Earlier this month, Graeme Obree was at Look Mum No Hands! for the London launch of The Obree Way, a training manual for cyclists.
Obree is a two time individual pursuit world champion, has twice broken the world hour record and is multiple winner of British national time trial championships. He is renowned not just for his athletic prowess but for his technical innovation on the bike and with the bike itself. His autobiography, The Flying Scotsman, was made into a major feature film. At 45 he is still on the bike and currently planning an attempt on the world land speed record for a human powered vehicle.
In a wide ranging conversation with Jack Thurston, presenter of The Bike Show, Obree talks about his own life as an elite athlete, his approach to training and his enduring love of just riding a bike.
“It’s a sport, it’s a pastime and it’s a form of transport. You don’t football down to the shops.”
Graeme Obree, 19 January 2012.
Channel 4 produced an excellent documentary about the rivalry between Graeme Obree and Chris Boardman. It’s on YouTube in four parts.
In 1892 a young accountant from t, USA, quit his job and set off to cycle solo around the world. Frank Lenz rode a Rover Safety Bicycle, a revolutionary new design that would soon consign the traditional high wheeler – or penny farthing – to obscurity. It was the birth of the bicycle as we know it today. And Lenz is one of the pioneers of cycle touring. Cycling historian David Herlihy’s latest book tells the story of his courageous, extraordinary and ultimately ill-fated journey.
Jack travels over the Yorkshire moors to Nelson, Lancashire to visit one of the oldest and most venerable companies in British cycling. Cotton mill worker Wilf Carradice began producing his indestructible canvas saddlebags in the 1930s and in 2011 sales are booming. Owner and MD David Chadwick tells the story of a family business and we get a tour of the factory. For more history of Carradice, there is a good article over at Classic Lightweights.
Jen meets Tim Jacques, one of the film-makers at this year’s Bicycle Film Festival, whose film “Peace and Lovely Tailoring” combines Rastafari, cycling and tweed clothing – a surefire winner here at The Bike Show. And we hear from Patrick Morgan, a Kiwi over in Europe on a fact-finding mission about cycle training and campaigning. In a podcast extra this week, Jack chats with Brendt Barbur, founder of the Bicycle Film Festival, about cycling in London and New York and why 2012 will be all about women in cycling.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, bodybuilder, film star and former governor of California, as described by Michael Lewis in a Vanity Fair feature on America’s municipal debt crisis. It’s hard not to like his style.
“He turned up right on time, driving a black Cadillac S.U.V. with a handful of crappy old jalopy bikes racked to the back. I wore the closest I could find to actual bicycle gear; he wore a green fleece, shorts, and soft beige slipper-like shoes that suggested both a surprising indifference to his own appearance and a security in his own manhood. His hair was still vaguely in a shape left by a pillow, and his eyelids drooped, though he swore he’d been up for an hour and a half reading newspapers. After reading the newspapers, this is what the former governor of California often does: rides his bike for cardio, then hits the weight room.
He hauls a bike off the back of the car, hops on, and takes off down an already busy Ocean Avenue. He wears no bike helmet, runs red lights, and rips past do not enter signs without seeming to notice them and up one-way streets the wrong way. When he wants to cross three lanes of fast traffic he doesn’t so much as glance over his shoulder but just sticks out his hand and follows it, assuming that whatever is behind him will stop. His bike has at least 10 speeds, but he has just 2: zero and pedaling as fast as he can. Inside half a mile he’s moving fast enough that wind-induced tears course down his cheeks.”
In the studio is Bike Show regular ‘Buffalo’ Bill Chidley, who brings news of London’s burgeoning bicycle polo scene (note imminent rebranding as ‘urban bike hammer ball’). The London Open 2011 is on 30-31st July. Steve Evans, a bicycling paramedic from the Liverpool Century RC, gives some excellent practical advice on how to provide immediate post-collision assistance to an injured cyclist. Steve’s free first aid guide for cyclists is available from the Rough Stuff Fellowship. Also featured is long distance cyclist and bearded wonder James Bowthorpe, around 18 hours into his 24 hour non-stop bicycle ride in a shop window. Phew!
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