PLAIN AND GAIN

While it was a peach of a day overhead, the ground under tyre was a quagmire

n admission. Maybe it’s a result of being in this job for as long as I have, but photoshoots for bike tests aren’t my favourite part of it. Yes, you’re on bikes in a pretty part of the country but there’s one big problem – you don’t actually do much cycling. I’m straying into how the sausage is made territory here, but the days are long, you ride over the same stretch of tarmac for take after take after take, and the photographers have you ride in some rather unreasonable, unnatural positions, always for the good of the shot. Inside leg down through a bend, for instance, or sprinting in the big ring in the drops up a 15 per cent gradient, which even Marco Pantani in his pomp would have found a bit unreasonable. We also get called upon to do shoots all year round,