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It come’s round every year, the Mosquito London Cyclocross Team Champs. Having spent a winter successfully avoiding the agony that is cross racing I get called upon once more to make up the numbers in the Mosquito team. This winter my lack of racing has been impressive by even my standards, the team champs would be only my second event of the season. Being now the Mosquito/Londoncyclesport squad we boast two teams for the race, so I take my rightful place in the B team, bit of a relief that as it means I can’t pull down the placing of the high flyers in the A team.
So the day dawns wet and cold (don’t all Sundays in the cross season?) and Thomas and I head off to our day in the mud. Thomas races first in the Under 12’s, has fun, gets peeved because someone falls off in front of him, gets over it, plays with his mates - perfect day for a 10 year old (and for a 45 year old come to think of it).
The main race starts in a muddy field from where we channel into some narrower singletrack and the positions soon settle down, at least they do where I am - no idea what is happening up front. So I trudge round for an hour around a pretty challenging but enjoyable circuit and trail in gloriously mid-field.
Afterwards in the canteen, riders chat and bemoan the end of the cross season, whilst I can’t help but applaud my good sense in not having spent every sunday for the last three months suffering like I have today. Truth be told, I’m not tough enough and I admire those who are - give me a road race on a hot summers day and I’m your man but a winters cross racing - youv’e got to be tough for that.
Back home Thomas discovers a good way to supplement pocket money, when dads knackered and he’s got a dirty bike….

So, whilst Hugo, Ian and Simon were doing Mosquito/Londoncyclesport proud at the National Cyclocross Champs (Hugo 6th in the Juniors, fantastic result) I was plugging away round some distinctly mucky Kentish lanes in the company of the other participants of the Old Portilian’s Reliability Trial.
Distinctly ‘old-school’ it was too. None of the gloss of the Sportive, just pay your five pounds, slurp down a cup of tea and away you go for 100km of lumpy riding in the company of riders a lot fitter than oneself (in my case).I had the company of team mates Matt and Iain for the first 20k or so until Matt punctured which left me hanging onto the the wheels of the fast bunch I had foolishly attached myself to. Not for long though, once the hills got longer I was ‘out the back’ and on my own and feeling pretty lousy. So for 30k or so I trudged along on my own, hauling myself over the Ashdown climb and on into Edenbridge where Matt and Iain rejoined me. Good to see them but on the other hand I also knew it meant trying to hang on again rather than suffering on my own and as the dreaded Toys Hill loomed

I knew there would be plenty of suffering ahead. Matt kindly waited at the top of the climb and we rode in together to the Village Hall for bacon rolls and cake - perfect post-ride recovery food!
A good day and good company. Pity my legs hurt so much the next day though

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(Photo courtesy, Andy Jones)

It appears to be catching on, this cyclo-cross lark, especially with the – shall we say – more mature cyclist.

The record field of well over 500 riders for this year’s national championships in Sutton Coldfield included around 120 veterans on the grid for the 40-49 age group.

Now, 120 riders trying to reach the opening left-hander in pole position is quite likely to lead to some kind of argy-bargy – although vets generally handle their bikes very well and are keener than most to get home without any broken bones. But I was rather expecting the first corner to be the problem, rather than the actual grid.

And so the rider sprawled on the tarmac in front of Neil Simpson of London Phoenix and myself was getting short shrift. We weren’t even over the start line, for pity’s sake, and were already pinned on the barriers watching a 120-man bunch fly by. This fella was scrabbling to get up and get going, his back wheel refusing to co-operate, while Neil and yours truly scrambled all over him, muttering unpleasantries. I feel a bit guilty now, in the cold light of day…actually, no I don’t.

Having started halfway up the field I was now looking at around 80 riders to chase. Oh well, start from scratch, don’t panic and pick ‘em off.

It’s amazing how many people you can overtake simply by riding smartly and not making silly mistakes. What had seemed during warm-up a rather dull course – dry, featureless and lacking any running sections save a couple of planks – was actually pretty challenging. A few sharp little inclines had people struggling. A short section of woodland had riders hitting the brakes and taking poor lines. Those with too much air in their tyres were slipping on grassy corners as the off-camber surface took its toll on the unaware and unsteady.

So without unduly forcing the issue and hammering myself to the point of going into the red I weaved through the field as best I could and spent the whole 40 minutes overtaking, which is, to my mind, always preferable to having people overtake for 40 minutes.
The only downer was finishing third in a three-way sprint for the line but there was literally nothing left in the tank by that point. 40th overall, 12th in the over-45 category. No complaints, but hoping for a tough course next year and a clean getaway from the grid.

While us lesser-knowns were frittering around many minutes adrift, the great – and incredibly nice bloke – Nick Craig was crossing the line with his arms in the air having won in his first year as a veteran.

No great surprise there, but he did turn up again the next day and give the leading men a run for their money in the elite race. Respect to Mr Craig!

As you will have noticed we’ve had some proper winter conditions over the last week. Lots of fun - sledging with the kids, snowball fights, traffic chaos….all the usual stuff. But the best bit has to be mountain biking in the snow. Faced with thick ice on all but main roads, any kind of sensible ride on the road is out of the question, so heading out into the hills to hear your tyres crunch through the snow is the only option. Of course getting to the off-road bit involves some road riding, which around my way last weekend meant negotiating the bike through a series of ice-rinks linked by occassional stretches of tarmac. Easier on a thick tyred mtb than a skinny road bike but still a test of handling skills. As long as you keep it light on the pedals and don’t brake or turn you should be fine!
So I had a great ride last sunday, two and a half hours zig-zagging my way around Boxhill and Ranmore Common in the North Downs. A great blast and a real workout, it’s amazing how quickly one warms up when slogging up an off-road climb!
The downside of the weather is the necessity to catch the train into work rather than ride in. Living 30 miles from Mosquito allows me to do a good bit of my training by simply riding into the shop. The state of the roads this week has made this impossible and I’ve been relegated to the train along with everyone else (and their germs!).
Still it’s nearly Christmas and if the snow stays I’ll be out their playing in it again on Boxing Day and hopefully working off a bit of the Christmas Spirit. Merry Christmas!

So, son Thomas had his eye on a cyclocross race at Herne Hill last saturday, he’s racing in the Under 12’s now and this was to be part of the British Cycling club championships, meaning an opportunity for him to score points for his club Preston Park Youth CC. I figured if we were to go to the trouble of going along I might as well make the most of it and enter the Senior event myself.

My last cyclocross race was a rather poor showing back in February at the London League team champs where I made a pretty poor job of ‘making up the numbers’!

Preparations begin the night before, sorting out the bike. I use my Independent Fabrication Planet X as my winter commuting/training bike and am afraid it only gets the occasional outing as a race steed. So, mudguards and lights off and ‘cross tyres on. Fortuntately I have a pair of fantastic Mavic R-SYS wheels on loan from Mavic which shod with a good set of’cross clinchers are hard to beat (at my level at least, the top guys swear by tubulars run at ridiculously low pressures, but that’s a whole other story).

Thomas’s race is at 11.15 so we are at the track 45 mins before, giving him a chance to ride round and me plenty of time to sign him on and get numbers. Around 15 riders line up for the Under 12’s race and pretty soon a lead group of 3 forms - Thomas, a lad from the Velo Club Londres (my old club and riding on home turf at Herne Hill) and another from Team Darenth. The 3 ride together for a couple of laps but then the gaps open as experience shows, Thomas finishes in 3rd a very happy boy and his first podium finish of the ‘cross season - worth a few points for the club and £6 to add to the pocket money kitty!

It’s a couple of hours till my race so I head off to warm up and Thomas goes off to the catering stall to fill up on bacon sarnies.
I sit myself back on the grid for the race start not wanting to get in the way of the ‘big boys’ and happy to settle for a plodding start. It doesn’t take long to settle into the groove though and I’m feeling pretty good till I look down at the pulse-monitor which tells me my pulse is 170 and I’ve only been racing for 10 mins. Bloody hell, no way I can keep this up for another 50 mins surely? But (I tell myself) that’s ‘cross racing, tough both physically and psychologically. Anyway 10 mins later and the pulse hasb’t dropped and I’m actually passing riders until ‘bang’, down I go. Trying to overtake on the side of some singletrack my front wheel goes down hard into a concealed hole and head over heels I go. Straight up again though and all seems well, bikes ok, bodies ok, new team kit isn’t torn so back on the bike and away we go. However I’ve lost a minute and the group I was passing have ridden away. Thirty minutes ridden so thirty to go (‘cross races being typically ‘an hour plus a lap’) and I have my usual crisis (along the lines of, I’ve been doing this for 30 mins and I’m knackered, there’s no way I can go on and anyway whats the point). This negativity usually lasts about 10 minutes (until the finish starts to feel in reach) and sure enough with 15 mins left I’m still going strong and catching riders. A guy from the VCL holds onto my wheel for a lap but I eventually loose him in the technical sections and ride in to the finsh on my own, completely wiped out but satisfied.

Putting the bikes back in the car I miss the prize presentation where fellow Mosquito/Londoncyclesport rider Matt Seaton picks up cash for 1st Vet and 3rd overall and there is much hilarity when Thomas has to go up to pick up my winnings for 6th Vet.
A good days racing for both of us. A low key race representing the grass roots and the real soul of our sport, organised by a local south London club, the De Laune, and the sort of event at which tomorrow’s Bradley Wiggins learn their trade and without which the sport has no future.
On the way home, hungry, we stop for a couple of bags of chips and reflect that perhaps it was’nt such a bad way to spend a dreary saturday in early December.

It’s been a long time coming but the new Mosquito/Londoncyclesport race team is now official, following the ultra-slick team launch last thursday. Well it was fairly slick for us; riders turned up, got kitted out in the new kit and lined up to have photos taken in front of a Mosquito banner. All very convivial and conveniently followed by us all piling down to the Rouleur Photography Album launch party (a fine publication, perfect for the cyclist in your life!).
We have been running a Mosquito team for many years now with varying degrees of success and interest but I’ve felt for some time that it needed some re-invigorating and the opportunity to combine with Londoncyclesport (www.londoncyclesport.com, for many years an invavluable source of info for all London cyclists) was the boost we needed.
Given the ages of most of the team members it looks like we will be concentrating on Veterans (over 40’s) racing! In fact my aim is to have a strong veterans team combined with a youth/junior section. Hopefully us old boys have a pretty good idea of what we are doing and whilst taking the racing seriously can also keep things in perspective (our days of dreaming of pro-level racing on the continent being long past). Alongside the vets we are looking to build a strong youth/junior squad allowing us to help to youngsters on their way to bigger things.Our star junior rider is Hugo Humphreys, who is just into his first year as a junior (up till 16 you ride as a youth) and performing admirably on the cyclocross scene scoring a podium finish in last weekends South East Cross Champs.
The new team has certainly spurred me into action and I’m really looking forward to once again racing with old friends such as Matt with whom I began my racing career (I still recall the dread with which we both signed on for our first road race in a Surrey village hall some 20 years ago).
So we’ve got the fancy new kit, sponsors are lining up and we even have our own team website (www.mosquitolondoncyclesport.com), roll on 2010.

Took it easy for a couple of weeks after the Tour of Mallorca but have now got back into regular training. I’ve decided to start the winter training a bit earlier than normal and keep up regular ‘top-end’ efforts (intervals etc) and try some leg strengthening exercises. The theory being that as one gets older it is important to keep up the intense work and that the ‘base miles’ should really allready be in the legs after 20 odd years of regular training! Makes sense, I’ve always noticed how cyclocross riders seem to benefit from a winter of regular intense races (and the training associated with it) whilst those of us who spent our winters riding steady miles struggled to keep up early season. The leg strength exercises are an attempt to slow down the loss of ‘fast twitch’ muscle fibres (which I read is important somewhere!), all I know is that they have left me barely able to walk this week so they must be targeting something!
Necessity dictates that tough efforts are performed on the dreaded turbo trainer, an instrument of torture I have managed to avoid for the last few years but have now returned too with my tail between my legs to accept it’s use. I can never quite understand the point of spending thousands of pounds on ’simulator’ trainers which allow you to follow your progress on a computer screen whilst riding up your favourite climb, pretending your in the Alps when in reality your stuck in the cellar! Surely the indoor trainer is supposed to be unpleasant, tough both physically and mentally, in fact rather like real cycling and isn’t that why we do it?
Alongside all this indoor stuff I’ve been enjoying the winter riding in the UK, which this year so far means a lot of rain and wind. I have treated myself to some new Mavic clothing which has helped me get through the worst of the weather. The ‘ ‘ waterproof bib-tights combined with the ‘ ‘ jacket have been worth their weight in gold. Never having used waterproof tights before I have learned what I was missing, even with mudguards there is a lot of spray off the roads and they really come into their own off-road where any ride at this time of year is a mud bath.

It’s a couple of weeks now since I was racing the Tour of Mallorca with Matt and Niall, a race full of surprises!The first shock was discovering that despite being billed as the ‘Masters Tour of Mallorca’ the event was basically open to any non-pro over the age of 23 which we figured, and we were soon proved right, would have a significant affect on the speed of the racing! As you can see I’m getting my excuses in early because basically we got a good old fashioned kicking!!

It all started off fine with the 6km time trial along the seafront (each rider with a police out-rider), none of us troubled the leader board but but at least we didn’t get caught by our minute men.

Stage 2 was run on a 20km flattish road circuit. Disaster struck after a couple of laps as we were hurtling along in the 120 man bunch when there was the heart stopping sound of wheels touching and as I did all I could to avoid falling I glanced Matt flying through the air and into the ditch, it looked nasty. Thinking we were going to be spending the next few days visiting Mallorcan hospitals it was a big relief to see Matt back on his bike the next time I came round (having managed to get dropped whilst worrying about him!). Bad bruising to his back and a buckled front wheel (sorted out by a local bike shop).

Stage 3 and we were into the mountains, the day we hade been talking about. However first we had to tackle 60km on the flat where the bunch was determined not to let anyone get away so the pace was pretty brutal. We were all aware of the potential danger of the bunch splitting especially when we went around the Bay of Alcudia where the crosswinds are notorius. The predictions were right but we still got caught out as the bunch split in two and we were left chasing as we approached the climb.So I settled for a ride up the mountain with a small group and a fantastic long descent into Inca, it was worth all the suffering just to ride down the mountain on closed roads.

So onto the final stage, a couple of times around a 50km circuit ventruring into ‘Es Pla’ the rural centre of Mallorca. Problems started early for me as I punctured after only 5kms, a fast wheel change from the Shimano neutral service car soon had me back on the road and thanks to some helpful drafting from the team cars I managed to get back into the bunch fairly quickly. Unfortunately the effort cost me and when I found myself on the wrong side of another crash I saw the last of the bunch and finished the race in the aptly named ‘laughing group’ of 15 riders.
The race finished with a great buffet meal in a local hotel laid on by the organisers, not the kind of post-race treatment one is used to as a British bike racer! The prize presentation followed with a succession of Spanish, Portuguese, German, Belgium riders picking up silverware with not a Brit to be seen, next year…..

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September means one thing for me: the annual pilgrimage to North Yorkshire for the very toughest cyclo-cross race in the World, the Three Peaks.

All other rides pale into insignificance against this monstrous approximation of a ‘cross race. Much as I love the fast and furious hour-long version that takes up the rest of the winter season, it does not compare. Road races, crits, even sportives: all are fine and dandy for the summer months, but they are a means to an end – all preparation for the big day.

For anyone unfamiliar with the event, some bright spark back in the day had the bright idea of stringing together the three biggest hills in Yorkshire – a route already familiar to walkers and fell runners – and throwing a bike into the mix. A 14-year-old schoolboy by the name of Kevin Watson hauled his standard-issue road bike to the summits of Whernside (2,419ft.), Ingleborough (2,373ft.), and Penyghent (2,273ft.) in 1959 and the Three Peaks cyclo-cross was born.

And riders have been coming back ever since, some more than others. Organiser John Rawnsley has completed a mighty 45 of the 47 runnings of the race, as has Neil Orrell. Mosquito’s new recruit Simon Scarsbrook was heading for Yorkshire for his thirteenth attempt, while I was mere beginner on four.

One of the bonuses of working for Cycling Weekly is getting to talk to riders, so under the pretext of writing an article, I grilled seven-time winner Rob Jebb and 1991 victor Nick Craig for every little tip going: where to go hard; where to ease off; when to eat; when to run; when to walk; when to throw the bike away and collapse in a heap due to cramp and sheer bloody exhaustion.

Team Mosquito set reasonable but perfectly attainable targets: top-20 in the vets’ category and under four hours. It was a perfect day for it, with little wind and a covering of cloud with the occasional glimpse of sun, so we set off in a 450-strong bunch feeling nervous yet optimistic.

Suffice to say the handy hints from Jebb and Craig came in very useful. Not going flat out on the road following the opening climb of Ingleborough meant having more energy to attack Whernside. The little diversions from the beaten path taken by the top riders shaved seconds off here and there. And Craig’s phenomenal descending inspired my brake-free hurtle down Pen-y-Ghent and thrash to the finish in Horton.

It didn’t feel especially quick, yet I had taken 12 minutes off my best time, shaved into the top-20 vets, landed some prize money, and got well under the four hour target. Simon came in a few minutes later and, as tradition dictates, I got the beers in.

And now we have another 12 months to work out our next assault on the ‘Peaks. Much like this year’s winner, Nick Craig, it will fly by…

I have just returned from a long and exciting journey.

I was visiting Islay, the Hebridian Island that is home to Jez Hastings and Brian Palmer creators of The Washing Machine Post, a website read and trusted by cyclists around the world.

The reason for this trek was to understand the thinking behind the Islay jacket. A custom made tweed cycling jacket.

The brainwave of Jez and Brian, with enthusiasm from us at Mosquito. We love selling custom bikes so why not clothing.
It will be available from Mosquito, individually made to measure.
To get the full Islay experience I stayed with Jez and his lovely family in Port Charlotte. Besides a couple of nice rides in breathtakingly beautiful countryside I also sampled some of the Islands famous export, malt whisky. Plus making daily visits to Debbie’s- Welcome to Great Coffee- café.
The Island has an extraordinary history of weaving, I visited the Islay woollen mill. A place with a heritage dating back to the 16th century. The mill makes Tweed using traditional methods produced in small batches to the highest quality. The colours are those of the landscape around the mill, greens and browns with flecks of blues and purple from the heather.
So the tweed is the starting point, next was the idea to make a cycling specific jacket. Tweed has always been used to make riding and country sports wear so with its natural properties of water resistance and warmth without bulk it lends itself very well to cycling. The interesting part was to design it with clean construction and a cycle specific shape.
Then to find someone who can make the jacket to a very high standard and be able to keep the quality of manufacture to these standards when each jacket is custom made for each rider.

Jez has found such a person, Anne, she lives in a hill top croft on Islay, with an understanding of how Tweed works she has worked on the development of this jacket so that it shapes around the body using the natural weave of the fabric.

The finishing touches are the buttons, made by Anne’s husband is his workshop next to hers. These wonderful buttons are each cut from the antlers shed by the deer on the surrounding hills. Worked and finished by hand, each button is unique.

So the finished product is a superb bespoke jacket, made from small runs of Islay Tweed. Not just another cycling jacket, this is a garment that will soften and mould and live the ride with you, to be treasured and admired for many years.

The jacket will cost ……..and will take three weeks from order to delivery. Samples of Tweed and examples of the jacket will be available at Mosquito; order forms can be emailed or completed with Gill at Mosquito