Team Cycling Plus -Andy Ward
khodgins | Blog, Cycling Plus | 13/10/2010 09:09am
Team Cycling Plus will be updating you each week with the highs and lows of their training as part of the team. This week Andy gets a new TT bike…
Team Member: Andy Ward
Serious cyclist, 41 year old Andy from Leicester, commutes to his job as a doctor, competes in a number of sportives, and enjoys the challenge of a hilly climb. Last year he did the London to Paris, and this year he has already achieved his goal of going on a cycling holiday to the Alps with his mates and now he’s had a go at time trialling too.
This week has been a tale of two bikes. It was Kirsty’s birthday and a present idea was required. Inspired by reading on bikeradar of Paul Smith’s renovation of a retro bike as a wedding present for his new wife, I started trawling ebay a few weeks ago. I found a nice old Triumph Traffic Master and after a few weeks polishing, painting and greasing, was pleased with the results, as was Kirsty. In the process of searching for vintage shopping bikes, I couldn’t resist typing “time trial bike” in the search box. I’ve always loved retro steel framed bikes, and among the hideously expensive carbon fibre mean machines, my eye was drawn to a vintage Brian Rourke low profile framed bike. An exchange of emails, some frantic last minute bidding, and the bike was mine. It was clear that this was a special bike, a bike which previous owner Jeff Siddon loved.
Jeff had been time trialling for a few years when he decided to build himself a new time trial bike. He decided that Brian Rourke would be the frame builder to choose as he’d seen a number of frames that he’d built and also spoken to various people about how Brian worked out the dimensions of the frame he was building. The frame sorted, it was time to kit out the rest of the bike. A Zipp 950 rear wheel was sourced as this was flat and the right weight, a Zipp 440 front wheel followed. Syntace tri bars (Chris Boardman was using them at the time), a mixture of Dura Ace and Ultegra finishing kit, carbon fibre seat pin and Flight Ti saddle. Even the headset top was machined down approx 5mm in order that Jeff could get as low as possible. Jeff’s best ride on the bike was a 10 mile TT on the A1 where he clocked 21:42 – a club record for his club Ormskirk CC.
Selling this bike was something that Jeff thought long and hard about. He’d not ridden it for many years, but if he had had the space and permission he’d have hung it on the wall. He thought it was not only a dream to ride but a dream to look at.
Hopefully I’ll be able to do the bike justice, although fitting the shopping basket has been a right pain with those tri bars.
Who are Team Cycling Plus?
Team Cycling Plus powered by Verenti are readers Andy Ward, Kay Bowen, Malcolm Ratcliffe and Sam Shaw. We’ll be following them in the magazine for the next few months as they train towards their personal cycling goals under the guidance of our experts and we will be publishing their weekly trials and tribulations here too. For regular updates check our Twitter page and the Team Cycling Plus Facebook page.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 13th, 2010 at 9:09 am and is filed under Blog, Cycling Plus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
