START LINE

06.09

I’ve been following cycling now for almost 30 years, and working on this magazine for 17. I’ll admit it’s sometimes possible to get a little blasé. I’d never say I’ve seen it all, I haven’t, but I’ve seen a lot. So it’s nice when something comes along and genuinely reminds me of the sport’s diversity.

This week’s feature on trying to enter the RRA record books (page 22) did just that. It’s a facet of the sport I know little about. I assumed they oversaw End-to-end attempts and not much else, now that most of the routes have been disrupted by new or updated roads.

But there’s life in the RRA yet, and Richard Abraham’s tale of getting his name into its books is a wonderful account of a beautifully eccentric side of the sport.

Run by passionate, but very knowledgeable volunteers, the RR A has a wonderfully simple website, itself full of eccentricities. Take a look at the page on advice for record attempts and you’ll see a prominent warning on affixing the correct amount of postage to your envelope.

I hope Richard’s attempt, and those of Michael Broadwith and Jasmijn Muller (who pulled out of her E2E attempt last weekend) serve to inspire more riders to make their own attempts.