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"World class cycling city": Cyclists urge council to clear "appalling" bike lane filled with gravel and leaves; Has Chris Froome found a solution to the supertuck ban?; Pothole warnings; Meltdown over free lights for cyclists + more on the live blog

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It's the Wednesday live blog and Dan Alexander is in the hot seat ready to bring you everything you need to know (and plenty you don't) from the world of cycling
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14:18
"World class cycling city": Cyclists urge council to clear "appalling" bike lane filled with gravel and leaves

Death, taxes and dodgy British bike lanes making an appearance on the live blog. We really do have too much material not to make it a regular feature, today's coming from the Scottish capital of Edinburgh where local riders have urged the city council to pull its finger out and clear the cycle lane on Queensferry Road...

Queensferry Road, Edinburgh, "apalling" bike lane (@livia_edin/Twitter)

The person who shared the post, @livia_edin on Twitter (sorry, Elon, still not calling it X — stubborn and immature, I know), said the damage is the result of works to fill potholes which has left plenty of gravel on the road and cycle path, debris which has now formed a sludgy soup with fallen leaves. 

Cycling Edinburgh called the situation "pretty appalling" and asked: "Is this the best CEC (City of Edinburgh Council) and its contractors can do with resurfacing and clean-ups?"

The Edinburgh Council customer service page said it had "raised this matter with the relevant team and asked them to action", so we'll see if anything comes... 

Other personal favourites of the genre include:

Leaves

> Unbe-leaf-able: cycle lane used to collect fallen leaves

Hampton Court cycle lane (via Twitter)

> Festive ice rink or triathlon lane? Good luck riding in this bike lane

Makes you proud to be British, doesn't it?

17:07
5 winter training tips for your best year of cycling ever!
15:17
Why the Raleigh Chopper was and still is the best Christmas gift for kids everywhere
14:53
Laura Kenny speaks out about impact of professional athlete lifestyle on pregnancy
Laura Kenny (Pauline Ballet/SWpix.com)

[Pauline Ballet/SWpix.com]

Laura Kenny is targeting a fourth Olympic Games next summer in Paris, an opportunity to build on her five gold medals and one silver. However, the topic of discussion in her latest interview, with BBC 5 Live, was not next year's shot at overtaking the trio of cyclists ahead of her in the list of Britain's most successful Olympians (husband Sir Jason Kenny, Sir Chris Hoy and Sir Bradley Wiggins, for anyone taking on the quiz question), but instead pregnancy and the impact being an athlete can have.

Kenny had her first child Albie in 2017, their second arriving in July of this year. However, in November 2021 Kenny suffered a miscarriage and two months later an ectopic pregnancy. Raising awareness of Red-S — a condition which Kenny does not have, but which sees women lose their periods, sometimes experienced by female athletes who may expend more energy in training than can be consumed through their diet — Kenny said she has had "many conversations" with fellow sportswomen who suffer with Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport.

"There are females that have struggled and will struggle to get pregnant because of the lifestyle of being an athlete," she said. "We've all heard of Red-S — being females losing their periods. You're not going to be able to fall pregnant if you haven't got a period.

"It's actually a really unhealthy lifestyle that these females can't have kids and it's actually really sad. I've always consistently had a period but the amount of conversations I've heard of people having Red-S. Red-S is actually really dangerous... these people are giving up lots of things that really deep down they want."

Speaking about her own situation, Kenny said: "I think I realised that when we had the miscarriage and the ectopic, I knew deep down that it would be one hell of a comeback [to return to cycling], obviously delaying it because I still wanted to have another baby.

"I knew that time would be short before the next Olympics and it wasn't about this big fairytale it was about what my heart so desperately wanted and it was to have him. I just wanted another one. It consumed me for a long time because I felt that sense of one, loss and two, this missing piece."

14:04
Scottish Government urged to spend more on public transport and less on cycling
12:51
Fancy a spot at Chris Froome's bike fit workshop? An innovative way around the supertuck ban?
Froome and Neilands video (Instagram)

Or in full...

Teaching the team how to get more aero. Forgive us if we've misremembered but, if the four-time Tour winner is giving out position tips, Neilands' set-up looks slightly different from Froome's Sky/Ineos position. Yep, that one he recently said he'd been well off since joining Israel-Premier Tech...

> Not so marginal losses: Chris Froome reveals recent bike set-up was "centimetres" apart from Team Sky days due to "oversight"

11:49
Care company turns to bikes to beat railway station roadwork congestion – and gets a pleasant surprise
11:29
An annual tradition: Jo uploads feature on what not to buy a cyclist for Christmas, you lot tell us the items included that you'd actually quite like
Gifts not to buy for cyclists Dec 2023

> All I want for Christmas is... not this. Gifts not to buy for cyclists to avoid a festive faux pas

And here we go...

paulrattew: "The Park Tool pizza cutter is a quality bit of kit! Not just the best cycling-themed pizza cutter out there, but easily the best of that sort of pizza cutter that I have used. Ok, you do only ever need one, so seeing it repeatedly as a gift would be rubbish, but if you don't have one already then it is a quality gift."

Matthew Acton-Varian: "Personally I wouldn't mind 'old bike bits' trinkets [...] As long as the items are clean and the finish is in good enough condition, if done tactfully, repurposing old junk has a certain charm to it."

Rendel Harris: "I must admit I rather like the bicycle bow tie and I'd be happy to wear it on the rare occasions I wear a dinner suit these days."

Have a read, who knows... maybe you'll find something you quite like...

10:30
Fancy a Tour de France winner's bike for Christmas? Jumbo-Visma auction off Cervélo team bikes
Jumbo-Visma Tour de France (Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com)

[Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com]

Jumbo-Visma are running an auction for "the race bikes that shaped cycling history", giving punters (with a fair bit of cash) the opportunity to bid for the Cervélo bikes ridden by Jonas Vingegaard, Wout van Aert and the team's other stars at this year's Tour de France. Yellow jersey-winning Vingegaard's Cervélo S5, race used en route to a second victory, is currently up to €15,022, while Wout van Aert's Tour steed is at €9,514.

The cheapest options — Tiesj Benoot and Wilco Kelderman's Cervélos — are both still already at €5,162 with three days left. 

Check out the full list of bikes here...

09:48
If anyone reading this just so happens to be looking to buy me a Christmas present
09:36
Pothole repair requirements "clearly inadequate for keeping cyclists safe", campaign warns
Pothole (Simon Kroner/Facebook)

Cam Cycle, the Cambridge Cycling Campaign, has penned a warning on its website, calling for Cambridgeshire County Council to "change the criteria for pothole repair and road maintenance to tackle the issues that cause danger to people walking and cycling".

In short, the group wants to seen routes prioritised for repair "based on the cycling network and the routes with the highest volumes of cycle traffic" and reducing the threshold for pothole repair to include shallower and smaller defects.

"With the highest rates of cycling in the country, it is vital that our region leads the way in prioritising active travel users in road maintenance policies," Cam Cycle states. The current approach to maintenance is based on mitigating damage to cars; however, the county is failing to keep up with maintenance to this standard."

Thoughts?

09:00
Motorist meltdown over police force handing out free lights to cycling commuters

Police officers in the City of London have teamed up with Halfords (hopefully on a better job than Monday's live blog) to hand out free lights and "adivce" to commuting cyclists on "cycle safety". As part of the 'Lighting up campaign', "we are issuing sets of lights for cyclists that need it with advice around cycle safety," the force said on social media...

This one's a strong case study for something, anything, fairly mundane blowing up in a firestorm of angry comments because... well, it involves cyclists. Cue queues of people unable to scroll on with their day without either asking for free tyres/bulbs for their vehicles, or demanding stronger action to tackle the unchecked terror on the roads (being caused by people on bicycles, of course)...

Cycling lawyer Rory McCarron said there is an "irony" to the comments, "that people cycling without lights don't cause them to cycle into things/people but driving with bald tyres is likely to cause them to lose control and collide with someone/thing."

Exhibit A and B:

The next type of commonly spotted response involved those wanting fines and lights paid for, not freebies... (even though it seems all these were on Halfords)...

Exhibit C and D:

Finally, came the bingo card favourite, completely unrelated demands for cyclists to be told to not ride on pavements through red lights. Thank you Sandra, knew you wouldn't let us down on this front.

Exhibit E and F:

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