Four of ‘us’, me, Melissa Slaney, Ottilie Quince and John Leveson fly to Zagreb on the 17th August to represent Great Britain in the 7th European Transplant Games in Croatia. When I say ‘us’ I mean the rare breed of cyclist that’s had a life supporting organ transplant. 3 kidneys and one liver – have a guess which one is which if you like, not that it really matters!

I’m fortunate enough to coach the GB Tx cycling team and the last few years has seen some real positive growth – particularly with the women. We started off a few years ago with riders ‘coming over’ from other sports – swimming, football, table tennis, and we did the whole ‘Level 2’ Road and time trial coaching process of learning basic skills – group riding around cones in the car park, following  a wheel, through and off, pacing, cornering etc. All of the stuff you need to get nailed down before you can become a bike racer. It’s exactly the same British Cycling led process that the amazing Rebecca Romero went through when see converted from rowing to cycling – winning Olympic medals in both disciplines.

A couple of years later my riders are sending me heart race traces and times for their club 10’s and asking detailed and pertinent questions about the training I am asking them to do. This is just how the coaching process should work. Of course, this comes after the preparation of a training camp in Majorca in the spring of 2011, sessions at the track in Wolverhampton and racing internationally (Sweden) and domestically for their home clubs.  

Although we are on a journey to the World Games in South Africa in 2012, the European Games are important in their own right. They exist to promote understanding of transplantation and organ donation and we compete with that in the forefront of our minds. We also compete in the knowledge the best way of saying thanks to out donors is to make sure we bring back some medals from Zagreb and, hopefully, a couple of European champions.  

We are of course inspired by the success of British cyclists in the Tour and the Olympics and we hope to emulate a little of their success. We’d also like to be financially supported in the same way! My riders are all self-funded; we get no support other than what we can find for ourselves which is increasingly tough in these financially difficult times. Rather than a full Sky sponsorship package, we’d settle for the equivalent of a monthly subscription to Sky Sports!   

I’ll update on the results…

Rich Smith is a Level 3 British Cycling qualified coach, the current British, European and World Transplant Cycling champion and the author of ‘ReCycled, a funny book about cycling and less important things like life and death. 

Have you ever thought about cycling as a spectator sport? I don’t mean sitting on the sofa watching in on Eurosport (although that is probably the best way) I mean in the live, visceral, up in your grill kinda way – in the fresh air. In many ways it’s difficult not to think about cycling as a spectator sport following the men’s Olympic Road Race today where 1000’s lined the route and watched the finish from the stands.

There are two obvious end of the spectrum for the spectator – either watching professional riders or having a gander at amateur racing but there is a third option that is little considered. Let’s deal with the two principal ones first.

You can (and should) watch professional cycling in a number of ways. If you are a fan of the big tours, you can go and stand on a corner in the Alps or Pyrenees and watch your heroes ride past you. You can run alongside them drunk in flip flops with your shirt off if you really want to. I mean, don’t, obviously because you’ll look like a complete pillock, but you can if you want to.

Alternatively, you can watch cycling at a velodrome. This is easier – you get a seat, toilets and, if you go to Manchester, access to a guy who will make you a chocolate and banana crepe so good you’ll forget you’re a cyclist anyway. The big advantage here is you get to see the riders at least once every 250 meters and you won’t get sunburned or freezing cold. Unless you’re at Newport, then you will get freezing cold. And no crepes.

The audience for amateur racing is mainly restricted to parents (forced by guilt), children (forced by parents), aspiring photographers (forced by a desire to stop doing their proper jobs and become cycling photographer) partners (forced by partners) and officials (forced and/or bribed by riders and club mates). Amateur racing is for the enjoyment (I use the word loosely) of the competitors – it shouldn’t be watched really. It’s embarrassing - well, it is the way I do it – nobody needs to see me do a 25 min 10 mile TT in a pointy hat and tight Lycra.

The third and least considered option for spectating at a bike race could be seen today in the Olympics where the riders representing the rest of the world spectated and got a cracking view of Team GB as they were dragged along in their slipstream. I’m surprised they didn’t get out cards or board games to keep them entertained for a few hours.  Great free seats though and cheaper than an open top bus tour through the capital.

This happens in amateur racing to – a guy rode pass me this week on the way back to HQ after a handicapped road race event and told me how strongly I’d been riding (he must have been after something). It was the first time I’d seen him all evening – he’d be spectating from behind. Much like their roadside counterparts, these spectators also take it upon themselves to offer advice and encouragement to the riders up front – often when they feel they are not working hard enough or doing enough to help them win the race. Bless them.

One guy who was riding in my group was kind enough to tell me how fat he thought I was - he’s right, I am a fat bastard -but at least this time I had the presence of mind to mention that from his position he would have been able to give a physiological assessment of all the riders in the bunch. Particularly the size of their arses….

Rich Smith is a Level 3 British Cycling qualified coach, the current British, European and World Transplant Cycling champion and the author of ‘ReCycled, a funny book about cycling and less important things like life and death.

Difficult to countenance but last night's race was the last of the 2012 SSSCCRRL (we've got to find a snappier name). Two questions really, where did all the time go and what the heck was that weather all about? I've been riding in the league since 1999 if memory serves me well and I can never remember having so many wet races but hey, that's road racing in Great Britain. By pleasant contrast, last night's race was held in balmy conditions. 

Pete Biddle was the long time commissaire to the league (and to many other local races) he also served on the British Cycling West Midlands regional board. He was a familiar figure to those of us who have been around for a few years and the news of his sudden death just after Christmas last year came as a terrible shock to us all. His gentle pre-race briefings ('look after each other lads, it's not the World Championships') were always a welcome 'grace' before the pain began. Sadly missed. The last race of the league is now held in his honour and a trophy given to the winner in his name.

Pete was keen on the league developing rider's fitness and skills. Last evening's race developed me from being a functioning human being to a shambling hollow shell of man with the appearance of somebody who had taken up bear wrestling. However, this paled into insignificance next to a big young chap who'd entered his first (and possibly last) road race. He started off kinda blue skinned/raving ginger and with the heat and the amount of pollen in the air, he finished off looking like he'd eaten the wrong sweet during a visit to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. I swear his head had doubled in size and turned purple.

As usual, there was much riding around in large circles (a pattern is developing I know) much of it at speeds I could pretty much only hang on to including the traditional 40 mph descent past the golf club. It was during one of these 'The Gos' decided to stick it in the gutter on the wrong side of road and get to the front of the bunch. Unfortunately there was an enormous fully laden cattle lorry coming the other way. I was honestly terrified and feared for the worse as a collision would have caused thousands of pounds worth of damage to the lorry and put the animals at risk - it might have slowed Gos down a little too.

Following a brief interlude sitting behind a combine harvester (quite literally 'grass roots' cycling) Group 3 got hold of G2 after a couple of laps only to be joined shortly after by the combined G4 and scratch. Chasing Group 1 down has been getting harder all year and on the penultimate lap they still had a 1min 30 on the chasing group. The last 'ascent' of the A34 saw a number of riders shelled out and (it was getting kinda blurry by then) I think we made contact with G1 with half a lap to go.

The traditional bunch gallop ensued to be won by Matt Bonehill of Stafford Roads closely followed by Chris Allcott (Freds) Andy 'Tamps' Tamplin (Wrekinsport) and Adam Howells (Freds). Andy's first season of road racing has been a good one since he realised that riding around on your own with a power meter strapped to your forehead is no way to behave. Adam Howells has always been a classy rider and is just starting to show some of the form he's always had in him. Great stuff.

It was a great shame Ben Lawrence wasn't racing this evening because he would have definitely won (or crashed) this one (is that ok Ben?)

Penkridge Cricket Club did is proud again by hosting the end of series BBQ and this concluded another excellent year for the league. Rubbish weather? Yeah, definitely. Dampened spirits? Definitely not. Thanks to the organisors again (these things would happened without the Jacksons, Goring, Lines etc of this world) and thanks to the Asst Commisaires who are sharing the burden.

Looking forward to next year already.

 

There will be a million people writing about cycling and the Tour this morning and quite right too. The success of Team Sky, Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish is fantastic and will be a massive boost to British Cycling and british cycling. As much I will add my congratulations, I won’t try too hard to be the 1,000,001st. I’ll leave that to knowledgeable cycling fans like Rio Ferdinand and David Cameron.    

I loved watching the Tour this year for obvious reasons but was frankly disgusted at the lack of real fight shown by the riders.

 ‘Really? what, the daily pushing and shoving to get to the front of the peloton you mean’? Nope. ‘Ah… the suicidal lone attack in the mountains, the 140km lone break away to steal the yellow jersey for a day?’ Ermmm no, simpler than that. I mean a good old fashion punch up followed by a roll-a-round wrestling match on the car park outside the team hotel.

Other than Tyler Farrar having a bit of a shout in a team bus, I didn’t see anybody get brained with a front wheel a la Carlos Barredo in the 2010 Tour. And there’s nowt worse than getting Kysrium Super Light up the bracket when you least expect it eh?   

Nothing is more unedifying or amusing that seeing cyclists fight. Particularly professional riders as in my estimation they’re the least well equipped human beings to engage in a spot of arbitrary pugilism for the following reasons.

1.       T – Rex arms. Most decent cyclists have weedy upper bodies and arms so thin it’s a constant surprise they can lift anything as heavy as an iPhone. Can you imagine just how pathetic an arm wrestling completion between, say, Frank Schleck and Ryder Hesjedal would be? Both great cyclists but, I reckon, crap arm wrestlers.

2.       By the time a professional cyclist is sufficiently enraged to try to punch someone’s lights out they have probably been riding for 6 hours and they are so tired they make ‘Weed’ from Bill and Ben look like Mr Universe.

3.       Walking in cleats is neigh on impossible when calm and stable, getting sufficient purchase on the ground to swing a hay maker and remain standing whilst tired and enraged is just not feasible. The most likely outcome being an impromptu pirouette followed by an uncontrolled arm flapping high speed run down the nearest coll.  

Most pro’s quite rightly realise they are unlikely to get far with fisticuffs and so resort to other methods to inflict pain and damage (commonly water bottles and insults) but I do wish they would try a little harder. Perhaps if the organisers introduced a real ‘combativity’ prize for the rider who has scored the most direct hits?     

You can usually rely on Bernard Hainault to blob somebody in the face or drop kick an over enthusiastic fan in to the back end of next week as part of awards ceremony at the end of the stage but I can’t even recall ‘The Badger’ managing to land one this year.

Anybody see a punch up I missed?

Rich Smith is the author of ReCycled. A funny book about cycling and other less important things like life and death.   Buy it via Amazon and he promises not to write anything else. 

When I first started  following the major cycling tours I was faced with trying to decipher the dynamics of the peleton – how the teams, the groups, the temporary alliances, the groups within teams, the individual riders et al interacted with each other to create the race. Leaving aside the races within the race for the moment (why complicate it further?) it was quickly apparent whilst this was very much a team sport, the teams operated differently to anything I’d seen before. It was also different from a fans perspective and this is what interests me the most right now (bear with me….)

How many of us ‘support’ cycling teams? You know, as you would with a football team in the vein of ‘my team are the best and I’ll bite your ear off if you say otherwise’. Certainly in the past this was a very rare thing – people ‘followed’ the sport and idolised individual riders irrespective of what team they rode for. I was (well, still am) a big fan of Chris Boardman: mainly because he was the one of the few English speaking riders at the time but I’d struggle to recall many of the other GAN riders of that period. I had a little GAN casquette, but I had it because Boardman rode for them rather than in support of the whole team.   

My perception is that this has changed recently. I ‘liked’ a Facebook page for Team Sky a couple of years back and then ‘unliked’ it pretty quickly because of the awful vitriol that was pasted on it. Somebody would question the performance or selection of a rider and then be told ‘this is a fan page, if you’re not a fan then push off’ only with more expletives.  My epiphany came when somebody claiming to be British Army sniper threatened to shoot somebody questioning a riders performance. Harsh I thought. Every now and again a wife or partner of one of the riders would appear and unleash hell as well. Actually on reflection maybe I should re ‘like’ it … J

So, for the time being, I’m going to carry on following the sport and looking out for individual riders that grab my imagination. Having said that, the prospect of seeing a group of Astana fans take on a load of half cut Dutch Rabobank fans on the Alpe d’Huez whilst chanting ‘you’re going home in a Kazakhstani ambulance’ is too tempting for words isn’t it…?

Rich Smith is the author of ReCycled. An extraordinarily funny book about cycling and other less important things like life and death.   

I’m supremely unqualified to talk about drugs in sport – so I’ll begin. You see, as a transplant patient, I take drugs every day to keep me alive – they stop my body from rejecting the new liver that’s has keep me happy, healthy and riding a bike for the last 20 years.

I race with these drugs inside me. The drugs I take are not on the WADA (and consequently the UCI or British Cycling) banned list but some of my fellow cycling transplant recipients have to take steroids and EPO for legitimate medical reasons, like stopping them from dying. That sounds fair enough doesn’t it?

Nevertheless, despite transplant cycling being the only cycling event where if you‘re found negative for drugs you are immediately disqualified I remain a bemused bystander when it comes to performance enhancing drugs (PED). Solving the drugs problem in professional cycling makes resolving the Middle East crisis look like child’s play.

However, we have to begin somewhere so, as a starter, let’s take a look at who knows what.

1.       I’ve already said I’m no expert, but I know who is currently taking and who has taken PEDs in the past.

2.       You’re no expert either but you know who’s at it too although our lists won’t match.

3.       The Director Sportives in the pro teams might know which riders in other teams are taking drugs but can categorically assure you no rider in their team is: until they are caught.

4.       All team owners, managers and DS’s who have been busted for taking drugs in the past are now committed to a drugs free sport and transparency unless somebody asks to see any information.

5.       Cycling journalists sometimes know who is taking what but some of the riders are their mates so they won’t dob them in until after they are busted.

6.       Cyclists who take drugs obviously have a good idea they are taking drugs but couldn’t say if their roommate for the last 10 years did although they might suddenly remember when they’ve retired and need to write a book or are having a subpoena waved in their face.

7.       The UCI don’t know anything about anything. Or anybody. Or anybody that knows anything about anybody or anything.

8.       The French know they are clean and that’s why everybody else is faster.

9.       Everybody knows Lance is innocent. Or guilty. Or neither.

10.   We ALL know Edita Rumsas, the wife of the rider placed 3rd in the 2002 Tour who was discovered carrying corticoids, erythropoietin, testosterone, growth hormones and anabolic steroids in her car was simply, as she claimed, transporting them for her 83 year old sick aunt. We also know that the comment ‘if her aunt had taken all of these, she would have got a podium in the Tour as well’ if one of the funniest comments ever made by a copper about drugs.  

Rich Smith is the author of ReCycled – a funny book about cycling that you should buy through Amazon without further delay via this link.  http://www.amazon.co.uk/ReCycled-Richard-Smith/dp/1781764891/ref=sr_1_1_title_1_pap?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342594266&sr=1-1 

The Tour has been compulsive viewing again this year - watching the stages is a real treat when time allows it but the pre and post stage interviews with the team managers and D.S’s have been fascinating for me, particularly the ones with Dave Brailsford, the Team Sky supremo.

Back in 2010, when my mid-life crisis was kicking in I was looking for a change in career I applied for a job as Olympic Programme Manager with British Cycling, based up at the velodrome in Manchester. OK, so I hadn’t worked out how I was going to get there from Bridgnorth everyday but that seemed like a secondary consideration for a chance at a job like that and, anyway, what was the chance of actually getting it?

Much to my delight, I was shortlisted (6 of us from 300…Ooooo get me) and I was interviewed by Dave Brailsford, the Performance Director, Ian Drake, the CEO of British Cycling and Steve Peters, the influential psychiatrist and author. These three luminaries form the core of British Cycling's senior management team, have been largely responsible for directing it to such massive success and are, it’s fair to say, a challenging interview panel. 

We sat in a square. Drake in front of me, Brailsford on the right and Peters on the left. It felt like the attack of the raptors in Jurassic Park. The questions moved from one side of the room to the other pretty rapidly. It was an exhausting process but I like that kind of thing to be honest. Brailsford was hugely engaging and really easy to talk to, Drake played everything with a straight bat and I couldn’t tell whether he liked me or not. Peter’s was terrifying – I felt like he could see directly in to my soul and, if it was necessary, would happily perform surgery on me without anaesthetic.    

As it turned out, they wanted a budget controller and project manager (I can do that) they didn’t want a strategist (I’m better at that) and they certainly didn’t want a ‘fan’ (bugger). I didn’t get the job and you don’t get any points for 2nd place here, but I really enjoyed the experience.

I thought about the ‘fan’ thing later on. They were right. If Chris Boardman had said something like ‘we need these carbon handlebars, they’re £20k per set, give me the money please’ I was less likely to question the cost and the rationale behind the purchase and more likely to say.

1.       Bloody hell, it’s Chris Boardman, can you sign my Gan jersey please?

2.       What other colours do the bars come in?

3.       Is one set of bars enough?

4.       Can I come with you to get them?  

See, another wise decision by the people behind the success of British Cycling and Team Sky.

Rich Smith is the author of ReCycled – a funny book about cycling that you should buy through Amazon without further delay.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/ReCycled-Richard-Smith/dp/1781764891/ref=sr_1_1_title_1_pap?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342432937&sr=1-1 

So, the dust has settled after the Shropshire Hills Sportive on July 1st. 300 riders turned up and supported our event and frankly we are stoked they did. We (John, Andy and I) started the planning of the event shortly after the 1st Shropshire Hills on 3rd July 2011 but the last couple of weeks are always a logistical rush. You can plan buying 10 litres of milk for tea and coffee but you can’t actually do it until the Friday before and 35kgs bananas don’t respond well to being in a garage for a week!

My great mate, Barry Goodyear, sacrificed his day to help me sign the 100 mile route. It was a long wet Saturday but we spent most of it laughing like drains. We worked hard and by the end of it we were very wet and really hungry. Properly hungry. My other half Helen was cooking for us that evening and his comment ‘I really hope it’s salad’ had me doubled over for 10 minutes.

It dawned on me a lot the of stress was down to knowing you guys, the riders, where paying hard earned money to ride and our responsibility was to make sure you got value for money on the day. Your feedback tells us you had a good day and we got most things right. But (there’s always a ‘but’ isn’t there?) there are things we can do to improve and we’ll work on those for next year.

2013 will be the 3rd year for the Shropshire Hills and we are determined the first Sunday in July will become an established date in the cycling calendar. We’re so lucky with the canvass we get to work with: Bridgnorth High Street is a great place to start and finish and then the Clee, Long Mynd, Corvedale … the list goes on. Just paint a few hundred cyclist on and you've got a masterpiece. Now, not having a big bike ride from Bridgnorth in the summer now seems unimaginable to be honest.

Ok, so, stick the 7th July 2013 in your calendars and, unless you hear differently, we’ll see you in the High Street for 9ish.