Cycling UK Forum

Buying this magazine in recent years has for me been the triumph of hope over experience.
I succumbed last week.
One of the major articles explained ways to get fitter on a budget.
One suggestion was that I could save £400 spent on a "personal trainer" over eight weeks by paying £30 to enter a "Sportive" eight weeks hence - the thought of which would engender sufficient fear that I would train very hard and wouldn't need someone to shout at me for that period.
Another suggestion was a gadget for £150 (looked rather like an assortment of sturdy rubber bands - I was thinking inner tubes). This would save £1187 gym membership.
Not included in the £150 was the very sturdy looking pipe work that the gadget needed to be suspended from - I think this would have been particularly important because one of the illustrations showed the user supported at about 45 degrees to the horizontal in a position reminiscent of a sprinter rising from the blocks.
There were other ideas both good and original as Harold MacMillan said of the Liberal manifesto.
In sixty years I've seen this magazine change beyond all recognition - apart from the classic Helms at the back.
I wonder now who it is aimed at.

Sounds like a typical lads mag..mum got me a sub to cycling plus for chrimble, 45% adverts of the 240 odd pages.
Lots of bike tests/reviews, lots of them well into 4 figures and most of them racing bikes as you'd imagine with a smattering of reviews on urban/audax/touring bikes.
Advice on training/increasing your performance including a long term test on a wattbike (it's £2000+ to buy but theyy're in ALL the gyms now apparently ), reviews on a reasonable range of goods & some write ups about trips and various events. Yours for the princely sum of £4.99..you can get a 6 month scrip for well under £20 incl delivery (£16 was the offer in August) and you do get the odd nosh bar/gel shots/drink tabs and I got a 12mm spanner in one issue.
I didn't renew as it's pretty much same old same old and I can find pretty much all of its contents on-line for nowt

Cycling weekly has become just one big advert for their RITMO system and their own sportives. I became disillusioned with sportives when I did the dragon ride last year and three of the four feedstations didn't have any energy drink. Then I discovered Audax and haven't looked back since. Getting into Audax also highlighted how narrow the perspective is for magazines like cycling plus and cycling weekly etc.

freeflow wrote:Cycling weekly has become just one big advert for their RITMO system and their own sportives.

.....and a re-hash of the same old topics almost every week (although keeping a weekly mag "fresh" must be hard)


Get "sportive fit" in just six weeks!

Faster in five simple sessions!

Eat more [this week's trendy super-food] to cycle further!

Top [summer/winter/autumn/spring] riding kit for your sportive!

We test the best [insert price rance] carbon bikes!

How RiTMO can improve your riding!

Planning your 2015 sportive calendar now!

freeflow wrote:Cycling weekly has become just one big advert for their RITMO system and their own sportives. I became disillusioned with sportives when I did the dragon ride last year and three of the four feedstations didn't have any energy drink. Then I discovered Audax and haven't looked back since. Getting into Audax also highlighted how narrow the perspective is for magazines like cycling plus and cycling weekly etc.

Norralf. They seem to start with the assumption that every cyclist wants to be a boy racer. Ditto MTB mags, which seem to think that everyone wants to ride down Beachy Head.

Trouble is, from their POV (i.e. that of their advertisers) there's no money in us dull Audax types who only buy a new bike every 10 years or so. Yet can you imagine how rich such a mag. could be? Tea-shop reviews, Bus Shelter of the Month, Your Worst Weather Experience... possibilities are endless. Not to mention the buildup to PBP, LEL, the Mille Migla, and lovely ads by Spa, Roberts & SJS.

It'd go bust in a month, alas.

CW is now firmly aimed at the "All the Gear and no idea" MAMILS and new generation cyclists. Certainly not the club riders that it was once aimed at. There was a 4 page article recently on how to hold your handlebars!!!

I gave up reading it 10 years ago and don't miss it at all - Cycling Plus and Cycling Active are no better either. I spend the money on cycling books instead (travelogues and biographies of famous riders).

If you are old enough you will appreciate the fact that there arn't any Mopeds in the mag now!
Joking apart, it was always a racing orientated journal rather than touring or utility cycling mag, in the same way that the CTC Gazette, sorry I'm quite old, has changed from a cycle touring journal into a general cycling mag with some touring content.

Ugly wrote:If you are old enough you will appreciate the fact that there arn't any Mopeds in the mag now!
Joking apart, it was always a racing orientated journal rather than touring or utility cycling mag, in the same way that the CTC Gazette, sorry I'm quite old, has changed from a cycle touring journal into a general cycling mag with some touring content.

I remember it before the mopeds appeared - about then it acquired the honorific of "the comic".
It did carry some interesting touring articles, and there was always the GHS column.
There was also a large amount given to time trials and road races - and some rudimentary training advice - I particularly liked the Doctor's (anonymous in those days) column where the benefits of beer as a blood cleanser were frequently mentioned.
I have to agree about the CTC Gazette - I joined CTC in the nineties and remember being impressed with the magazine - now it's hardly worth a few minutes scanning the contents.

easyroller wrote:.....and a re-hash of the same old topics almost every week (although keeping a weekly mag "fresh" must be hard)

Absolutely. I knocked up this spoof cover along those lines. Someone then came up with this rather wonderful pastiche of the other 20% of the cycling magazine market...

Two wonderful sendups of the strange world of cycling magazines.

Hi t here, Really enjoyed the spoof covers, but so near to absolute truth! I think the September edition of "Cyclist" must also rank among the all time lows? Specifically the piece on L'Eroica Britannia, so very ironic. Rules: Must be built before 1987, Must have D/T Gear Levers, unless original BarCons, No concealed cables et al. Their lead photo shows 3 Bicycles on a section of the course. Shame is the first 2 are on plastic with STi stuff? So no one bothered to check out the photo before use! We all would. The organizers aren't any better, very picky? I was told that I could only ride the shortest route if I chose to ride either of my 1953 Higgins Ultralite Tricycles, both on old stuff, "Not the image we want"! "Tricycles aren't racing machines!"? So Henri Desgrange wouldn't fit their profile of suitable riders for their event. (French Tricycle Champion in his time). They didn't get my money.
The magazines are bad, event organizers worse! Comics? No laughing matter in my eyes! TTFN MM

Still a compulsive weekly read in my household after more decades than I care to count - yes, including the 'Cycling and Mopeds' years. The quality has varied as much as the ethos, but the current format is on many counts a success - it knows what its market is and serves it well, which is presumably why it keeps on winning publishing industry awards. The present format is less sportive-dominated than often claimed by its detractors. It still has the best general coverage of the racing scene, and there are entertaining innovations - among them recipes [!] for cyclists' fuel, and the incomparable Michael Hutchinson column - by far the wittiest and most perceptive commentator on the cycling world now writing.

Cycling Weakly?

I've no time for that kind of thing....

cheers

I don't remember the moped section of Cycling Weekly but I do remember the short lived off-road section on green pages. My name was in there in the results section a time or two as I was mad on MTB XC racing at the time.

Cycling magazines have always been repetitive with the same old topics coming round again and again. Magazines were once useful for results, adverts for bike bits and pieces and technical info, but now the internet has arrived I never buy them.