Paris-Roubaix prep started this week

The next running of this bi-annual sportive monument is on Sunday June 6^th.

Ideally I’d like to ride the full 260 km (160 miles) so I’ve arranged for accommodation near the start in Compiegne and also near the finish in Roubaix. Transport should be fairly straightforward thanks to the Eurostar plus I understand there’s a shuttle service to get your bags from the start to the finish. If not, I’ll extend my booking in Roubaix back a night and get one of the early morning buses to the start.

Registration info is due early November on the Velo Club of Roubaix’s site but no details posted yet.

Before Paris-Roubaix, there is of course the not insignificant Tour of Flanders in April. I’m also planning to ride the full distance there. To help prepare for these I’m treating myself to a week in the Sierra Nevada mountains, southern Spain in late February. In theory, the training week together with a winter indoor trainer program and regular weekend club rides should be perfectly adequate prep. Let’s see…

Asda’s £70 bike

Asda has started selling what must be the UK’s cheapest adult bike at £70 and I’m amused that its press release says it “could save you literally thousands of pounds” by comparing it to the cost of a six-zone annual travel card (£1,904). I’d love to see someone commute all year into the West End from somewhere like Epsom, Uxbridge or Epping on this 18 kg (40 lbs) bike. In fact, that sort of daily commute on any bike would be a challenge. On this bike, with its budget components, I’d be surprised if it lasted a year doing that sort of mileage.

Fleche Wallonne Femme

Highlights from April’s Fleche Wallonne Femme are now available at Cycling TV (subscription required). This is the first non-Olympic or World Championship women’s road race I’ve seen other than this short glimpse on the Muur when I was at the Tour of Flanders.

There’s no commentary in Cycling TV’s highlights but the camera work is excellent. It is easy to follow the action and watch how the race unfolded. Emma Johannsen retained her World Cup series lead coming in second to Marianne Vos. Nicole Cooke finished sixth.

Keep up to date with women’s cycling news here.

Cycling on ITV

RoadCyclingUK carried an announcement in mid-April that ITV will show highlights of a new Tour Series taking placing between 21 May and 25 June. Great news. I’d love to watch pro level domestic cycling on TV. Off I went to the ITV website to get more details. Wouldn’t you? After all, it has an entire section devoted to cycling. What I found there surprised me.

It has been difficult to not feel like you’re living in Lance Armstrong’s pocket lately if you follow his Twitter feed and read the cycling press. Every aspect of his comeback is being shared and we all know that if he crashes with that metal plate still screwed into his collar bone then he risks doing more damage and certainly writing off his chances of riding either the Giro or the Tour. The banner story on the ITV Cycling section is “Lance escapes injury in Leipheimer stage crash”. Not again. Didn’t that also happen during the Tour of California in February? Turns out it did. ITV’s cycling section has not been updated in months. Oops. I can see why the RoadCyclingUK piece included a link to the Tour of Britain site and not ITV.

Spring cycling

This time of year is when cycling is at its most fun in South East England. The countryside is rich with colour as the plants unclench from winter. Longer weekend rides become far more enjoyable, especially if you live in a city. Weekday urban riding can hardly be described as either relaxing or inspiring so weekend rides need to be fun. Fortunately, in my part of London, I can be out of the city and drifting past bluebells, not bus shelters, in under half an hour.

Cyclists who don’t wear helmets can be guilty of contributory negligence

From BikeRadar:

A new High Court judgment means cyclists who don’t wear helmets can be guilty of contributory negligence if they are injured in a road accident in the UK.

Considering a case where a cyclist and motorcyclist collided (Smith v Finch 2009), Mr Justice Griffith Williams ruled that the cyclist could have been found partly liable if wearing a helmet would have prevented or reduced his or her injuries.

In this particular case, it was accepted that a helmet would not have protected the cyclist, Robert Smith, because of the speed at which he hit the ground.

But Richard Brooks from law firm Withy King told BikeRadar that this ruling means that if you are injured and a cycle helmet could have reduced your injuries, you may not be able to recover full compensation.

Cyclists who “expose themselves to a greater degree of injury” by not wearing a helmet can now be found to be negligent, even though it is not a legal requirement in the UK to wear head protection when cycling. However, for this to happen it would have to be proved – using medical and other evidence – that a helmet would have prevented all of their injuries or made them a good deal less severe.

[Update 7 Feb]

The CTC is taking legal advice on challenging a court ruling which could leave cyclists liable to contributory negligence if not wearing a helmet when injured.

Roger Geffen, campaigns and policy manager for the CTC, called the High Court judgement in the case of Smith v Finch, “concerning,” and said the national cyclists’ association would be consulting its lawyers to prevent cyclists potentially losing out on compensation in the future.

Are cyclists a bigger threat to pedestrians than motor vehicles?

We routinely hear how dangerous cyclists are to pedestrians. We’re constantly cycling recklessly along pavements, through parks and running red lights. Last week the government published figures showing that as a pedestrian you are 263 times more likely to be killed by a motor vehicle than by a bicycle.

In the last ten years, just over 7,600 pedestrian were killed by motor vehicles while 29 were killed by cyclists. Over the same period, 364,000 pedestrians were injured by motor vehicles, almost 76,000 (or 21%) of them seriously while cyclists injured just over 2,600 with roughly the same proportion (22%) being considered serious.

The big difference of course is that motor vehicles tend to be a little bigger and travelling a little faster than the average cyclist. When you look at the relationship between deaths and serious injuries you see that for every ten serious injures caused by motor vehicles there is one death whereas for every 19 serious injuries caused by cyclists there is one death.

So, unless you’ve still got your training wheels on, get off the pavement, obey the traffic laws and stop giving the public another (wrong) reason to hate us.

Tweed Run: Winter Dress Club Run

The London Fixed-Gear & Single-Speed forum is holding the first Tweed Run this Saturday, January 24th, describing it as a social ride with a bit of style.

Riders will be gathering for 2pm in Hanover Square and heading down to H Huntsman & Sons on Saville Row to begin the ride. The route will be a fairly leisurely ride through London. No need to pack Kendal Mint Cakes, the ride will include a stop at a tea shop at Tour de Ville for mid-ride fortitude, and will finish at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club for refreshments and cheer.

Proper attire will of course be expected, so dapper gents and elegant ladies, polish off your lugged steel beasts and prepare your best outfits. Suggested attire: woolen plus fours, harris tweed jackets, flat caps, fair isle jumpers, alpaca coats, merino wool team jerseys, cycling skirts and perhaps a jaunty cape for the ladies, cravats or ties for gentlemen, and of course a hip flask of brandy.

Be sure to dress with a bit of panache, there will be prizes awarded for:

Most dapper chap
Most dashing dame
Best moustache (open to both men and women, of course)
Most enviable period bicycle
The Doff of The Cap award for most civilised behaviour on the day

There will also be a spiffing tombola draw for some lovely prizes benefiting bikes4africa, an organisation that refurbishes bicycles and gives them to rural African schools so that students who live far away can get to school.

A big doff of the cap to those who have donated the marvelous prizes: Hudson’s Hats (The Bonk), What Goes Around Comes Around (JD), Ved, The Chap Magazine, Brooks Saddles, Hendrick’s Gin, Geo F. Trumper, David Saxby’s, Dashing Tweeds and Rapha.

Tally ho!

There’s probably no god

The UK’s first ever atheist advertising campaign launches this week, with 800 buses featuring the slogan “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” running in cities across England, Scotland and Wales, along with 1000 adverts on the London underground and two large LCD screens on Oxford Street.

The campaign, which is supported by the British Humanist Association and BHA Vice President Richard Dawkins, and in Scotland by the Humanist Society of Scotland, is a response to a series of evangelical Christian adverts running on buses in June 2008, which featured the URL of a website saying all non-Christians were going to hell. Comedy writer Ariane Sherine suggested the rational, positive slogan to reassure people who may have been scared by the evangelical adverts.

The Atheist Bus Campaign’s donation phase launched in October, aiming to raise just £5,500. However, within four days it had raised £100,000 from individual donations from the general public. It has now raised over £135,000, smashing its original target by 2400%.

There will be four new adverts running on London’s tube network from Monday January 12, featuring quotations from famous atheists and humanists:

“I’m an atheist, and that’s it. I believe that there’s nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people” — Katharine Hepburn

“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?” — Douglas Adams

“I do not believe in a personal God and have never denied this but have expressed it clearly” — Albert Einstein

“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet” — Emily Dickinson

From British Humanist Association.

Motorbikes in bus lanes

Motorbikes can now legally do something that most have been doing regardless. For the next 18 months motorcycles can use London’s red route bus lanes despite more than 4,000 London Cycling Campaign members signing a petition asking the mayor to reconsider the measure.

The mayor says extension of the trial will depend on “motorcyclists using this privilege sensibly and [on the fact that motorcyclists] do not do anything that undermines the confidence or compromise the rights of cyclists”.

Let’s see if the trial does in fact improve safety and reduce congestion.

LCC chief executive Koy Thomson said: “Putting motorbikes in bus lanes will not reduce motor traffic and will likely undermine the Mayor’s targets for growth in cycling. The Mayor has set this up as a trial and it is vital that it is properly monitored and evaluated.”

LCC has set up a page where you can submit comments and report any incidents. There’s also a link to the TfL site to report comments there too.