Here Endeth the First Lesson

So in the end it was not to be for our first attempt at a long distance record. It is bitter, bitter pill to swallow when you finally have to make that call but it does come and it comes to just about every rider who attempts distance records, often more than once in their riding career.

It came at 230 miles. Although the decision was made quickly it wasn’t a problem that suddenly reared its head but the return of long standing physical problems that we hoped were behind us. We didn’t have the perfect start to the day inexplicably dropping the chain off the inside ring on the very first hill of the day, It had never happened before and it could have easily unsettled us but we took a deep breath, reminded ourselves that there was over 360 miles to go and popped it back on.

In the end it was purely a matter of whether Jez could continue at record pace suffering again from ‘Hot Foot’, an affliction that has plagued him all year and feels like someone driving a kitchen knife up through his sole with every pedal stroke. The switch to super-stiff, mouldable Bont shoes has without doubt helped but after 9 hours riding it had returned strongly enough to know that the last 1/3rd of the schedule would slowly, inexorably slip away.

There is no shame in making that call, it’s not ‘packing’, it’s knowing when to stop battering yourself and go back to the drawing board to iron out those problems that have stopped you. Even so it was a very emotional few minutes when we knew our last stop…was our final stop.

In preparation the whole team was faultless and brilliant. In execution we learnt more than we could possibly imagine about riding long distances against the clock, often quite surprising details that would never occur to anyone who had never attempted a distance ride against the clock, but will be all too obvious to long distance time trialist or record rider. For example, it doesn’t matter what the current wisdom is on hydration is, every time you have to stop for a ‘comfort break’ you lose minutes. Equally, wearing a skinsuit makes having to stop an absolute, there is no way to relieve yourself off the side of the bike, pro rider style, its impossible! There are probably a dozen tiny but vital tweeks to make and next time we’ll nail it.

Until then Team Wiggle Tandem is far from crawling away and licking its wounds. Jez and mechanic Suzanne Duncan-Gilbert will now turn there attentions to the Three Peaks cyclo-cross race and as you read this Peta McSharry is ready to take on the world at the World Master’s Road Race Championship in Austria this week. I will be training with the great Sean Kelly over the course of the Vuelta and the rest of the team will be adjusting the plan for the next 3 months efforts.

Ride safe

Photos

Follow Team Wiggle Tandem on the Wiggle Athlete‟s Diary www.wiggleblog.com

Or at the team‟s website, www.teamwiggletandem.com

Alternatively find the team on Facebook and Twitter

Riding across the backbone of Wales, across the Cotswolds and central England and finishing with the open prairies of East Anglia taking in 380 miles across the widest part of the UK David Harmon, Eurosport’s Cycling Commentator and Jez Hastings, a wilderness guide, will attempt to make the Side-to-Side record in under 17.5 hours. They will be joined at the hips, literally, as they pedal in unison on their state of the art tandem, Rocket 1.

Every second will count as the timekeepers start the clock at 4am from Pembroke Castle on Saturday 21 August and stop it once the team touch down at the Britannia Pier in Great Yarmouth. Contending with regular traffic along the route, Team Wiggle Tandem may not receive any outside assistance. Where you’d see a team car assisting riders in a road race as it drives along side them, David and Jez will only be able to pick up musette bags (food bags) from crew who are posted on the roadside, they will need to make all their own navigational decisions as their support vehicles ride behind them and keeping an eye on the clock they will need to judge their pace to stay within the record time, yet ensuring they don’t blow up before they reach their destination.

With two delayed attempts due to injury and unfavourable weather conditions, Harmon and Hastings have been chomping at the bit to get underway with the attempt since March. Fitting the attempts between a busy commentating schedule has been tough, however the changeable weather patterns this year have seen the riders and team wait with baited breath until the very last minute to make the decision to go ahead with the record attempt.

As the team gather in Pembroke in Wales, weatherman Ian Michaelwaite has given the thumbs up with a South West South wind of around 8mph, whilst a good westerly wind is what is needed the more southerly wind is a far cry from the Easterly head wind the team would have faced earlier in the year.

Whilst the attempt is scheduled to start at 4am, the riders have a few hours either side of this time to make a start should the wind turn behind them. Their progress can be tracked on Map My Tracks once they get underway, with the route link and updates being posted on Twitter under WiggleTandem.

Roadside support would be an added bonus for the team, with their proposed route and schedule posted below. Cheer them loudly if you see them along the way and overtake safely if you happen to be caught up behind them.

For further information:

Follow on Twitter: http://twitter.com/WiggleTandem
Website: http://teamwiggletandem.com
Routemap & schedule: http://www.teamwiggletandem.com/side_to_side.html

The Moment of Truth

They say that time trialling is the ‘race of truth’. Against the clock you can’t hide in the bunch, can’t shelter from the wind or exercise any tricky sportsman’s games in the pursuit of your goal. In time trialling you can’t cheat the wind, can’t run for cover behind the group, or sandbag and fool nature into accepting your ruse.

It looks like finally, after months of delays we have come to the point where it is just us and nature. All our injury and health worries seem to be behind us. We have, against some expectation remained in good shape despite the interference of work, travel and families. There is always more that could be done, or situations managed differently but nevertheless we now stand less than a week away from knowing whether we will enter the record books by the time we roll into Great Yarmouth on our attempt at the Side to Side record from Pembroke.

The schedule that has been filed with the Road Records Association calls us to maintain an average speed of 21.6 miles per hour, over 380 miles with the worst of the terrain presenting itself during the first half of the course but crucially the better wind conditions over the faster second half of the course.

As always work has proved the biggest stumbling block to full on long hour training, most especially the Tour de France, with it’s constant travelling, long hours and often inconvenient routes and so for the final run up to the record attempt I have reverted to the fixed wheel bicycle to do tune up the legs and adjust to the speed that will be required to work in harmony with Jez. Throughout the Tour of Poland, which Eurosport covered from it’s London base, I trained with team colleague Peta McSharry in Richmond Park and commuted to work and back. Little did I know it would lead to doing my first fixed wheel TT in 10 years when Peta entered me for the London Dynamo Richmond Park 10.5 last Sunday.

I’d forgotten just how impossible it is to chase anyone on a road bike in a time trial when you can’t freewheel and than goodness for the generosity of Dave Atkinson at Road CC who rode to the rescue with a 5 tooth sprocket for the White Industries rear hub on my bike that has an unique carrier system. These sprockets are like hen’s teeth at the moment but at least it meant I could still see riders in the distance by the end of the 2 long fast downhill sections of the course.

In the end I caught 4 men in the road class for 2′ in total and ended up top fixed in the road category, which I have to say rather surprised and pleased me. The time might not look spectacular at 28′50″ but I simply couldn’t have pedalled downhill any faster….mind you I couldn’t have pedalled uphill much faster either!

Come Thursday night the entire team will have gathered at the most westerly point in Wales, Pembroke Castle will be the starting point for what has turned into more than a record, into a voyage of discovery and with 17 hours we will know whether we can open the record books to see Harmon & Hastings next to some of the greatest distance riders of all time.

Ride Safe

DH

There are races and there is the Tour de France. This bizarre cross between a medieval army on the march and a circus takes over my life every July. Over 8000 people, live, work and travel with the Tour as it rampages around France laying waste to each town in besieges and invading the media until finally Paris itself falls to the marauding peloton on the cobbles of the Champs Elysees.

Stuck in the middle of it all,in a tiny tin box sit Sean Kelly and myself. It’s a peculiar space to occupy in the Tour de France caravan. We sit at the very peak of a media network that brings the images of these warring knights of the road to millions worldwide, just 2 men in 2 square metres of ground.

And it’s a long history of warfare too. 2010 sees the centenary of the Tour de France visiting the Pyrenees for the first time and all the famous climbs used in that first foray have been revisited this year, culminating in the showdown between Andy Schleck and Alberto Contador on the slopes of the Col du Tourmalet. Hundreds of thousands lined the road as the two strongest men in this years tour went shoulder to shoulder, eyeball to eyeball to see who would crack first, neither did,but it was so vastly removed from those first stages 100 years ago won by Frenchman Octave Lapize as to be as if from another planet.

Sean prefers to limit his exercise to running whilst on the Tour but this year, as last, I have borrowed a bike from a team and taken to the road at every opportunity, often riding a part of the route each day and having a relaxed spin in the mountains on each of the Tour’s two rest days. I can’t get out everyday as the logistics of the job often prevent it but come the second, and rather late, rest day in Tarbes this week I was looking forward to a ride up the Tourmalet, a day bound to be more pleasurable as Sean had agreed to the request of a former team mate and former Champion of France, Marcel Tinazzi, to join a party of riders on quiet spin up the Col to celebrate the achievements of the early Tour pioneers.

The weather on the morning of the rest day didn’t look particularly favourable with spots of rain blotting the windscreen as we drove to St.Marie le Campan at the foot of the great Col and somehow I think Sean was hoping that one good downpour would mean the ride might be cancelled. I once remarked to Sean, on a training day when the clouds hung leaden in the sky, that it was only a spot of rain likely. His reply came back quick as a flash; “I spent 17 yeas as a professional suffering in the rain, why would I want to now go and ride it it for fun?”. If the weather failed to provide an excuse not to ride the coup de grace was revealed when the bicycle and kit promise by Tinazzi emerged from the back of a support van.

And what a bike it was, the very finest racing machinery and clothing available…in 1910. For years I have been trying to get Sean to ride the great retro event l’Eroica in Italy, where you race across the white gravel roads of Tuscany on period bikes and for years he has steadfastly refused. Now, faced with 25 other members of the Velo Club Ancien, he had no choice but to don the woolen jersey and shorts, pull the spare tire over his shoulders, adjust his goggles and face the Tourmalet on one gear.

For the record, he made it easily to the top as you would expect for the rider with the 3rd best palmares of all time and actually quite enjoyed it but what an eye opener on the world of Edwardian racing. My superb Team Wiggle issue Focus Cayo weighs in at about 7.4kg with my own light Shimano DuraAce race wheels on, Sean’s pre First World War machine weighed about 20kg. Added to which there was no super slick 10 speed, just a single freewheel of 24 teeth, driven by a 40 tooth chainring. Braking must have been more of an aspiration than a reality with a single ’spoon’ type rod operated front brake that applied limited pressure to the top of the tire and as for the saddle…well let’s not even go there.

And yet, feeling totally incongruous in my Team Wiggle Tandem kit and modern bike I had the best ride of my year, riding up and down the line as a domestique, fetching and carrying water and food for the group as they displayed just how hard the men of the early tour were.

How has this helped the tandem project? Well physically not much but I am a man who needs motivation, who needs to be in love with the bike and the romance of riding it in order to achieve and you could not in 1910, or now, ride these mountains on these machines without a real fire inside for the joy of the bike and that is utterly inspiring.

If you want to see exactly how much fun we all had away from the Tour for a day, check out the Facebook site run by the German Eurosport commentators; “Radsport on Tour” and go to the video section. A picture can say a thousand words!

Now, do Wiggle do 20kg, 100 year old single speeds?

Ride safe.

All Dressed Up…..and nowhere to go

A quiet word of advice for anyone thinking of contemplating a record attempt…..don’t move house at the same time.

I have to think back a long, long time to remember the same range of emotions washing over me today as I unload another trailer full of bits and pieces, junk, timber, bags,pot plants and boxes.

It’s been apparent for about a week now that the weather would turn against us in our attempt to set a new side to side road record from Pembroke in Wales to Great Yarmouth in East Anglia. Ironically, as the sun blazes down on me here in Shropshire the wind has swung around and freshened into a decent breeze from the north east, making it clear that Team Wiggle Tandem would be riding for at least half of the 387 miles into a 10mph headwind. Knowing that it is unlikely you can attack the record after months and months of training hasn’t made it any easier today, just 24 hours after we made the final decision.

Having to wait on the whims of the weather is an entirely new experience for me. I have never been involved in a project where you are prepared down to the finest details and yet not be able to achieve the goal for which all that fine detail has been put in place for. I guess mountaineers, Antarctic explorers, land speed record holders and the organisers of Wimbledon would nod sagely and say; ‘welcome to the club’ but frankly right now it’s pretty depressing.

Jez has spend the last 10 days here as we waited on the every word of our man at the Met Office but I guess it was inevitable that trying to cram a house move into the few weeks between the Giro and the Tour as well as making the final push to a road record was never going to work. It’s a testament to the patience of the man and his abilities to muck in that TWT HQ is now placed neatly in the new house and barn but come last night, after a marathon work and moving session even the normally tea-total Jez polished off a bottle of red and 2 whiskeys. The last few days have tested our friendship to the limit. I don’t think either of us would like to go through this again in a hurry.

On the positive side it’s been a great 10 days for the team when we have been out on the road with fantastic rides in both the Verenti Dragon Ride where the tandem was a huge hit on the Verenti stand and debuting Rocket 1 in road trim on the Northern Rock Cyclone sportive. We are certainly in better physical shape now than we have ever been the real challenge now is to stay focused for the next 2 months until we get the next opportunity to charge across the breath of Britain.

Until then our heartfelt thanks to everyone involved in Team Wiggle Tandem; Jason Sims, the sponsors, the suppliers, backroom boys, mechanics, soigneurs and of course our long suffering families and friends.

Follow Team Wiggle Tandem on the Wiggle Athlete‟s Diary www.wiggleblog.com

Or at the team‟s website, www.teamwiggletandem.com

Alternatively find the team on Facebook and Twitter

Ride safe

So 3 days of carnage among the twisting and turning roads of the Netherlands comes to an end for the field in the Giro d’Italia. Riders are limping away to lick their wounds on the oddly early rest day that allows for the transfer back to Italy where the race proper will begin.

Sitting in the commentary box over the last 3 days I couldn’t help but wince every time the cascade of riders spilt out across the Dutch roads, thinking to myself; ‘now if that was on a tandem that would REALLY hurt!’

That just sounds plain callous doesn’t it? Of course I don’t mean it to sound that way and of course I care about the fate of the poor skittering, tumbling peloton but it does show how far down the road of total tandem immersion I seem to have travelled.

Is this a good thing I wonder to myself? It’s certainly a road less travelled and continues to engender a few smiles from Sean and raised eyebrows from current professionals but increasingly, they are more fascinated by the whole project than vaguely amused by it. This subtle attitudinal shift has come about not from a sudden upsurge in interest for bikes with 2 riders, but from the fact that Team Wiggle Tandem, record breakers of the future or not, are the real deal; committed, organised, integrated, and most importantly passionate.

Anyone who had spent 3 days with us recently as we travelled between Pembroke and Great Yarmouth meticulously scrutinizing the route which we will take in June would have been privy to that glorious moment when as, ‘Hannibal’ Smith was so fond of saying, ‘a plan comes together’. Mechanic Jeff Winstanley and chief logistics man Stephen Davies were mighty allowing Jez and I to concentrate solely on the micro-adjustments required to make Rocket 1 comfortable for in excess of 17 hours at a stretch. Every junction and traffic light phase, each twist in the road or change of camber was meticulous recorded in 1 mile stretches, amassing a huge volume of information in neat concise OS illustrated text boxes.

Having moved the boulders out of the way by careful analysis of the route, its historical weather patterns for June and the careful finalizing of food strategies, there was a wholesale sweeping up of pebbles in the quest to leave no stone unturned. I never imagined I would spend a day riding backwards and forwards practicing double musette pickups or smooth stop and wheel changes, but it’s happened.

Peta McSharry was on hand to check the progress of my Achilles rehabilitation and fill the Travel Lodge in Yarmouth with the strange and terrifying screams of Jez as she massaged 1000km’s out of his legs and Team Principal Richard Gorman did his usual superb job at making sure everything moved in the right direction smoothly and calmly.

And what of Rocket 1 itself? In a word awesome…Taut, responsive and yet comfortable Dolan and the component suppliers have created a machine that allows us to cruise at 30mph even without the largest Rotor Q-Ring which still needs to be fitted. Look out for a full technical rundown on Rocket 1 and all the other equipment being used by Team Wiggle Tandem on the team website shortly, including the CARO Bioracer skinsuits previously only used by the Dutch and Belgian track squads.

So all the pieces of the jigsaw are on the table and gradually being fitted together. It remains only for me to fight as hard as I can to regain the fitness that was coming so good 2 months ago before a small run in with a Welsh stone wall.

Oh…and by the way….I hear Team Wiggle’s very own John Cannings is going to attack the National 24 hour on a tandem trike.

It must be catching.

Stay Safe

David Harmon

I have to say that up to now just about everything has gone right for Team Wiggle Tandem. Our sponsors and crew have been phenomenally supportive and with a steady diet of training and the honing of our knowledge of records and each other as riders, it couldn’t have been too much more on song.

However neither of us is in the first flush of youth and inevitably injury has come upon us both as we have ramped up the intensity and the hours. In the space of 10 days the collective Team Wiggle Tandem medical sheet has racked up a knee injury, a slightly torn left Achilles and a crash resulting in heavily bruised chest and hip.

Specialist knowledge and treatment is absolutely key to both containment and eventual treatment of any problems that have cropped up during this project and Peta McSharry at Sports Massage Zone in conjunction with coach Colin Bachelor of Total Cycle Coach have swung into action to make sure that with only around a month to go until the Side to Side, everything humanly possible can be done to keep 2 aging bodies together and improving.

A switch to Speedplay pedal systems for Jez seems to have vastly diminished the strain on his right knee. The process of active pedalling analysis included video analysis on a static trainer and slow and careful adjustment of the cleat and stroke pattern until the pain began to easy, fascinating stuff.

The left Achilles tendon tear will prove more problematic but even so I have to say that I am not too disappointed in either what level of fitness I had exhibited last week in Snowdonia with two 8 hour rides and a 10 hour under our belts, even after a heavy crash into a stone wall that left me gasping for air.

Now in Nice on the Endura training camp, there are an awful lot or bike riders kicking their heels as huge storm waves batter the seafront and the walls of the Roche Marina Hotel, making long rides a waste of time for the boys, especially those desperate to avoid any situations that might lead to injury before tomorrow’s Tour du Haut Var race. Jez however, being the ‘wee hard man’ of Islay still put in 5 hours while I could appreciate the interior comforts of the hotel and a little remedial work on the ankle.

So what happens if injuries plague the team right up until the day of an attempt? Well such is the nature of record breaking that if 100% of the circumstances aren’t 100% right on any one day…you just don’t go. I am still slightly envious of the young bucks around us who tomorrow will line up to duel with the cream of French racing but the more professionals we come into contact with as Team Wiggle Tandem the more it’s apparent that there is still huge respect and regard for riders who train and ride for those old and well regarded records and playing the long game is all part of the romance and the science of record breaking.

Keep riding. Be safe

DH

The official launch party for Team Wiggle Tandem took place on Thursday 21st January 2010. The announcement for their series of World Record attempts was released to numerous sponsors and cycling press during a two hour press release at the Charlotte Street Hotel in London. We have an exclusive video report of the presentation for you to watch.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Follow Team Wiggle Tandem on the Wiggle Athlete‟s Diary www.wiggleblog.com, or at the team‟s website, www.teamwiggletandem.com alternatively find the team on Facebook and Twitter

With crunching reality 2010 is upon us and clearly Skadi, the Norse goddess of Winter is no great lover of tandem attempts as she’s made damn sure the country has received the very best arctic weather direct from Scandinavia. There comes a point when you just have to shrug your shoulders and accept that you are just not going to get out training on the roads much..if at all.

Thank goodness then that I am now fully aware of just how precious those training camps coming up in February and March are going to be to the success of Team Wiggle Tandem. They say that every mile on a bike during winter is like depositing a pound in the bank and all I can say is that after my recent ramp test with Marc Laithwaite at The Endurance Coach Ltd in St. Helens the balance sheet is looking a little light.

Dripping sweat and with heaving lungs I packed at just under 380 watts sustained for 2 minutes as my debt of carbon dioxide climbed above my intake of oxygen. Is it enough? I don’t know is the honest answer to that but it would be true to say that another 2 months will see a significant increase in power to weight ratio as kilos come off and miles pile on but what was far more interesting than my current condition was the insights into my metabolism the test highlighted.

Historically I had always trained early morning on just a dual shot of strong coffee and no food for either breakfast or on the ride. I have also always been a big gear masher. Both of these things seem not to be in favour in modern cycling but the fact that even during warm up I was burning almost exclusively carbs and no fats seems to confirm that the espresso preparation technique was probably right, I just turn excess carbs to fat and then don’t burn it off unless I force my body to do so.

Jez and I are also switching over from heart rate zone training to training based on power metres which for those of you who have never used is rather like riding a turbo on the road. If you set a target wattage you stick to it and there are none of those micro-recovery freewheeling moments on the road and that too should see a healthy effect on both weight and strength.

Next up is the launch in London at the end of the month followed immediately by our first dedicated week on the new Dolan Super Tandem. In London at least I’m sure we’ll let our hair down..well I will..even if Richard and Jez can’t!

Dave