Paddy Blake

The KMP now has such a massive following it has now hit the other side of the Atlantic.

Here is latest (and newly married) member of the collective Tom Bender from Salt Lake City Utah.

Worldwide domination is soon to follow.

Well what a lucky boy I am. A trip to Deer Valley, Utah where all the posh American lawyers and doctors go skiing in the winter for US Bike Dealer Camp? Yes please!

A big thank you to the guys from Pivot Cycles for the invite and looking after Tommy V and myself (and for getting us extremely drunk). For those of you that didn’t know Dealer camp is a relatively new show to sort of rival Interbike where dealers can ride and decide what they wish to stock for 2012. Pivot Cycles/BH Bikes possibly the most popular and most impressive stand there. With temperatures pushing 100 degrees f and uplifts on hand it was a trip of a life time!

Meeting Dave Weagle – Inventor of the awesome DW link was a definite highlight.

Well here’s the scene! I Just got back from Park City in Utah where Tommy V and I had the most awesome week riding with the Pivot at Reynolds guys. I have a little sleep and wake up to complete pandemonium!!!

Here is a nice pic of me passed out in the hospital after a series of brain seizures and an a pretty fast ambulance response it has to be said. All better now bar the constant hangover and annoyances of being put on an long ass NHS waiting list for an MRI scan and having my driving licence taken away, no drinking and no cycling (all of lifes little pleasures then).

Possible diagnosis is Epilepsy, which I’m assured is no big deal nowadays, PHEW!!!!

Update to follow! Thank god Claire (=awesome girlfriend) was around or I would have been unaware of the whole thing!

Saturday July 2^nd, I think possibly the most stressed I have been in my life. Why? La Marmotte had finally arrived and the lack of training and preparation for this day had all suddenly come to catch up with me on the start line in Bourg D’Oisans at 7am with a sea of 8000 people all looking in fine shape.

Any way excuses out the way let’s get onto the ride. Quick overview, 3 mountains Glandon, Galibier and Alpe d’Huez all in one day over 174km 16,000’ total elevation. Sound easy? Well this ride is billed as the ‘Europe’s hardest sportive’. I can tell you now that it is fairly manageable. Either that or I just dug deep and found some ability to cope well with the day. Apart from the initial fear and panic the evening before I appeared to have had the perfect ride. I got all the feeding and hydration right not overfilling my body with too many caffeinated gels, I took my time and conserved as much energy as I could for the big climbs.

There were a few dark moments where I had to do some soul searching. The biggest climb I have ever done before this ride is about a mile and a half long and around 10% ave gradient so the 1^st mountain (Glandon, 1924m) came as a bit of a shock to the system when I sore the ‘Summit = 7km’ sign I was very low thinking how I was going to cope with the rest of the ride ahead. At the top though all those feelings disappeared as I sore the descent. Breath taking scenery on a very dangerous road, so dangerous that due to deaths on previous years the race organisers (with timing chip technology) had neutralised the downhill time on this section to discourage racing. Still though I witnessed a lot of ambulances and medical staff patching up people on the floor brandishing lots of road rash.

The next section heading on a flat for 20km to Saint-Michel de Maurienne or the bottom of the Telegraphe/Galibier mountain, my legs appeared to be programmed into climbing mode and found spinning them faster on the flat to get into a pack very hard so just plodded along until the bottom of the Telegraphe. I was into the swing of this mountain climbing now and thought this climb through the trees, with lots of apex corners was one of the most enjoyable a have ever done. My biggest life saver were the km markers from the bottom to the summit, they gave me something to work on, knocking one km off at a time. This continued all the way up to the summit of Galibier some 35km from the bottom. The main thing passing through my head at this point was RCUK’s Richard Halletts advice ‘keep your nose dry until Valloire and you will be ok!’ sound words. I won’t dwell on how long and hard the final 8km of Galibier (2646m) are. After all there are books and commemorative jerseys dedicated to it, watch stage 19 of the Tour and see for yourself. The summit was amazing to have reached and needed that Kodak moment!

The descent down to the bottom of Alp d’Huez was on a different level, superfast, lots of tunnels, fast corners, wide smooth roads and for some was complete carnage. Entering a dark tunnel with sunglasses on at 45mph was new for me. Unfortunately there were several rather large accidents on this 40km downhill and had several hold up’s and road closures for police and ambulances (even a few fire engines) to clear, I hope all the downed riders were ok, we heard no information of serious injury at the end so assumed so. Mentally and physically this whole time was spent in preparation for climb ahead.

Alpe d’Huez, what can I say about this climb, I’m still struggling to come to terms with it. I’m sure a lot of people reading this have done it before so know what I’m talking about. We drove up it the day before for registration and the length and gradient filled me with fear, I had no idea how I was going to cope with those 21 hairpins after having just ridden the hardest 100 miles I had ever ridden and having just ridden past the van knowing I could have stopped to seek refuge. However I have never quit a challenge and kept going. Most of this was a 10% gradient, as the hairpins were numbered from the bottom I used the same technique from before and knocked them off one at a time, mentally preparing myself for the next one, in no time I appeared to be at turn 1 and on the home straight. All that was left was a Cavendish style sprint across the finish line, however over 11 hours into it where the 1^st place rider finishing 5 hours before this was only to make myself feel better and look good.

I would thoroughly recommend this ride, La Marmotte is one of those rides you should do before you die, it is definitely not one to be scared of. I did no training nor had ever ridden up a mountain before and coped with it pretty well. Just take it at your own pace and get your feeding right and remember a gillet and arm warmers for those nippy descents (possibly the best advice I received before we went). This is one of the most enjoyable events I have ever done and the memories an buzz from finishing will last for a long time. Organisation was superb and I would like to thank La Fuga (www.lafuga.cc) for being a great tour company and making life easy they surely had the best feed station there (4km from the Galibier summit which was perfect).

Sign up for next year now!!! I will look for my next challenge and maybe do a little training next time.

Ok there is a full report to come on this epic sportive but I need to say yes I finished it (phew) and here are a few initial photos

Well Mayhem it certainly was. There is a lesson here in how to cope with the wheels totally falling off a team event. Mixed team of ten soon depleted down to 5 with motivation to grind it out for a podium position rapidly diminished. The answer is to have fun, drink a little beer and even have a little sleep through the night. It makes it much more fun.

I think it may have started with my nightmare of crashing on the 1^st lap and dislocating my finger and not registering a lap time. Although not a major injury I was thinking Marmotte in 2 weeks, can’t really f*ck that up so bowed out, leaving Oli, Lea, Frazer, Matt and Julie to it. Luckily Scottish Phil turned up at night time to plumb in a few laps, the beer bottles had been popped by that time though. I won’t look at the results or comment on how we did.

The new ‘Lezyne Bridge’ feature through the campsite was a cool addition to the course.

It wasn’t all bad though, the remaining team members had some blinding laps and Oli won the Kenda climb with a blisteringly quick 47 seconds. In a way it was one of the best Mayhems as the stress of chasing results had gone and incredibly it remained quite dry!

Well done to South Downs Bikes teams, 2 podiums, nice one!

We will be at the XC world cup in Dalby Forest over the weekend 21^st/22^nd and have Geoff Kabush signing autographs on Saturday. It will be a great event so come and say hi if you are going.

KMP rider Katy Winton will be competing so we need as much support as possible.

Well I spent a lot of time with composites legend Paul Lew from Reynolds Cycling last week. More to come on this trip as it was very interesting but had to share a little story on Pauls infamous ‘Black Hole’ wheel/fork combo.

I found this bit of text and picture via Google: Paul Lew is definitely among the rare persons on the earth who always innovate, research and feature new breakthrough products.
After the Black Holes wheels, associating the fork, the steering and the wheel, in 1995, he came back in the forefront some time later with the Palermo and KOM rims, he sold a few years later to Reynolds in 2002. These rims are now mythical...

The wheel/fork combo was banned by the UCI in 95 for giving an extremely unfair aerodynamic advantage.

Well I had to bid a fond farewell to ‘Betsy’ my faithful old Blue Racelight T, With the Marmotte looming ever closer, the appropriate bike to train and ride the event on was essential.

Luckily for me a GF_TI prototyper was required and here is the resulting build, I have about 3 long group rides and Sportives planned so I will keep a good update of how the bike rides, 1^st 40 miles has been super impressive, I’m still trying to get my head round the feel of ride as I’m so used to alloy and carbon and being thrown about with a horrible jolt as soon as you hit the rough stuff. This is a little different though.

All routes lead to the Marmotte in July which is genuinely sending shudders down my spine, it hit home on Friday when the route information was sent through. It was the Alpe D’huez I was most concerned about but that middle climb looks an absolute killer.

Need to find me a compact chain set I think.