Late last year I enjoyed a holiday, near Calpe in Spain, a location that is well known for its gentle Autumn climate, quiet roads, challenging climbs and pro team training camps.
You’d imagine that I planned this as a cycling holiday. You’d be 100% wrong. The plan was not to even take a bike, but instead to get away for a few days with Mrs. Doc and enjoy a little warmth and sunlight before coming home to the grey grind of a British winter. It was a good summer for bike riders in the UK this year, and I was happy to take a week off. It’s not as if I have a lot of target races between now and Christmas.
This plan fell apart almost instantly. We stayed in an apartment owned by some bike-riding friends. They sent over some notes about the place – where to turn on the water, what restaurants to try… and about 20 links to fabulous-looking Strava routes with helpful notes. “Lovely ride, does the classic local climb, and the orange trees will be in full bloom when you’re there.” “Highly recommended – a really nice 80 km and you can stop at the castle for a coffee.”
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Multiple national TT champion, best selling author and aero consultant, Michael Hutchinson writes a column for CW every week.
It went on to tell me about the tools they had in their store room to save me bringing any, some local riders who’d love to come out for a ride and had been hand-selected to ensure they’d nod and smile when treated to time trialling anecdotes. (No small act of generosity; such a person is not easy to find in Spain. Miguel Indurain now describes himself as “a golfer” because it’s the only way he can get a conversation started.)
It was not a message to which you could credibly respond with, “That’s great, but I’m not taking a bike.” Not unless you wanted a reply that was essentially a sharp intake of breath and a sad shake of the head. I don’t think they’ll ask me to write an essay on where I went and what I saw, but I don’t feel as if I can totally rule it out.
So I took a bike. And helmet, shoes, kit, GPS, spares, nutrition, bottles and the rest. Taking a bike on holiday is always a hassle. It’s never casual — you can’t really half-pack for a ride or two. There is so much stuff you can’t function without that the difference between the bare minimum and the luxury package is an extra pair of shorts and a neck buff.
The consequence is that by the time you cram a giant bike box into the backseat of a too-small taxi and make your other half balance on top of it with her face pressed against the window, it becomes hard to be convincing when you say things like, “I’m not really planning to do too much riding. It’s more a ‘just in case I feel like it’ bit of packing. You know, like the way you packed that second pair of sandals.”
It means that when I got there, I had to ride a lot. I had to. It’s the sunk cost fallacy – If I’m bringing a bike, with all that that entails, and don’t manage at least a couple of hours a day I’m an idiot. And just like that my non-cycling holiday turned into a cycling holiday. The only potential win left open to me was to prevent it becoming a training camp, and if there’s so much as a dumbbell sitting in the store room, that bulwark will crumble as well.
How To… deal with speed wobble
Speed wobble is caused by resonance in the frame and wheels of a bike that amplifies an initial oscillation in the steering. All of a sudden the bike becomes a living, bucking, impossible-to-steer monster, as if you’re riding an angry crocodile. It normally occurs at a particular speed, normally quite a high speed, which means that it happens most often on a descent.
You’ll recognise it if it happens, because it will be the most definitely about-to-be-dead you’ll ever have felt. Remember that it’s related to a particular speed, and also that braking will make it worse. You could do worse with your last few seconds in this world than enjoy the irony of this.
On a fast descent, it’s often possible to outrun speed wobble and get out the far side to a higher speed beyond the resonance. This is fine, except that unless you can do 90 kph indefinitely, you’re going to have to decelerate back through the potential wobble.
There are a number of solutions. One is to use a different wheelset. This is a) expensive and b) not much use in the short term, and believe me, if you have speed wobble your priorities in life are very much about the short term.
The most respected method is to use damping to alter the resonating frequency of the frame, which in practice means clamping the top tube firmly between your knees. It’s a disappointingly dull solution to what feels like the biggest problem you’ve ever had, so if screaming invocations to a deity of your choice helps, go ahead and do that too.
Acts of Cycling Stupidity
I recently received news of a rider who, new to clipless pedals, did what most clipless newbies do at some point and fell over at a set of traffic lights.
What most of us never had to endure was this particular rider’s older sister. She checked out the glorious spot and the nearby shops, and secured CCTV footage from some security cameras that showed the incident from three angles, with sound.
She edited these into a video that she sent to every saved contact in her brother’s phone. She took the best still images and had them printed on coasters. And she’s already ordered the family Christmas cards.
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