For a chance to enter, simply log onto http://www.futurecomps.co.uk/WMB_LBS and answer the question. The first ten correct entries after the closing date of 20^th December will get the tickets. Good luck!

The London Bike Show (Jan 12-15) is at Excel, in London's Docklands

So what can you expect from the show this time around? Well, organisers have signed up double the number of exhibitors found at the inaugural show, so there should be even more of the latest bikes and kit on display – and available to buy.

The Animal Bike Tour will return for more jaw-dropping trials demos and the show will host London’s first ever international indoor bike polo tournament. Cycling experts and celebrities will take to The Cycling Stage, and there will be plenty of things to drool over on The Cool Wall.

The London Bike Show 2012 takes place from 12-15 January 2012 at ExCeL in London’s Docklands. It’s held alongside The Outdoors Show, The Active Travel Show and the Tullett Prebon London Boat Show, and tickets are valid for entry to all four events. So if you want to watch wakeboarding, then have a go at bouldering, then swoop by and pick up a discounted tent, ogle with incredulity the latest super yachts, and then take some shiny new bikes for a spin then you can. Bargain.

Adult tickets cost £20 on the door or £16 in advance, but What Mountain Bike readers can buy them for just £12 by entering the offer code ‘BIKE’ on the booking page (please note: the offer is subject to a £1.95 transaction fee). To book or find out more details, visit www.thelondonbikeshow.co.uk.

Exhibitors confirmed so far include 2Pure (Crank Brothers, Ibis), ATB Sales (Marin, Whyte, Wilier), Bromley Bike Co (Yeti, Cielo), Brompton, Chicken Cycles (Campagnolo, Cinelli, Time), Endura, Extra UK (Intense, Easton, Fizik), Giant, Hope, Madison (Shimano, Cervelo, Genesis, Saracen, Ridgeback), Polaris, Rose, Surf Sales (Transition, Dakine), Trek, Upgrade (DMR, Kinesis, Lezyne) and many more.

Mark sports the official Team What Mountain Bike/Red Cloud kit

It’s funny how something as major as the TransRockies, now in its 10th year, can sneak up on you but surprisingly it has done just that. It seems like only yesterday that the What Mountain Bike crew, Jenny Copnall, Steve Peat and I met up in Sheffield for the selection day for the Ticket to TransRockies winner. That was back in March, and since then time has whizzed by in a blur of training, dieting, chatting with Gordon and dieting some more!

As the legs have got stronger and the waistline has got smaller, both Gordon and I have bonded well as a team and all the other plans have been put into operation – design and order the team kit, arrange RVs, buy the equipment needed and much more. It’s been a true hive of activity both here in Bedfordshire and, I’m sure, in Gordon’s home up in Lanark.

We’ve got together to ride a few times in the last couple of months and I think we have a really good understanding of each other’s characters as well as our respective strengths and weaknesses. Our rides around Afan, Glentress, Innerleithen and Gordon’s local Scottish trails have served us well. We ‘get’ each other and our individual reasons for taking on the TransRockies challenge. This has led to a strong team spirit developing and demonstrates that people from opposite ends of the country can bond quickly when given one common goal and love of bikes. As the next week or so develops this theory will be put well and truly to the test as we hit the Rockies for seven days of hard riding and great scenery. If anything will test the team spirit, the TransRockies will!

Whatever happens we’ll certainly look the part. Back at the beginning of July we took delivery of our official Team What Mountain Bike/Red Cloud kit and I have to admit to really liking it! I ordered the design through the Santini custom service that Santini’s UK distributor offers. The whole process was dead easy and the finished garments are out of this world. They look and feel fantastic so even if our legs don’t react like a pro, we’ll certainly look like pros.

To finish the pro look we needed some top spec bikes to ride, bikes that would rise to the challenge with us and see us through to the end. Being a bit of a Yeti freak, there was only one choice for me – the Yeti ASR5 alloy. Gordon test rode a few bikes and finally went for a rather sexy looking Merida 96. Full details will be in the next issue of What Mountain Bike (on sale 24 August) so please check them out. For the next couple of weeks our Yeti/Merida combo will be our best friends and family all in one. We love them already and hope you do too. They’re both great bikes and worth looking at closely if you want a good do-it-all/marathon/cross-country (XC) race bike.

We’ve also been out shopping for the best protection for our beloved bikes for the trip to Canada and after much deliberation both made the same choice with two new Polaris Bike Pod Pros heading our way in time for the fun that is dismantling and packing the bikes ready for action. As a non-techy person I must confess that taking the bike apart filled me with dread but it went by without drama and it’s now all packed and ready to go. I’ll let you know how the Bike Pod Pros stand up to the rigours of airline baggage handlers but first impressions are really good – solid construction, secure locking mechanism and with the bonus of being a colour that makes it completely unmissable on the baggage carousel even after the most tiring transatlantic flight!

Lots of other questions remained unanswered right up to the last minute for me. Which shoes will work best with hike-a-bike sections? Do I go tubeless or stick with tubes? Will wider or thinner tyres be best? Bottle or hydration pack? Most of these I’ve now sorted but others remain. Am I ready? Will the legs last the distance? All the doubts come out right before the race.

Jenny Copnall has been a great ally when the doubts kick in. Her experience in big races and hard training speaks volumes and she’s given me some great tips for mentally coping with the pressures to come. I will tell you after the event all about them and let you know, most importantly, if they worked! Gordon has been the perfect team mate already as he has overcome difficulty of his own and has shown courage and mental toughness to even get back on his bike let alone be lining up alongside me on the start line at the TransRockies. He’s an inspirational character and really epitomises what we’re trying to do with this challenge – prove the impossible is possible! For this reason I am confident that whatever comes our way, we’ll get each other through it and get to the end.

Please remember we’re doing this for Stay Strong but also for the Scottish Air Ambulance. Both charities are worthy of your support so please do check them out and support them if you possibly can. Both will make you too feel that the impossible is possible.

So all is left for me to say is please wish us luck! Stay tuned to this blog as we’ll be updating it every day during the race and immediately afterwards. What Mountain Bike will also be covering the recent training weekend in Afan and the race itself in full pictorial goodness over the next couple of issues so make sure you check them out. Thanks to Matt and the team for being so great during our preparations.

So, from Gordon and I, thanks for all your well wishes on Twitter and Facebook… Next stop TransRockies X! It’s going to be a hell of a ride.

Explore your transport options
The infernal combustion engine in all its forms burns more than just precious natural resources. Planes, trains and automobiles are money pits but even though they’re a necessary evil for some journeys, making use of your bike will save you lots of pennies. Start by switching your commute to pedal power; you might not be able to ride the whole journey but investigate combining public transport options with one or more bike legs to cut costs and reap the fitness benefits too.

Save yourself some cash by looking after your tubes

Patch your tubes
Two flats a week adds up to the cost of a new fork over a year if you’re fitting a brand new tube every time – not to mention the obvious environmental cost of consigning a perfectly fixable component straight to landfill. Even the worst snakebite can be fixed with a little time and patience. Keep a couple of ‘good’ tubes in the pack and save the sticky finger work for when you’re at home though, as you don’t want to try to persuade a patch to stick in sub-zero temperatures.

There are great trails to discover just outside your door

Explore your local patch
Struggling to summon up the funds for a weekend away? Eliminate travel costs completely and ride from your own doorstep. It’s easy to overlook your local trails in favour of exotic delights further afield but exploration often reveals surprises in your backyard. Two things will help you out here: the relevant Ordnance Survey map for your area, and an open mind. You’ll be surprised by the hidden patches of greenery just outside your door, and the joy of your local patch is that it’s personal, yours to experience in all seasons and there for the taking with minimum effort and expense.

Even the smallest adjustments can make a massive difference to your ride feel

Fine-tune your position
It’s surprising how much difference small changes to your contact points can make to your ride feel. Try shifting the saddle backwards and forwards a few millimetres, or angling the nose a few degrees to alter your weight distribution. Take a look at the set of your bars; most have a certain amount of sweep on them and altering the bar rotation will allow you to change your hand position significantly. Just making small adjustments can totally alter the feel of a bike and, best of all, they cost you nothing except a bit of spanner time. See our bike fit feature to make sure you’re riding in the best position.

Drag out those old parts and spares – you may even have enough for a whole new bike

Reuse, recycle, and reduce (your spending)
Most of us have enough spare parts stashed around the house to build at least three bikes – albeit three rather tatty, eclectic bikes… Try putting all those spare bits together to make a whole new ride, pooling or swapping with friends if you can’t quite make the jigsaw work. Resurrect an existing bike that’s fallen into disrepair or build yourself a whole new toy; it’s not likely to be shiny and new, but it might make for a great winter hack or commuting rat bike – and it’s liberating to discover that there’s life in the old bits despite the lack of gloss and polish.

Save money by using a bucket and brushes, and you can check the frame for damage at the same time

A clean bike is a happy bike
Try using a bucket and brushes rather than the hose. It uses less water and allows you to carefully check for wear and tear while you scrub. Drivechain areas need a concentrated degreaser to remove the old lube and grit that does a grand job of munching parts in double-quick time. Wipe seals to avoid accelerated wear to the stanchions, and make sure pivot bolts are still tight while you’re down there, too – another area where it pays to catch any problems early on. Once dry, slap on some fresh lube and you’re ready to hit the trails again.

Swapping your holidays abroad for riding breaks in the UK can save you a packet

Scrap the foreign holidays
Wave goodbye to Whistler and enjoy some great UK riding if you need to holiday on the cheap. If you can, book well in advance – you can travel the length and breadth of the country by train for a pittance. Camping is a great way of keeping costs down, so invest in a bivvy bag like Alpkit’s Hunka (£30, www.alpkit.com) and indulge in a spot of wild camping for the ultimate in cheap nights out under the stars. Check out the basic bivvying rules beforehand to make sure you’re not going to be doing anyone or anything damage. If you’re new to sleeping out under the stars, The Book of the Bivvy by Ronald Turnbull is a useful and humorous guide to the subject, and see WMB123 for our adventure biking feature.

Learn to be your own bike mechanic, even if it means taking a course

Get your wrench on
From a formal training course like the Park Tool School to repair manuals and magazine and online step-by-steps, you can save a packet by learning to fix the basics using basic tools. If you find yourself in need of expensive specialist kit, try establishing a tool library. If you can spread the outlay, and knowledge, required for items like headset presses and BB tools between friends you’ll trim your labour charges right down. Don’t desert your local bike shops though – when it all goes wrong and you’ve screwed the flangegrommit to the wrong thingummywotsit, they’ll be your knights in shining armour.

Try tubeless
If you’re forever flatting or love low pressures, then you’ll want to try tubeless. The expensive ways involve a hefty investment but there is a third way: going ghetto. Split an inner tube to fabricate your rim strip, pack out the recess of the rim with electrical tape to persuade the bead to seat tightly, insert your sealant and then pump like crazy while hoping it holds. We’ve attempted it with mixed success but, if you’re prepared to be patient (particularly when cleaning the latex off the walls), it’s a fun way to get yourself a tubeless set-up on the cheap.

DIY racing
Fancy racing but not the outlay? Keep an eye out for race promoters putting on events that offer more for your money, or go the whole hog and tackle some DIY racing at home. Whether it’s an informal XC series round the local woods or an epic 12-hour ‘event’ where only the toughest of riders will be able to resist the lure of shower and sofa as they pass the front door on every lap, it’s a great way to get your race head on – and you won’t need to be towed out of the car park afterwards, either…

Try swapping out your tyres or experimenting with pressures

Fresh rubber
Switching your tyres is a great way to effect a change that would have Clark Kent quaking in his phonebox. Bigger rubber means more cushioning and control, while skinnies are best kept for mud plugging. Tall, round tyres like our favourite WTB WeirWolfs have a large contact patch, and the big air chamber allows the use of low pressures for maximum grip and traction. Finding the balance between too much pressure and not enough is something that’ll only come with experience, but with enough practise you should be able to select tyre pressures to suit both you and the trail.

Prioritise investments
There’s no point in splurging on yet another new jersey when your saddle’s so uncomfortable an hour’s ride leaves you in need of a local anaesthetic. Try not to cut corners – saddles, shoes, shorts and gloves are all areas where good quality kit will be noticeable on every ride, as well as lasting longer. Good fit is everything, so try on or test ride whatever you’re considering buying where possible – beg, borrow or steal from a mate if shops are reluctant to let you dirty their wares and, if you’re not 100% certain it’s the one for you, don’t buy it.

Forget expensive sports snacks and get baking

Get cooking
Fuelling a long day in the saddle can eat up the pounds if you’re relying on the teashop or sports scientists for your snacks. Try saving the specialist foodstuffs for race day and turn to cheaper sources of calories for your everyday riding. Stuff your CamelBak with sandwiches, fig rolls and bananas for a mobile feast, or break out the wooden spoon and bake your own energy bars. Top up flapjacks with nuts, seeds and fruit for a tasty mid-ride snack that’s cheaper than shop-bought alternatives and will probably be a big hit with your mates, too.

New frame, old bits
Desperately lusting after a new bike but can’t risk leaving the whole redundancy cheque at the LBS? How about the halfway house of buying a new frame and switching components over from your current ride? Check the compatibility carefully to make sure you don’t end up with a heftier bill than expected but, with a good clean while all the parts are off, you’ll end up with a mostly new bike for considerably less cost than a whole new one. Do the job yourself and you’ll reap the ultimate rewards from your investment.

Get a workout
You don’t need fancy equipment or a costly gym subscription to boost your fitness and it’s one of the most cost-effective investments you can make to top up your riding. Losing a few pounds will cost you absolutely nothing (unless you go so far that your wardrobe needs tweaking) and it’s not just your climbing ability that will benefit. The fitter and more efficient you are, the more energy and enthusiasm you’ll have left in the tank to lavish on the descents and technical sections. Browse the training technique articles on BikeRadar’s Fitness section; we’ve covered everything from race-ready workouts to core exercises.

Investigate Cycle to Work
If your employer is at all clued up, it should already have cottoned on to the many benefits of cut-price transport and fitness options for their staff offered by encouraging cycling. If it hasn’t, read up on the technicalities and make a beeline for the nearest personnel officer to make the case for cheap bikes for you and your colleagues.

Simple measures like keeping your shock pressure topped up can make a big difference

Spring tweaking
When did you last check your shock pressures? It’s easy to ride for weeks without once getting the shock pump out but they do need regular topping-up. Just 10psi of air one way or the other can make a big difference to how a shock behaves on the trail and, as long as you stay within the guideline pressures, you won’t do any damage by experimenting. Most forks and shocks have rebound and/or compression settings, too; learn how they affect your ride and you’ll have gained more valuable knowledge for free.

Strategic upgrades
Okay, so spending loads on new wheels might be an extravagance in these cash-strapped times but, if you want to transform your steed from trusty carthorse into racing thoroughbred, they’re the best place to begin. Wheels are classed as rotating weight, multiplying their heft with every turn of the rim. You’ll really notice grams shed here and investing in a top-quality lightweight wheelset is a good strategic. Make sure you’re fitting fast, light folding tyres to maximise the effect of your new hoops, too.

Stop hoarding and sell your old kit online – you may get a good price for parts that are just gathering dust

Sell it on
Your spare bike junk can generate cash. Once you’re certain you don’t need all eight pairs of V-brake levers that you’ve accumulated since you switched everything to discs, stick ’em on eBay. Clean everything up before you take the pictures as they’re what will sell your gear, and make sure you cover postage and packaging costs to avoid them eating into your profits. If you’re feeling philanthropic, set up stall at a bike jumble or arrange a swap meet between your riding friends. Your once-prized tat might be someone else’s dream find, and you never know what you might find while browsing.

DIY guiding
Professional mountain bike guides are well worth their price tag but sometimes the money just isn’t there. If you’re headed to an unfamiliar area or bored with your local patch, seek out some informal guiding. Web forums have become an invaluable resource for those looking to hook up with local knowledge and, although common sense warnings about personal safety apply, you can even join up with total strangers to tackle a trail swap. Exchanging favourite routes with friends lets you experience familiar trails from another point of view and gain a different appreciation of what’s on offer.

The feature profiles both Dave as a person but also the story – and background – to his record breaking 48-hour distance record ride from the south coast of Wales to the north coast, and back. Grab a brew, sit down, and enjoy this unadulterated insight into the highs and lows of Dave Buchanan’s epic challenge.

Interview: Matt Skinner
Photos: Matt Cope, Tom Simpson and Simon Smith
Date of interview: 27 May, 2011

Matt Skinner: Talk us through your support team and how crucial they were to your ride.
Dave Buchanan: “They’re the best in the business. Jo’s the only one who’s done supporting in the past really in the team. We’re all very lucky in the South Wales area as we have a very close-knit community of friends, if you like. They’re super-supportive. The team were:

“Joanne Evans– my partner who’s fantastic; Paul B Mugenyi (aka ‘Mugs’) – both he and Jo were absolutely pivotal in formulating the whole plan. You saw some of the documentation last night – you saw a schedule of where I was going to be and when, who was going to set tents up, who was going to give me drinks and where and when, and basically did all of that. Nick, who’s [been] a friend of mine for 25 years, did most of the driving in my car, while Simon from Loco Suspension, one of my other sponsors, did all the driving in the mechanics’ van with Huw and Scott in there, plus Mark Huskisson of Reset Films.

“But the two pivotal ones, Paul Mugs and Jo, had planned everything down to a T. And there was redundancy in the timing system too so that if it fell apart because the weather was bad or whatever, they arranged it so that the redundancy in the schedule could be followed on from there. It was just amazing. Absolutely amazing; the rest of the crew were Jim Calder; Huw Thomas; Scott Hodgskin; Mark Deacon; Zoe Frogbrook; Andrew James; Matt Page; Loco Simon; Nick Shenston; Matt Cope; Rob Khoo; Tim Press; Mike Hall; Mark Huskisson; Jon Shergold; Rich Holmes; Dave Evans; and Rob Evans.”

MS: How long had it been in the planning process?
DB: “From the moment I did the single coast to coast [in 2009] – north to south – I finished it high on caffeine and said, ‘Oh, that’ll go as a double.’ And I was really high on caffeine – over double what I should’ve had due to inexperience. And then a colleague from racing – Jack Peterson from Numplumz Racing called and said, ‘Can you ride it from south to north?’ And I emailed him back saying, ‘Well, no, no you can’t. But give me a bit and I’ll have a look.’
“So I reccied the route from south to north, which turned out to be a bit tougher really, and I thought, ‘I need to join this together really.’ From that point on it was always going to happen – especially as I’d dropped myself in it in the beginning and said that’ll be done as a double. That was 2009 – just over two and a bit years ago. It was all ready to be done last year – Chris [Eatough, Dave’s coach] got me fit as hell. I was rocking and then I got an illness and a new job, and I went away abroad for a bit and it stuck with me for a whole year. Then I was treated for asthma for the whole year – I don’t think it was asthma but I was treated for it. I got better through the winter and then hit it. I didn’t think I was fit before I did it [pauses, musingly] strangely.”

MS: And now afterwards?
DB: “I feel awesome. Absolutely, totally awesome – I don’t think I’ve felt this strong ever, and this is two weeks after the ride too. It’s awesome [you wouldn’t expect that?] Not with me – I’ve always struggled with recovering from things – especially from a 24 or 12 hours. My Twentyfour12 solo I really struggled to recover but this has been fine. This is down to the tips that Chris has given me. I would count Chris as a sponsor as well because he’s invested a lot of time and effort too and not had what you would term as reasonable renumeration for it. He’s there all the time, for anybody that wants help. He’s awesome.”

MS: Who inspires you?
DB: “It’s not so much the guys who have done this and that – although they do motivate me – but the guys who motivate me the most are the ones you look at and think, ‘They shouldn’t be out here,’ or ‘they shouldn’t be doing that’. The big man who’s trying to lose a few stones of weight but who’s giving it some out riding – that actually drives me. I love that, because cycling’s such an open sport for people. So I love to see folks who have to work really, really hard to do it.

“But outside normal folk like them and me there’s Matt Page, who was out on the ride with me. In the last few years he’s come out of nowhere to be a dominant force in 24-hour racing. He’s alright, he’s a good wee man and he inspires me because he just gets on and does it. Anthony White is another guy who just gets on and does it. He’s a year younger than me but he’s not slowing down.

“A lot of my riding colleagues here in Cardiff all have in some form or another something to inspire you [for example] the likes of Tim Press who says, ‘I’m no good climbing, I’m no good going fast’. He’s 50-odd and he is. You get him on a downhill bike and go downhilling with him and you can hardly catch him up – he’s a really good downhill rider. Everybody’s got something to offer – in fact, every one in my group of friends has something to offer which actually drove me and still drives me on.”

MS: What about non cyclists?
DB: “It’s not non-cycling specifically, but there’s a guy I met on one of the forums called Bull Heart. He has a myocardial carcinoma of some form around his heart, which has spread. He seems to be phenomenal. I was reading his forum entries and getting all upset because this guy was getting on and doing it. He was saying: ‘Sod you all, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that,’ and he has.

“He’s doing well. He’s actually been really supportive because similarly he’s been watching what I’ve been doing too, which I find dumbfounding. But this guy has been amazing.

“In my work – doing orthotics and prosthetics – I see a lot of different patients and also I work with a lot of Para-Olympians and I find them inspiring too as they just get on and do it, and they do stuff that is amazing. And there are the rheumatoid patients who battle against everything; they give me a lot to go for too. As you know, it’s not all physical, it’s mental too.”

MS: Has this ‘can do’ spirit always been with you?
DB: “I think so – I’ve always done quite difficult things. From the climbing, the paragliding and the boxing, I’ve just got stuck in. I’ve never really thought about it – I’ve just got stuck in and done it.”

MS: Is that something that’s been natural?
DB: “I was always an outdoors boy. I used to work on farms and worked hard when I was a wee boy – I worked really hard and got some right blisters on my hands. Then there was the motorcross and I’ve always been sort of outdoorsy. I just like a buzz, the excitement, I don’t care what level I get it at; I just like a buzz.”

MS: You’re always quite effacing in the sense that sports don’t come naturally – you’ve had to work hard. Has that work ethic always been there?
DB: “Yes, if it wasn’t I wouldn’t be any good at anything. There was that necessity to work at it too I suppose because if I do anything I want to enjoy it and I want to enjoy it at a half decent level, so that probably drove me on as well.”

MS: You’ve said before there was no question of you not finishing the ride…
DB: “No, not at all.”

MS: How did you build up to that mentally?
DB: “I think Jo did it for me… I built myself up to it because I just imagined it as the worst 24-hour race of my life and I’ve had a few dicky ones. I suppose it started in 2009 when I did Relentless. I pulled out of Sleepless In The Saddle (SITS) as I pulled my back – and I was doing okay there, I was doing alright – so I wanted to do Relentless at the end of October but I had a medical problem at the time. I thought it was a gall bladder problem and thought the gall bladder was coming out. After the race it turned out I had a stomach ulcer and I’d done the whole race with it. When I found out it was a stomach ulcer I thought, ‘Oh god, if I can do that then I can probably do anything and stick with it as that [racing with a stomach ulcer] was quite uncomfy.

“I was planning on doing The Hobbit’s Tale by then so I used that as ammunition. And then after all the planning that Jo and Paul had put in, Joanne said, ‘If you pull out of this I’m going to kill you!’ And I could see it in everyone else’s faces too as they’d spent so much time and effort there was no way I could let them down. If you’ve got that entourage of people helping and following it there’s no way I could let them down. Absolutely none. I didn’t even consider it – even when I hit rock bottom and couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk… I was finishing it no matter what. Home is home, just click your heels together and off you go that was all I could do.”

MS: Was that bonk the worst it got?
DB: “Oh god, yes. In Llyn Brianne I was in trouble. It was 45/46 hours in because I actually slept through the 48-hour window for the Guinness Book of Records, as they had to take documentary evidence that I was asleep in a van.

“I had 10 minutes rest when I knew the bad bonk was coming, then an hour later I hit rock bottom when Scott was with me and I had this major bonk. I couldn’t walk, couldn’t stand, couldn’t talk. I basically just collapsed in a heap so I had a lie down while he went for help just in case. That was a bad point. Scott was so switched on – and actually quite quick – cos he went off like a bat out of hell. Actually, he woke me up when he came back as he skidded to a stop.

“I lay down with my buff covering my face to stop the midges, as there were tons of them about that time in the morning (about half seven). By the time Scott came back I’d had about 10 minutes shut eye on a log and I could just about stand up. I don’t know what had happened but it was like I had rebooted. I could then stand up and then just about walk, could then just about balance, could then just about pedal – cos I had to be self-powered, no two ways about it for me – and then I eventually got down to Llyn Brianne near Llandovery, where I basically got in the van and said, ‘Get me up in two hours, I’m going riding.’ I had those looks that said, ‘oh god, I’m not sure if he is going to go riding.’ But there was no doubt in my mind: I was getting up and I was going riding as I had to get home. I actually got up in an hour and a half and I was looking out the window looking at them all waiting on me, I got up, went to the toilet, got some food, and my legs felt fantastic. Then rode on and got stronger and stronger all the way home until I was stood up pumping up climbs all the way into Cardiff and getting spaced-out looks from folks who asked, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘I don’t know – my legs feel great.’ I was pumping up the climbs up to Castell Coch and folks were struggling to keep up. Maybe it was because I was on my way home but I was flying.”

MS: Did you see it coming?
DB: “I knew it was coming but I didn’t expect it to hit me quite so hard as it did.”

MS: Can you describe it?
DB: “Yeah. I stopped in the car and I just felt low, I felt tired and Huw (Thomas) was with me; that was the second time I had ridden with Huw and I rode with him at nine hours and I had a bonk then – I went too fast early on, well too fast – and he kept me going. Just before I could feel it coming on, I said, ‘look, I’m in trouble here, something’s going wrong.’ I rode with him for another hour because I wanted to get to Llyn Brianne anyway as it was a goal – but before I got there I just felt dark, my vision went and everything was dark and out of focus. I couldn’t talk straight or walk straight. I just felt out of control; I had no control of my eyes.”

MS: Did you feel unconscious?
DB: “I knew where I was. I just couldn’t do anything about it. I tried to walk with the bike but I just couldn’t. And then I started to lose consciousness. It was a very strange feeling because I had no sensation of cold or warm – nothing at all. Absolutely nothing. When I woke up again I was cold, very cold; when I got back to the van I borrowed a sleeping bag as I was so cold.”

MS: Was this at night?
DB: “No, it was after first light on the Sunday. There’s a photo of me and Scott riding down to the cars near the chapel and there’s a half side on portrait of me just looking knackered, that’s when it was starting to happen. I knew it was coming, but I wanted to go on in case something miraculously made itself right, which it didn’t until I actually stopped. I felt it coming on but I just didn’t recognise it properly.”

MS: How did you feel on the first leg up to Caenarfon?
DB: “Awesome, absolutely awesome. Even with that appalling headwind, even with the frost and the rain I got there within 10 minutes of the time I had hoped to get there. I sat down in the car out of the wind, had a wee chat, had some food with Mark Huskisson taking video and Jo saying, ‘You look great!’ ’Do I?’ ‘Yeah, you look really fresh.’ ‘Oh, great!’ ‘What are you going to do now?’ ‘I’m going to ride back.’ ‘You’re not going to wait for a bit?’ ‘No, no, I’m going to ride back.’

“So I just got up, picked up another rider, Mike Hall again, and rode back to Coed y Brenin – about 70km. I had lunch, then got changed into some nice dry weather clothing, rode out the far side of Coed y Brenin and then the sky dropped its guts. It rained its heart out the other side of Coed y Brenin. It rained basically from there until the arch near Devil’s Bridge in mid-Wales [a very long way] – solid rain. Mike accompanied me up the climb onto the tops on the Mach 3 route near Machynlleth, which is the longest climb in the world. We got onto the track between Mach and Nant y Arian and the rain just went sideways, thunder and lightning came in and the cloud cover came in even lower. Mike just dropped his head and said, ‘If this doesn’t break you, nothing will.’ I was like, ‘What do you mean? I’m alright.’ I just focused. Normally if it wasn’t me doing the ride and being so focused it would’ve been me saying, ‘This blimmin’ rain is doing my head in.’ But it just didn’t register.

MS: What was the river crossing like?
DB: “It was above the axles so not too bad.”

MS: When you were coming into the end, was it the highlight to the ride or a great finish to the ride?
DB: “No, it was a highlight. There were two highlights related to that: back along the Taff Trail and down some concrete steps and over a humpy hump back bridge, past a café and up a really steep climb I stood up and pumped up there. Rich Holmes, who’s a really fit, strong rider was stopped at the top side-on looking at me as if to say, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know! I don’t know what’s happening.’

“Then up the really steep climb to Castell Coch I thought, ‘I feel really good here’. Rich and Mike were riding having a little race together, I stood up and pumped past them. Whether my body had settled into cycling enzyme mode or what I don’t know, but I pumped past them and they were like, ‘what the effing and jeffing are you doing?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know I just feel good and I’m having a cycle.’ And it was probably faster than I’ve ever ridden before up a hill. I don’t know what it was but I was awesome. It may never happen again, but it was pure magic.”

MS: What bits of the ride – just pure riding – really stick in your mind?
DB: “The last skull and crossbones sections of Coed y Brenin are great, I just love them. The Chute in Mach was good. It was actually a lot more fun than I thought it’d be; I’d been dreading it. The other highlights were The Gap descent. I was with Matt Page and it was hammering down then actually. It’s difficult because it was full of highlights. I’m just stunned it’s been done because of the help of all these people…

“Coming back through Castell Coch from Brecon we started to pick up people who’d come out to meet us – friends of our local group VORB – stopping to say hello and say, ‘hey, you’re looking really good – well done!’ This slowed the last bit down by quite a margin but that didn’t really matter as I’d done the ride by then. It was odd but we used Brecon to Cardiff – which is a route that people train for – as our warm-down, saying ‘we’ll be home soon. But hang on, that’s a 90km ride – what’s happened to our thought processes?’

“So were picking up all these friends and one boy said, ‘Do you want a beer?’ And I said, ‘No, I’ve got to get to Cardiff.’ And he said, ‘Oh right,’ and put the beers down and followed us. We kept picking people up on the way – Rich Landsdown and Dominic and people like that were waiting for us along the way. Eventually we came in front of the opera house in Cardiff, which is incredibly photogenic. I came in with my lights on and the rest of the Loco team came in beside me in an arrowhead formation and it was, ‘Oh wow!’ Everyone else that I knew in cycling was there in the Celtic Ring, then up went the cheer and then this huge group came in behind us. It was amazing, it was fantastic.”

MS: And then you fumbled with the bottle of Cava at the end…
DB: “Cava! Cava?! Cheapskate! [laughs] I had no strength in my upper body as I had fixed and become very stiff on the Taff Trail as it’s just pedalling. Because I was having trouble with it somebody said to me, ‘bring it close to your body and get some leverage’. ‘No chance, it’d blow my head off!’ But eventually it came off and I did the shaky-shaky thing and it was fantastic spraying champagne everywhere. Then I got a hug off everyone. I said hello, had a wee chat.

“Everyone was absolutely knackered so Mark Huskisson, Jo, Mugs and I went back to my house and Jo’s parents bought us some pizza. We sat and ate pizza ‘til midnight and went to bed. Then I was up at 5am to say goodbye to Mark who had to get his flight back to Glasgow. Then I was up all day and that was it. I felt a little tired, a little run down – I’ve had a coldsore – but I’ve not had any knee pain or back pain, nothing. Some foot numbness and a little bit of numbness in the old boy but that’s all settled now – from when I got tired I forgot to stand up. Apart from that I’ve been out riding and been feeling great. I’m amazed. I thought, and Chris Eatough, thought at the time that I was going to need six weeks off the bike, but I don’t. It’s weird. I lost two stone on the ride but I’ve probably put half a stone back on and I’m now at racing weight.

“When I started the ride out I was a good stone heavier than I thought by deliberation because I knew that this was going to happen. I actually took larger clothes for the outward journey and smaller compression garments for the way back. I’m glad I did, because everything turned into baggies. That worked well.”

MS: Was it actually dry on this ride?
DB: “There was some nice weather but it was still windy. There was ‘Dave’s Cloud’, as the guys christened it because wherever I was there just seemed to be this pigging great cloud raining on us all the time. So if I wasn’t in my softshell I was in my Pac-Lite trying to keep dry and comfy.”

MS: When you did the C2C the first time, was the plan to do the most direct or most interesting route?
DB: “Well, we’re mountain bikers so it had to be interesting. So I sort of set a goal… First off, I looked for the most easily accessible legal route through Wales with help from Jack Peterson Ian Barrington, Matt Page, and some guys in North Wales too, again it was a team effort. Then I looked at ways of taking in good places as well – so The Gap, the tramway climb in the Brecon Beacons, the Nant y Arian stuff, the Chute on the way north, the Climachx descent on the way back – things to make it hard so that you can only do it on a mountain bike rather than a cyclocross (CX) bike.

“Perhaps I made it a bit selfishly so that you can only do it on a mountain bike as I don’t own a cyclocross bike. You couldn’t ride on a CX bike, well you could but you’d have to walk a fair bit. And taking it through some historic places like Strata Florida, Ponterwydd, Nant y Arian, Devil’s Bridge area – that’s a huge tourist area so people could stop there for a few days and then get back on the ride – so it was about keeping it interesting.”

MS: Were you thinking of the route beyond yourself?
DB: “Yes, to make it more interesting for anybody else who does it over two days, four days, six days – whatever. Otherwise folks aren’t going to do it: if it was just a sub-24-hour route I could make it a straight line but that’s no good to anybody apart from three or four folks a year. But now five or six folks have done the route: Steve Heading’s just done the new coast to coast as I was fore-warned that there may be some access issues with part of it; so Steve’s done the new diversion and really enjoyed.

“If people of his calibre are doing the route and enjoying it then – apart from my friends who said they enjoyed it, they would be kind to me, but Steve would have no reason to be – I think it’s a good route. Luckily. I’m proud of it, but I’m also proud of the fact that the people who helped me had a hand in it too.”

MS: How did The Guinness World Record come about?
DB: “I looked on a website – there was a 48-hour mountain bike race in the States. Two or three years ago one chap did 350 miles on an essentially flat course around a lake. And I thought, ‘ooh, 48 hours.’ And for some reason I found myself looking for 24 hour greatest distance achieved and I saw that a record had been filed for that based on a 24-hour race in the US, which I don’t think was subsequently completed – the record attempt.

“I though that’s a good idea, then kind of just combined the two together as I’d already coined The Hobbit’s Tale [he elaborates: ‘There & Back Again, because I’m not the bright’].

“I thought, ‘I wonder if there’s a record for that – let’s have a look and see’. And there wasn’t, or there wasn’t as far as I could tell. So I thought, ‘Let’s ask Guinness.’ A lot of people pay attention to Guinness y’know – a lot of people grew up with Norris McWhirter and Roy Castle. I don’t think that what we do inspires folks, I think it gives people the choice to be inspired.

“People can look at it and go ‘pfft.’ Or they can look at it and be inspired – but they make the choice themselves. And given that The Guinness Book of Records is an inspirational thing for aspirational people I thought it might help to push it that bit more to show people what’s potentially possible with the human body. It just seemed to gel. We got it organised after a few stops and starts, as it’s got to be done in exactly the right way, and we got the record sorted. We need to cross some Ts and dot some Is to make sure we present the evidence in the right way as that’s equally important as it’s got to be right for them. It was the first time anyone was going to do a ride of that nature outside of a race course, and even then it had only been done twice, so that would’ve been a first; the record would’ve been first; the fact that I was riding from south to north was a first; there was so much going on that I just thought ‘I’ll do that.’ And I get a certificate if I complete it properly – waheey!” [Laughs]

MS: If you were being quite cut throat about and said I’m going to have the record, you could’ve just ridden around an athletics track. Why did you choose to do it the hard way?
DB: “Because we’re mountain bikers, and because if it wasn’t fun I couldn’t have done it. Even when I was cream crackered I was enjoying the descents. I may have been doing that at a relatively snail’s pace because I was so tired, but I was still enjoying them. If you’re trying to give people the excuse so that they can choose to be inspired and go out and do things themselves they’re much more likely to be inspired by something rocky and scary than Tarmaccy. So it was selfishly about me enjoying myself but also for more people to enjoy themselves too.”

MS: What would you like to see as The Hobbit’s Tale legacy?
DB: “Legacy?! Everybody thought I was nuts and nobody said – apart from Matt Page who said, ‘I think you’re nuts,’ but Matt and I can talk like that. Everybody else thought I was insane but they didn’t tell me then; they all wanted to be there to help me but didn’t think it could be done. I don’t think Chris Eatough thought it could be done but he also thought that if anybody could do it, it could be me. Maybe because I can switch off, I’m dumb or I’m a bit thick, I don’t know. I’m no fast rider but I can just ride, and ride, and ride.

“I think those were indications of people’s preconceived ideas of what’s possible. I hope I’ve helped in showing that we’re just starting to show what’s possible with the human body, the human mind, with all this fantastic technology we’ve got as bikes. I think bikes are amazing, they’re so much fun. If I’ve showed that then I think in 10 years time more folks will be doing this because they see it’s possible.

“It’s like what John Stamsted did before – you know, we’re all racing 24-hour races now – but I don’t think 48-hour races would be appropriate because it’s a whole weekend, so I don’t think we’re going to go that way. But it’s the fact that people now realise that we can go that bit further. And even further and a lot faster than I’ve done.”

MS: Your own personal story… I’ve read before in previous interviews that you’ve got a chip on your shoulder about cancer… and I know that your comments following on from national media interviews that they’re pushing the whole cancer story, how do you view what happened to you compared to who you are now?
DB: “I’ll get slated depending on how I put this – it was almost, from certain viewpoints, a good thing for me. Certainly I was ill: I was fairly gravely ill at some points and even more gravely ill on the chemotherapy things, but I still went out climbing, I still went out running 10km every day, I still boxed although I couldn’t compete in boxing as I wasn’t allowed a license, I was still being active. I was still out with Mountain Rescue, although they stopped me going out on the hill they still let me go climbing, which was a holiday, really. But it was good for me because I changed my job, I went to uni afterwards, I met Jo first and foremost. Then I changed my job because she wanted to upgrade me, so I went to uni and got a degree and got the job I have now. I work with people who need help as I needed help myself in the past. It’s almost a bit melodramatic really, but I get to help people in a similar vein to the way I was helped in the past.

“And I do have a chip on my shoulder about it, although it’s a lot less than it used to be – because I had to stop a lot of things I loved doing at the time because I just wasn’t fit enough to do them. All the veins up my chest went black like one of those zombies with black and blue veins; and although I was built like a brick outhouse because I was climbing and boxing, it still wasn’t very nice.

“I would almost say that that was where I saw the first elements of what you might term mental fortitude because I was going down for the surgery and not knowing what was coming – because they couldn’t tell me what was going to happen. My mum was in pieces as it’s harder for people around you rather than for yourself when you’re ill. And I was like, ‘come on, let’s get this over with. I want to get home, I want to get fit.’ I was like that all the way through and I’ve been like that ever since. So that was almost a tipping point, the flicking of a switch. But it did stop me doing an awful lot of things completely.”

MS: What do you mean by ‘having a chip on your shoulder’?
DB: “Well, I was a bit of a shit at times. For a while, and I can still be guilty of it now, I can be a bit self centred, and [tails off] I was a shit one day in Tremadog: I was climbing and a lady came up to me and said – Jo thinks it’s funny now but I’m embarrassed by it – ‘Hey can you give money for charity – it’s for cancer?’ And I was like, ‘No thanks, I’ve got no money right now and anyway I should be having that [money] – I’ve got cancer.’ Which I thought was funny to say at the time but it was shit thing to say and the lass didn’t know what to do.

“I’ve always regretted saying that: but that’s always been an indication of the chip on my shoulder. And if ever I was ill or I had something wrong then [adopts melodramartic voice] ‘it must’ve been the cancer back.’ It ruined my life from that point of view for five, six or 10 years afterwards. If ever I was ill, it was that. Also the doctors tended to concentrate on that if I was ill – and I did spend a lot of time getting ill after the chemotherapy so that’s sort of an explanation on the chip on my shoulder, although I find it hard to explain. It’s definitely still there but it’s getting a lot milder and less of an issue with me now.”

MS: Is that because of time passing or because your energies are directed into other positive things?
DB: “Probably a bit of both. But with a lot of other folk concentrating on it… and maybe I’ve self perpetuated that myself; in fact, I know I have. It does catch a headline a little bit more: ‘Cancer survivor did this!’ And I think, ‘oh no, I shouldn’t be writing that’ but then I’ve done it anyway which is self perpetuated that potential for maintaining that chip on my shoulder.”

MS: How do you describe yourself?
DB: “Headstrong. I think I’m just headstrong: if I want to do something – it causes arguments at home, mind – but if I want to do something and somebody says, ‘You’ll never do that.’ I’m like, ‘Well, oh really? I’ll give it a go. Let’s see if it works. If it does, it does, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.’ I’m very lucky in that I’ve never failed on anything because I’ve got stuck in and maintained that headstrong attitude. Not bullish, I think. I just keep at it. It’s that resilience thing I was talking about earlier.”

MS: Your body’s been through a lot – the whole cancer thing aside.
DB: “Yeah. I did six bones in two months; I had two dislocations; I’ve had the bowel operations, I’ve had shoulder operations because of arthritis, I’ve had my knees operated on twice each I think. I’ve had a bum hole op because of painkillers for a shoulder op – good god. Yeah, I’ve been through a lot really.”

MS: How are your knees now?
DB: “If I was still running they’d be ruined, but thanks to the cycling they’ve rounded off – I’ve got stage four or five arthiritis in my knees and the cycling wears those round and on the patellae because cycling’s non-weight bearing. So I’m in a lot better state than I would be if I was still running, boxing, or hill running. Gone are the days when I’ll go and run 50 miles off road. But cycling’s good. Cycling’s good for a lot of people – you just have the odd mishap where you break things or fall off and graze things. But apart from that, getting out, the air, the scenery, the health implications, it’s fantastic.”

MS: Could you ever see yourself without bicycles these days?
DB: “No. No. Actually, I sort of thought prior to doing the Hobbit’s Tale, ‘I’m going to be sick of the sight of bikes after this. What am I going to do if I don’t like bikes after this?’ But the next day [after finishing the Hobbit’s Tale] I went for a bike ride and enjoyed it. I thought, ‘ooh, this is weird: I want to ride my bike.’”

MS: So what’s Jo said you and your bullishness?
DB: “I’ve put Jo through hell. Definitely. But then Jo’s allowed me to put her through hell because if she didn’t want it to happen, if she wasn’t so supportive of what was essentially a self-centered dream, then it wouldn’t have happened properly. She’s always been there like that. But now it’s time for her to do her stuff because she’s a good racer herself – a very good racer – so I’ve got to support her now and let her do her things.”

MS: How did you two meet?
DB: “Climbing. Just off the coast to coast route at Merthyr I was out climbing with my RAF PTI  (Physical Training Instructor) mates – I wasn’t a bad climber so I used to take them out and show them techniques and how to do hard routes – and I met Jo that night. And then we became an item. I met up with her a few months after I had my appendix out and two/three weeks later I was diagnosed with cancer. She didn’t do a runner, so I thought, ‘ooh, this ones a good ’un, she’s a keeper. Definitely.’”

MS: Were you living in Wales when you met Jo?
DB: “Yes, I was living down in South Wales as I was working for the RAF in St Athen while I was on Mountain Rescue there. After we got together properly she finished her physio degree and I was upgraded. She said, ‘You need to become an orthotist and a prosthetist because they do this, that and that,’ and I looked at her and she said, ‘It’s just the same as aircraft engineering – just with humans.’ So I did it. I got top student. I got a first class degree. Only because I’d been doing that sort of stuff…”

MS: So she was vindicated?
DB: “Yes, yes, wholly. But I really enjoyed the uni and I was glad I was given the opportunity to do it as otherwise I wouldn’t have done it and I’d still be fixing aeroplanes and up to my eyeballs in gunk. I did it for eight years. I arrived in South Wales on 6 September 1987 to start work.”

MS: So what’s next?
DB: “I really daren’t say because I’m not allowed to have a project because it’s Jo’s time. However [with a glint in his eye] it’ll be something big that, hopefully, people will say, ‘Oooh, that’s going to be hard – is that actually going to be possible?’ And if I get that for the right route and it is actually possible I’ll do it. I’ve got some ideas but I daren’t say anything unless she kills me. She will, yes she will. Because anything big will take more logistical planning and I daren’t put my friends through that for a long time either – until they offer and then we’ll take a look at it.”

MS: This ride has seemingly turned you into a local celebrity…
DB: “Yes, I’ve done a few presentations [at local a school] for one of my friends from the Miggly Moos, Gaz Williams, who’s a hell of a rider himself. He asked if I’d come and talk to the kids about resilience. He actually asked me before I did the ride because I think he thought I was going to do it. In fact, I’m positive he thought I was going to do it.

“This week I’ve done two presentations at his school for the grown up kids and the younger kids at his secondary school and they were enthralled: when you start mentioning the key stats they stopped talking amongst themselves, looked up at me, looked up at the screen and were like, ‘Wow!’ And they watched and they listened. I was very pleasantly surprised and it was a nice feeling.”

MS: Is this something you want to do more of?
DB: “Well, I do a lot of presenting for my job anyway but yeah, I’d love to. If folk can find any source in any of the stuff I’ve done – because I’ve learnt a lot of what’s possible about myself through bloody mindedness and sheer hard work – and there’s resilience and sticking at it – I probably would, yeah. But I’d need to keep the balance that I’m a normal person and people need to realise I’m just a normal person and I’m doing the stuff that I do because I think it’s possible.”

MS: Is this something you’ve always had?
DB: “Yes, in paragliding I did all my exams really quickly and I went to do all my exams and this, that, and the other. When I was climbing I latched onto some top climbers – I used to climb with John Dunne who was a very controversial climber – he did the first E10 which is a massively difficult climb – but I used to climb E6, E7s with him and I could never do that before I met him. Then I ended up soloing E6s and E7s because I got in with the right people with the right mindset.

“Running was the same and I ended up to be running with guys on the RAF Mountain Rescue who are deemed to be quite special troops, quite tough troops. I’ve always been lucky to get in with the right guys because if you get in with the right people they bring you on to their level quite quickly, if they don’t kill you. I’ve always liked to do the best that’s possible with the time that I’ve got.”

MS: We’ve talked about the change a significant event in your life can have on your philosophy… How would you help or evangelise that shift in perspective that you’ve had in other people without them having to go through it?
DB: “Sometimes people almost let life get in the way if they want to do something. But for me, it’s something that I’ve been criticised for in the past, I can be selfish. But sometimes you need that selfishness to make the decision so you can go and do it. But if you can’t be selfish about it and you still need to take people into account, then give yourself little feed-in goals so you can get to that point to make a decision. ‘This week I’m going to do this, next week I’m going to do that, the week after I’m going to make a decision.’ Give yourself short-term milestones. Then, get to that point, make a decision and go and do it. But even then you can get to that point but go beyond prevaricating and you just have to say, ‘Right, I’m going: I’m off.’ By making it easier to get to that point, I think more people can do more than they think they can. Almost like me building up my mindset. And that was multi-step without a doubt: getting my mindset right and then saying, ‘Right, I’m ready now.’”

MS: What would you have written on your tombstone?
DB: “I’d like to say Spike Milligan’s, ‘I told you I was ill!’ [laughs] because that’s just stuck in my mind. [Pauses, thinks] ‘He did it, he did.’ Yeah, something like that. But I’d probably still want Spike Milligan down there somewhere because he’s blimmin’ funny.”

Click through the pages for details on his sponsors, the bike that stood up to the challenge with Dave and his top endurance riding tips…

The finalists line up alongside Steve Peat, WMB's Matt and Red Cloud MBC's Mark Almond

Our finalists came from all over the UK to the assessment day in Sheffield – from Bristol, Scotland, Derby, Manchester and Nottingham – and each with a unique story to tell.

For Brett Underhill, cycling helped him recover from crippling psychological problems and return his lust for life; Gordon Dickson survived a near-fatal bike crash requiring three pulmonary resuscitations; bike-fit/cycling injury specialist Richard Salisbury’s Lymphoma is currently in remission and he’s also overcome other serious health issues; Martin Yeo has overcome numerous broken bones and injuries to return to riding with the utmost zest again and again; and Matt Legg-Begg gave up his dream job as a mountain bike guide in Canada when his father was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. Matt organised and completed one of, if not the, fastest off-road Lands End to John O’Groats rides in aid of The Prostate Cancer Charity, raising £10,211. His father sadly passed away on the eighth day of the ride.

So, without further ado, click through the pages to meet our Ticket To The TransRockies finalists.

The Dark Peak

Where Hope Valley, Derbyshire
Web www.visitpeakdistrict.com
Good for Year-round technical fun with big views

Click on the links for more route information and maps
Easy, Moderate, Classic

The South Downs

Where East and West Sussex
Web www.visitsouthdowns.com
Good for Long summer days of rolling miles and dusty, sun-drenched vistas

Click on the links for more route information and maps
Moderate, Classic

The 7Stanes

Where Southern Scotland
Web www.7stanes.gov.uk
Good for Straightforward, easy to follow trail centre rides for all abilities

The North Downs

Where Dorking, Surrey
Web www.surreyhills.org
Good for Tight singletrack and woodsy fun within striking distance of London

Click on the links for more route information and maps
Easy, Classic

Snowdonia

Where Gwynedd, North Wales
Web www.mbwales.com
Good for Big-mountain riding in the heart of the Snowdonia National Park

Fort William

Where Fort William, Scotland
Web www.ridefortwilliam.co.uk
Good for World-class trails on the side of Britain’s highest mountain

The Lake District

Where Cumbria
Web www.lakedistrict.gov.uk
Good for A mix of technicality and flow in a truly stunning setting

Coed y Brenin

Where Dolgellau, North Wales
Web www.mbwales.com
Good for The original Welsh trail centre

The Quantocks

Where Somerset
Web www.thequantockhills.co.uk
Good for Secret singletrack in a pint-size setting

Click on the links for more route information and maps
Easy, Moderate, Classic

The Cairngorms

Where The Highlands, Scotland.
Web www.visitcairngorms.com
Good for Truly epic big days out in the heart of the wilderness

Click on the links for more route information and maps
Easy, Moderate, Classic

To see the full feature and get more details on all of these rides check out WMB issue 119, on sale now!

Long before the UCI decided that it was fine to run disc brakes on cyclo-cross bikes, but still not fine to run tyres wider than 33mm, the majority of riders and bike designers had already stopped listening to the rules and started to revel in the all-rounder efficiency of ’cross bikes intended for mere mortals, rather than for the rule-book-bound pro racers.

A few years back, designs started to move in a new direction, away from pure race geometry towards something encompassing the have-a-go-at-anything potential that ’cross bikes had always hinted at but never quite achieved. Disc brakes appeared, replacing cantilever judder, scarily inefficient slowing power in the wet and fast wearing rims with smooth, powerful well-modulated control in even the worst conditions. Bottle bosses, rack mounts and room for bigger profile tyres released maximum all-terrain cruising potential. Geometry started to become more relaxed. In short, cyclo-cross bikes were finally being built to appeal to anyone who wasn’t quite sure what sort of bike they wanted. They had the potential to encompass aspects of the best of everything.

Whyte is a UK brand, run by the importers and frequent design instigators of California-based Marin Bikes. Designer Ian Alexander is Cotswolds based. He took the design helm when Jon Whyte moved to Canada a few years ago. Ian comes principally from a mountain bike background, but his fresh approach to design is starting to reap rewards as the brand moves into new areas. We joined him for a ride around Bristol’s woodland lanes and trail network aboard prototypes of Whyte’s new cyclo-cross bikes, not officially available until later in the year.

First impressions of the Whyte CX geometry is that it’s unusual to the point of initially disconcerting… at least if you’re used to expecting near road-bike-like geometry on a ‘cross bike. The first thing you notice is that you can see more of the front wheel out front than usual. This is for three reasons: a very short stem, a slacker than usual (69-degree) head angle and a long front centre on the frame (the ‘front centre’ is the measurement from the bottom bracket axle to the front wheel axle). Off road, these three factors work well together if you stay sitting in the centre of the bike instead of instantly hanging off the back of the saddle when the terrain drops away. But if you’re used to dropping off the back of the saddle to avoid the possibility of taking a dive over the bars on a more conventional ‘cross bike it takes a while to gain confidence to do the opposite. Mountain bikers will adapt more quickly than road/cross riders.

At slow speeds, on technical terrain, you have to consciously fight the feeling that you need to shift your weight back, because if you do the steering starts to feel a bit wishy-washy, especially under hard braking. But as your speeds increase, especially over typical non-technical cyclo-cross terrain, you start to gain confidence to stay sitting (or hovering) over the middle of the bike and let the bike’s steering find its own way. Basically, relax and it trundles along like a well-balanced mountain bike wearing skinny tyres. The easy pull (with centre bar interrupter levers) well modulated power of the disc brakes are a massive boost compared to the cantilevers more usually found on ‘cross bikes.

Construction-wise, the frame boasts an interesting assortment of manipulated shaped aluminium tubes, chosen to achieve the right combination of stiffness, strength and comfort. There’s loads of mud drop-through room and space for a very big tyre up front and up to 38mm out back: Alexander says the stays on final production models will feature more manipulation for tyre clearance without losing the compact (and noticeably good for climbing) back end. The steerer is 1.5/1.125in tapered, the straight blade fork is carbon composite and there are rack and bottle eyelets. Fine detail, including paint and componentry choices at several different price points, is still subject to change, but expect to see two models at below the £1000 mark.

Interview with Whyte’s Ian Alexander

BikeRadar: What is the frame and fork material of the bikes?
Ian Alexander: A Whyte-designed hydroformed tubeset in 6061T6 aluminium. We’ve concentrated on developing a stiff oversize down tube linking together with large asymmetric chainstays, but then using our slimline signature Whyte-designed seatstays with a 27.2mm seat post for as much comfort as possible.

BR: Will the frames and fork be the same throughout the range?
IA: There are two design briefs, one is a commuter-orientated concept and the other is a more competition-focused frame with extra performance features. Both will have the Whyte-developed CX geometry to allow really serious off-road capability.

BR: Roughly what price points are you aiming at?
IA: Obviously ‘Bike-to-Work’ scheme friendly is important in the UK. But at this stage we’re not confirmed but expect the range to follow on from Whyte’s tremendously successful R-7 flat bar range.

BR: What sort of rider do you expect to buy?
IA: The CX bike is the eponymous crossover category. I think MTB XC (cross-country) and Trail riders who want a road option that lets them commute, but with a change of tyres can do proper off-road events like the 3Peaks and Hell of the North Cotswolds will love the Whyte geometry on these bikes. Then you have road riders who also commute but perhaps want to change to CX tyres in the ‘cross season and do their local league events as well as CX events like the CX Sportif recently….

BR: Could you sum up your approach to cyclo cross-geometry, and explain why?
IA: It’s been an interesting concept to develop. I’ve come at the CX bike from perhaps more of an MTB design perspective rather than taking a road bike and adding canti-brakes and more clearances. Things like the continuous outer cables and other UK MTB design details are key defining points, but the decision to go disc specific means the bikes have vastly better braking performance off-road, and this means as with MTBs before, the ability to really descend fast and tackle steep and technical off-road sections means the geometry has to cope. I believe that the more stable and sure-footed the bike can be, the faster off-road, so the geometry is based around a longer frame length with correspondingly short stems but in conjunction with slacker head angle and as wide as possible bar widths to get the cockpit and steering geometry really optimised. Using the top mounted brakes gives a great position on the bike when off road. I’ve been impressed with its neutral feel on the road too, we have CX and road set-ups on test and we’re pretty happy.

BR: Where next? Any ideas for the next Whyte level of CX or road bikes?
IA: Personally I’d love to see how a titanium version would ride, purely for research purposes of course…

Think big. It’s a bike show in widescreen. Eurobike would swallow the London Show into the dark end of one of its 12 show halle. Just getting round and seeing everything means literally jogging past rows and row and rows of brand new shiny hi-tech bikes, components and software.

There were two things which became obvious as the week wore on. Firstly there was no one single killer product or bike on show, bad for those wanting a banner headline. However, the reason for this lack of a standout product was that EVERYONE has raised their game for 2011.

New technologies were mostly refinements in material rather than new ways of making the bikes function, meaning lighter, stronger, but essentially familiar looking bikes for next year. The second was that design and more specifically aesthetics are the golden rules for all 2011 kit. Actually you might not recognise your favourite bikes in 2011 as most brands seem to have hired new graphic design teams in the last year. As the power of Apple’s iPod design and styling continues to leech out into practically all utility items, so brands are realising that it’s no longer acceptable to have a brilliantly engineered frame and then just kit it out in cherry-picked components. You’ll end up with a bike that rides well, but which looks disparate and a bit clunky. Saleable for sure, but not sexy.

For 2011 if you aren’t working with you suspension supplier to custom colour match your fork, tweak the graphics on your chosen wheels to match those of your frame, finding cleaner, prettier and more efficient ways to style your bike then you’re way off the pace…The best at this game are Cube, Scott, Trek and Specialized who continue to put out bikes styled to within an inch of their drop-outs.
If this all sounds a bit too much like window dressing over substance, then it’s you who are off the pace, at least according to the guiding lights of the bike industry. They claim this smooth integrated conceptual look is what consumers want, and the reality is it was hard to resist drooling over bikes which looked so complete or ‘as one’ as somebody accurately described a stunning knobby tyred two-wheeler that was being swamped by lusting bike-o-philes…

After walking 20 miles of aisles, consuming 16 ham and cheese rolls, 14 espressos, and roughly 4lb of steak in the week, it’s time to rest my sore feet and put the best of the show together for you to enjoy. Check out our full report with all that was best from the Eurobike show together with pointers to the hottest MTB kit for 2011 in What Mountain Bike 115, on sale 20 October.

Words and photos Dan Milner

“Just look for tomatoes in the front garden,” suggests Keith, concluding directions to finding his house. I’m still pondering if ‘tomatoes’ is code for some new prototype component when I spot what can only be Keith’s house. In a modest suburb, among a dozen similar bungalows, one stands out, its front yard crammed with a tangle of towering tomato plants. Tomatoes it appears, are an important part of life for one of the bike industry’s most recognised names.

Anyone seeking the elusive frame of their dreams during the ’80s will spout forth on the aesthetic magnetism of the hand-built Bontrager frame, but to today’s rider the unmistakable Bontrager ‘B’ is more easily associated with the components decorating a hefty chunk of Trek’s bikes. Indeed, since his first, and successful, stab at mountain bike frame creation in 1980, the Bontrager name has evolved more than a little.

I catch up with Keith in the surf mecca of Santa Cruz, a place that has been his family home for a couple of decades. Keith, sporting a weathered shirt, earring and shaven head, looks a little like a bouncer you’d find outside any Manchester club. He looks tired, having endured the long-haul flight back from the UK only the day before: the price an American resident pays for entering the Three Peaks cyclo-cross race in England. For a person whose name is inextricably linked to the world of mountain bikes, you’d have thought dabbling in a little cyclo-cross would be child’s play, but the Three Peaks is a veritable challenge by anyone’s standards. It’s left Keith with a cold.

“Cyclo-cross frames were part of what I used to do locally,” he says, explaining that in the ’80s he produced custom frames for national cyclo-cross champions, and through that connection, became immersed in this skinny-tyre form of masochism. In fact, an hour later when we’re readying ourselves for a ride on Keith’s local loop, he’s about to grab his ‘cross bike when he remembers that we’re shooting for a mountain bike mag.

“We have pretty buff singletrack here, so most can be ridden on a ‘cross bike,” he says, leading me into a false sense of security about the ass-whooping he’s about to unleash on me; even at the age of 55, speed is still a big part of how Keith rides. The trails we lap are classic for the area: dusty and fast, and they crisscross Santa Cruz’ neighbouring hillsides with such regularity, from the air the landscape must look like a giant rumpled tartan rug.

“But as the courses in Europe prove, if you put your mind to it, or lose your mind, you can ride a ‘cross bike pretty much anywhere,” he continues, and in one sentence, I realise that this is Keith Bontrager’s thinking in a nutshell.

Pioneering is what Keith does best and from the early days he drew on his higher education in physics at University College of Santa Cruz and his time as a motorbike mechanic to better understand the obstacles that lie in the way of building better bikes. Keith likes to dig deep, often to a material level, to work out how a component can be improved.

As we roll away from his house and towards the two-hour loop that he uses to “test” components, I notice he’s on an ageing hardtail, actually an old prototype that combines an aluminium main triangle, steel chainstays and a carbon wishbone. He produced it at a time when experimenting with using different materials for separate parts of the frame according to their suitability rather than using the same throughout. It might sound like a Frankenstein creation, but it shows how the Bontrager mind works. For Keith it’s about evolving ideas as well as finding solutions, and it’s about rethinking the accepted way of doing something. Of course, as with the mutant machine he’s using to pull away from me on the climb, not all are easily accepted in the outside world.

“I’m often accused of inventing challenges, but in order to make something that will appeal to people, you have to find a new way of solving a problem, to make it better. After all how do you distinguish your riser bar from others? Sometimes you can’t, but there are times when you can do something better and it’s outside everyone’s comfort zone. I’m not saying you roll the dice, but if we do the extra work and we check out a different way and it works, then we have a better widget, whatever it might be.”

Widgets. It’s a word that comes up often during our chat: Keith’s catch-all phrase for the expanding range of Bontrager-brand components that is annually marketed by parent company Trek. It’s the widgets, rather than the beautiful hand-made frames, in fact that attracted Trek to buy the Bontrager brand in 1995, a time when in reality Bontrager bikes was struggling to keep abreast of the largely fashion-led changes that were sweeping the mountain bike market.

The sale of Bontrager took only a month to complete, and after the transfer, the Bontrager workshop, based in an old converted fish cannery near the beach (a location now occupied by Santa Cruz bikes) continued for some time to produce the top end steel and titanium frames that had made the brand.
“We gave the bike brand a good shot. We had the most sophisticated steel manufacturing production line going, but steel hardtails were rapidly falling out of fashion and suspension bikes weren’t very good so we thought ‘why would you want one of those compared to a totally sorted ride?’” says Keith with little detectable hint of remorse for the demise of what had become one of the most intuitive frame brands in the business.

“At the time, the lesson to learn was that this wasn’t about riding a bike, but about fashion and the curiosity in new stuff. The motivation for people to buy things was no longer based entirely on the performance of the bike,” he continues with perhaps a hint of justified cynicism. If there is one person that will have difficulty in bikes becoming fashion, rather than engineering led in their design, then I imagine that would be Mr Bontrager.

For some time prior to Trek’s buyout Keith had been producing components, or widgets, to give them another name, as a way of making mountain bikes truly suitable for off-road use.

“The parts that were made according to traditional methods, mostly broke, at least when you started riding them hard,” he explains, reminding me of the almost weekly broken rear-axle saga of my own first mountain bike. “Then you come to a new way of doing things: mostly to keep the thing light but also to keep it from breaking.”

And so an industry of aftermarket components was born, offering better quality alternatives for the stock kit that often wasn’t up to the job. With Keith’s background in modifying motorbikes, the step into this world from frame building was a natural progression. Things have moved on in 15 years though. When I ask of his current role at Trek, Keith laughs, letting his gold tooth shine. “Engineer at large would be the best description,” he answers, before adding “though there are some guys in Winsconsin [Trek’s HQ] that would like to hear my best shot at what my job description is!”

With the incorporation of a company that employed 25 workers into a behemoth like Trek, I suggest that perhaps certain compromises have had to be made when it comes to Keith’s level of involvement. “I don’t run the company. I work on a lot of stuff but I don’t have final say on much,” he says chirpily. Indeed with such a large team in product development, there are times when Keith arrives for sales meetings and sees a Bontrager component for the first time.

Yet rather than be vexed by this distancing from some product development – something that would have been unthinkable in the garage-workshop years – Keith appears at ease with his position. “There is way too much going on for me to be involved in all of it,” he says. “There are times when we work in a fashion business, times when there are some products that I think I wouldn’t have done it that way, but I don’t understand enough about the comfort bike market for example, to tell someone if that’s the right kind of saddle. I just have to let that go.”

But having your name emblazoned on a range of product  – some of which you’ve never seen let alone had input into – must mean battling certain moral or egotistical demons? “Well, my association with the brand is still there, and we still have the same approach to what we do,” he explains, “but I don’t have any problem with the change down in spec for lower price point product. You’d have to be dumb to think everything can be as good as high-end stuff.

“Frankly, the engineering for the £5000 bike is more fun – you get to play with space age materials – but the engineering for the £500 bike is more demanding because if you make a mistake there will be a lot of them coming back. Blow it on a £5000 bike and you have to replace 250 widgets, blow it on the £500 bike and you have to replace 100,000 widgets. And because there are limits and restrictions on materials and technologies [on lower end components] you have to understand all those things much better to make sure you don’t make a mistake.”

In truth the man Bontrager is still firmly associated with the Bontrager name, albeit in a much different role than he occupied 20 years ago. This is the same Keith Bontrager that has been attributed the mantra: “Light, strong, cheap. Pick any two!” as a platform for understanding bike component manufacture, and while Bontrager production has been ramped up massively under the Trek flag, he still works by the same philosophies.

“You have to choose priorities for a design: a logical framework that every engineer or designer has to work within. If you approach the world that way it starts making sense and becomes an easier place to live as you’re not expecting things to be magic.”

It’s unrealistic expectations from materials that stirs the only glimmer of agitation from Keith during our chat, when I quiz him on the current rebirth of carbon as a frame material. “The problem is that the bike industry is full of people familiar with metal things that behave like metal things and now we’re making things that don’t behave like metal things!” he says. “Some understand it and others don’t. The manufacturing is better than ever, but we’re not selling things that are used in a tight, well-controlled environment with predictable load ranges, we’re selling bikes to anybody who wants to ride; kids jumping 8ft high on bikes that are inexpensive, for example, and that shouldn’t happen. We’re selling Contador’s Tour De France winning bike to people who weigh 120kg. That may be within the appropriate range of use for the bike, but just barely.”

Keith lived through the ’90s material revolution, when early carbon designs and certain alloys were being plugged as the next best thing. Few of them worked out so it would be easy to put the caution he’s expressing down to scepticism when in fact, it’s his mechanical background punching through once more.

“The first carbon bikes [in the '90s] were not the optimal use of carbon fibre. The aerospace guys called it black aluminum, designing things out of carbon but using the same shapes and approaches as if it were aluminum; it doesn’t work. But you can see where it is now. People are designing carbon as if it is carbon. From the point of view of a person who has spent most of their life making two wheel things go faster, all that is really cool. We’re getting Formula One level stuff,” he exclaims, before adding with a grin, “for Formula One prices!”

I’m guessing that to a person whose reason for building his first frame was an unwillingness to pay for decent road bike, and whose interest in cooking can be attributed to “I travel a lot and I’m fundamentally cheap,” the price of today’s carbon offerings are somewhat of an eye-opener. So as the technical side of our sport continues to develop rapidly in fields like carbon, and costs escalate, does Keith welcome the ‘no holds barred’ approach that has allowed the mountain bike to develop exponentially?

“The fact the MTB has this ‘do what you want’ attitude, and the fact that it’s riding not the racing that is important, that’s really good. But as a physicist and engineer one of the games I play with friends is to predict the consequences of new designs. Is that a good idea? If it is, then that’s what everything will look like that in five years.”

He refers me to the deluge of anodized CNC-hubs that swept through the ’90s: easy to make, but largely unreliable. “Trying these things is fine, but the bike industry is one where everyone who has an idea can give it a try. It’s almost comic. You can see all these really bad ideas in the patent office realised in hardware. It sounds snobby, but it’s part of physics and engineering to predict what will happen before you do it.”
After our ride I ask Keith if he’s ever considered pulling his welding jig out of storage. “I have friends asking for them. Not because they think I can do something no one else can, but because it could be fun to have a signature piece. I used to make a frame in a day, and not from sub assemblies from Japan. This was bare tubes on the bench to finished frame. I used to like that. It’s like when I’m cooking now, when you get into this focused process, when at the end of the day you have something to show for it. It’s the same motivation as looking at Italian frames and saying ‘I can do that’. It’s not just creativity: it’s craft. I really enjoy that part of it and since I don’t get to do it on bike parts anymore, I turned to the kitchen.”
With that he hands me a bulging sandwich. The tomatoes in it are the best I’ve ever tasted.

Keith on hardtails:
“If you just want to have fun, then buy whatever you want. If you want to be a good, fast skilled rider then yes, buy a hardtail. Eventually you’ll ride something so rough that you’ll need all those skills to take a good line even though you’ve got the suspension.”

Keith on product testing:
“For the most part I don’t end up testing the high end stuff. It’s easy to find people to test those: put it out there and you have vultures coming from everywhere. It’s harder to find people who will put a lot of miles on the medium priced stuff. The image people have of people like me is that we ride around on the Formula One level bikes all the time, but that’s not how we do our work. We do that for fun.”

Keith Bontrager timeline.
1954 Keith Bontrager is born.
1965 Keith’s love affair with both the dirt and hands-on inventiveness begins when he constructs mini-motorbikes using lawnmower engines.
1970 Racing motocross he lands a spot as head tuner at the 250cc and 750cc World Championships, confirming his taste for both speed and a good fettle.
1979 Unwilling to pay for an Italian bike, Keith builds his first road bike frame. The plan is optimistic: the frame takes a year to complete.
1980 Keith builds his second frame, a mountain bike frame. Loosely based on the Klunker template used for many of the frames being built in the Marin County area. He only makes one like this before incorporating more efficient angles for pedalling.
1980s Operating out of his in-laws’ garage Keith goes on to supply demand for further mountain bike, tandem and track frames. Ditching lugged construction enables him to alter geometries.
1984 Keith finds some 40-hole 700c road bike rims in the bins outside the Specialized offices, cuts them down, and re-rolls them into a 26in rim. The seed for Bontrager components is sown.
1986 Keith designs and produces the first clamped fork, where the fork legs are clamped into the crown rather than welded as a single unit. It’s this same design that forms the basis for almost every suspension fork today.
1992 Bontrager Cycles expands. Influenced by Jeff Fox’ idea that if you make something that is so good, so well understood you don’t need to market it, Bontrager bikes are given names like Race and Race Lite. Advertising is minimal, and the brand expands by reputation.
1993 Bontrager begins making components in quantity. These are found, under license on Trek bikes.
1995 Bontrager’s no-faff approach to product design draws the attention of Trek. Wanting its own in-house component brand to offset reliance on Shimano, Trek buys Bontrager.
1999 Bontrager turns out the race Lite wheelsets, designed as a complete system wheel.
2003 Lance Armstrong and the USPS Cycling team ride Bontrager road wheels to Tour de France victory.
2004 Bontrager pioneers Tubeless Ready Technology to produce lightweight, tubeless tyres.

Tom Ritchey on life’s knocks, the birth of dirt and racing wooden bikes in Africa.

Words and photos by Dan Milner

Despite his 6ft-plus height, I’m having a little trouble keeping my fellow rider and guide in my sights ahead of me, and the anxiety of being left behind as the sun sets on a hillside that is renowned mountain lion territory starts to become real. I’ve been warned about Tom Ritchey, or at least his fitness, by all and any industry types I’ve met en route to conduct an interview with the legend himself. “So you’re riding with Tom eh?” they’d say biting their lower lip in contemplation of what lay ahead of me.

My idea of an interview of course necessarily involves throwing a leg over a bike for an hour or two; how else can you get under the skin of a rider. Tom Ritchey’s name might appear on a million bike components out there, but strip away the matt black anodizing and Ritchey is still a rider. Right now, as I gasp for breath to keep his pace along mile upon mile of flowing singletrack, I’d almost prefer it if he was just another overweight office executive.

“Overweight” and “executive” are not words to describe Tom though. Even as CEO of Ritchey Design, the long-running component company he started in 1983, Tom needs little excuse to ride, perhaps the reason he so readily accepts my request for an interview. After all this is a guy who was at the birth of mountain biking and has no doubt been interviewed countless times before, but throw in the idea of balancing the Q&A session with a decent two-hour loop and Mr Ritchey is all ears. The fact that he rescheduled our get-together to participate in Tour de France pro Levi Leipheimer’s 100-mile charity ride the day before has done nothing to show me mercy on the trails.

Considering Tom clocks up some 10,000 miles in the saddle each year, it’s hard to believe he has any time for the CEO and company president duties at Ritchey Design. “I have a great executive team that covers for me a lot,” he says with only a hint of guilt, before adding “my job has been reduced to product development.”

I’m about to suggest that overseeing product development in a company whose components find their way onto a lot of OE spec sheets worldwide is hardly a ‘reduced’ role when he sees that he’s perhaps played down his role at Ritchey and jumps in. “All product is my responsibility. That’s what I do: I’m Mr Product” he quips.

Product, or rather product quality, is in Tom’s blood. It always has been. Back in the early 1970s when he was racing road bikes at national level, he was designing and milling his own components, trying to get the edge over his rivals on race day. At the age of 16 and growing up in an engineering environment (his father was an engineer) he bought a lathe and a milling machine and began turning out his own hubs, bottom bracket shells and seat posts. When asked whether this manifestation of adolescent creativity was down to a deep-seated passion for engineering he retorts, “Heck no, I was self centered to the core. I was a racer, I wanted to go faster than my competitors and I needed to make my bike lighter, stronger, tougher and better. If everyone else had a Cinelli stem that weighed 10 ounces and I could make a carbon steel one of my own at 4 ounces, I thought bingo man! I’m going to have the stiffest, baddest stem!”

It’s this same “stronger, tougher, better” ethos that he strives for throughout the Ritchey line today, a product range that includes seat posts, headsets, clipless pedals, tyres, stems, saddles, bars and even wheelsets.

Of course, product testing for Tom means just that, and as we soar down dusty trails that literally sit on the doorstep of his rambling home in the hills south of San Francisco, I am aware that the bloke whose dust I’m eating is responsible for a lot of the development that has produced the mountain bike we see today. For myself and many other riders who discovered mountain biking in the early ’80s, the Ritchey name is almost hallowed. We cut our teeth saving up for Ritchey Logic cantilever brakes and buttery smooth headsets to adorn our svelte XC rigs, idolizing both their simplicity of design and the way they simply worked well.

“Classic, race-tough and trusted. It’s still the same,” he says of current components, “but Ritchey represents value too. To me, I’m the guy who is out there buying stuff in the store and I don’t want to overspend just because it has the Tom Ritchey name on it!” he adds with a little agitation, and a hint of modesty. “Hey, I’m a pretty value orientated guy personally…  just look at this place, look at my car!” I’ve got to admit that I’ve already noticed that in his driveway sits not a Porsche Cayenne, but a 1998 VW Jetta.

Indeed everything about Tom’s daily existence seems to be very down to earth and earlier when I rolled up at the large wooden cabin that has been his family home for decades, I found him busying himself in his workshop. He’s sporting stained jeans that struggle to reach his ankles and as he hands me a lump of rock I notice his cheap supermarket digital watch. “Check this out! It’s a piece of fossilized wood I found in Arizona.” The trip he then describes is a recent bike adventure with long standing friend and Ritchey team member Thomas Frischnekt, during which they rode with an ageing native american chief through some of the most spectacular terrain Tom has ever experienced.

Looking around the workshop I take in half a dozen metal working machines, none of which I could speculate the purpose of, let alone know how to turn it on, but I do recognize a welding jig, in which sits the barely finished skeleton of a tandem. The frame is a visual joy, the welds so smooth that if you were to paint the frame black it would look like a carbon monocoque creation.
It’s this frame building prowess that created an initial splash for Ritchey in the world of mountain biking, when in late-1978 he turned his torch-wielding hand towards meeting demands for the then-revolutionary mountain bike, teaming up with Gary Fisher and Charlie Kelley to provide the frames for their company, Mountain Bikes. Already competing (and winning) in the legendary Klunker repack race down Mt Tam, Tom’s awareness of the need for better componentry was brought to the fore when hitting a bump halfway down the course, he had to pull up to rotate the bars on his own bike.

“That’s all it took. I knew I needed to make a one-piece [bar-and-stem] that would never slip. It’s those kind of experiences that have foreshadowed all my designs,” he continues as if needing a sneaky excuse for the number of hours he spends in the saddle. Not much has changed; seeing opportunities to improve the technology of the sport was what it’s all about.

Sitting on the deck of his place, we look across to the San Francisco Bay area and to the commonly deemed birthplace of mountain biking. “I don’t think Marin was ground zero,” announces Tom. “I’m not saying that California and that weren’t part of the history, but a bigger piece was Greg Lemond.

“Nobody ties Greg into any of it, but he was a catalyst. He suddenly put himself out there as an innovator: the time-trial, the aero position, he re-wrote the book with rider salary and contracts.” Inside I hear Tom’s phone ringing and ask if he needs to get it, him being the CEO of a pretty chunky company, but he shakes his head, instead carrying on where he left off.

“Back then everything was Europe-based; there was no Japan. Peugeot, Gitane, Motobecane, they were the Trek, Specialized and Cannondale of Europe. They sponsored the big teams of Europe and it [mountain biking] went over their heads. They didn’t know until too late how the influence of Lemond and US-born inventiveness had happened. I feel his success was a catalyst and a lubrication that we took advantage of in legitimizing what we were doing. It’s taken me a while to come to that place.”

However the mountain bike came about, Tom remained immersed when he split from Fisher and Kelley in 1983 and focused on component design and production, starting Ritchey Design. “So basically it was about understanding the bike more deeply than just the frame; it was a system of components and I was uniquely gifted when it came to design and building and machining,” he says as I scan the line-up of bikes that sit propped against various walls. Among the beautifully crafted frames and Tom’s regular ride – a Scott Spark complete with a folded spare tube taped to the bars XC-race style – is a brightly painted cargo bike. The top tube is emblazoned with the words “Coffee Bike”. While it’s not a frame that’s been born from the Ritchey jig, the Coffee Bike is as much a Ritchey creation as any other bearing his name, and its existence represents a big change in tack in Tom’s life.

Seven years ago, when his first wife left him, Tom found himself battling the personal demons of self-centredness and insecurity. “To tell you the truth, people put me on a pedestal, but in a personal way I didn’t feel good about myself, and I didn’t understand it. I was hard on myself; when a wife leaves you they say you can go bitter or better, and I didn’t want to become a bitter person. I had good people in my life that believed in me more than I did in myself,” he explains through watery eyes.

In 2005, after years of ego-centrism Tom was asked to accompany a friend on a bike trip in Africa. Finding themselves in Rwanda, a country that had experienced unfathomable bloodshed during a civil war that ended in 1994, things were put into perspective. Tom immediately saw the potential of using his knowledge of the bike for positive change.

“I knew that if I was to do something beyond cynicism, something that would not only show that I could change but also gave other people a second chance, I couldn’t make it about me. I made that my first mandate, that it wasn’t about Tom Ritchey.” From these initial experiences the seeds of the charity Project Rwanda were sown.

A year later Tom returned to Rwanda to put on the wooden Bike classic event, one that lined up invited American riders alongside locals on homemade wooden bikes. “Bikes are famously popular of course, but only one in a 100 people have them. Most people know how to ride a bike and as a tourist on a bike, they just wanna race you. It doesn’t matter if they’re on a beaten, broken bike that has 100lb of potatoes on the back of it, that doesn’t register with them.”

The Wooden Bike classic (now an annual event) was just one of Tom’s ambitions for Rwanda. Providing focus on cycling in a fun way, it set out to create community in, and awareness of, Rwanda, and had soon assembled and was training a national cycling team, with Tom’s friend Jock Boyer at the helm. “They [the Rwanda government] saw what we were doing under the umbrella of Rwanda’s national cycling team. They looked at the opportunities in cycling and saw that it is an opportunity to show a positive Rwanda to the world.”

Subsequent photo ops of the team alongside Lance Armstrong will go a long way to creating a positive image of a now peaceful country that has much to offer especially in terms of eco-tourism (Rwanda is one of the few places you can still watch wild silverback gorillas).

Surrounded by ageing, rod-braked, Indian-designed bikes that provided a limited use to the Rwandans in their hilly terrain, Tom also realized that things could be different. “The bikes aren’t even being ridden,” he explains, getting agitated, “they’re being used as scooters. They are loaded up, but they can’t control them; they either don’t have brakes to stop them, or gears to get up hill. They only know the bike as this one design of bike, so from a tech perspective and my own background I realised that I have a unique way of looking at things that could help them.”

A meeting with Dr Tim Shilling, who was heading a program to improve coffee quality in Rwanda, provided the impetus for Tom to design a bike that could truly help a coffee growers lot, by cutting the time it took the farmer to transport the beans to the washing plant. Less time means better quality, means a better price; the Coffee Bike was born. In its development, Tom draws parallels to the advent of the first mountain bike. “All it took was someone to put it together, to take the cobbled together bikes that were already in existence, and say there is a more elegant way of doing this. I come along in those environments and find that I’m in the right place at the right time.”

While Tom’s role in the Coffee Bike is undisputable, there is of course not one Ritchey component on it, and you have to search hard to find Tom’s name on the Project Rwanda website. “I didn’t want people to see me being a do-gooder and making a marketing statement out of it,” he says.

It’s clear that his involvement in Project Rwanda has had a big impact on Tom, but he’s not done yet. “The most rewarding thing for me would be to have created a project that is self sustaining… to absolve me,” he says to underpin his criticism of typical NGO ‘handout’ philosophies (the Coffee Bikes are actually bought on micro finance loans by the farmers). “My next goal is to have an organization ‘Bike Designers Without Borders’,” he replies when I ask where he’s heading next. “It would be about your skill as a designer, whether your working on $10,000 carbon bikes or basic Walmart bikes, you know something and have something to give as a servant to the third world.. a third world technology solution, whether it be generating power, purifying water, grinding maize, or a tricycle for the handicapped. There are a thousand Tom Ritcheys in the bike industry that just need an organization to channel through.

“The Rwandans look at a bike that’s been there for 100 years and they don’t see a lot of hope. They look at the bike I designed and they are excited about that,” he adds, getting agitated again, before fixing me with a steel-eyed look. “The bike needs to be a tool of excitement and fantasy, to take them to another place in their minds about what their opportunities are. Who knows where that will lead?” And that is an apt question with Tom riding alongside them.

Tom Ritchey timeline
Born 1956.
1973 Tom is racing road at national level. He welds more than 1000 road frames by the time he leaves High School. He machines his own components.
1974 Road racing is banned in California for one year. Tom and friends turn to riding their road bikes on the buff singletracks around Saratoga Pass.
Mid-1970s Uniquely Tom ditches lugs in favour of the freedom of lugless frame construction. In bucking a trend he is free to vary geometries that different tube sets and angles offer and surges ahead in frame design.
1978 Tom sees Joe Breeze’s first mountain bike and gets asked by Gary Fisher to make him one.
1979 Tom works with Gary Fisher, providing 160 hand-built frames for his company Mountain Bikes. The complete bike sells for $1300.
1983 Mountain Bikes is dissolved and Tom sets up Ritchey Logic, concentrating on component design and build that he’s been doing for 10 years. He continues to weld frames, including the Ritchey Annapurna.
1990s Apart from his role at Ritchey Logic/Design, Tom continues to produce more than 500 hand-built frames per year. Notably the lightweight Ritchey P-22 makes a splash in Europe.
2005 Tom visits Rwanda as part of a mountain bike trip in Africa.
2006 The first Wooden Bike Classic race is held in Rwanda. 3000 spectators turn out to watch.
2007 The Coffee Bike arrives in Rwanda, being purchased by the farmers through three-year micro-loans paid back by the 30-40% increase in income the bike affords.
2009 Tom re-marries. He has already crafted a tandem frame for his second wife and himself.

“Most people won’t know how good a steel frame feels.”
“I feel privileged to have been in a unique place at a unique time when a lot of things converged.”

Project Rwanda
Started in 2006 Project Rwanda seeks to further economic development of Rwanda through initiatives based on the bike as a tool. This it is achieving through media attention of the Wooden Bike event, through the advent and training of a national cycling team, through increasing eco-tourism and the supply of the Coffee Bike to farmers and similar cargo bikes to health workers. Check www.projectrwanda.org for more info and to see how you can help.