We all like to think we are the fastest cyclist around town. Especially those who like to play the silly commuter race. You know who you are!

But how rare is it to get a chance to actually prove it in a 250 metre sprint challenge?

Well, in steps the Deloitte Ride Across Britain City 250 Challenge and Olympic Gold medal winner James Cracknell.

On Wednesday the 8th of February at Finsbury Avenue Square the challenge begins and you are invited to take part and pit yourself against all comers including James Cracknell, Rebecca Romero and Paralympic flag bearer Danny Crates.

The fastest man and woman will be rewarded with one of the few remaining places on this year’s Deloitte RAB ride worth £1,740. There is also a prize for the fastest company team.

A Boardman Carbon Pro racing bike worth £2k will also be up for grabs in a prize draw.

The challenge will benefit the British Paralympic Association.

For more information and to sign up for this September’s Deloitte Ride Across Britain event, visit www.rideacrossbritain.com

The big news reverberating today around the London cycling blogosphere and reaching the mouths of cyclists sipping their morning cup of Joe in Look Mum No Hands, is about the planned changes to Bow Roundabout.

Nothing if finalised yet. However, it looks as though we will soon be seeing the first ever phased traffic lights in the UK. Cyclists will be given a separate set of lights, 12 metres ahead of general traffic. The lights will go green for cyclists first, giving them enough time to safely navigate and clear Bow Roundabout without fearing fast moving left turning traffic.

These changes will likely be seen in time for the Olympics. Visitors attending the games will be able to marvel at how forward thinking we are with our cycling infrastructure. “Them Brits really know what they’re doing over there on the other side of the pond!”

Over 500 junctions up for review

Unfortunately, it has taken a number of tragic deaths and protests before the Mayor ordered an urgent review of the most dangerous junctions in London. With over 500 junctions in the queue, Bow was pushed up the line to first position. The priority of getting this right is high enough that TfL will likely be breaking their rule of no new major road works in the run up to the Olympics.

The other major change is to the Bow flyover. According to the press release 60% of cyclists choose to use the flyover to navigate across from Bow road to Stratford High Street. A new compulsory lane just for cyclists would improve safety.

Is this a sign of bigger things to come?

The changes will have cycle campaigners wondering whether it’s time to pop open the champagne and celebrate better things to come or whether they are counting their chickens too early.

According to a phone interview with Ben Plowden, the Director of Better Routes and Places at TfL, it absolutely" and unequivocally is. The priority will be to review the junctions that are the largest in scale and public interest.

As you read this you’ll be thinking: Kings Cross. The scene of many of the recent protests.

(See also: Pictures from the Christmas Vigil held by cyclists at Kings Cross)

This was the next question I put to Ben Plowden. The original improvement works that have been planned for a while at Kings Cross, will still be going ahead. These plans have been criticised by campaign groups of not doing anywhere near enough to protect cyclists.

However, and this is where things get confusing, TfL will still be including Kings Cross junction in their wider review program. It seems counterproductive to go ahead with changes that have been planned for a while, with a view to changing them down the line.

To that Mr Plowden added that the original changes needs to be done in time for the Olympic games, due to the huge increases in pedestrian traffic in the area.

Big changes are coming, but after the Olympic games

It’s likely therefore, any further big changes such as the ones seen at Bow Roundabout, will only bring safety to cyclists after the Olympics. The job of campaign groups will be to keep the pressure on TfL and the Mayor, to press ahead with any recommendations that come out of the review of all the junctions.

The positive change, is that it finally seems the TfL wheels have begun spinning in a good direction for cyclists. Whilst 2012 won’t be the year we stop opening the newspaper to stories of cyclists hit by vehicles, the Bow Roundabout should stand as an example of what can be achieved when the Mayor acts on people’s concerns.

See also:

• Kings Cross Christmas Vigil for cyclists who lost their lives in 2011
• Blackfriars Bridge protest

It’s that time of the year again when we all descent on the London Bike Show to take a look into what the bicycle companies have in store for us in 2012.

The show starts on Thursday the 12th of Jan at 10am and runs until Sunday the 15th. The busiest day is always the Saturday. However, this is also when most the attractions are on.

This year in particular the Training Hub looks to be of much interest. For £99 you get a full assessment of your cycling performance and you are given tips on how you can improve. Whilst that won’t appeal to the “just want to get from A to B” side of me it get’s my “I want to ride faster than my friends” competitive side tingling in anticipation. The £99 test includes “Fascial Stretch Therapy” and Postural Testing. If that makes you screw up your face wondering what on earth the sentence you’ve just read means, then there’s more on the website.

My recommendations from last year:

• Take cash – the few cash points inside are likely to be busy and you are after all visiting the world’s largest bike shop
• Use Cycle Superhighway 3 to get there – they’ll be cycle parking outside
• Factor in some time to wonder around the Boat Show and the Outdoor Show

For tickets click here.

They are not available for long (one of them ends tomorrow!) so take a look below and see if there’s anything of interest.

Knog Frog Strobing Front & Rear lights

Ends tomorrow (December 29) at 11am! Best price £10 (RRP £21.49)

Tiny bike lights you can shove in your pocket and use as a backup.

Knog 20 Bike Tool

Ends 2nd of January at 11am. Best price £25 (RRP £35)

Don’t get caught on the road without the right tool. The Knog MultiTool packs 20 in one tiny package.

Knog Party Frank Lock – black

Ends 6th of January at 11am. Best price £10 (RRP £17)

A very nice secondary bike lock to keep bike thieves at bay.

Keep up to date with the deals..

To hear about the new deals BuyaPowa can email you. Simply click here, enter your email and they’ll be in touch once a deal is available.

“No Barclays Cycle Superhighways will be launched in 2012/2013 due to a reduced construction delivery window necessitated by the 2012 Games”

This was the answer given by the Mayor when asked about the progress of the Cycle Superhighways.

The good news is that the Cycle Hire scheme will continue to expand. This news comes despite the revelation that total income by March 2012 is now expected to be £7m as opposed to the original estimate of £18m. The difference is attributed to the delayed launch of the 400 sites as well as the delay of the launch to casual users. Although TfL says this figure is likely to change again depending on the roll out of phase 2.

As part of phase 2 rollout, the cycle hire scheme will be heading towards Tower Hamlets, Westfield White City and Camden Town.

Phase 3 of the scheme will be rolled out in summer 2013. This will head towards the West and South West of the current area. Wandsworth and Hammersmith & Fulham have already started to identify suitable cycle hire locations and are calling on local residents to send in their suggestions.

In other news from Mayors questions:

• Total complaints about the cycle hire scheme have fallen by 1/3 in the past six months since May 2011. From 1,647 (0.23% of total hire) to 1,100 (0.16% of total hire)
• We don’t yet know if the Trixi mirrors (blind spot mirrors) is statistically successful but TfL has had approval to install them on all future superhighways from the DfT.

The ETA are currently running a competition that you can enter by simply getting a bicycle insurance quote from this page. Up for grabs is an iPad 2, a high end cycling back-pack, a pedal powered iPad/iPhone charger and a copy of the London Cycle Routes eBook.

To enter grab a quote.

The thinking behind PleaseCycle, a new London based startup, is an Air Miles system for bikes. A way of rewarding people for choosing a green mode of transport for commuting.

Once your company has signed up for PleaseCycle you then start logging miles. This allows you to view CO2 emissions saved and redeem credits for various incentives. These include charity donations, discounts and employee benefits such as additional holiday days.

The whole system works around the Cycle Hub. Which is an online panel that includes route planners, forums, savings calculators and everything else an employee would need to start cycling. Within the system you can log your daily mileage through either the hub website, Twitter or a mobile app. This then accrues BikeMiles.

The points can then be tallied in leaderboards which could be used to encourage friendly competition between colleagues, in a similar fashion to the London Cycle Challenge by TfL.

PleaseCycle has already snapped up the first few clients keen to show off their green credentials and reward their employees for cycling. Reckitt Benckiser are using the system to raise money for Children in Need. Other clients include a hotel which allows guests to log their mileage and a university for their students.

There’s only two downsides I can think of to the idea. The first is that having to incentivise cycling with rewards suggests cycling is something people wouldn’t want to do anyway. Surely cycling in itself is enough of a reward? 

The second is that it may give companies the feeling they are doing everything they can for cycling when perhaps they should be providing cyclist friendly facilities such as secure parking and showers.

Overall however, I believe PleaseCycle has great potential. For companies it’s a turnkey solution for encouraging employees to cycle. It also allows them to show off their green credentials by displaying the CO2 emissions saved by their employees. For workers it provides an extra encouragement to cycle to work which may just be the bump in the right direction many people need. As the solution only costs a company a couple of hundred pounds to get started with a basic package, businesses have one less excuse to not encourage cycling!

Drop-in workshop (Saturday 13th of August)

Free advice from Cycle Training UK as well as maintenance help. 12pm to 4pm

More info

Cycle-in-Cinema (Saturday 13th of August)

Cycle to the Royal Festival Hall, hook your bike up to a generator and power the film screening. Starts 7pm.

More info 

Floral Bicycle Parade (Sunday 28th of August)

Decorate your bike, helmet and clothes in flowers for a parade around the Southbank Centre. I can see this event being fun as long as the weather is good!

Bike decoration stations on The High Street (Level 1 outside Royal Festival Hall) from 2pm till 4pm.

More info

See also:

• Top 10 events not to miss

This is a small business, that we’ve praised previously on London Cyclist. In-fact when interviewing Matthew and Penny they told me how they wanted to reach out to the youths in the local area and bring them in to the shop.

This video on YouTube shows the attack. Thanks to zzgavin on twitter for sharing.

If you have any other reports of bike shops being attacked then please do share them in the comments or contact me on Twitter

Update: “Bike Shack in Leyton got completely cleaned out last night. Little Independent, lovely staff, always really friendly.” via @imkah

Update: Evans Cycles in Camden seems to have been looted too

A TfL consultation is currently taking place where it is possible to see the roads in London affected by the Olympic Route Network (ORN).

The shock of the news is of the sheer length of the disruption. After all, many of the VIPs and athletes will already be housed in the Olympic Park. However, events will be taking place all over London. Such as mountain biking in Hadleigh Farm, Essex.

More bad news

The Olympic Lanes will also effect delivery trucks which will need to complete more deliveries between midnight and 6am. As well as bus routes which will need to be redirected during the games. Not least of those affected are pedestrians, who will be losing 51 zebra crossings.

Why ban cyclists?

The reasons quoted for banning cyclists include making carriageways too narrow and hazardous. Nothing too new to seasoned London cyclists. Of course, the danger of having to merge with the remaining congested traffic isn’t a particularly comforting thought.

How will everyone else get to the events?

It is estimated that 25,000 marketing partners, 28,000 journalists along with 18,000 athletes and 11,000 officials will be transported along the Olympic routes.

The question of how the rest of London will reach the events has yet to be answered. Provision for cycling at the games has also come under criticism. The Olympic Park has a mere 2,200 bike parking spaces. Which would accommodate a tiny fraction of visitors. Additional space will be provided in locations including Victoria Park. Which is a short walk from the Olympic Village.

Organisers expect around 5% of visitors to arrive by bike.