Indholdsfortegnelse for October 26, 2017 i Cycling Weekly

What’s your assessment of the 2018 Tour de France route? Too hilly? Too flat? Too French? After all the foreign starts of late, I for one quite like the idea of the race running almost entirely on French roads for a change. And as for the amount of climbing……. Well, for the fans can the Tour ever have too much? Sprinters might disagree. Whatever you think, that first week is perfect for British fans wanting to follow the race each day. A ferry to St Malo or Cherbourg and a drive will get you to Tuesday’s finish in Sarzeau from where there’s a good holiday to be had following the race all the way over to Roubaix on the Sunday. The unpredictable nature of those 154km and 15 sections of…

@DaveRaynerFund Adam Lewis, 22 United CT, Veerle, Belgium You stayed in Café Sur Place this season? Yeah, there were quite a few of us from the Dave Rayner Fund living there and a few Norwegians. We made good friends with the locals and they supported us at races. We even had our own Belgian supporters club. Good season? I went into the season with the ambition of getting results to move up a level and I had four victories, four second places and one third place. I broke my scaphoid in a crash in June and had five weeks off the bike so it could have gone even better. That’s a good number of wins. It took time. The main thing was having the confidence that I could do it.…

Three days before Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme unveiled the parcours for next July’s extravaganza, French sports paper L’Équipe published a “design your own Tour route” article, asking a series of expert commentators including ex-pros Charly Mottet and Jérôme Pineau to reveal their ideal Tour itinerary. This was, given what Prudhomme served up at the Palais des Congrés in central Paris 72 hours later, the perfect hors d’oeuvre. Since taking over as the race director in 2006, and especially since Thierry Gouvenou became his route director in 2014, Prudhomme has been searching for ways to spice up every day of the sport’s greatest race. With his sights set principally on forcing the general classification favourites into the front line more often, the Tour boss has presented a host of…

LA ROSIERE Stage 11: Albertville > La Rosière Height: 1,855m; Length: 17.6km; Average gradient: 5.8% A new finish for the Tour but not for its organisers. The 2015 edition of the Tour de l’Avenir featured a similar stage crossing the Pré and Roselend passes before concluding on the long climb up to the La Rosière, although it finished at a lower point. Coming at the end what is sure to be an explosive stage of just 108km with three big climbs beforehand, the Rosière could produce the first significant gaps among the favourites. A power climb at the start and finish, the toughest ramps are in La Rosière’s mid-part, and it’s here the selection is likely to be made. L’ALPE D’HUEZ Stage 12: Bourg Saint Maurice > L’Alpe d’Huez Height:…

Kinesis UK “I think there’s a place for both winter bikes and gravel bikes and the starting point will involve asking yourself, ‘What sort of a cyclist am I?’ Are you spending many hours on the road or are you looking to get down bridleways a bit? “If road is your thing, buy a winter road bike. If it’s having a bike that works well on the road in the winter but that can also take you to some more adventurous riding or some more interesting riding down rougher tracks — or you fancy a go at something that’s going to take you off-road, whether that’s a cross race or some sort of bike packing — then thankfully there’s a bigger choice now. What might have been called touring bikes…

The majority of products sold as performance-enhancers have no direct physical effects on the body. Where there’s a positive psychological outcome, attributable only to the cyclist’s belief in the effectiveness of the therapy, the phenomenon is known as the placebo effect. It’s not to be underestimated, as it can strongly influence our perceptions of health and performance. All rigorous scientific studies are placebo-controlled, meaning that the product being tested is compared to the effects of a placebo (or sham product) that has a similar appearance but no active ingredients. In this way, researchers can distinguish between real physiological and psychosomatic effects. A 2006 study published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sport and Exercise tested the effects of placebo on cycling performance. Six well-trained cyclists completed a series of…

A modern and popular way to make the most of your training time, High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is great for burning calories and improving your top-end fitness. What it’s for Traditional slow and steady base miles in the winter still have their place in a good training programme. If you’re looking to become a fat-burning machine over extreme distances, there is no replacement for the long hard graft. However, modern ways of thinking have brought us a new style of time-efficient training in the form of HIIT. HIIT involves many repetitions of short, high-power sprints in a relatively short workout. Because of the aggressive nature of the workout, it’s essential to use a direct-drive trainer to prevent the rear wheel from slipping. The trainer also needs a strong, stable…

One hundred and thirty years ago a certain Mr. Dunlop created the world’s first pneumatic bicycle tyre, to take the sting out of the cobbled roads of the time. Within a few years solid tyres were history, and the bicycling world wafted its way into a new era of comfort, efficiency — and punctures. No one knows exactly when the first devices to scrape debris from tyres appeared — it’s likely the first ones were hastily improvised twists of wire inspired by equal parts inspiration and despair. In theory, as tyres and roads got better there should have been less need for them, but as technology improves you can use it to make things stronger and longer lasting, or lighter and faster. Cyclists tend to go for the faster/lighter option,…

I just watched Elinor Barker and Eleanor Dickinson win Madison gold at the European track championships in Berlin. I expect they’re exhausted but we’ve done our fair share of sweating up here in the stands as well. Fact of the day: Berlin just hosted only the seventh European track cycling championships – the event began in 2010. More trivia: our Elinor/Eleanor team are only the second ever women’s Madison champs, as the event only opened for women last season. We also received the announcement that the Madison would be returning as an Olympic event for men (it wasn’t in the 2012 or 2016 programmes) and added as a new event for women. It’s a pretty seismic piece of news. Why? Well, firstly, I’m a professional cyclist and also an amateur…

Mikel Landa says that his two years riding with Chris Froome and Team Sky have made him “stronger and more confident”, as he leaves the British squad for Movistar in 2018. Landa helped Froome win the 2017 Tour de France in July after he himself won the mountains jersey at the Giro d’Italia. Movistar have signed him to lead their Grand Tour team next season. “I feel stronger and I have more confidence in myself. I’m a stronger rider than two years ago [when I joined Sky],” said Landa, who was racing last weekend in South China at the Tour of Guangxi, his last fixture in team Sky’s black and blue colours. “I learnt a lot because Team Sky is one of the best teams in three-week races and they…

The new French UCI president made much of his plans to develop women’s racing in his election manifesto, but it appears that ASO ignored this section of David Lappartient’s campaign strategy when putting together the fifth edition of La Course by Le Tour. After three years on the Champs-Elysées circuit in Paris and this year’s doubleheader comprising a dash to the summit of the Izoard and a handicap/pursuit race on the time trial course in Marseille, next year’s La Course has a diminished look. The event, which didn’t receive a mention in the official Tour dossier handed out at the race presentation in Paris, will revert to a single day, covering a significant part of the Tour de France stage to Le Grand Bornand on 17 July. Starting in Duingt,…

In winning four Tour de France titles and finishing runner-up in another, Chris Froome has not only seen a good variety of route options but consistently shown that he is capable of adapting to and gaining an edge on all of them. While the 2018 edition only features a paltry number of very hilly individual time trial kilometres, where the Sky leader is likely to have a significant edge on the specialist climbers, Froome’s huge ability in the mountains ensures he has plenty of terrain in which to evade his rivals and secure a record-equalling fifth Tour crown. Froome, picked out the first half of the race as the most complicated. “Anything can happen on stages that you don’t know, like those to Quimper and Mûr de Bretagne,” he said,…

Festka Doppler Czech brand Festka has fused carbon and titanium to create a unique and beautiful machine that weighs 6.8kg in this Record build — astonishingly light for a metal-tubed bike. It has a stunning ‘Doppler effect’ soundwave paintjob too. Contact: www.feskta.com Price: £11,000 Review: December FSA PowerBox Carbon We reviewed the aluminium PowerBox power meter, which costs nearly half the price, in May and found it to be accurate and reliable. The carbon version is used by the FSA-sponsored pro teams and is lighter and slicker at 780g minus the BB. Contact: www.windwave.co.uk Price: £1,091.95 Review: January MAAP M-Flag Pro Base LS Aussies MAAP have sent us this stylish winter jersey. With its fleecy Roubaix-style inner lining, coupled with cuffed long sleeves and three rear pockets, it looks like…

Rewind two years and the mere task of putting on shoes was a challenge for Richard Cavender. “I had to lean down on the side of the bed to reach my foot, then sit up and take a few breaths before putting on the other one. I thought to myself, this is mad.” Since emigrating to Spain a decade earlier and setting up an IT business, Cavender had settled into bad habits, “working harder and harder while getting fatter and fatter”. With his weight hitting a lifetime high of 110kg, there was no more denying it: he needed to take action. Digging out a neglected hybrid bike, Cavender tentatively began cycling, at first just the odd 5km or 10km as his work schedule allowed. Before long, though, he was part…

“This is one of my most favourite roads in the world,” Buxton Cycling Club member Rhys Roberts tells me as we wind our way up out of the Goyt Valley towards the top of the famous Cat and Fiddle pub in the Peak District National Park, Derbyshire. “In fact, I love it so much,” Roberts continues, “I moved to the area because of it!” It’s a grand claim, but entirely feasible, as even on a drizzly day it’s breathtakingly beautiful here, with waterfalls in full flow and a spectacular display of forests and moorland sporting full autumnal fatigues. In fact, the only downside is the rather brutal climb straight out of Buxton that we’ve had to conquer in order to take in the visual feast. “Living in Buxton has certainly…

Sunday, October 22 Italian Marco Canola made history by becoming the first rider to win both the criterium and road race at the Japan Cup. The Nippo-Vini Fantini rider won Saturday’s criterium, and then on Sunday in Utsonomiya he was the fastest in a five-man tussle for the win. Jasper Stuyven (Trek-Segafredo) brought the chasers home, some 34 seconds back. Tuesday, October 17 The final European road race of the season was won by Dutch 23-year-old Arvid De Kleijn. The Baby-Dump Cycling Team rider sprinted to victory in the Sluitingsprijs Putte-Kapellen race in Belgium. De Kleijn won three races in 2017, his last being Antwerpse Havenpijl in August, when he beat Brit Harry Tanfield (Bike Channel-Canyon) into first place. Tuesday, October 17 Italian rider Jakub Mareczko (Wilier Triestina-Selle Italia) quite…

doctorhutch_cycling@timeinc.com People often ask me about my friend Bernard, who appears in these pages more often than he would prefer. “Dr. Hutch,” these people say, “why do you spend so much of your time riding with this man when you would so clearly like to drown him in a roadside ditch, frisk his jersey pockets for your stolen possessions, and leave his body pegged out in a field for the crows to eat?” It is a reasonable question, and one to which I don’t have an entirely good answer. All I can really say is that I’ve tried to do better, but he still seems to be the best I can find. There have been other riding companions. For instance, a couple of years ago, for a few weeks I…

Halfords and a government minister both found themselves on the receiving end of a public backlash last week as they separately suggested cyclists could be forced to wear hi-vis, helmets and even have number plates. The Halfords report entitled Sharing the Road 2017, was based on a survey conducted for it by polling organisation YouGov, which found 59 per cent of people backed the introduction of number plates for cyclists. Perhaps unsurprisingly this prompted a strong reaction from cyclists who started the hashtag #boycotthalfords across social media. Twitter user Hamish Denton’s comment was typical: “Just caught up with what Halfords have been up to. So disappointed. Creating self-serving research that whips up division.” Meanwhile, roads minister Jesse Norman got similar short shrift when he said, in an interview with The…

The Paris-Roubaix cobbles are “too dangerous” and should not be included in the Tour de France 2018 route, according to the head of the Movistar team. Speaking after the announcement of next year’s Tour route last week, which includes nearly 22km of cobbles on stage nine, Eusebio Unzué criticised the race organiser’s decision to include cobbled roads for the first time since 2015. “I don’t understand the inclusion of the pavé. It’s too dangerous,” the Movistar team manager Eusebio Unzué told L’Equipe. “Cycling is already a risky sport, and on the pavé those risks are multiplied… the pavé should be for Paris-Roubaix and that’s it.” The cobbles were last included in the Tour in 2015, with stage four of that year’s race seeing no abandons on the road to Cambrai.…

Nivea trivia In answer to William’s email about lack of sponsorship by sun cream manufacturers (CW October 12), in actual fact the German cosmetics company Nivea became the first non-bicycle company to sponsor a team, in 1954. The Italian team Ganna told its leader Fiorenzo Magni that it would not be able to continue unless further sponsorship was found so he arranged for the cosmetics company to be the main backer of Nivea-Fuchs. The team lasted until 1956. John Sturgeon, email Greeting groan I find the continuous stream of letters about cyclists not acknowledging each other both boring and tedious and wouldn’t dream of writing one. In days long ago, there were fewer cyclists. Many cyclists knew each other or belonged to long-established clubs and if you crossed on the…

The sense of expectation created by Christian Prudhomme’s confirmation that the 2018 race will feature nearly 22km of cobbles says everything about why they are back on the Tour menu. The TV audience will be huge on that Sunday, which also features football’s World Cup Final later in the evening. Froome, of course, never made it to the cobbles when he slid out of the Tour on a rainy day in 2014, but insists that, while aware of the risks they present to every GC contender’s prospects, he’s quite happy to tackle them. “Contrary to what people think, I like the pavé,” he affirmed in Paris before joking that he might line up for Roubaix next year as preparation. Others, notably Nairo Quintana and Movistar’s management, were not as upbeat.…

Andy Nichols (B38- Underpin Racing) is a first-cat road racer and 16-time British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) medallist. “Having split my time the last four years between training rides and being a PhD student in a medical school, I have always dismissed alternative therapies. I felt that acupuncture on my legs would be about as effective as having it done on my tyres! Even so, a lot of athletes seem to use these treatments to improve performance. It seems that barely a month goes by without someone telling me of a new amazing supplement that has given them an extra 10 watts, or an injury that has spontaneously resolved after some alternative therapy. “A knee injury this past summer forced me to somewhat change my perspective. Having been unable…

“It is not as rare as you might think, given that no one has ever heard of it,” says Sally Dickinson from the National Ankylosing Spondylitis Society. “About one in 200 in the population has it — not that rare at all.” Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) usually manifests between the ages 18 and 30, as a sore back that is exacerbated by rest and eased by activity. It may not be rare, but it is elusive; in the UK, getting diagnosed with AS takes on average 8.5 years. Why so hard to detect? “It just gets missed. GPs don’t pick it up. It’s described as a needle-in-a-haystack condition, and there is no definitive test, apart from a full spine MRI.” Is cycling an effective therapy? “Yes. With AS, it’s best to…

1 Goyt Valley The ribbon of tarmac that leads you through the valley allows you to take in the raw and rugged Peak District National Park at its finest and you can’t help but fall in love. 2 Kerridge After the flying descent of the Cat and Fiddle the punchy climb up the ridgeway is a bit of a surprise to the legs, but is worth it for the views across Manchester, Cheshire and over to Wales. 3 Eccles Pike The vista from the isolated hill is spectacular, but there’s no such thing as a free view, with each of the three options to the top making you work all the way up. Favourite cafe Tea on the Green: this small, family-run tearoom in Chinley offers home-made cakes and snacks,…

Sunday, October 22 Yorkshire Points Series round six (Thornes Park, Wakefield): Seniors: 1. Billy Harding (PH MAS) 1:02.27; 2. J. Williams (PH MAS) +0.44; 3. M. Taylor (Shibden CC) same time; 4. E. Cameron (PH MAS); 5. J. Clarkson (Hope Factory Racing); 6. N. Barnes (Hargroves Cycles); 7. G. Fox (Paul Milnes); 8. I. Taylor (C and N Cycles); 9. R. Short (Pedalsport CC); 10. C. Wilson (Huddersfield Star Wh). Women: 1. Annie Simpson (Hope Factory Racing); 2. M. Smith (Bolsover & Dist CC); 3. M. Jackson (Paul Milnes). Veterans: 1. Stefan Macini (Aurelius Cycles); 2. M. Burden (PH MAS); 3. C. Young (PH MAS). Scottish League round three (Fife College, Fife): Seniors: 1. Iain Paton (Leslie Bike Shop-Bikers Boutique) 58.14; 2. G. MacDonald (Nevis Cycles RT) +0.12; 3. D.…

As the evenings close in, many of us reduce our weekday riding. This is fundamentally mistaken. Riding at night is, in many respects, better than riding during the day. First, you’ll need some lights. Go nuts on this — buy the biggest front light you can afford. Don’t worry, if for some reason you don’t like riding at night it’ll make a great torch — I sometimes use mine for doing shadow puppet rabbits on the moon. Get a decent back light too. And perhaps some small emergency spares so you don’t get stranded. Second, get the hell on with it. Just pick one of your normal routes. It’ll be almost the same as in the day, except better. Riding at night feels faster than riding during the day. This…