We wanted to give you a flavour of what to Expect in The Ride and the best way to do that is to publish some of our fantastic articles here online, so read on and when you're done we feel sure you'll want to buy The Ride for lots more of the same (and lots more of not the same at all).
Remembering back to when I first started racing I'd just ride for fun and strangely I probably spent more time on my bike then than I do now as a fully fledged pro. I've never gone out there and said I am going to win a world title or a world cup or even a national race for that matter, I just enjoyed racing and being on my bike. The results just came. People may say that's rubbish but that's how it was. I never wanted anything out of bikes until I actually did win a few good races. The winning was all just part of it. Don't get me wrong though, once I got used to winning, nothing else really mattered. I would get pissed off with a second. I believe this sport moulded me into a winner. I never expected a thing, and I think that means those wins mean more to me.
The stillness inside a large group of cyclists is fascinating. To be part of a large body in movement but more or less unmoving relative to those around you is hypnotic. Like a flock of birds or a swarm of bees, the peloton exhibits unity of action and single-mindedness; only the whole is appreciable to the observer while its individuals blur and coalesce. To belong to that animate mass, to feel part of something faster and larger than oneself is one element of the appeal of the sport. There is also silence. The mesmerising whirr and the clicks and the occasional shouts are contained, isolated from the muteness outside and beyond the group. Turn your head to look around and suddenly the wind isn't rushing into your ears. The hushed world slips by.
I see my dad as I crest the brow of the pass. He's bent double, pushing into the wind on the short walk from the car to the pub. The wind is strong, gusting 60mph, maybe 70mph – strong enough to stop me dead in my tracks on the last corner before the summit, forcing me to unclip my foot from the pedal to avoid toppling over. Thankfully it's just coming up to 11am and the pub at the top of the Kirkstone Pass is about to open. The landlord says the view is beautiful, but it's invisible through the low cloud and driving horizontal rain. We're in the Lake District in the last week of June, on day six of my ride from Land's End to John O'Groats. I'm riding on my own, with my dad driving the support car.
Wallowing in a drowsy slumber, I'm suddenly shocked from sleep by a plaintive cry from the next room.
Jerked awake, heart racing, I peer blearily at my watch: 5.58am. Two minutes before the alarm was due.
I drag myself away from the magnetic pull of the duvet and hurry into Felix's room to do the dutiful father routine. With bottle plugged securely into child I sit in the cosy darkness of his room and wait for him to drift back into milk-filled sleep. I stay like this for a while before depositing him back in his cot.
After the slow, careful movements of moments...
My bike died yesterday. Or maybe not
A few days ago I noticed a creaking sound when I pedalled, but it wasn't coming from the pedals. It seemed to be caused by some motion when I was on the saddle, so I assumed the seat post had become dry and crusty - that makes bikes creak. So when I got home, I relubed the post. I also took apart and reassembled the bottom bracket cartridge, just for good measure.
But riding to work yesterday, the creaking sound was still there, perhaps even worse. At Lex and 60th, I stopped at a red light and examined the frame. There, like a chasm in front of me, I saw a crack...
If you'd asked me four or five days before the final stage, I'd have said: "I don't think I have much of a chance." Then three days before the last time trial, I won the stage, and my legs were fresh again.
A couple of nights before, I started thinking seriously about the time trial: I was considering using triathlon bars but it was a whim, not part of a grand plan. I'd done no studies on them, just picked them up.
I also thought about the time trial I had done against Laurent Fignon in the Giro d'Italia earlier that year. It was 50-plus kilometres but I took a minute and 21 seconds out of him. It gave me the confidence the day before to start calculating how many seconds per kilometre I could claw back...
