the post

book reviews

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what we've all been waiting for and coming very soon to a washingmachinepost near you, a review of rapha's brand new merino training top (smooooth) - if the rain goes off long enough - and a review of 'man on the run' - the life and death of marco pantani by manuela ronchi. and in the distance, alan peiper's new book.

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one size fits all

there are people i know locally who need to maintain a degree of fitness for their job. and very much to their credit, instead of marching off to the fitness room, buying a season ticket and fitnessing of an evening, they all got bikes and cycle in and out to work.

this combines two things - you can travel to your work and get fit at the same time, rather than having to put aside extra minutes (?) outside of working hours to achieve the same. with about a ten mile round trip, aerobic fitness will soon be theirs. and this moves smoothly on from the last post using the bicycle as a method of transport. which is probably the first (and likely the last) time that there has been a neat segway from one issue to the next.

as the years advance, fitness tends to recede unless you do something about it, and if you need to do something about it, what better way than pedalling a bike? well strictly speaking, i believe swimming is regarded as the best form of exercise because the water supports your body weight while exercising, and the whole body is exercised during each swim (at least if you swim the way i used to - mobile jacuzzi).

cycling comes under the heading of second best, though that depends very much on how you view the quality of your training. i figure i'd much rather feel the wind through my helmet and watch the rain blowing across the road in front of me than swim up and down a lane in a swimming pool. but then that's just me, and hopefully you, or i'm going to be down a few readers by next issue.

in order to aid this fitness regime (see how it's gone from an informal chat to a regime - where else can you see such instant progress?) it's a good idea to figure out how this is supposed to help. do you want to become incredibly fast on a bike or just fitter?

if it is the former, you probably need specialist training, so find yourself a coach. if it's fitness, then it's a case of varying either your route to and from work (assuming such is possible. our poor editor only has one way, but at least the wind varies) or being really technical (like moi) and getting yourself a heart rate monitor.

now before you start accusing me of being too high tech, i would have agreed with you entirely only a few years ago, until i won (thank you cycle sport) a polar heart rate monitor that doubles as a wireless cycle computer. now you can set this for varying heart rate zones which is probably what i should be doing, but i've lazily left mine on basic. straight forward heart rate indicator and just how slow i'm travelling.

so even if you can't figure out your maximum heart rate (rule of thumb - men 220 minus your age, women 226 minus your age) the best indicator of fitness is how long it takes your heart rate to drop when you stop pedalling. wallop it up a hill, stop at the top and watch the hrm. if it takes five minutes to get back to a normal looking level, then you probably need a bit more work.

but help yourself. several folks seem to buy a mountain bike with knobbly tyres on the basis that more work equates to better fitness. possibly, but it's a heck of a way to go about it. same as pedalling everywhere in the big ring. harder work so it must be better for you. possibly, but your knees will be shot before too long.

if you have to keep a mountain bike, then get smooth tyres for it unless you have to cycle through a forest to get to work (it happens) otherwise go for a road bike, even one with flat bars, though the latter means there's nowhere to hide when the wind appears (or in islay's case, always).

gratuitous colnago picture

while we're almost on the subject of road bikes with flat bars, colnago showed a very nice carbon cf5 based on the c50 which seems like a delightfully expensive way to shred the traffic, but i digress.

if you're a long time, or short time reader of thewashingmachinepost and don't own or don't regularly ride a bike (unbelievable, but true), why not find out what i've been drivelling on about over the past 179 washingmachineposts. get a bike, or get the old one seen too and start pedalling with purpose. if anyone started doing this recently or has plans to do so, e-mail and let me know how you get on. it's not necessary to ride to read the post, but it sure helps.

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this website got its name because scotland's graeme obree built his championship winning 'old faithful' using bits from a defunct washing machine

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as always, if you have any comments on this nonsense, please feel free to e-mail and thanks for reading.

this column appears, as regular as clockwork on this website every two weeks. (ok so i lied) sometimes there are bits added in between times, but it all adds to the excitement.

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