In 2009 a cycle ride was set up in London through online forums that has now become one of the socio-cultural highlights of the increased interest in cycling; Tweed Runs are now held internationally. Traditionally, organized cycle rides have been the preserve of cycle clubs. But, with the recent rise of mass charity rides and cycle campaigning, they have become far more public. What makes this one different is that, in a period of retro, vintage, and the Internet, it is a public event staged round the visual evocation of history. The Tweed Run could be seen as the cycling manifestation of many of the values expressed in The Chap magazine: a post-modern bricolage of clothing and fashion from the first half of the twentieth century. From a perspective of cycling history, the Tweed Run is challenging; not only does it focus attention on largely-ignored forms of cycling, mainly those surrounding the “roadster,” or the stereotypical “black bicycle”, (upright machines built on 28 inch wheels during the period c1900-1960), but it also, in particular, associates itself with bourgeois cycle culture. The event is laced with ironic humor that makes it difficult to assess its position in either cycling culture or cycling history. However, it could be argued that a precedent for it exists; that is, the Tweed Run seems to represent a popular understanding of an earlier cycling culture similar to that of the “ordinary” bicycle some two generations earlier. It was the scepticism of this understanding that largely underpinned the development of revisionist approaches to cycling history. Both Herlihy and Oddy have considered the anonymity of early twentieth-century cyclists in the context of a history that has traditionally focused on technological change—the former in the USA, the latter in the UK— The period deserves much more attention, but it seems that academic cycling history is fated to lag behind the visually attractive take on the past that events like the Tweed Run offer. This paper considers the relationship between popular and academic approaches to cycling history as a driver of revisionism. It puts forward a proposal that, as arguably the longest established of all design histories of modern technological consumer durables, cycling history depends on a cycle of myth and debunking.