and French-like. The journalist ended by saying: "Dimanche prochain, quand led pros s'elanceront sur le parcours qu'ils ont emprunte, ils pourront dire: 'J'y etais.'" We do it to say 'I was there'. Maybe. For me, this race dating back to 1896 is steeped in so much history that it is one ride that you have to tick off the list, and a way of touching the hem of the greats. If you ever thought pro-cycling was easy, then try this. It is hardcore. But with ASO at the helm, the Challenge has real panache. You don't just finish in the Velodrome: you get a superbly healthy meal afterwards, even with fresh beetroots (!); the chance to sluice a Jupiler beer; the chance to shower in the fabled Roubaix shower block and even a free-to-use Karcher pressure wash for the bike. All these elements overcame the logistics of having to get across the English Channel to the start, and then from Roubaix back to St Quentin to retrieve the car, only to retrace steps again to Roubaix. Yes, an effort, but one I'd make again for a ride I'll never forget. 

UK Handmade Bicycle Show, 2012

People queuing at 9.25am this morning - a stunning spring day

Bespoked Bristol 2012 - The UK Handmade Bicycle Show (24 March 2012)

One of the vendors had a T-Shirt. It said: "There's more to life than bicycles, you know? (but not much)." A nice, inadvertently accurate take on this show, now in it's second year and twice as large. I was almost transcendental happy, especially after one of Look Mum No Hands' flat-whites. Lovely atmosphere, lovely people and intelligently organised so that for the modest £7.50 entrance fee, you walked away with a programme booklet that included a write-up on all exhibitors but also a directory that was wider than the show, thus throwing a loop around a nascent cottage industry in the UK. Superb. It was an immersive, bike-fest like no other, with a grass-roots texture - maniacal obsessives trying to do something truly original in the field of bike tech or design, whether retro or space age. This much colour is not easily found at the massive Eurobike held in Germany each summer.

Chris Sleath of Dynamo Works, Edinburgh, is reviving the non-digital art of hand printing with wooden blocks. I subsequently bought the print shown here - it summarises my philosophy entirely...

Quoc Pham - yes that's the name of the London-based, London-raised Vietnamese founder of this superb fledgling brand of very functional yet stunningly beautiful cycling shoes. Someone had to do it; Quoc Pham is surely succeeding by not exceeding it's brief. As Quoc said to me: "It's simple: shoes are my love." Great to see a city shoe with a completely recessed SPD cleat cutaway, so you can still walk on it all day in an office without causing clickety clacks; but I love all of 'em.

The Brooks Criterium Jacket

This coat caught my eye. It's a Timothy Everest-designed, Brooks branded, Foxes (of London) produced mega-garment costing £850 a pop. In retrospect, I didn't like the belt and the too-pocketed front, which apes Orvis and the 'Zambesi twill' approach to African safari. Where's the pith helmet Jeeves?
But I am told that within a month there will be an even lighter, summer version costing less. It will be called The Blackwell. The price-thing is not trivial when you consider the sorts of wheelsets you can get for £850. (NB - the chest straps shown here are from a bag, they're not part of the jacket)

www.atomic22.com (infiniti 3D security)

Possibly the most important exhibitor of the whole show, infiniti3D security is headed by Patrick Wells and Ayantika Mitre. They've done what the boys at Royce engineering said wasn't possible: design a 3-D key for a 3-D security bolt. More than that, they've thought through the whole geography of the bike so that every significant part from saddle to skewers has been secured. So they are evolving a three-key, three size solution to cover a whole bike. In theory, you'll only need one small D-Lock. The hardest thing will be to get manufacturers to fit from scratch, but it has to be the way ahead.

Cherubim Piuma frameset with steel fork

Highly desirable

London, Soho-based Tokyo Fixed gear founder Max Lewis told me that the fixed-gear market has sagged in the face of mass, cheap imports from China. Grant Young of Condor said the same. What was special and counter-cultural became mainstream and then tacky, just like snapping a finger. However, the 'boom' will, I predict, have long legs because riding fixed is so pure. It's an authentic, magical way to ride a bike so everyone should have a fixie in their armoury. I don't mind if it stops being a 'boom'.
The other consequence is a raft of new and wonderful discoveries, mostly with a roadie emphasis - such as Cherubim of Japan, which produces less than 100 frames a year and every one bespoke. Tokyo Fixed are importing them to the UK, and the Piuma got a rave review in Cycling Plus magazine. I subsequently rode the same bike and can vouch for that - it achieves an extraordinary degree of the impossible qualities of being very stiff and very compliant. This would be an amazing winter/cobbles bike. The Uli is even better, and with a carbon fork starts to look competitive for racing. Yes, the steel concedes a bit to carbon fibre on the weight front (1.3kgs for the frame set, ex-fork), but Max told me that customers have so far been completely wowed by the bike, making it their #1 ride including racing.....

Enigma Etape in white - yes, you can paint titanium

Dario Pegoretti's stand was the most avant-garde

Il Soigneur: the coffee thing just keeps coming up

Enigma of Sussex, southern England, had a superb stand and have now evolved alot of models to the point where you can have practically anything you like. For instance, the ever-green Etape (shown) can be painted, if you are weary of bare ti grey. Would they make the Rohloff-hub bike they've just evolved in a titanium frame? Yes - but it would be a custom build and take a few weeks. These guys are real engineers and theior prices remain real world, the Etape frameset weighing in at £1,300.

Original take on Roy Liechtenstein print made me laugh

Lovely venue, but will it be too small for next year?

Tom Donhue

Donhue Road Bike

Tom Donhue won best exhibitor last year and is already building frames for Rapha, with a six-month waiting list out of his Norwich base. His stand was so richly immaculate and original that you immediately wanted to stop and examine - bespoke shifters here, stunning paint jobs there, and several completely different kinds of bike to show that almost anything you dream up is possible. Above all he has revived the art of bi-lam, or bi-laminating, where you braze in a secondary tube and then cut it away, a sort of in-situ alternative to a hand-cut lug. The swallow logo is based on the symbolism of coming home after a long flight - and a typeface remembered from the Hino trucks Tom saw when cycling across Mongolia on a massive biking odyssey he took three years ago.

REVIEW: Garmin Edge 500

REVIEW: Garmin Edge 500 Blue, with HR and Cadence sensors, Wiggle £219.99
This all started with me being unable to get speed and heart rate data from the back wheel of my bike to my Polar CS 200 - and because I'd just hired Tom Newman, my coach. It was important that (a) I acquire the right data when training on my turbo (when the front wheel doesn't turn), and (b) that he could easily look at it by using my log-in to Garmin Connect (what better way for a coach to keep an eye on his charge, without it being obtrusive?). So out came the Visa card. As one club mate blogged: "It's just money isn't it?"
I take it as an interesting point of departure that Tom told me all his friends use Garmin, whether this model or the longer established Edge 800 with full sat nav capacity. Does this mean Polar is losing? Certainly their GPS devices are horribly clunky the last time I looked, and their software less intuitive. The social networking/sharing rides/beating virtual rival aspect has suddenly erupted to the point when its as much a consideration as the actual hardware.
I was attracted to the Edge 500 Blue because my team kit is blue (!); and because it's 56grams instead of the 100g+ Edge 800, and because I don't typically envisage that many situations where I would really use the mapping/sat nav. It's also half the price of the Edge 800 but still alot of money, the cited price here including a discount from Wiggle. Finally, it has a lithium-ion battery, mains re-chargeable, with a claimed life of 18 hours. This is very attractive unless you do multi-day events such as 24 hour TTs or Paris-Brest-Paris. My old Polar burned through the coin batteries fairly quickly, and they cost money.
Please take note, if you buy the Edge 800, it's even more eye-wateringly expensive than it appears, because you have to get the right mapping bundle otherwise you might have well have not bothered. The 'universal embedded mapping' that comes with it is totally, utterly useless for riding purposes. I know because I had a loan unit from Garmin for a magazine review and it was hopeless. Why the Garmin press folks didn't load up some great maps is one of the mysteries I never solved. The Edge 800 package with maps is going to tip the scales at £400, which is far too much in my book.
But for the purposes of this review I wasn't totally thrilled at every detail of the Edge 500. The Garmin HR strap is heavier and clunkier than the thinner, more-fabric-and-less-plastic Polar one. Then, to my dismay, I found that the cadence sensor was too thick to pass the swirly stays on my Ridley X-Night. OK, it's a cross bike. But it doubles as a winter trainer and I do want the cadence function. There is no need for the pedal sensor to be this thick.

The same applies to the spoke magnet/speed censor. It does work over a flat aero spoke, but less from design than good luck, amazing given the racy credentials Garmin claim. In the 'Quick Start' hand book, the picture shows said magnet clamped to a traditional, round profile spoke. What decade is Garmin living in with respect to this? Maybe the 1980s. How about providing more than one magnet to suit customers who have spent this sort of money? The magnet provided is functional, but it doesn't grab your heart or your eye.
My final gripe concerns the initial set-up of the software. A DVD comes with the unit, but your best bet is opening Garmin Connect (a web site) and then hitting 'upload' while the computer is connected by the USB cable provided. None of this is adequately explained, and I was led off on a wild goose chase with Windows saying it couldn't read a FIT file, and then a third party vendor trying to get me to download their solution for this unwanted problem. And etc. I went onto a forum and the first remark I read was: "I don't know why it's doing X; is it really meant to be this complicated?" My sentiments exactly, although now I have downloaded a few files I am impressed by the software itself.
Other than these gripes, the actual unit seems to have performed flawlessly so far, and unlike the Polar it is not (so far) prone to any false readings or hiccups out in the field. The Polar's biggest weakness was defaulting to a HR Max reading of 220 at the first sign of speed work and intervals, when the pulse was changing rapidly. The Garmin does not do this. My wife Stephanie has the wrist-mounted Polar FT80, one of Polar's top models, and despite a recent £30 repair and a new HR strap, it is still prone to these fake readings, a shocking state of affairs for such an expensive item.
A final comparison comment: the Polar over reads calorie burn by a whole 30-40% compared to the Garmin. They can't both be right and that's a huge discrepancy. Garmin claim to have done sophisticated modelling of calorie burn taking into account the other relevant data, weight/height/gender/age, which might be true. Polar might instead have wanted us to feel great about ourselves and our exercise, and taken the generous route from a one-size fits all universal calculation linked to heart rate. But I honestly don't know.
My initial, overall feeling is that I've made a good choice, indeed an excellent choice, but I will only know for sure over a much longer period of training and racing, so the plan is to use it hard for a year and report back once it's had some knocks and scratches.