Lock your bike properly. It might stop it getting stolen, and you’ll avoid someone telling you that wouldn’t have had your bike stolen if only you’d locked it properly.

Mansplaining bike lock strategies to someone who has just had their bike stolen is kind-of not that helpful.  Having my bike stolen has taught me many things. Like, some people actually do steal other peoples’ things for a living.  And, a lot of bikes get stolen, but no-one can really tell you where they go. And also, a 10-year old rim-braked road bike is not worth anywhere near as much as you wish it was.  But maybe the key thing I’ve learned is that there’s no lock out there that will stop a thief with an angle grinder. It feels like there’s a certain inevitability to some bike thefts, and no matter how hard you try there’s no guarantee that your bike is locked so securely that no one will ever steal it. And this is maybe he harshest lesson: maybe – just maybe – you can lock your bike in a way that discourages them just enough that they go and steal someone else’s.

Always keep riding: five years of Thousandth Fastest.

Has it really been five years since I started writing this blog?  Apparently so. As the bumper sticker tells us, life is what happens to you while you’re off making other plans. One minute you start a blog about biking up a hill, then five years later its, well, five years later and the gap between ‘plan’ and ‘reality’ is quite a bit wider than you were expecting.  Sure, I biked up the hill, but this blog has been an excuse for all kinds of other stuff.  I’d like to think that five-years-ago me would be quietly impressed that I’m still at it.

Netflix’s “Don’t Look Up” is a sort-of funny satire on American politics but a sort-of terrible film about climate change

Don’t Look Up: No-one’s listening (image from here)

Ever since Christmas my social media feeds have been full of posts imploring me to watch Netflix’s star-studded political satire Don’t Look Up.  Actually, that’s not quite true. My social media is still totally dominated by cycling stuff and ads about artisanal running shoes because I bought some running shoes online that one time. But there have been quite a few posts telling me that I should watch Don’t Look Up because it’s funny and a great allegorical tale for our times. So sometime between Christmas and the New Year we gave in and watched it, and I have to say we were pretty underwhelmed.  It feels heretical to say it, but I think Don’t Look Up is a sort-of-funny American political satire, but a terrible film about climate change.

“Phil Liggett: The Voice of Cycling” is a kind and generous documentary tribute to a kind and generous legend of Cycling. Go see it.

From Demand Films, here

Most people who read ThousandthFastest will know who Phil Liggett is, and if you don’t know the name you’ll almost certainly know the voice.   For the English-speaking world Phil really is the voice of cycling and his ebullient Tour de France commentary has been either the soundtrack to summer or the aural caffeine keeping you awake during the long dark nights of a southern-hemisphere winter since the 1970s. Phil’s story spans the narrative arc of pro-cycling as we know it, from the start of the Merckx era through the Hinault, Indurain and Armstrong years to the post-Team Sky world we’re in now.  In 2020 Australian duo Nickolas Bird and Eleanor Sharpe released an absolutely wonderful documentary about Phil and his life.  It’s a kind and generous tribute to a kind and generous fella, and I saw it last week as part of a great bikes-in-schools fundraiser (more on that below).  It really is a lovely film, and I encourage you to see it when you get the chance.

Georgia Williams: Kiwi champion riding a wind of change in women’s pro cycling

National Champion Georgia Williams raced the first ever women’s Paris-Roubaix. Image: Getty Images

Women’s professional cycling has always battled the headwinds of a male-dominated sport. Here in New Zealand there’s no coverage of women’s racing.  There’s been no real women’s equivalent to the Tour de France (but more on that in a moment) and ordinary punters would have to look hard to get past the idea that cycling is run by men, for men. But those headwinds are starting to shift and the bastions of a male dominated sport are starting to crumble. There’s a long road ahead, but an increasing number of women cyclists are chasing their sporting dreams on the professional circuit.

First ever women’s Paris-Roubaix was a cracker, and a long awaited step in the right direction.

First ever women’s Paris Roubaix winner, Lizzie Deignan. From here

It’s been an historic week for cycling.  This weekend just gone saw the 118^th running of the men’s Paris-Roubaix and – and this is the truly historic and awesome bit – the first ever running of the women’s Paris-Roubaix.  Yep, a race that has been running since 1896 has for the first time allowed for a women’s race.  But park your outrage about that for just a minute (we’ll get back to it later…) and revel in what was one of the greatest editions of the greatest bike races of all time.

COVID daydreams: La Père Auto, Ville d’Avray, and the finish line of the first Tour de France

Ce n’est pas le départ, c’est l’arrivée!

It’s always good to let your thoughts wander a bit.  Doing it while riding your bike is arguably the best possible time to do it, and cycling and daydreaming were pretty much made for each other.  But in these COVID Times, we don’t always get to ride as much as we like; we do our bit to stop the virus’ spread by staying at home, or staying close.  So I’m not riding at all, and have to grab daydreams when I can.  I have a favourite one, and when I’m waiting for the next Zoom meeting to start I jump across to it and build it in my head like my kids build their Minecraft worlds. My dreamscape is a wonderful place of counters and coffee machines and display fridges full of tasty food for sale and walls covered in cycling memorabilia and happy cyclists sitting at tables under trees in the shade eating hamburgers and drinking craft beer and happily talking crap about bikes.  My daydream got a huge shot in the arm last week with the discovery of some wonderful photos on the internet that have not only brought history and daydream together, but also given me a wonderful opportunity for mansplaining some cycling history. Which I am about to take full advantage of.

The Tour starts this weekend, and it’s all of a sudden much more interesting…

I’ve only just done the maths, but this year will be the first since 2016 that I won’t be in France for at least a part of the Tour. It feels hard to believe, but I got to stand at the side of French roads and see the Yellow Jersey whizz past for five consecutive Tours. You’d think that might have started to make me a bit jaded. But no! The Tour is a gift that keeps giving, and this year that gift has surprisingly taken the form of a certain Mark Cavendish. After what seems like a few years in Tour wilderness he’s set to make what’s feeling like a redemptive comeback. That’s making this year’s Tour a whole lot more interesting. Here’s why.

Is the Giro d’Italia better than the Tour?

To call these fans is an understatement. I don’t know who took this photo of this year’s Giro, but let me know if you do so I can give him or her credit.

The Giro d’Italia – Italy’s three week Grand Tour – has been done and dusted for over a week now. To say “this year’s Giro was a cracker” feels a bit redundant, because the Giro is always a cracker. It produces unpredictable racing (mostly), tales of heartbreak and redemption, the craziest fans, and stunning food and scenery in equal measure. While the Tour de France will always get the most attention, I’m increasingly of the view that for fans of cycling the Giro is better than the Tour. Here’s why.

Bike lights. Awesome, and underappreciated.

Maybe not like this. But this is also awesome.

If you asked any cycling nerd to give their top picks of technology that has enriched cycling within the last maybe 20 years, depending on who you talk to that list would include things like electronic gear shifting, cheap GPS-enabled devices, power meters, disc brakes (and the radical shift in wheel design that a move away from rim brakes has enabled), and basically all those wonderful carbon fibre innovations and geejaws that now mean an entry level road bike now costs roughly 87 million dollars. But I reckon there should be a spot on any “cycling-enriching top-10 tech” list for the humble but increasingly awesome set of bike lights.  Bike lights are awesome, one of the greatest innovations in bike technology, and one that’s easy to overlook.  And waaay better than they used to be. 

I have a bit of sympathy for the UCI, but sometimes they just seem like the fun police.

From the sidelines it’s easy to pick on administrators, managers, and people that run things. Especially in sports. They need to make up, arbitrate, and enforce the rules of the game – literally and figuratively – and sometimes those rules can seem to have little to do with actual sports, and more to do with politics. So it is with Cycling’s governing body – the UCI.

Drafting while commuting: a modern manners minefield?

Commuting by bike can be a manners minefield. Image (of the Brompton Folding Bike World Championships) from here.

One of the (many!) things I’ve enjoyed about being back home in Wellington is the opportunity to strap on the lycra, knock out some functional commuting and ride my bike to work.  It’s been a bit of a shock to the system actually going to an office to work in this COVID-free parallel universe as, like most of the rest of the world, our life was ‘work from home’ for most of the last year. But now that we’re back in Aotearoa, ‘commuting’ means more than walking from the kitchen to the lounge.  The quick and easy commute for me is a 20 minute ferry ride across Wellington harbour. It’s a great book-end to the day, and on a good day it’s wonderful and at least once a summer we see dolphins and the odd whale).  But it’s also a 25 km cycle each way around the harbour and so as often as I can I’m riding, with Wellington’s notorious winds giving me the perfect opportunity to channel my inner Flandrian and pretend I’m riding Gent-Wevelgem.  Just with less beer.

And we’re back! The New Zealand summer is a fickle thing, but lucky the racing’s been great!

Finn Fisher-Black, in the final stage of the NZ Cycle Classic

The long process of getting back home and set up in Aoteroa New Zealand is just about done. We’re back up and running with work, and the new school year is well under way. The only thing missing is our furniture, which we’re told isn’t too far off. Lucky I managed to squeeze my bike into our airfreight, so I’ve been able to hit the roads and reacquaint myself with the ‘delights’ of cycling in Wellington. It’s blimmin’ windy here, and even though we’re in the height of summer we’d be lucky to get a couple of days in a row with temperatures higher than about 22 degrees. The sun here is blisteringly intense and it’ll grill you to a crisp if you’re not careful. So summer is like some weird quantum state where you can be both too hot and too cold all the same time.

Interesting things I’ve discovered biking around Paris #4: Ancient Rome!

Paris is chock full of history. It’s one of the greatest cities in the world, and for good reason. What’s a little bit surprising is that so much of what you see in Paris is both relatively recent, and relatively manufactured. Thanks to the fact that Paris has been built and rebuilt over the top of itself over the more than two thousand years of its habitation, including through the deliberate destruction and re-shaping of Paris in the last half of the 19^th Century, there’s actually very little here that can really trace its history back to Paris’ most ancient times.  Which is why it’s rather a nice surprise to be able to find a few traces of ancient Rome history.