A peculiar thing seems to be happening in the world of cycling.

When I say “world” I guess I’m really talking about my world of cycling rather than the world of cycling where peculiar things seem to frequently happen. Chasing a moped around a steeply inclined track, for instance. Or those long pointy speed helmets. Or drugs. Lots of drugs. Allegedly.

In my world of cycling, I have a mountain bike. In Okahao there is one two story building – a bar. On a clear day (i.e. every day) you can see for, oohh, say three thousand miles in each direction. Suffice to say that there are not too many mountains for my mountain bike to go up round these parts. That said, with the roads being made of gravel or sand (or, as I suspect, thorns with a thin layer of gravel/sand thrown over the top to hide them before they plunge into your tyre), a rufty tufty bike has been quite useful. I average a puncture a journey (hence the thorns), but can’t imagine how a racing road bike (the ones with the curly handles) would get on here. Actually I can. They won’t.

Anyway, I’m using my bike to commute to one of our clinics – Onemanya – every Tuesday. Its about a 25km round trip on gravel (thorn) road. Although I’m not going out to break any land speed records, I have been timing myself just to see if I’m getting any better. My time for one way averages around 40-45 mins, but interestingly my times are not improving in a nice sloping graph sort of way, but rather seem to be mimicking the mountainous zones which are so scarce here (perhaps trying to mock me?) As part of this process, however, an interesting observation has been developing – namely, the relationship between cycling times and music which I’m listening to on said journey.

Now I’m a great believer that the more pumping the music, the faster I must be going. That’s just logical surely? But this belief theory was thrown into absolute chaos about 2 months ago while listening to Leftfield, an artist you would expect to push for a reasonable time. Although I felt I was hitting a good rhythm to the pretty upbeat music, I came in with a dismal 52 minutes. My worst time to date.

And so it began. Since then I’ve been carefully observing the relationship between times and music. And here’s where the peculiarity has begun. The pre-season favourites, Fatboy Slim, Paul Oakenfold and Cream Anthems have slipped into mid table obscurity along with other big guns like U2 and The Stereophonics all between the 40-45 minute mark. Unexpected successes like Coldplay and Jack Johnson are high up there in the early 40s too. At the bottom of the pile, along with the previously mentioned Leftfield, we have Finley Quaye, Blur, The Beatles (they were never going to maintain their 1960s form) and, errm, Alanis Morrissette all involved in a relegation battle.

“So who’s at the top?” I hear you sitting at the edge of your seats wondering (hear?). Well, only Massive Attack have stuck to their title billing with a respectable 39 minutes 43 seconds to claim third spot thus far. Inching just ahead at 39 minutes 12 seconds coming from nowhere is Jools Holland. Howver, ladies and gentlemen, all records were smashed to pieces in a moment of musical-cycling-synchronised-perfection and we have a clear leader with an astonishing 35 minutes 32 seconds. And the source of this motivational master? James Blunt…

So there you have it. Definitive proof. I watched the Tour de France a couple of years ago and noticed that Lance Armstrong always had an earpiece in (supposedly to talk to his team). Tracey Chapman, maybe? Or Engelbert Humperdink?

Probably not Cheryl Crow.