We’ve a summer bike sale for 2 weeks up to Saturday the 30th June. There is a 10% offer on all Lapierre and Kinesis 2012 bikes in stock and to pre order. There is also 10% off accessories bought at the same time as the bike. (Fitting charges apply) We offer free lifetime servicing with every bike sold. There is a further deal of 15% off all clothing at the same time as purchasing the bike. Please note prices on our website are for the full RRP.
Great piece by Nigel of http://bikingbrits.blogspot.co.uk/ about making cycling more pleasant in the UK
“” sadly I don’t detect any suppressed majority yearning to get onto their bikes!”
Probably that’s because you’re not looking.
Plenty of evidence out there to suggest that most of us don’t actually like driving much and would welcome the opportunity to use our cars less frequently.
Lynn Sloman’s research suggests that 30% of us don’t have access to a car; 50% of car users don’t like driving. Sustrans research suggests that 70% of us won’t cycle on the roads in their current format because it is perceived as too dangerous.
Lynn Sloman’s research again: The 40:40:20 rule: 40% of current car trips could easily be done by other means right now, without any change to infrastructure or public transport; another 40% of car trips could be done by other means after infrastructure changes, leaving 20% of car trips that cannot be done by other means.
No one’s suggesting we all give up our cars completely; simply not a practical proposition – I’ve no plans to abandon mine – but the concept of the car as the default mode for all trips needs to be challenged, and frequently.
Call it “ideology” if you must. Some of us call it common sense. The “ideology” of striving to make your city more car friendly is probably not the best idea, especially when that city’s street layout evolved long before motor transport. “Quart” and “pint pot” spring to mind. The lessons of the 20th Century need to be learned and taken to heart. Building for car traffic has only ever resulted in more car traffic, resulting in more building to “relieve” the congestion. A vicious circle we really need to break out of. The answers are out there and have been successfully implemented on mainland Europe a generation ago. Time we caught up.”
Neither of us have ever done a cycle race so having done quite a bit of cycling over the last few years we thought we’d enter the Bath Cycle Races. The trouble is there’s ‘cycling’ and then there’s ‘cycle racing’ don’t ever confuse the two we learned the hard way! Still its better to have tried and failed than to have never given it a go!
The results of our feeble attempt were Becci in last place 1 lap down total time 24.09 with a best lap time of 2.33, and I was 3rd from bottom 1 lap down total time 33.46 with the best lap in 2.18. The only consolation is that there is a long ladder to potentially climb and we can try to better our own times, it must be harder to be the leader or somewhere near the top.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wav3ydave/
We both were both pretty happy with the sharp corners and the effort needed to get the speed up out of the second corner, but we both felt the hill was the real difficulty. No easy answers, just try a bit harder on the hill I guess. We didn’t exactly do any interval training either so we don’t have the speed in our legs I guess. Riding long sportives doesn’t prepare you for the races, pretty obvious!
We’re going to enter the last 2 races provided the spaces on the line are available (should be no problem for the women’s race as there are so few women racing). I enjoyed making myself feel sick, cramped stomach, hacking cough and dead legs the following day. Becci didn’t succumb to any similar aches and pains, just felt a bit tired right after the race – and got frozen cold at the end despite nabbing my extra layers!
See you at the races! (Every Wednesday evening in May in Victoria Park, Bath)
April has come to a soggy end and so has our joint effort (with Becci) to ride 1000 miles in April! We only managed to ride 470 miles in the 2 weeks up to the 15th April, when we seemed to be on track. We then went for a short 4 day family break to Disney in Paris and got back feeling that we could do it! Unfortunately each planned evening after work ride was halted by thunderous downpours or too much extra work – people getting bikes fixed or serviced whilst the weather drove them indoors!
We debated the reasons for doing the challenge a number of times, it was a personal challenge to see if we could push ourselves physically (and mentally sometimes!). It was also supposed to be an enjoyable experience, which pushed us to get out more into the great outdoors. We had some great rides, up and down steep twisty lanes, (the Tour of Britain route which we descended into Wells on was a highlight) past trees showering us with spring blossom, the welcome relief of cake and coffee stops and riding in the cheery company of club mates spurred us on. We also completed the Bath100 on the 1st April to kick off the challenge, and it was a great motivator to be part of something big and to meet a wider more varied range of riders than we ever normally would. So all in all we were enjoying it, even the night rides weren’t too bad, in fact they were pretty enjoyable with the roads being so quiet. We even found some new routes which the challenge pushed us to seek out as it got a bit boring riding the same loop over and over again. Our legs hurt a lot but we just pushed on and that didn’t really stop us, we felt ourselves getting stronger and riding longer distances with less effort. We even rode in the rain on at least 3 of our long rides, and that seemed to not dampen our spirits at all.
The lessons we’ve learnt from this are varied, it can be mentally gruelling to set yourself a target to get to, thinking about it can be just as tiring as riding it. Setting off in the rain is so demotivating, rain halfway through a ride is ok. Work got in the way, but that work is needed to enable us to ride so work came first. And it’s demanding to fit a challenge like this around full time 6 days a week work. Maybe we’ll try it again when we can take time off to just ride, but its not something to be undertaken lightly.
We are helping 2 University of Bath students with a ride they are doing for the charity ‘Habitat for Humanity‘, read on for more on their challenge and the helping hand we are giving their charity cause. They’d also appreciate sponsorship so please do give if this charity does it for you, it did for us which is why we are helping out!
About Us
We are Tom Laight and Tim Traynar, engineering students at the University of Bath, and both long-term bicycle fanatics. In 2011, we decided to start planning a grueling cycling trip from John O’Groats to Land’s End, both as a personal challenge and as a fundraising event for Habitat for Humanity.
The Challenge
The journey from John O’Groats in the Scottish Highlands to Land’s End at the tip of Cornwall is famous for being the nearly 1000-mile trip which runs the entire length of Great Britain. In June 2012, we plan to spend two weeks cycling from one end of our island to the other in order to raise money for Habitat for Humanity. We’ve both loved riding bikes for as long as we can remember and so, even though our normal preference is for the muddier side of cycling, we felt that riding from John O’Groats to Land’s End would be a great challenge to pit ourselves against. Being able to use this as an opportunity to raise money for a very worthwhile charity really is the icing on the cake.
The Charity
Habitat for Humanity is a worldwide charity that champions the rights of every human being to have clean water, education, healthcare and above all, a decent place to live. But more than this, they take real action to work with local communities all over the world to help build long-term solution to housing problems. Since being founded in 1976, Habitat for Humanity has helped over 2.5 million people to renovate, repair or build more than 500,000 homes across the globe.
Green Park Bike Station
Tom Jenkins, owner of Green Park Bike Station in Bath, has been a great help in preparation for this challenge. We have received help in many forms, including Tom’s professional expertise along with supply of important equipment such as Blackburn seatpost-mounted luggage racks, Elite water bottles and Lezyne bottle cages, Elite chamois cream and a spare Michelin tyre, just in case! The Bike Station has also kindly offered a complimentary bike service to make sure our machines are in top condition before we set off.
Have a look at our blog (address below) for forthcoming mini-reviews of the products from the Bike Station and links to our Just Giving page, where you can sponsor us.
Blog: [email protected]
Just Giving: www.justgiving.com/tomntimcycling
Becci and myself are attempting to ride 1000 miles this April. Its been quite a challenge, I haven’t given too much thought to the way we’ve tackled it so far, so here goes. Endurance rider Rob Lee sparked off the idea of the 1000 miles in April challenge, we liked the sound of it so casually signed up on the forum he set up – the easy bit! Then we started thinking about it and doing calculations, how far we’d need to ride each day, what would happen to our daily target if we did a few ‘big’ rides. There seemed so many variables, including a pre planned 4 day holiday halfway through the month where no riding will be possible, that I kind of shrugged off trying to plan any attempts to commit to anything!
We did kick off the challenge in a good way by completing the Bath100. Having done it we thought that doing some longer rides would be the best way to get to the target. It made sense as we have a few days off thanks to the bank holiday where we could make a big dent into the miles. The best bit is that it means less epic rides are needed after work, which helps.
We are now nearing the middle of the month and our ‘enforced’ holiday, the realisation dawns that we should be nearing the 500 mile mark. We’re at 334 so that leaves 166 to do in the next 3 days – which is going to be very tricky as we’ve got to balance work with the challenge of high mileage riding.
Overall the challenge has not caused too many aches and pains, as we’ve managed to have rest days after long rides or used the flat Bristol Bath railway path for ‘recovery rides’.
On this blog I’ll keep our mileage up to date, with a link to the route taken. I’ll update with separate posts on the more interesting aspects of our rides.
Day 1
Mileage: 100.28
Total: 100.28
Map: http://www.brytonsport.com/mapTrackView/2?id=407917
Day 2
Mileage: 25.05
Total: 125.33
Map: http://www.brytonsport.com/mapTrackView/2?id=412202
Day 3
Mileage: 35.5
Total: 160.83
Map: http://www.brytonsport.com/mapTrackView/2?id=413951
Day 4
Mileage: 0
Total: 160.83
Day 5
Mileage: 0
Total: 160.83
Day 6
Mileage: 83.5
Total: 244.33
Map: http://www.brytonsport.com/mapTrackView/3?id=416124
Day 7 – 0
Day 8
Mileage: 88.73
Total: 333.06
Map: http://www.brytonsport.com/mapTrackView/2?id=426949
Day 9 – 0
Day 10
Mileage: 48.5
Total: 381.56
Map: http://www.brytonsport.com/mapTrackView/2?id=433846
Day 11 – 0
Day 12
Mileage: 68.9
Total: 450.46
In the last fortnight we’ve ridden on two great local Sportive rides, the Lionheart and the the Bath 100. Its been a great experience doing these sportives and if you’ve never done one or think its not worthwhile read on and I’ll try and convince you!
The 2 rides shared a few bits of route, especially in the hills to the south of Frome with the fearsome ascent of Alfred’s Tower in particular. Both have almost the same amount of climbing, with my GPS showing the Bath100 to have slightly more at 8957ft compared to 8427ft for the Lionheart. Apart from that both have some great long descents and long flat blasts. The overall feel that I had of from both rides was that the Bath100 was more ’rounded’ whilst the Lionheart less so. If you look at route maps side by side the shape of the rides shows that the Bath100 is more round, but its more the feel of the ride I am talking about. The Lionheart route ‘splits’ early on after about 10 miles at Longbridge Deverill with the 100 milers blasting down to Wilton on a long flatish section. Whilst it was a fun flat section maybe its nicer to get the climbs under your belt earlier on in a ride. The Lionheart route took on Alfred’s Tower just about 15 miles before the end which was a real killer! The Bath 100 did have us crawl up Sion Hill in Bath, about a mile from the end. Its pretty awful, steep, but nowhere near as tough as the fearsome Alfred’s Tower!
The descents on a ride are a real highlight and there are some really great ones on both rides, but I’d have to say that the Bath100 was the winner here. The descent to Midford from Bath is great, on an A road with long steep sweeping bends you can really lean into. The steep hill into Lacock is fun but you need to be very careful on a switchback three quarters down, but what’s the point of a descent without a challenge? Then the hill from Kingsdown down into Bathford is a long long blast and if you’re lucky you won’t get stuck behind vehicles in the village and you can blast all the way down through the one way priority islands, I wasn’t! The white knuckle descent off the White Horse tests your bike handling skills to the max, skipping down the slightly bumpy road trying to time your braking over bumps and the double ‘S’ corner, before the blast down to the bottom where you have to grip your bike very hard to stop the bumps bouncing you around. The descent down to the grand mansion at Longleat is nice, but pretty tame in comparison. You can see all the corners from the top and its as smooth as a billiard table, making it not such a great challenge.
The food stops are another highlight of a Sportive, after all its not meant to be a race! There were plenty of food stops on both rides. At the start of the Bath100 you got a complimentary energy gel bar which was nice. All the food stops had plenty to offer cakes, flapjacks, bananas and hot tea or coffee. The lunch stop for the Bath100 just after the White Horse was supreme, a proper buffet with cold pasta salads, quiches, roast pork, bean salads and a variety of fruit and cake, there were even chairs and tables. The Lionheart lunch equivalent at Kingston Deverill was well stocked but basic filled rolls, cakes and bananas, there were a few chairs but not enough. Some people don’t like to have much of a stop for lunch so this does come down to personal preference, but it can be a highlight for some. The Lionheart won out at the end with an amazing 9 (or was it 12) bean stew with very nice wholesome crusty bread. There was also beer available(!) but I passed on that. The welcome at the end of the Bath100 was a bit muted with not even a complementary drink, although there was a mobile caterer on hand.
Finally just a few housekeeping things to highlight. The signposting on both was good, but the Bath100 was fantastically well signed. In particular the junction where the 100 mile and 100 kilometre rides split was very well signed with 2 very large blue or yellow signs showing which route to follow. As well as this there were signposts for potholes, narrow roads, and even a toad crossing. Both rides had a good number of marshalls, and special mention must go to the marshalls on the A303 for the Lionheart who were great. The goody bag at the end of the Lionheart was a real treat – I have used the complimentary buff now a number of times! I didn’t get a goody bag at the end of the Bath100, maybe I missed it bit of a shame as the one we got last year on the Action 100 was fantastic, with lots of recovery bars and jelly beans! That had ZipVit in it and its seems as shame that they are no longer involved (I think) as I can’t abide High5!
Both rides were completed by me and Becci in 6hrs 40mins ride times, but we did stop to enjoy the lunches and food stops taking us to about 7hrs 30mins for both rides. I won’t hesitate to recommend both rides as each had its merits. The big draw for the Action100 is the money raised from the rides goes to funding research into childhood illness, which Action Medical Research have an exceptional track record for. The Lionheart has a less obvious charitable purpose, and is not billed as a charity ride, but as their website states ‘Spin Events will be donating a percentage of their profits from the 2012 Lionheart towards the ColaLife project.’ The Lionheart could be viewed as a season ‘opener’ to motivate you to train over the winter and get a decent time early in the year. Both rides were great and we’ll be back for more next year!
We’ve been following a blog on the Morvelo Kinesis Project by a rider called Rob Lee , he’s come up with the proposition of riding 1000 miles in April. The idea was sparked by doing something memorable in tribute to those who have inspired us to get on a bike, back on a bike or to ride further or faster! Its certainly an experience that should stick with us. I’m doing the ride in tribute to a little girl who recently passed away.
We’re going to have a tough time getting the miles in as we have a total of 5 days currently in April that we won’t be able to ride, that ups our daily average mileage by quite a bit. We’ve also got to run the shop and so don’t have the luxury of any days off apart from Sundays. So we are going to have to squeeze in as much riding after work as possible. We’ve worked out we need to do about 38 miles a day to hit the target, whilst that’s not much for a ride getting it done day in day out is going to be tough. There’s also the boredom factor of doing the same routes, we’ll have to be creative and find some different rides to do. The other limiting factor round here are the hills, we’re going to have to find some easyish routes so we don’t wreck our legs. Of course we’ll still do some ‘hard’ routes 2 or 3 times a week, but a flatish ride will make a welcome break.
We’ll update our mileage on this blog each day, and write about our experiences along the way.
The Kinesis Virsa mtb is based around highly regarded Tange Prestige Japanese double butted steel tube set. This gives the ride of the bike that steel ‘spring’ which is ideal when zinging along twisty singletrack.
The reviewers have certainly given it a thumbs up. Since the review the Brighton based Kinesis designers, who test all their products extensively on the South Downs, have upgraded key parts of the frame, bit more on this later.
I’ve had the frame for a few months and had been saving up to get various parts for it. It had to be a ‘British’ inspired bike being a true home grown brand with a growing reputation for ride quality. So I of course opted for Hope kit, which as well as being totally machined and made in the UK by hand has a great reputation as well. They recently released a seatpost so that was pretty fortuitous as it meant that all the finishing kit parts on the bike could be based on Hope. The only parts that couldn’t be British were the drivetrain which had to be Shimano for sturdiness, slickness and great value.
The next big thing on a mountain bike is the suspension and I had been reading great things about X-fusion who have actually been around since 1999, but only recently started to go into selling their products aftermarket. They’ve picked up some rave reviews recently, so I was very keen to get a fork that customers could try out as a demo with a view to potentially purchasing them. The fork I got was a Velvet RL120 fork upgraded to 130mm travel, its tapered which adds more stiffness at the steering interface. Its also stiff at the axle with its 15mm screw through upgrade. The larger diameter headtube is one area Kinesis recently upgraded on the frame, to allow for a new generation of tapered forks.
The wheels are definitely a crucial rider / terrain interface and I wanted to do something a bit different here. It was to be my first foray into tubeless, well I had to take the plunge sometime! Just my luck that WTB very recently released some very reasonably priced (26.99) UST compliant rims with regular spoke holes that can be easily built up into a user friendly tubeless wheelset. These rims are 23mm wide so will make the tyre balloon nicely for a very grippy ride. So I opted for nice gold Hope Pro 2 hubs, with that colour running throughout the bike as it pairs up with green nicely. The rims built up very easily, although the offset spoke holes provided some spoke length calculator fun and games! Setting up the tyres (UST WTB Bronsons 2.3) onto the rims was so simple, just whack on some special rim tape, add a valve core, pop the tyres on and inflate – well in practice, and now I know having had lots of practice. What you need to make sure is that you have the tyres on the right way before you inflate (most tyres are directional). When you remove these tubeless tyres, if you do get it wrong, the rim strip gets ruffled up rendering it pretty useless. So my advice is if you go for these get it right first time and you’ll have no trouble at all inflating. Its going to be really interesting to try out this wheelset at pressures lower than 30 psi, with no risk of pinch flats and no worries about thorn / stone punctures as the sealant will do its duty.
The bike’s drivetrain is full 10spd XT, so its pretty light and also very slick. The brake system is Hope Tech X2 which is supposedly their lightweight cross country / light freeride offering, but its pretty beefy especially with the 180mm upgraded floating rotor upfront. A new innovation on this frame is at the rear brake calliper which mounts into a pair of slotted holes. This means that if you ever wanted to use the horizontal swopout dropouts to run singlespeed or hub gears you can remove the wheel easily thanks to the slotted holes.
Finally the pedals have to be the most bling bit of the bike. I knew the Vault pedals were good but wait till you see and feel them in the flesh, they are so nice! And in this case so green!
The bike is available to take out to specifically try out the forks, but also the frame, tubeless wheels, pedals and so on. The Virsa is available as a ‘ready to ride’ package with different specs, but if you want something a bit different then why not build your dream steel hardtail around an award winning frame / fork combo!
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