The CAAD 10 and crashes

Cycling is a sport rife with superstition and tradition. From the obviousness of giving your tyres a pinch before you take a pump to them regardless to the almost arcane fashion statement of leg-shaving, we participate, consciously and unconsciously, in these micro-rituals in the same way that some would cross themselves when talking about friends passed away. Replace pumping inflated tyres with reading learned-by-rote manuscripts and bald legs with bald patches, and we're practically monks.

Some may think it trite of me to compare what is ultimately a fruitless sporting endeavour with religion - a pursuit ultimately called upon to answer the great, unanswerable questions. But, really, in this goal, they are actually one and the same. Cycling has derived this strange facsimile of faith because we rely on it so much - despite all that we have learned about the bike, we still know so little.

We can measure and model and test and strain the frames until there is barely an atom unaccounted for. We can set our angles, our reach, our bottom-bracket deflection. Change ratios and position. Make it lighter. It all matters, and we can quantise and design the bike until it's the most perfect machine ever put together.

But perfect for what?

What does it do?

I didn't even conceive of these questions until I got my race-bike, riding it home with a Bambi-like lack of finesse in heavy fog, as I worked out everything that I needed to adjust about the fit that I could get no idea of whilst stationary. A Cannondale CAAD 10. Probably the best mass-production aluminium frame being sold, a feathery 1150 g for a 58cm frame - designed to race.

Stiffness. That's what I'd been told it had, in reviews and criticisms. Almost too much of it. The bike would beat you black and blue, if you weren't careful. The word brought forth images of steel girders ringing with hammer-strikes, of lamp-post black-eyes and barbell-grip abrasion.

That wasn't what they meant by stiffness, though.

It took me a while to get used to the bike on that first long ride around Tak-ma-doon. I was part-braced, part-coiled. Expecting the worst. That the bike would be less than I had wanted. That it wouldn't change anything.

After years of riding the Allez, I still have never fully warmed to it. For what is obviously a sportive bike, it would still be uncomfortable over any sort of broken road surface. It looks huge - a snarling, rearing beast of a bike, the ludicrously curved top-tube arcing back from the scaffold-pole head-tube, throwing the visual weight of the bike into such a wedge that with a rider on it, you'd be afraid it'd tip over backwards. Lines and cables looping awkwardly out of shifters and hanging off the frame. It has rarely let me down, but I've never fallen for it.

I worried that the CAAD would feel the same. That a bike over a kilogram lighter would still feel leaden. Well, maybe not leaden. Stately.

Or maybe it'd be the opposite. Maybe it'd be hyperactive, ducking and weaving at the slightest movement. Maybe those flattened chainstays would bounce against the tarmac, propelling me forward with a zing that would flow like electricity through my heels.

I was looking for all this, examining every detail, unable to work out what the character of the bike really was. The hesitation or the spark. The only impression I was getting clearly was that it was, against all expectation, comfortable.

Really, really comfortable.

Undoubtedly the GP4000s tyres helped, but I couldn't remember the Allez ever feeling this relaxed even with the exact same wheels and tyres. It helped. I could concentrate on working things out as I climbed Tak-ma-Doon.

A kilo less on the frame changes some things. How fast you accelerate, turn. The whole way the bike feels. Some things, it doesn't change.

Climbing is, and always will be, really hard.

Over the top and down the other side, getting to grips with the brakes. Just rolling and rolling and pushing and trying a sprint and rolling and turning and...

it hit me.

Cannondale hadn't made a bike. Not as I understood the term "bike", anyway.

They'd made a conduit.

With no computer or HRM on-board; no shift indicators above the hoods; I had no call to look down. If I didn't look down... I was floating.

With no undue vibration from the road, the only thing I could feel was my legs working against the pedals... and nothing else. That was what stiffness meant. Hauling on the bars as I sprinted, nothing gave a millimeter. Nothing flexed or complained or... felt like anything at all. I was working against the road. The bike was my tool to do this, but it wasn't contributing or taking away from the process one iota.

Would I have been able to know how this felt from numbers on a sheet of paper? No. Engineers have figures to aim for, but those figures just exist because people have ridden them - and they just feel right. They give you a bike that tells you everything you need to know, and nothing more. That never gets in your way.

It doesn't always work that way.

I switched the stock tyres on the CAAD onto the Allez - Schwalbe Luganos.

Under moderately heavy braking, the front wheel lost grip without warning, planting me heavily on my side, destroying the mech hanger and damaging most of my clothing and a fair bit of my skin. I don't get into many accidents, especially not on the Allez, so I knew where to place the blame. The tyres had given me no information whatsoever that they were about to lose traction, and it was this lack of communication that caused the crash.

In retrospect, they may have improved once worn in, but what happened was still inexcusable for a product on the market - a topic I shall get back onto some other time. It may have been residue left from manufacturing that needed to be scrubbed off before the real tread could engage. Most people seem to get on with Luganos fine.

The luganos are relegated to turbo use, never to be used by me on the road again.

Another superstition is born.

Anyone can win a race. Especially you.

Hello again.

I've got a whole backlog of posts building up now, as the long weeks and short weekends move dauntingly towards the start of "the season". Posts about real things, like how my new race bike has made me question everything I thought about compromise in bike design. Posts about concepts, like power and weight and what actually matters when you stretch your legs up Tak-ma-doon. But, for now, I'm tired, so it's time to go more abstract.

I'm convinced that there are no bike racers in Glasgow.

It's not that I don't know that there are people who race bikes in Glasgow. I am merely saying that my brain has constructed, deep within itself, a sense that there are no racers in Glasgow. It is certainly inaccurate, and may even be dangerous, but it appears to exist purely for motivational reasons. By believing you have something special, you can create extenuating circumstances for every success or failure. If there's never a fair competition, there's no competition at all. If everything you do is harder or faster than everyone else, then you're never playing catch-up. You're not looking at a pedestal that you could never hope to reach. You're looking down at the ants and laughing.

It starts in the gym.

The gym is a place of punishment and redemption. It is a place where the scales judge the weekend of excess, and sentence you to perdition. Where the mathematics of shame tell you that a gain of 1.3kg points you to a threshold session on the trainer until you drop, sweat turning your eyes red, whole body right on the limit, not even the power to prevent the cry of anger as the poorly-maintained seatpost drops a notch for the third time in an hour.

But you're the only one there.

The only one suffering, at any rate. Look to your left, your right. They might be moving, but they're not suffering. Half of them are playing on their iPhones. What is this, a recovery day? They don't know the meaning of work, of trying to absolutely transcend yourself.

There's that guy, of course. But he's running. He's a runner. Not a cyclist. And that guy. But he's no cyclist - he's twice your weight. He could crush you like a fly, but, by God, you would thrash him up the Crow.

No, there's no cyclists here.

On the roads, then. That's where the real cyclists are. Like you. But they're not. They're all different from you. Generally slower. And you're not like that guy, because you don't jump red lights. And you're still faster than him. And you're definitely not like that guy - you still look like a human being on a bike, not some sort of fondant Christmas tree. No. There's no-one here like you. No-one who knows what it is to earn speed, real speed with nothing but strength and poise. You're the cyclist. These people just ride bikes.

Away from the city. These guys enjoy it. They know the love of the bike. But they don't know the speed. Apart from these guys. But they probably haven't already done fifty miles. You shouldn't chase, because it's a rest day. Maybe you will anyway. Just to show them. Show them how effortless you can make it look. Make them wonder how you got that fast.

You know how you got that fast.

Because you know how to suffer. You want to race bikes, so you've learned how to suffer. You've studied it. Bicycle racers don't just train. They take classes in how to train. They read articles, pay instructors to bark at them, bully themselves with computers and endless numbers. All you need to do to go faster is suffer.

And no-one else can suffer like you.