Like all the worst addictions mine began innocently.


One day I thought I’d try cycling to work.

But it’s quite a journey from commuting on a beaten-up mountain bike to the point where you’re eyeing up a custom-made titanium racing machine with a £4,000-plus price tag. Well, that’s the story of my addiction. From spliff to crack den in three years flat.

When the mountain bike was stolen I bought a hybrid that was much faster on the five-mile spin to the office. Just when I began to enjoy the glow of regular exercise, my pusher moved in.

Howard, a bean-counter in our finance department, sidled up and asked whether I’d ever tried a “proper” road bike. He had one and he did epic rides on it.

He showed a few snaps of himself and his pals hurtling down Alpine passes at 60mph. This was the real rush — a stage of the Tour de France, just like a pretend pro. Wouldn’t I like to try some of that? So I blew £2,000 on an Airborne road bike.

Of course, you then pedal about 5,000 miles a year to get fit enough to do the bike justice, and justify the expense. Then you need a goal to focus all the training. That means you sign up for one of the continental cyclosportives — a mass race which takes you 100 miles up and down three or four classic cols. By that point you’re truly hooked because the sense of wellbeing in the saddle is almost like a meditation.

It got worse. I started snapping up rusty bike frames from eBay, smuggling them into the house like a dirty secret. A classic 1950s Cinelli is hidden in the loft begging for a paint job. I even logged on to bike forums so I could swap nerdy information with other hopeless cases. And then I discovered a company called CycleFit and it all went off the scale.

These people understand. They ride bikes, race them and engineer each model for the physical idiosyncrasies of each customer. They are the Savile Row of cycling, the final destination for addicts like me.


THE FITTING

The basic double triangle of the bicycle has not changed in 130 years. Even Jeremy Clarkson — who regards cyclists as no more than potential roadkill — can appreciate that this design is the one engineers got right first time: their hole in one.

What CycleFit does is fine tune the riding position until you arrive at the sweet spot — the perfect fit that produces the most effective and comfortable transfer of power.

Mark Kirkman, CycleFit’s exercise physiologist, spends two hours measuring body symmetry (my right leg turns out to be shorter than the left), flexibility (middling for a desk jockey) and cycling style (I’m an inelegant masher).

He looks at the way I stand (abnormally long legs) and measures the tilt of my feet — valgus or varus (tilting out or in, respectively). All this is based around an interview: do I suffer pain in knees, back or hands? What is my training schedule, how far do I ride, what are my ambitions? It’s clear I’m very much a type — a middle-aged white-collar worker chasing his youth. “You said it, not me,” murmurs Mark.

Many of CycleFit’s customers are City types who train hard for continental races like the Etape du Tour and La Marmotte, another classic leg-breaker. In terms of a midlife crisis it’s like buying a Ferrari and having to supply the engine yourself.

The sizing is based around the Sizecycle — an infinitely adjustable static bike — which reveals any poor posture or defective pedalling.

As I spin, Mark studies the co-ordinates using a goniometer, a giant protractor, to measure knee angles, then a plumbline to check the position of my knees over the pedal axles. He sorts out the saddle position in relation to the pedals before moving on to calculate the ideal top-tube length — the horizontal distance from the top of the seat tube to the top of the head tube. This will affect handling and comfort.

Are the legs extended to the optimum angle? Is the chest open to allow deep breathing on a long climb? He then uses a light beam to check the alignment of my legs in action.

Mark films me on the Sizecycle, plays back the result and then invites other technicians to check my cycling position. My knees were blushing at all the attention. It was like a once-over by Trinny and Tranny.

If one leg is even minutely shorter than the other it can throw the pelvis out of kilter. This is sorted with shims under the shoe cleats that also correct variances to foot tilt. By the time I’ve been fitted with custom moulded footbeds, my pedalling position is confirmed as passing muster.

All the data are fed into a computer by Phil Cavell, the CycleFit boss, and out comes an ideal geometry — the bike I was born to ride.

THE BIKE

Ben Serotta bikes are among the classiest in the world. His top of the range carbon fibre and titanium model, the Ottrott, will cost you £4,150 — for the frame. Throw in forks, wheels and other components and you’re looking at the thick end of £7,000. So why so much for a double triangle that’s been kicking around for over a century? It can take as many as 60 hours to build a Serotta frame, from the selection of the double-butted titanium tubes (internally thicker towards each end), through welding and finishing.

The tubes are designed to deliver strength and compliance exactly where they are needed — thicker near the cranks where you put down the power, for example, with thinner tubes running from the rear fork ends to the seat tube, for shock absorption. Each tube is handpicked for the individual rider and each dropout for the wheels carved from a solid ingot of titanium. This must be one of the most over-engineered bikes ever made.

The carbon forks come in three stiffnesses to suit the rider’s weight and multiple angles to match the chosen handling characteristics — shorter for a lively ride, longer for more relaxed.

All my data is sent to Saratoga Springs, New York, where the chief designer builds my frame — a matt-finish Concours. Five weeks later it arrives in London. Since this is a dream bike there is no stinting on the rest of the components — full Campagnolo Record groupset and Mavic Ksyrium wheels. Total price: £4,300.

THE RIDE

After the final build in Covent Garden brings frame and parts together, the bike is put on a static turbo trainer and I’m asked to ride it under the watchful eye of the CycleFit gang. The handlebars and stem are tweaked and I’m ready to take to the open road on a work of art.

On the first 50-mile loop down to Kent and back up to London I could have wept — of all the bikes I’ve ridden this was the One. It feels like an extension of the body — just a welcome extra limb. No ache or twinge. The bike simply feels like it isn’t there.

When you put down the power the stiffness comes through and yet it feels beautifully compliant on a fast, uneven flat. Eight hours in the saddle is a pleasure.

“We sell dreams,” says Phil Cavell, “but our job is to match that dream to a reality — the reality of what you are and how you ride.”

All I need now is a new engine — but that’s what money can’t buy. Or maybe I just need fuel injection. So pass the testosterone patches, Floyd.


Cyclefit, 11-13 Macklin Street, London WC2 (020 7430 0083) www.cyclefit.co.uk

www.serotta.com

Nicole who? Britain’s unsung cycling star

Nicole Cooke is Britain’s most successful athlete of 2006. The 23-year-old is a world number one and this year won two top events in her field — the women’s Tour de France and World Cup.

You might not have heard of her, though, because while England’s dismal performance in the cricket and rugby merit reams of hand-wringing analysis, the phenomenal success of a lone female cyclist earns little more than a nod from much of the media.

But tonight Cooke may finally get at least some of the recognition she deserves when she joins nine other BBC Sports Personality of the Year nominees for the awards ceremony at Birmingham’s NEC.

“It’s fantastic to be recognised,” says Cooke from Lugano, Switzerland, where she trains with Team Univega. “But I just set out to see what I could achieve. I’m still after the next winning feeling.”

In a lacklustre year for British sport, Cooke stands out among the nominees as a genuine world-beater – more so than a Formula One driver who’s managed one grand prix win in six years (Jenson Button) and a cricketer who couldn’t even make the underachieving Ashes team (Monty Panesar).

Cooke puts her relatively low profile down to old-fashioned sexism — “that’s fairly obvious across a whole range of sports” — and to the fact that women’s cycling is still a relatively new sport (the men’s Tour de France has been going since 1903; the female version started in 1984). “Fortunately, I’m more concerned with winning races than how many people see them.”

Her ambition now is to claim gold at the 2007 World Championships to make up for her disappointing bronze in this year’s event.

Having messed about on bicycles from an early age she clearly remembers picking out her first racing bike, aged seven. “It had five gears and my dad built a speedo for it so I could see how fast I was pedalling.”

Her father Tony, a teacher, cycled competitively in his younger years and encouraged Cooke to enter races. “I entered the first one when I was 11. I came fourth or fifth and kept thinking, ‘I could have done better’. That’s what drove me.” Two months later she won the Welsh championships for her age group — “beating all the boys”.

Between races she and her father would cycle the seven miles from home in Wick to school in Bridgend, south Wales. Preparations for the Tour de France were more gruelling. “We’d (the Univega team) spend four hours in the saddle each day, sometimes as many as seven. We’d start with a 6km hill, then an 8km one, then 10km, 14km, 20km.”

Determination alone will not be enough to win her BBC Sports Personality of the Year. At the time of going to press, the golfer Darren Clarke is favourite, followed by horse-riding royal Zara Phillips. “Nicole is just not mainstream enough to get the votes,” said a spokesman for William Hill, who put her odds of winning at 50-1.

Emma Smith