This summer’s sweltering temperatures could be a portent of a particularly traumatic winter of riding, suggests the Doc
Usually, one of the best things about being a cyclist is that you know all about the weather. You spend time outdoors. You experience the passing of the seasons at a level more visceral than noticing that Strictly Come Dancing hasgiven way to The Voice.
Unfortunately this means that riding this summer, especially in the South East of the UK, has been a bit disturbing. It has been so hot, and so dry, for so long. The landscape is brown and dead. It’s easy to get some heat-conditioning sessions done, so I’ll be all set for the winter turbo season if my fan breaks, but that’s about it.
I’ve done my best to fix the climate, honestly I have. I washed my summer bike, which is normally a sure bet. I washed it properly, and dried and polis hed it, despite the fact that I could have made it sparkle with no more than a duster. Not a drop of rain. White shoes had no effect. The sheer audacity of throwing out a pair of mudguards didn’t help either. They were broken, but possibly repairable, so it ought to have worked.
I even applied a phenomenally expensive chain lube at something like £50 a bottle. I’d been saving it for the day I have some sort of a breakdown and make a return to racing, but getting it to rain seemed more important. The skies stayed blue. The only thing that changed was that I was able to go very, very slightly faster. (I was probably kidding myself about that anyway.)
Even if I could stop worrying about the medium-term end-of-life-as-we-knowit, the short-term thing that a long, hot summer does is make the thought of winter more depressing. I always start thinking about winter somewhere around now – it’s a conditioned reflex from my sister’s daily holiday-countdown of the days till school went back. As she’d point out, it’s September in a couple of weeks, then October a week after that and about 20 minutes later it’ll be January and we’ll all be wearing a balaclava and two pairs of gloves. She’d want you to remember that the next time you’re tootling about on a warm summer evening.
How to… be popular
Being a popular cyclist is very, very difficult, so before you read this you might just decide it’s not worth even trying. Most cyclists are loathed by everyone they know, and to be quite honest with you, they get through life just fine.
However, if you still want to be popular there are some measures you can take. On group rides, do your turn on the front. Do it at the right speed – this will be impossible to judge so really this is luck. Don’t spend too long on the front either. What constitutes “too long” depends on the road, the weather, the time of year and for all I’ve ever been able to make sense of it, the phases of the moon and the share price of Wiggle.
Point out obsta
