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24 hours of madness, 23 kilos of Boris Bike, 22 seconds to spare.
Kudos to Rob Holden and his mates for pulling off this crazy 24 hour cycling challenge:- Rent 23 kilos of Boris Bike, drive over to the base of Mont Ventoux, ride the sled / bike up the fearsome beast of Provence and return back to London all within 24 hours to dock the bike in sufficient time to avoid the £150 non-return fine.
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Wiggo: “You know you’ve made it when they put your name on a bottle!”
Bradley Wiggins chats with Stokey locals about the highs and lows of bike racing at the start of the 5th Stage of the 2012 ‘Tour of Britain’:
Up close and personal with Wiggo and Cav!
Photos of Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish taken at the start of Stage 5 of the Tour of Britain; a 90 mile race starting and ending (!) in Stoke-on-Trent.
Cav arrives at the start line to wild applause from the Stokey crowd:
“To be a cyclist is to be a student of pain… at cycling’s core lies pain, hard and bitter as the pit inside a juicy peach. If you never confront pain, you’re missing the essence of the sport. Without pain there’s no adversity. Without adversity, no challenge. Without challenge, no improvement. No improvement, no sense of accomplishment and no deep-down joy. Might as well be playing Tiddly-Winks” – Scott Martin
As Scott Martin so eloquently puts it, pain is a key ingredient of cycling. Most cyclists will admit to an amount of masochism. Most professional cyclists will see it as a requisite to simply doing their job. Even a fairly lazy occasional touring cyclist as myself would admit that when it comes to biking, where’s there’s pain there’s pleasure.
Heading off to Provence on Sunday to hopefully climb the Ventoux; lashings of pain are therefore thankfully guaranteed.
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A Tale of Two Tommy’s: Part 2
After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, the ‘TommyGodwin.com‘ website is now up and running. There’s still a lot of work to do, but I hope that it’s an enjoyable and informative site to visit.
With regards to the other Tommy (Simpson), plans to cycle the ‘Ventoux’ were laid a few weeks ago – and look very likely to hatch shortly. In the 3rd week of April, plans are afoot to fly and then drive down to ‘Orange’ in Southern France. From there, guru (AKA ‘Pete the mentalist’ , AKA ‘Dad’) and I plan to have 3-4 days cycling in Provence, culminating in a climb of the ‘Ventoux.
Watch this space.
A Tale of Two Tommy’s
Back in Stoke for the Christmas holidays, and it’s a good opportunity to undertake a pilgrimage I’ve been meaning to do for ages; screwed to a brick pillar of a most unattractive building in Stoke-on-Trent, is an unassuming small brass plaque that tells the athletic tale of the (20th) century.
In 1939, Tommy Godwin cycled 75, 065 miles.
No – you didn’t misread that number and no, I haven’t mistyped or misquoted the amount.
Once again: 75, 065 miles – or an absolutely incredible average of 205.66 miles per day.
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