From littlies on their first trainer trikes to family groups on cycleways, competitive ‘road warriors’, Mamils (middle-aged men in Lycra), and now adventurous retired couples, Auckland is having a biking boom. Jane Phare looks at our cycling tribes.
It used to be, years ago, that someone cycling along Auckland's Tamaki Drive roadway looked decidedly out of place. Built in 1932, the reclaimed waterfront road was essentially for cars. A footpath catered for walkers and wharves dotted along the beaches gave ferry access. Cyclists weren't really factored in.
Now, more than 80 years later, Tamaki Drive is the most-cycled route in the country, its tarmac pounded daily from pre-dawn by two-wheeler fanatics wearing Lycra. It is here, if you stop to watch, that you'll see a decent cross-section of the tribes who cycle. They're fairly easy to identify. The Mamils (middle-aged men in Lycra), with their expensive bikes, hairy legs and padded saddles have a giveaway bulge where Lycra meets tummy paunch. They don't move with quite the speed, grace or technique of the younger, streamlined - and hairless - road warriors but they aren't far behind in determination and competitiveness. Certainly the kit is often just as flash, because they can afford it, and the tales of top speeds and near misses just as exaggerated at the cafe stops.
Family groups, sometimes with a baby being towed in a bike buggy, joggle along their half of the Tamaki Drive footpath, while trying to avoid lamp posts, pohutukawa tree roots and dog walkers who have strayed over the white line. The e-bikers are growing in numbers too, their shiny new electric bikes often sporting a basket on the front.
Two more cycling "tribes" are growing in numbers - female road warriors and older couples who, in their retirement years, have discovered a double joy: the freedom of cycling coupled with the wonders of the SuperGold card, which gives them, and their bikes, free access to trains, buses and ferries. The SuperGold carders come out to play after 9am on week days, by which time the road warriors and commuters have gone to work. Weekends will see the ferries to Waiheke or Devonport loaded with bikes, plenty of them belonging to beaming bikers in their 60s and 70s.
For many, cycling becomes an addiction. It takes over their life; they spend more on their bike - and the best kit - than they do on their car. All over Auckland, and elsewhere in New Zealand, thousands of alarm clocks go off in the still-dark hours of the morning. Minutes later, cyclists haul their bikes out of garages, sheds and off balconies and hit the road.
The pre-dawn hours of the Rugby World Cup final were no different. At VBike at Auckland's Westhaven a bunch of cyclists watched the All Blacks thrash Australia at 5am while pedalling furiously on wind trainers. VBike owner Jianni Koutsos says serious cyclists will pay $10,000 or $11,000 for a custom-made bike. A couple of times a year he sells high-end bikes for between $20,000 and $25,000. Add up the extras and cyclists will spend another $5000 on the best kit.
Will Turner, of Hot Cycles in St Heliers, has a $19,000, specialised carbon-fibre S-works for sale. With electric gears, built-in power meter and aerodynamic wind-tunnel design, it's the sort of bike ridden by pros in the Tour de France.
"The person riding that bike," says Turner, "would definitely shave their legs."
A must-have for the serious cyclist is a GPS computer that records cycling data including speed and, after syncing with your phone, means you can download emails and texts. And, with the help of the app Strava, cycling's version of Facebook, you can compare your personal best and routes with your mates, and share photos.
Says Turner: "Strava has escalated, it's massive. It's social media on a bike."
Keen cyclist and Strava user Mark Erikson, 46, is up at 5.30am on weekends to do 100km rides with the Grey Lynn Cycle Club - a group of friends - who'll often link up with other groups. Erikson is no sooner home on a Sunday when he, with his sons Jaedyn, 9, and Rielly, 7, set off with the Grey Lynn Cycle Club Juniors, a group of local kids. They bike different local routes, stopping at playgrounds along the way, and sometimes do trips further afield, for which Erikson hires a big trailer.
Seventy-year-old Tauranga cyclist Cliff Kingston had to buy himself a new bike this year. His old one fell apart in September - not surprising since he'd thrashed it for 96,400km after buying it second-hand from Kiwi cyclist Susy Pryde in 2001. Now he's out on North Island roads clocking up the miles on his new $7500 carbon-fibre 22-geared model. Currently he's training for next weekend's 160km Lake Taupo Challenge - his 21st time competing in the event.
Kingston organises cycling expeditions through his funcycling website - including Round the Mountain (Mt Ruapehu) and the Okoroire mid-winter ride. But it's the Saturday morning rides from Kingston's home that have gained traction, as much for the social side as the cycling.
Barbara Cuthbert, 63, doesn't own a car, just a bike. In her role as chairwoman of Bike Auckland (formerly Cycle Action), she pedals miles every week to various meetings. She couldn't achieve what she does in a day if she had to drive in Auckland's traffic and find parking, she says.
With a house in Devonport and a place on Waiheke, Cuthbert and her bike spend a lot of time on ferries and trains. She's delighted with the number of retired couples with bikes she now sees. Whereas cycling is the new golf for Mamils, biking is the new campervanning for the older age group. It is this group, and families, who are making most use of the cycleways throughout the city and cycle trails around the country. Says Cuthbert: "The growth in this demographic is massive."
The road warrior
Amy Haddon owns five bikes but none of them are gathering dust. The superfit 30-year-old uses all of them - a road bike and four mountain bikes - interspersed with swimming and squash.
This morning, she says, she's been on an early-morning bike ride as usual, swum at lunchtime and in the evening will meet friends out at Woodhill Forest for a mountain bike ride. She shrugs off the punishing routine, in between working for the BNZ in Pukekohe in business finance. "I thrive on being fit. My motto about life is 'I'm in a race against life to get fit'."
At weekends, if Hatton's not mountain bike racing, she'll hit the road on her bike for a five-to-seven-hour training ride, clocking up between 100kms to 150kms. Or if there's a road race on - Coromandel's K2, the Round Taupo Cycle Challenge, the Auckland Harbour Bridge race, Nelson's Graperide - she will toss her bike on the roof rack and head off, eyes set on a place on the podium.
Haddon admits to being a fiercely competitive "bike warrior" who won't settle for "anything other than first place".
Two years ago she qualified for the London Triathlon World Championships but came second after overshooting a loop in the course. "Unfortunately I made a wrong turn on the bike and it cost me first place. A little bit disappointing."
In mountain bike competitions Haddon usually wins her age group and holds her own overall. This month she won the Taniwha, an 85km race along the Waikato River trails to Taupo. She's come second overall in the winter Enduro series in Rotorua, has won the 80km Colville Connection race, and last year won both the 50km Mt Karioi race at Raglan and the 85km Trailblazer in the Taumarunui region.
Apart from $30,000 worth of bikes, Haddon uses technology to improve her performance, logging all her training into her iPhone, which syncs to her Mac. She has a Garmin bike computer attached to her handlebars and is constantly watching data on the screen - heart rate, cadence/speed, time, distance, output, and her nutritional and hydration intake. The data tells her when to eat and drink, when to push thresholds or ease off.
Haddon doesn't see long training rides as a chore, rather she describes them as "exhilarating and rewarding".
"You're physically fit, you're mentally challenged when you've been on the bike for seven hours and you've still got 30-odd km to go. Or you're half way through a race and your gears aren't quite right and you've got to think outside the square. I love it."
The challenger
A couple of years back, Teau Aiturau weighed in at 252 kilos, suffered health problems, couldn't walk and was constantly breathless. Realising he needed to do something, he started swimming at the Mangere pool and there met Dr Richard Cooper from Counties Manukau District Health Board.
Cooper, who educates people with long-term conditions to manage their health, issued a challenge: to compete in the Rotorua Moonride in the Whakarewarewa Forest trails in 2013. "Oh yeah," said Aiturau, "I'll give it a go."
Teau Aiturau of Mangere lost 100kg after taking up cycling and now runs an after-school programme for youngsters who can't afford bikes. Photo / Kellie Blizard
So he and some cousins, "all big boys", did just that. "I fell off my bike 20 times but it was awesome. I enjoyed it."
Afterwards, an impressed Cooper gave Aiturau his mountain bike as a reward, a gesture that was the start of a community scheme in South Auckland, encouraging youngsters to get on bikes.
Aiturau, 40, who is a caregiver to his wheelchair-confined brother, set himself up in the Mangere Community Centre carpark and started giving away bikes and helmets. He begs, borrows and buys new and good second-hand bikes, fixes them up with donated parts, and gives them away to local kids who can't afford their own.
But first the children have to learn how to ride, fix the bikes and about safety. Six months ago he moved into a more permanent workshop, a garage next to the community centre, and from there runs an after-school biking programme.
"The kids are really into it. They just want to go for a ride and they're happy. That makes me happy."
Once the children have learned to ride, Aiturau - now 100kg lighter - organises rides on bike trails through local parks, encouraging the parents to join in.
"We need to get the parents involved because the kids want to go riding but aren't allowed to on their own."
On his wish list are more donated new bikes and helmets for the kids, and for Auckland Council to establish more cycleways in South Auckland.
"I live across the road from a primary school and every day the street is blocked up with cars. That's another reason I ride my bike, there are too many cars."
Early riders
At 5am every morning the alarm goes off in the O'Keefe household. Phil, a 57-year-old Mamil, rubs sleep out of his eyes and hauls on his Lycra. He wakes his two children, Guy, 19, and Charlotte, 17, and 20 minutes later they're heading out of the garage on their bikes.
Why? Because they love it.
Twice a week during the training season, they'll ride the 9km from their St Johns home to AGC Parnell College where Charlotte is a student, ready to train with the squad from 6am until 7.15am, often riding the waterfront where speeds get up to 44kph and occasionally higher.
Guy and Charlotte Nankivell with their father Phil O'Keefe, are keen riders who are on their nikes by 5.20am. Photo / Kellie Blizard
If the weather is wet and cold they go into college and do wind training, cycling on a stand. Boring? "Hellishly boring," says Guy.
But it helps with strength because there's no respite from downhill slopes, he says. "It's a sweat fest. It actually gets pretty disgusting."
Other mornings they'll meet up with the Lunn Ave Bicycle Club, outside McDonald's in Mt Wellington, and do a bunch ride to the Parnell Cathedral in two groups - the ace riders and the slightly slower ones. Guy, light and fast, is up front. Phil, with a supply of "fly traps" - Griffin's Golden Fruit biscuits - for the longer rides rides, is with the second squad. The vigorous, punishing rides come at the weekend - often 100km.
Phil has cycled, and run, for years but it wasn't until five years ago that Guy, now at Auckland University studying for a BSc in computer sciences, showed interest. His father gave him his old steel-framed bike, and Guy took it to bits in the garage.
"That's one of the best things Guy has ever done," Phil says. "He knows more about bicycles probably than most riders."
Three years ago Charlotte gave up dancing, bought a bike and joined her father and brother on the early-morning ritual. Her school friends can't believe she goes to bed at 9pm. "I say 'well, if you woke up at 5am you would do the same thing'," she says.
Cycling, says Guy, has completely changed their family life. "It's shifted our day to two hours earlier."
It's also influenced the way they holiday. Last year the family, including Phil's wife, Fleur, headed for Europe to follow the Tour de France, riding some of the stages in France and Belgium. Other days they waited on crowded street corners, with other Tour de France fans, to see their cycling idols whizz by. But for Phil, cycling is not all about competition, it's about fitness and personal best.
"It's you and your mind against the clock. There's no hiding. You're racing against yourself."
Tour De France wannabe
Auckland consultant and cycling fanatic Mike Pengelly is 63 but has no intention of letting his body believe that. He trains hard, rides most days and does weekend bunch rides from his Mt Wellington home to places as far as Coromandel. Once, he and some mates rode to Wellington, cycling coast to coast.
And then there's the Tour de France. He's ridden it - virtually. Sometimes on his own, sometimes with cycling mates, Pengelly is known to spend five and a half hours at a stretch watching the race on a big TV in his lounge while furiously pedalling on his bike. In a mad, virtual-reality sweat fest, he follows the Tour with his bike balanced on rollers, keeping up with the speeds the pros are doing.
As well as on-road training, Mike Pengelly follows the Tour de France on TV. Photo / Kellie Blizard
Before the race, Pengelly pulls the TV close in front of his handlebars, lines up water bottles within arm's reach and he's off, balancing and pedalling hands-free when he needs a drink or snack. If the pros can't take a break, neither will he.
When the racers lean into a corner so does he. When they do it hard, "honking" up a steep hill, Pengelly's right with them, matching their speed. When they hit over 50kph in the final sprint, so does he - "balls-out stuff".
The big screen and the camera work gives "a magnificent sense of reality and appreciation", he says. "Your handlebars are in front of the screen, man, you are actually riding."
He's had a few crashes, riding through the French countryside. The cameras put the cyclists "up against your shoulders", he says. "Then suddenly the team car will go past and you find you're pulling your elbow in and ducking to one side. More than once I have fallen off when they get too close and I can't help but swerve."
Really?
"Really," he says.
And on he goes: "Their pain is your pain ... I sweat, throw my empty bidons [water bottles] to the imaginary crowd and dream of home, of stopping, of finally ... getting over the finish line. And as they [the pros] take their hands off the bars and throw them in the air ... so do I."
Sounds eccentric? Pengelly doesn't help that impression by occasionally riding a unicycle to work but to him it all makes perfect sense. He has, for those few hours, ridden in the Tour de France.
Family fit
Gesa and Scott Mitchell tell their boys to get outdoors rather than play computer games. For that reason, their three sons, Flynn, 12, Peer, 10, and Yonas, 8, each have a mountain bike but no Xbox or PlayStation.
Weekends are often spent on the trails at Woodhill Forest or Hunua, with holidays designed around the outdoors. This summer they plan to cycle in Hawkes Bay, taking in the Cape Kidnappers coastline and local wineries. They've already ridden the Hauraki rail trail and the Ohakune Old Coach Rd.
Always keen cyclists, the Mitchells decided Auckland's roads were too dangerous for family cycling when they arrived from Sydney four years ago. So they bought mountain bikes.
Gesa and Scott Mitchell with sons Peer, Yonas and Flynn. They are keen cyclists. Photo / Kellie Blizard
Their first trip to Woodhill Forest - the first weekend they arrived in New Zealand - was a "disaster", Gesa remembers.
"It ended in tears because it was far too difficult for the kids."
But they persevered and now are regular weekend visitors to Woodhill or the Hunua Ranges. Mitchell says mountain biking is a great family sport but it can be tough.
"I think it is a challenge sometimes for the boys, they are out of their comfort zone. But life is a challenge, it's not a walk in the park."
The Mitchells, both in their 40s, are also keen road cyclists and runners, getting out for early-morning rides and runs whenever they can. Scott will regularly clock up 100km on his bike, and competes in triathlons and in cycling events.
For the past two years he's ridden the gruelling mountain legs of the Tour de France, Mt Ventoux and Alpe D'Huez, while German-born Gesa visits her family. During their last trip, the Mitchells spent a week cycling in Provence while the boys stayed with their grandparents. The couple are cautious about allowing their sons out on bikes on Auckland roads, at least until they are older.
"I find it far too dangerous here," Gesa says. "In Europe everybody rides a bike, so everybody knows you have to watch out for them. But here the drivers are not so aware of that."
She'd like to see safer cycleways established throughout Auckland. "I would love our kids to be able to hop on their bikes and go anywhere rather than us driving them everywhere."
