Trick or Treatment?: Alternative Medicine on Trial by Simon Singh & Edzard Ernst, published 2008, Bantam press.

At this time each year, we see the launch of the following year's cycling equipment - sometimes (all too rarely in my opinion) a hugely significant technical advance is made.  Shimano's development of STI shifters for road bikes, which seemed to stimulate parallel development at Campagnolo, is one of these cases.  Addition of more gears does not.  For example, cyclingnews.com has an article outlining the changes to Campagnolo's lineup for 2009, with the addition of an 11th cog to the cassette in the top three groupsets, among other things.

I have had absolutely no experience with SRAM equipment, so I have no worthwhile opinions on that.  The kit looks good, has had good reviews, and it is good to see a third player in the field. 

Good innovations

It was clear that this evening's event was going to be quite tough - when I set off from work to Stony Stratford, I roared up Brickhill Street at about 27mph with a stiff tailwind (of course when I went home it was the opposite!).

On the evening, we had a reduced turnout, presumably a combination of the strong wind, and impending summer holidays.  Dealing with my front trispoke in the crosswinds was a problem on the ride our, but at race speed, I had no difficulty.  The climb to the turn was pretty tough into the wind, especially in the approach to Nash, but roaring back down was nice - I reached at least 44.3mph at one point.

Cycle Tour 2008 - The Outer Hebrides, Skye, and Northwest Scotland

This event was the North Bucks Road Club's 10 mile championship, and was held in a week when the weather had varied between the dull, wind, damp and the frankly atrocious.  Following Sunday's grovel up and down the F1 in the NM&H '50', I had vague hopes for a reasonable evening, and in fact the weather during the day had not been too bad.  I rode down to the club room in pretty gloomy conditions, with no real enthusiasm for an evening '10'.

In the event, I was one of the later starters, and got a bit clobbered by the rain when it arrived.  I didn't have a clear runf through any of the roundabouts, other than the far turn, and I found the run up to the Stoke Hammond bypass a real struggle.  Coming back from the turn was pretty quick, and I especially noticed the benefits of the tailwind when on the false flat immediately before the finish.  I could tell from the off that I wasn't on a good ride this evening, and as it turned out I was pretty luck to take third place overall.  Still, we saw some excellent performances, notably Tim and Tony, who took first and second places with excellent times on a frankly rather crummy evening for a time trial, and on a not particularly quick course.  Gilbert pipped me again on vet's standard!

No more racing for a couple of weeks - I'm off cycle touring in the Hebrides, which will be a welcome change of pace!

As I seem to have acquired a bit of a reputation as a repeat offender in the puncture stakes (at least with my racing wheels), I have decided to log these events for the 2008 season. This year I decided to switch back to clinchers (on H3 wheels) as the expense of replacing all those tubulars was becoming prohibitive.

After last week's 50 mile event, I had hoped this time trial, held on the same course, might offer the possibility of a better result!  On Saturday afternoon, the wind strengthened, and in direct proportion, so did my apprehension as the forecast for Sunday morning was for rain.  True to the forecast, the rain was just starting when I got up at 4am (Tony was calling en route at 5.15am).

The rain strengthened and by the time we left for the event, it was heavy.  The event HQ was the entrance hall and kitchen of Moggerhanger village hall - the usual venues being booked up for weddings.  The F1/50 start was about 3 miles, and by the time I got to the start, my rear LED lamp had stopped working.

If anything, the wind was stronger than last week's event, but from roughly the same direction.  So the southbound legs were much faster than the northbound legs.  On the first north bound leg, I was just a fe miles north of the Black Cat RAB when I saw Tony ambling south shaking his head (he'd started 10 minutes before me), and it later transpired he had punctured , and lost his drink bottle at the first turn at the Sandy RAB.

After a rather chilly ride down to work, I was pleased that the evening was pleasantly warm, albeit with a stiff breeze.  Still experimenting with routes from the OU over to Stony Stratford, on this occasion, I zoomed up V10 and then along H3.  Actually the best route so far, in terms of avoiding the need to use redways and the busier MK roads.

I'm never too keen on the Stony Stratford course, mostly due to the lengthy climb up to Nash, which I usually take in too high a gear.  Tonight was no exception.  The return leg was pretty quick, as I'm happier riding that section in the dry.

The event was the third round of the club league, so I was reasonably happy with my third place (second NBRC rider), though the margin between Tony and me was a bit big for comfort! Interestingly, this event hd more riders than next Sunday's North Middx & Herts CA '50'! 

It's been some time since I commented on the dreadful Phorm system of deep packet inspection, and BT's intention to use the Phorm system to snoop on your browsing habits and supply targeted advertising.  (Recall that Phorm are a known spyware maker - in their previous incarnation of 121Media).

Alexander Hanff, who has made a series of appearances on the media to make robust criticisms of the system has posted a detailed description here. The day that BT implement this, I will leave them for another (Phorm-free) ISP.

BT Retail, who manage the ISP business have behaved quite appallingly over the matter, ignoring (and even trying so suppress) discussion on their forums -  all the signs are that they are holding fire until the furore dies down.  We should all try to ensure that this doesn't die down.  Visit BadPhorm for more information.

This was my first '50' since the 2006 season.  When leaving the house for the event, I was fairly optimistic, but upon arriving at Tempsford I realised that the northbound legs would be tough going due to the head wind. Anyway. onward I rode, fuelled by the knowledge that this was the event nominated as the North Bucks '50' championship event - one other NBRC rider had entered.

The start for this version of the F1/50 lies quite close to the Tempsford flyover, so pretty quickly I found mself roaring down the sliproad onto the A1.  As expected, the ride to the first turn, at the Sandy RAB was splendidly quick.  Unfortunately, once I'd rounded the turn and  started on the long leg north, it was apparent just how tough it would be (I don't know what my average was, but I saw 22mph quite a lot).  I grovelled northward, across the Black Cat RAB, to the turn at Buckden, where I caught number 55, a rider  apparently on the comeback trail, and riding a bike with a single speed freewheel and no tribars.  This seemed to spur him on a bit, it took me to the Sandy RAB to shake him off (and even then not by much judging from the final result).  Number 60 caught me for 4 minutes just before crossing the Black Cat RAB - at somewhat less than the halfway mark.  (My split for the first 25 miles was just sub-hour).  The southbound leg was pretty quick, but being the indomitable soul I am, I wasn't too worried about the second northbound leg.  Well, actually it was just as horrible as the first time I headed north!

On the face of it, the riders were presented with an appalling set of conditions - the warm and sunny weather we had for the previous week or two had vanished, replaced by cold and grey conditions, with a very strong wind and the threat of rain.  To add to this, I had a real lack of enthusiasm and couldn't stop yawning as I lined up at the start.

Mind you, having Tony Parks a minute behind me was sure to spur me on.  I nearly got tipped off by the wind catching the front trispoke just after the start, but after that I had no trouble.  As expected the wind assisted me down the main road towards Chicheley, but more astonishingly, it seemed to help most of the way back to North Crawley.  That mystifies me!  Anyway, I was pretty pleased - not only did the rain hold off, but I limited my losses to Tony Park to 30 seconds, which was pretty good given his form lately, but I improved about 11 seconds from three weeks ago.  An encouraging event...next race is the Norlond '50' on the F1/50 on Sunday morning - this will be my first 50 since the 2006 season!

There's a report from Tony over at the NBRC web page.

Both the Open University and Oxford University websites have their own versions of the press release. 

Lynne had a TV interview with BBC Oxford yesterday, while I had a radio interview yesterday and another scheduled for tomorrow (broadcast for today and tomorrow respectively).

Our paper in Aging Cell describing the identification and characterisation of a Drosophila orthologue of the exonuclease function of WRN is now available online, and open access.

This was an afternoon event on the hottest day of the year so far, hot enough that I found it rather oppressive. By the finish, my HR had climbed to some pretty unreasonable levels.

The F12/10 runs on the A505 Leighton Buzzard bypass, and while not a dual carriageway it is a pretty wide road.  The surface is a little rough and fractures in places, and the road undulates quite a bit.  The course suffers a bit from being quite exposed to crosswinds, though this wasn't an issue for this event, as it was virtually still.  There have been traffic management changes since I last rode the course, with increased traffic levels through the Grovebury Road industrial estate where the HQ was, and on the section of road where we normally warm up - possibly due to the new Stoke Hammond bypass road.

I rode to and from the event, and I must be on a roll as I had no punctures.  During the race, I quickly dropped into a good rhythm, but after 5 or 10 minutes the heat began to get to me.  I had a clear run through the Billington Road roundabout in both directions and had no trouble at the turn.  I finished with 22:45, which I think was 9th.  Tim Carter and Tony Parks r=finished in 21:27 and 21:50 respectively, giving the North Bucks the team prize.

I had a visit from a BBSRC Press Office person on Wednesday 8th May.  (The BBSRC are the UK Research Council that fund my current research into ageing, using Drosophila as a model system) This was to record some video footage to accompany a press release concerning a paper that will be published online on Monday 12th May.  She went on to visit my collaborator Lynne the following morning.

It was quite a surreal situation - being filmed in the lab while people carried on working.  I imagine the raw footage is very funny, with all the false starts and stops - the difficulty was in stopping myself from using technical terms that would be opaque to the general public.  Typically I'd be on a bit of a roll, then suddenly grind to a halt having uttered a word like "phenotype" or similar.  I have to say that the BBSRC person was most helpful and sympathetic (I presume she deals with inarticulate and camera-shy scientists on a regular basis!).

I picked this story up from Pharyngula.  The crazed Islamic creationist Harun Yahya, real name Adnan Oktar has been banged up for three years by an Istanbul court (Reuters).

Oktar runs a bizarre publishing enterprise that sends out huge and lavishly illustrated but bizarrely argued tomes vainly trying to discredit evolution.  The strategy seems to be to compare fossils with extant species, claim no morphological difference between them, then state this proves evolution to be false.  As a wild-eyed strategy this is rather amusing, such as the comparison of a spider crab with a spider.  He is certainly taxonomically challenged.  Perhaps I'll scan some examples later...I have a copy of one of these volumes that was sent to me a year ago...

He's been convicted of "creating an illegal organization for personal gain".

We had a lovely summery spring evening for this event, one of our interclub events between the North Bucks Road Club and the A5 Rangers, and it brought out a field of 32 riders.  There was quite a stiff easterly breeze, which made me rather apprehensive about likely times on this course, which is not exactly a dragstrip!', '

In the event however most, if not all, riders recorded improvements, with some particularly strong rides.  I was pleased to improve by nearly half a minute to 22:56.  The breeze actually helped us up the hill to the DC section and up to the turn.

Tony's official writeup is here.

Once again (again), the forecast was for rain, and this time (unlike Wednesday), it turned out to be a pleasant morning for a time trial.  This was only my second solo 25 of the season, and it was held on the F1/25, using the version with turns at the Sandy and Buckden roundabouts.  In past seasons, I've never had a good ride on this course. On the day, it was pretty mlld, and in fact I felt a bit too warm with my arm warmers on.  Once again, I rode the Cougar with the trispoke clinchers - a configuration I'm very happy with.', '

I had quite an early start, at 7.16 (number 31, bizarrely).  The seeding of the field seemed a little odd.  Not that I am disputing being on a 1.  What little wind there was presented a headwind for the southbound legs (i.e. to the Sandy RAB, and from the Buckden RAB to the finish.  This didn't present too much of an obstacle, in contrast to my inability to keep the speed up over the undulations in the course.  I suppose that offers some pointers to how I should modify my training.

My result was a 57:43 (and no punctures in contrast to my clubmate Ian Stokes, who was a DNS due to a puncture before he started).  Out of a full field, I came 32nd...

Once again, the forecast was not good for a time trial: this time the forecast was accurate! It turned out to be a hard evening on the course, with a headwind up the hill to the turn, and light rain.

Because the event was over at Stony Stratford (F5u/10 - though despite what the code suggests, the course version we use is 11.4 miles), I rode down to work on the Cougar TT bike, then on to the event after work.  By then, there was light rain which eased a little by the time I got to Stony.  On the way, however, I had yet another puncture (while I was evading a traffic jam on Brickhill St by popping briefly onto the redway).  I had no tyre levers, but discovered I could use 50p coins instead! This was the fifth puncture of the 2008 season.

The forecast was for rain, but as it turned out, this event was held on a rather lovely spring morning, with a gentle breeze.  The event was organised by the North Bucks Road Club, with the clubroom used as the HQ,  We used the F5d/10, which is the new '10' course based on the Stoke Hammond bypass.

Conditions were fairly similar to those for the recent NBRC club event, and I improved by a measly 3 seconds to record a 23:25.  As far as I recall, the winning time was a long 21 - a fine ride by Jason Gurney (Team MK).  It was good to see a strong turnout from NBRC members.

This is the third event run on the F5d/10 - I reckon it's a pretty tough course, with a lot of climbing (OK the gradients are pretty shallow, but when trying to maintain a reasonable race pace they are quite hard!) to the turn.