John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
Add new comment
15 comments
Well I commute every day, come hail, rain, sleet, snow or blow and have benefited in my wallet as well as having reduced my waist line loosing over one and a half stone in the process. Oh by the way it's a into central London commute, where other road users can be rather challenging, blind and idiotic. But when I arrive I feel great even during this awful weather we've been having. Oh and it's just 18 miles a day. Another plus is I don't have to play sardines on public transport either.
I'm self-employed and work from home so my commute consists of me stumbling from my bed to my desk while scratching my balls. If Cyclesheme are up for seeing this on a daily basis I'm in.
I use the car only a dozen times per year, and wind, rain, snow, sub-zero temps etc don't stop me riding so I might qualify, but I don't think anyone would be interested in my blathering.
But if I wrote about my commute I would want it to benefit an organisation with loftier goals*, so I'd write for Sustrans or CTC.
* AFAIK CycleScheme is only a business handling a govt tax break.
1708 posts and counting
Free stuff is free stuff. I'm in.
Eh. Have your shift start 20 minutes later. For ... reasons.
Theres a girl i catch on my route in sometimes who has a nice bum. That would make good viewing. It does for me, but the drawback is i'm 15 minutes late on the mornings i sit behind her.
I like the idea of this, less so the output from the headcam at me vociferously swearing at lorries/cars overtaking within a hairsbreadth distance.
Exactly that. Mine wouldn't be broadcastable before 9pm!
It's a wonderfully cheap bit of marketing from Cyclescheme though eh, 12 essentially free staff writer-come-salesmen to publicise your services from a talent pool of people who've not yet figured out that commuting by bike is no more interesting than commuting by car or tube or bus in reality.
I would do it, but I don't think CycleScheme are looking for stories about how bloody awful the cycle path is, or me commenting about the number of cars/trucks/buses driving through red or stopping on the pedestrian crossing.
When I moved in with my flatmate, he had zero bikes and commuted by bus/train - he now has 4 bikes and commutes by bike daily
I'd do it as I quite fancy the helmet cam but can't really justify the price.
I won't though as it is through facebook and I don't do facebook..
Is there anything as dreary a proposition as forum comments, blog posts and helmet cam videos of someone's commute? They'll have no shortage of people who believe their own particular journey is worth championing though, I'm certain.
Do you want to subscribe to my youtube channel and follow me on Strava?
Two personal bests on the commute this morning, including a 9th place on Strava, average speed 29.9mph along that downhill segement. Woot woot.
More seriously, though my commute is thankfully very boring, no major disasters, no half-arsed poorly constructed ill concieved cycling infrastructre to deal with. While I do record the commute, I wouldn't suffer anyone to watch it. The only time that I would not just delete the video would be if something intersting happened, like the day I fell over on the ice in comic slow style, or when I become invisible to buses.
I like the idea of using a "normal" commuter to champion it, but I am not sure that this is the best way to do it, but hey, free stuff!