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It was a very funny sight this morning along Beach Road in Melbourne. Regular riding group – “The King’s Men” – decided to take on an unusual form of exercise by riding 20kg rental bikes from Melbourne’s Bike Share network.

Starting at MSAC (the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre) in Albert Park, it was a cruise (or rather a sustained effort) to get these steel monsters to Black Rock. The route along  popular Beach Ride and back to MSAC covered a respectable 40kms.

But if they’d made the ride just 2 days later they would have been battling for space among the sea of over 10,000 other cyclists who travel along Beach Road on any given Saturday or Sunday.

Among The King’s Men are many riders who compete at the amateur racing level. They can ride anywhere from 500 to 600 km per week but today they met their match.

These blue bicycles are strategically designed to limit top-end speed. They’re more for short trips around major cities than covering longer distances. Even with a lot of horsepower behind them, they could only manage a top speed of 27 km/h – achieved while going flat out during one of many sprints (Mind you these are the same guys who can accelerate up to 65 – 70km/h during a regular racing sprint).

The ride coincides with the release of the 2011 National Cycling Participation Survey, which revealed that 1.1 million people in Victoria ride their bikes every week. Even more amazing is that 40% of the population has ridden a bike in the past year.  That’s massively higher than expected. What we’re seeing is a cycling revolution.  And, in Victoria,  up to 20,000 more cyclists per week are taking to the streets compared to their New South Wales cousins.

The King’s Men rented bikes are part of the Melbourne bike share network that sprawls across the inner city and takes in many landmarks, including the Melbourne Arts Centre and the State Library of Victoria.

Unfortunately the bike scheme has come perilously close to extinction.

Why? The  requirement to wear helmets has caused a degree of complication not originally envisaged. While these schemes have been  successful in European cities like Amsterdam, Copenhagen or Paris where they have more relaxed helmet requirements, Australia’s compulsory helmet laws undermine the true spirit of the bike scheme. The essence of bike share  is about using other forms of transport for short or unplanned trips – precisely the kinds of occasions when one isn’t necessarily carrying a bicycle helmet.

It just goes to prove that, with plenty of energy and commitment, getting around Melbourne is quite easy on a bicycle regardless of whether it’s your own road racer or a bike rented by the hour.

Written by Andrew Talati

Inspired Cadel’s second place rides in 2007 and 2008, and his 2011 Tour De France win, there’s been an increase in people getting on bicycles.

This is more evident with the creation of a new acronym – MAMIL, or Middle Aged Men In Lycra. While not the world’s most flattering term, it does highlight a growing trend.

While there have been many references to cycling being the new golf, you can’t ignore the blistering facts.  Cycling is currently undergoing a revolution in Australia.

The local distributor of BMC, maker of Cadel’s winning bike, has sold out of all the BMC paraphernalia like cycling jerseys and caps.

Gaelene Snelling, Vice President of St Kilda Cycling Club (SKCC), said, “There has been an explosion in the last two years.” The club has swelled from 350 in August 2009 to 650 in August this year.

Cycling Victoria – the governing body for both recreational and competitive cycling – has also seen a dramatic 300% increase in club memberships since 2007.  They now boast a staggering 8000 members.

It was amazing to see the huge crowd that turned out to honour Cadel when he made a brief detour to Australia before heading to the US for further racing. Usually such large crowds are reserved for footie parades or Olympians.  We’ve never seen them turn out for a single individual from a foreign cycling race.

With obesity and overweight numbers increasing, cycling offers an awesome way to keep fit, socialise with your friends and get outside the house or office.

At the turn-of-the-century cycling participation rates were extremely high as bicycles represented the primary means of transportation around Melbourne. With the advent of the motor vehicle and improved public transportation, the poor old bike was relegated to being a children’s activity.

We can look forward to continued growth with increasing participation in those riding bicycles and hopefully a corresponding decrease in those diseases associated with a sedentary lifestyle )

Written by Andrew Talati

And unusual support was taking place in the Chile streets, an urban downhill bike riding called the The Valparaiso Cerro Abajo held in Valparaiso.

It’s great to see the evolution of sports that make the most of their environment to add a new dimension of excitement. While most traditional downhill bike races take place on the side of mountains with a single track course weaving its way through the trees and other obstacles, this urban downhill race involved massive drops from one street level to another, descending steep staircases, avoiding random dogs and moving along at high speeds avoiding many obstacles of this urban landscape.

While one wouldn’t consider Chile to have a race attracting international attention, it shows you that anything is possible when you truly believe.

The video was filmed using a similar helmet mounted camera to what we use to fill but filming our red suits around Melbourne.
One of the most amusing parts of the video is when a representative from the UCI, which is the international cycling Federation was trying to explain to the Chilean writer about the perils of not wearing sufficient body armor to protect himself.

When high-end design meets fitness you have the Ciclotte Exercise Bike.

The Ciclotte exercise bike goes against the conventional school of thought for fitness equipment whereby form follows function. Rather than designing a product that focuses on results over design, Ciclotte turns this premise upside downs.

No longer will your exercise equipment be condemned to the basement or garage, we now have a functional piece of artwork that will quite happily adorn your lounge room or living area.

At all princely sum of $8000, you too can be the owner of this magnificently designed lightweight exercise bike.

The Ciclotte’s design adopts a mono wheel whereby the outside diameter of the wheel turns as opposed to a traditional wheel that rotates on its central axle.

Made from space-age cereals such as carbon fiber, blended with some steel and glass it enables you to have complete mobility in case you need to move around your house or office.

The bike comes comes complete with 12 different programs to vary the type and intensity of the workout by using a magnetic field to alter the level of resistance.

My local bicycle shop was unable to remove my seat post so they used a can of Coke poured down the bottom bracket to unseize the seat post.

The worrying thing is that we are consuming this beverage which has high acidity properties, enough that it will dissolve years of road grime and sweat. The real question is what are the effects on our body of consuming this product on a long term basis?

Over the years I have heard anecdotally that pouring coke down your drain unblocks it or using Coke to loosen wheel nuts on your car or remove the corrosion from battery terminals. While I dismissed this as an urban myth or one of those story we have against large multi national conglomerates, I was truly surprised there was some truth behind it.

A client of mine who worked for a big beverage company mentioned that the handling of one of the key ingredients of their soft drink, E211 or sodium benzoate used protective clothing when handling the drums that contained this chemical. It was treated as a hazardous material and required the necessary OH&S procedures in place to remove the risk of contamination and harm.

The ingredient in Coke is Phosphoric acid which is widely used in the food industry. Unlike fruit as oranges that are naturally acidic, the production of Phosphoric acid is a highly involved process that starts with mining the raw ingredient phosphate from phosphatic ores mined around the world.

A good friend of mind who survived cancer attributes one factor to reducing the amount of acidic food that he consumed. While there is much conjecture about whether a diet low in acidic foods stops or reduces the growth of cancer cells, it’s one treatment that is worth investigating further. Even now there are companies that are selling water that is high in alkaline that has the opposite effects of acid within the body, once again this is an area that requires further research and testing.