Those old racers

[User]

 

[Cheule]

Cool, I wonder if his race wheels were under 4kg each ;-)

 

[Smokin Joe]

My last (and sadly now defunct) club's list of TT records had one for 200 miles. In a booklet detailing the first 50 years of the club (1907-1957) there are accounts of members riding up to 100 miles to the event on a Saturday, staying overnight, racing Sunday and riding home again after the finish, getting back to east London in the early hours and then working a full day on the Monday.

People were used to a much harder life then, and as the bike was the only form of transport most could afford the distances covered were much greater than most of us would consider today. No recovery drinks or energy gels either!

 

[gbb]

My dad and his brother was a regular cyclists in the 1940s and 50s, not racing or club cycling, but they used to think nothing of riding from Bristol to somewhere near Gloucester...then back. They'd have been early teenagers...riding IRO 60 miles. Granted they'd spend the day in Gloucester so it wasnt in one hit, but even so, for young teenegers on bikes that certainly wouldnt have been high quality....

I remember when i was looking at spending IRO £500 for a bike...'what' he said...you dont want to be spending that much...its the man, not the bike.
Several months later, we were talking, he said how his first good new bike cost him a months wages....hmmmm, equate that to todays wages...i'd be spending £2000 on a bike, not £500. Yeah right dad....do as i say, not as i did eh ?

He also said, in the 1950s (i think), you'd see packs of cyclists maybe 50 or 60 strong, regularly. Enormously popular back then. Mind, as he said, there was bugger all else to do back then. Everyone had a bike !!

 

[Globalti]

In the sixties my Dad was the village doctor in a little place called Chinnor in Oxfordshire. Every Sunday the local road club used to have a pile-up outside the Bird in Hand and my Dad used to get called out to sort them out. Wouldn't happen nowadays; they'd call an air ambulance.

 

[palinurus]

He was telling me that in his younger days he and his club colleagues would ride long distances to a race meeting with their race wheels on a frame on the front of the bike, swap the wheels over, race, swap the wheels back and ride all the way home. They seemed to think nothing of it. Men were men in those days!

I'm thinking of doing a similar thing to get my spare wheels to 'cross races. I do ride to most of my races (TTs and 'cross) but rarely more than 25 miles, occasionally a bit further for a TT.

So far I haven't tried riding out the day before, sleeping in a hedge, racing, then riding home.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

...he and his club colleagues would ride long distances to a race meeting with their race wheels on a frame on the front of the bike...

This sort of thing wasn't it.

 

[tyred]

Going back to probably the late 1940s, my great uncle and a few friends used to make an annual pilgrimage to Belfast (~110mi) to watch a motorcycle race. They did it all in the one day and we home in time just to start milking the cows at about 6 o' clock the following morning, so an all night ride with the handicap aid of flickering SA dynohub lighting, and a hard day's work to follow.

 

[Ghost Donkey]

Different times. Fell runners used to tun or walk impressive distances to races in bygone days too.

 

[ChrisKH]

In the early 60's my father was a keen cyclist and they didn't have much money then. In the Spring of 1964 he visited Canvey Island on holiday with my mother (and me as a baby!) then visited several times during the summer to buy a plot of land and instruct the builder. He didn't have a car and would regularly pootle down from Charlton/Woolwich to Canvey having to backtrack to Tower Bridge as he couldn't take the bike through the Blackwall Tunnel. So he rode fixed, sometimes at night to Canvey and back. It's not that far (40-50 miles x 2?) but he did it regularly. Ironically I now do roughly half that, on much the same route for the Fnrttc. He was a whippet of a man who never complained.

Not sure what happened with me then.

 

[Saddle bum]

This sort of thing wasn't it.

I still have a pair of those sprint carriers in my relics box. Unfortunately, to be safe, they required an extra long front axle, so sold hubs were needed. Going downhill, getting a bit of speed wobble could be, er, "interesting".

Nice Mafac racer brakes.

 

[gbb]

Sleeping in a hedge??

Eeeee, luxury!

Made me laugh on a so far dull day. Thanks

 

[PpPete]

Not just cyclists....

Members of the Fell & Rock (including such legends as Don Whillans & Joe Brown) would regularly cycle down on a Friday night from Manchester to Snowdonia, put up rock-climbs which are hard even by today's standards, and return on Sunday night (having of course got seriously bladdered and usually into a punch-up or two on Saturday night). They'd have been carrying heavy climbing gear and sometimes camping gear too in rucksacs.....

 

[Globalti]

I thought they did that on old BSA and Vincent motorbikes? Still pretty amazing though.

 

[Fiona N]

You just beat me PP

Not quite in the same league, but at 16-17, I used to cycle (on my cousin's old ladies bike) from home in Cleckheaton to Todmorden to a climbing friend's house where someone used to pick us up in an old van at 7am sharp on a Sunday morning to go climbing at Stanage, Brimham or some of the other gritstone outcrops. I had a Saturday job so couldn't go over the night before but would usually leave home about 5.30am. I didn't have much climbing gear luckily so it wasn't like I was carrying a huge rucksac.

Didn't think of myself as a cyclist in those days either