Call me a Luddite, (call me Araldite if it helps) but I hold little truck with new-fangled electronic gears and hydraulic brakes for road bikes. Before somebody accuses me of getting irate at the unfortunate demise of rod brakes and cotter pins, I'm not against new technology filtering in to cycling, I mean, I'm not the UCI or anything.

However, I would prefer it if the new ideas and equipment actually worked, or in case of hydraulic rim brakes, didn't work, before they were attached to peoples bicycles. The results of my hastily assembled flimsy research have thrown up a couple observations I’d like to share with you. Thus, and quite literally, viz…

Riding in Majorca this year we came across a young German feller standing at the side of the road with a grim look of consternation on his face and a couple of dents in his virtual Teutonic armour. He was holding a very nice looking expensive carbon bike with carbon wheels on carbon hubs, carbon tyres and a carbon saddle with carbon sprinkles. Despite all this carboness, neither he nor the bike where moving anywhere. We gathered he was testing the proto-type ‘Kaput Shizer’ version of Shimano’s Di2 Dura Ace groupset and, for reasons unknown, it has gone into error mode. We asked if we could do anything to help, he looked wistfully at his broken bike like he was witnessing the last moments of life of his faithful Alsatian dog and said ‘there is nothing anybody can do now’. Thankfully, his trainer (in a team car) and team mates appeared to rescue him. Being British, we were slightly wary of a load of mechanised Germans in uniform swarming over a foreign mountain so we moved on.  

A day later, rolling gently down the Coll de Soller (I won’t call in descending, it wouldn’t be fair) we came across another rider carrying his bike UP the mountain. Same problem but no team car this time. Heaven only knows what he was going to do when he got to the top, there’s nothing there other than a lovely view. Presumably he was going to carry it down the other side.

Campagnolo electronic system will work better of course. Anybody who has ever owned products manufactured by Alfa Romeo, Moto Morini, Moto Guzzi  or Fiat will testify to the reliability of Italian electronics. In the rain.  

I foresee different problems on a comparable scale to Die2 and EPS with hydraulic disc and rim brakes for road bikes so big thanks to SRAM for coming up with this particular piece of genius level thinking. Never, not once, ever, have I finished either a training ride or a race and had somebody tell me the whole experience would have been improved if they could lock their wheels up with just the touch of a finger. Never. Ever.

One of the things that makes bunch riding safe(ish) is that nobody can slow down quicker than anybody else. On the track (no brakes) everybody has to use their legs to slow down, on the road, rim brakes are capable of scrubbing off enough speed but pretty much everybody has the same stopping power. Try it, put one guy on a track with brakes and see if you fancy riding in the bunch with him. Alternatively, put one nicely inexperience rider in the local road race league with hydraulic brakes and ride behind him. In the wet. Go on, dare ya. You’d better just hope he’s riding with an electronic groupset and his battery has gone flat.  

I suspect much of my bitterness comes from resisting the temptation to go for Campagnolo 11 speed a few years ago as it would have meant I’d have 8,9,10 AND 11 speed non compatible componentry. I made the sensible decision to go for SRAM/Shimano 10 speed on everything. So now I look like a complete chump so thank you, thanks a lot.

I know component manufacturers have to come up with new shit to flog us but it has to make sense, right? What’s next? Servo assisted remote controlled braking and gear shifting? Now that does sounds like fun.

Rich Smith is bitter, twisted and old. He is also the author of the potential No1. best seller ReCycled. Not available in good book stores but definitely available via Amazon for a quid or so...     

Always a pleasure to see the Great Britain Transplant Cycling Team come together for a training session. It contains some remarkable people so there is always a bit of a buzz around it. Yesterday at Stourport cycling circuit we had riders come from as far afield as Northern Ireland, Darlington, Portsmouth and Luton to ride.



The full cycling team travelling to South Africa to compete in the World Transplant Games in Durban, South Africa this July will be 13 strong – for the stato’s amongst you that’s 4 livers, 7 kidneys, 1 heart and 1 bone marrow transplant. 11 of the 13 made it to Stourport. It’s the biggest team we have managed to take to a World Games and it would have been bigger had funds allowed. All of the riders are self-funded – we have to raise the £3000 or so it costs each of us to get to the games individually and this can be a real push with family and other commitments. We’re not complaining, we've been given a second chance at life and this is our chance to do something to raise awareness for a cause that is close to our hearts (and livers and kidneys – see what I did there? )

We are also lucky to be supported by friends and fellow riders who help us out at the sessions. We mix some skilful and fearless youth, junior and senior riders into the Tx team and throw them around some 180 degree hairpins and see what comes out the other side. I'm polarising for effect of course, we had two Level 3 British Cycling coaches and a number of trainee coaches there for the day - we're starting off from a pretty well established skill base and improving riders’ technique by demonstration and practice, practice, practice. The simple truth is, the races at Worlds levels are separated by single seconds and tyre widths – if you can get the power down a fraction of a second earlier out of a corner, it will make the difference between a podium position and a top 10. Frankly we want podiums – preferably top step – so we train and practice.

There’re more women than men in the team for the first time ever. Over the last two years we've gone from core skills like getting on and off a bike, drinking and eating on the move to cornering in formation at race speed with some of the best bike handlers I know – shoulder to shoulder, big smiles and great satisfaction at new levels and skill and confidence.

Huge thanks to Ron, Craig and Jess Ansell, the Brothers Perry (Mick and Dave) and Will, plus Charlie Smith of the Wolverhamption Wheelers and Wrekinsport’s Del Jones for their continued invaluable help and support during the day.      

Stay tuned for exciting news about new sponsors and new kit… more, oh so much more, later… 

…So there I was, just riding along, you know, tapping out a steady pace sitting on the front of the bunch next to my mate Del, warm in the pale Majorcan spring sunshine heading out towards Orient – my favourite bike ride, possibly of all time…

A week or two in Majorca in March or April is not an unusual thing for me to do but it’s a treat for sure. It allows one to live like a pro might for a couple of weeks. Eat, sleep, ride, and repeat. You can empty your mind of everyday nonsense, the stresses and strains that come with modern life, and just focus on turning your legs round. With the knowledge that you don’t have to rush back to work, or to cut lawns, or wash clothes and the like, comes a cathartic and Zen like experience.

It’s my happy place, my Vanilla Sky moment. If I was going to be stuck on a never ending visual tape loop in my head I would want it to be of me tapping out the miles just like this on a bike, in the sunshine, with my mates. The 2 hours and 14 minutes it took to cover the 32.5 miles from Puerto Pollenca to Bunyola , the little town before the climb to Orient , flew by. Trance like, happy.  

I could hear the little group of riders behind us chatting and joking. It gave me and Del the opportunity to enquire if all was well in the cheap seats and if the weather was okay back there, but truth be told we didn’t want anybody to come through to the front. We’d get bragging/joking rights that evening about how nobody else wanted to put their nose into the wind; we could express mock surprise that certain riders had been with us during the day because we’d not seen them during the ride. Roles would be reversed on other days and bragging rights would be swapped but today it was our turn and it felt right.

It all looked a bit different for me from the preceding November when doctors were putting tubes with lights on down my throat to try to find where all the blood and iron that should have been in my veins had gone. Over winter I’d been pretty much unable to ride because, without going into too much unnecessary detail, Severn Trent were processing my red blood cells when it should have been my lungs and muscles. A few miles at very modest pace was all I could manage before being exhausted.   

The doctors found some holes where I’d been leaking, plugged them and started feeding me iron to cure the resulting anaemia. You can’t ride a bike fast without a healthy blood count; ask Lance if you don’t believe me.  This kind of thing comes with the territory of being a liver transplant recipient of 20 years vintage. Frankly, transplant or no transplant, it can also come as fact of life of being a 45 year old man with a stressful job too. Duodenal ulcers aren’t very romantic as far as injuries and illnesses go are they?

That I am lucky enough to be here to even ride a bike 20 years after a liver transplant adds a little poignancy to every pedal stroke and this day, on my favourite ride, I felt particularly lucky – blessed even. First, behind me, in the cheap seats, were some of my Wrekinsport club mates – friends, people I like and trust, people I chose to spend precious time with on the bike. Secondly, my son Charlie, a decent rider and decent bloke who did another chunk of growing up in the company of trusted friends during his week in Majorca. Thirdly, my friend and GB Transplant Team mate Ottilie Quince – somebody I have seen go from behind a sportswoman with a bike to a fully fledged cyclist over the last few years – something she shares with many of her GB Tx team mates. I flatter myself by claiming, as her coach, I have played a modest role in her being the current British, European and World Tx cycling champion in both road race and time trial disciplines. OF course, she's the one that pushes the pedals, right? 

I won’t attempt to describe the view of the Tramuntana Mountains and the valley you get whilst descending from Orient; I wouldn’t be able to do it justice. It’s awe-inspiring and breathtakingly beautiful. I would strongly recommend you go see it on a bike so you can really feel it too.

To cement our bragging rights, Del and I sat on the front for the 35 miles back to Puerto Pollenca. I felt privileged to be able to do it and, more to the point, privileged to be able to do it in such company. What a fantastic day…