Reply To: Tuesday 16th and Thursday 18th April rides

[Sweaty Eds]

In the car park at Bloomfield just before six a large peloton had gathered. Much of the conversation revolved around Gary’s summer outfit, hotpants, a crop top and a liberal application of factor 50. Gary, Mark Clundurbanman, Pete, Leights, Jane from Turbo, a cyclist from Barnes, Chris from Folly Farm, Andrew Ajax, Dan, a big guy whose name I don’t know and my Sweaty self were surprised to find that Stag Jones had set his watch to Valley Road time but, after a few digs, we set off on the prescribed route. Somewhere between Heron’s Brook and the Molleston crossroads the cyclist from Barnes morphed into Johnny Mad Doig and then the science lesson began.

Now, I’ve got a science degree and still remember a little about the three laws of motion, Newton’s first law to do with inertia, his second is acceleration and his third is about every action having an equal and opposite reaction. Imagine my surprise when Dan revealed that he’d been doing a little physics research in his Landshipping laboratory and he’d actually proved Nick Brown’s forgotten fourth law of motion. This law relates to aerodynamics, more specifically the hole in the air punched by a cyclist. Of course much research has already been done in this area, Nick has already described to us the reduction in effort when cycling closely behind another, something I have enjoyed a couple of times with Huw in Position A, but what Dan excitedly revealed was that he had discovered that a larger, stronger, super-vortex-like force exists and, when conditions are right, the cyclist(s) behind do not have to pedal at all for mile after mile. He called it ‘Stag Drafting’.

The basic principle of Stag Drafting involves a headwind, a large group of cyclists and an ultra-competitive games master. Of course, Stag has to be distracted and provoked simultaneously, on this occasion Gary managed to engage him in an argument relating to what were bluer, violets or pansies and at the same time poked his bike a half-wheel ahead of Mr Jones’. While this was going on Dan briefed us all on the experiment and before you could say ‘Bradley Wiggins’, there we were, ‘Stag Drafting’. A couple of the less experienced riders lost their nerve and dropped back. The veteran Dan surfed the vacuum all the way up the incline to Jeffreyston, only popping out of the Stagstream to claim the King of the Mountains points. Johnny Mad Doig again showed his fearlessness by decending through Reynalton engulfed by the vortex.

I had to peel off in Jeffreyston because my brake blocks were melting. As I waved the group goodbye I could see that Gary had managed to steer the debate onto the old classic ‘scone’ or ‘skone’, meaning that the ‘Stag Draft’ still had some miles to run.

Thanks everyone, great ride as usual.