Indholdsfortegnelse for November 10, 2022 i Cycling Weekly

We’ve now entered into what for me is the most challenging phase of the season. The ‘oh-no-the-winter-bugs-are-back’ phase. A third illness is now sweeping through our household – and it’s the dreaded sickness bug. This means outside of work my time is mainly taken up by washing. Some items of clothing have seen barely five minutes of use before they’re back in the washing machine. It’s a difficult phase to navigate, as emotions range from sympathy for the stricken patient to fears of getting ill myself to resignation that I have no chance of avoiding it and then finally, acceptance. Throughout all this I’m making constant readjustments to my ever-shrinking riding schedule. The chances of doing any exercise during this period permanently sit on a very fine knife edge and…

Tom Pidcock has the talent needed to attempt a future Tour de France win, but says that in order to tackle the “explosive” general classification racing, he would need to put his Spring Classics ambitions to one side. Reflecting on his impressive Tour de France debut, at Rouleur Live in London, the British rider explained that the French Grand Tour was “a completely different beast” to any other race he had experienced. Pidcock told Cycling Weekly that his experiences at the sharp end of the action were eye-opening. He said: “Racing at the Tour is just full gas all the time. When you’re going up the long climbs and you’re at threshold, and then you’re attacking each other, it’s just so explosive. It’s really like nothing else. “I think in…

With the passing of Brian Robinson on 25 October, aged 91, another chapter in cycling’s illustrious chronicle is closed. I am old enough to remember Robbo’s stage win in 1958 when he was awarded the win after the Italian rider Arrigo Padovan tried to put Robinson off the road. He repeated the win in 1959 when he won the stage by 20 minutes. Now the British riders are probably the best prepared of all nationalities and also the common language in the peloton is English. Robinson was greatly respected in the British cycling community not least by the professionals who followed in his wheel-marks. His career blazed a trail for others to follow and test themselves in Europe, such as Tom Simpson and another Yorkshire rider, Barry Hoban. Robinson acted…

Lauf Gritfest, Wales, 16-18 June, 2023 Entry: £120 Open to all off-road bikes, this gravelly weekend is held in the Cambrian Mountains in Wales, and features an optional 5km prologue on the Friday night. The two weekend rides are 65km and 53km respectively, and feature numerous timed stages. Gritfest.co.uk Dirty Reiver, Kielder Forest, 21-23 April, 2023 Entry: £55-£75 Based on the US gravel-grinder format and featuring a mix of surfaces, 2023 will be the Dirty Reiver’s 10th anniversary. There are three distances: 65, 130 and a mammoth 200km. Dirtyreiver.co.uk Grinduro Wales, Summer 2023 Details TBC The Grinduro stable features rides all over the world, including this one in Wales. It features timed sections within Saturday’s 75km ride, plus a prologue on the Friday night, and boasts “perfect party to race…

ONE UP One up - F/Road Series 2 Ultegra £5,784 For an extra £700, you can swap SRAM’s second-tier electronic/hydraulic groupset for Shimano’s, in the form of 12-speed Ultegra Di2. You get a harder gear at the bottom end, but then Shimano’s shifting is sublime. The wheels stay the same with the 45mm deep carbon-fibre Fulcrum Airbeat 400 DB 700c. ONE DOWN One down - Fara F/All-Road Series 3 Ultegra £3,990 Shaving a grand off the price also gets you an Ultegra groupset – although this time the 11-speed mechanical version. The wheels get a downgrade, too, to the aluminium Fulcrum Racing 4. You might be more interested in the £3,490 F/All-Road Series 3 with SRAM Rival instead.…

Hormones can go haywire for other reasons than age. These are the chief culprits for cyclists: ▪ Training and recovery out of whack: Suboptimal hormone function can be caused by imbalances in cyclist behaviours around training, nutrition and recovery. This can cause subtle issues around fatigue, poor sleep and subpar on-bike performance. The red flag in men is reduced libido; in women, it’s irregular periods. The good news is that this is not a medical condition and full hormone function can be restored by realigning behaviours. ▪ Missed periods: For female cyclists, missed periods should never be dismissed as unimportant, as they may be the sign of an underlying health problem such as RED-S. ▪ Diabetes mellitus: In Type-1 diabetes, the body’s ability to produce the hormone insulin goes awry,…

The week: 3-9 October, 2022 Location: Cardiff Training for: National Hill-Climb Champs Born in the UK but schooled in the USA, Illi Gardner returned to Wales in 2017 and over the next two seasons continued to develop her road racing prowess. During lockdown, Gardner’s taste for climbing took on a long-distance flavour, culminating in her breaking Emma Pooley’s Everesting record – a mark she improved on further this July. For 2022, the 23-year-old decided to focus on hill-climbs and has taken the discipline by storm with 10 wins from 10 races – including a dominant performance at the National Champs at the end of October. Gardner generously made time for CW while taking a postchamps break in Majorca. How did you get started in cycling? I did triathlon while still at…

Nibali and Ryder launch new team Former Team Qhubeka boss Doug Ryder has launched a new tier-two team, Q36.5, which will also have newly retired Vincenzo Nibali on board as technical adviser. Sponsor Q36.5 is an Italian technical sportswear brand, and the team has been granted ProTeam status. The roster features 13 different nationalities, including Britain’s Mark Donovan and Kiwi Jack Bauer. t Deadly roundabout made safer The Plain roundabout in Oxford – branded the most dangerous in the UK for cyclists – is to undergo work in order to make it safer. It follows the death of Dr Ling Felce, who was hit there by an uninsured and unqualified driver in March. Driver Robert Whiting was jailed for eight years in September for causing Dr Felce’s death. Oxfordshire County…

Coros Vertix 2 £599 Weight 89g Coros describes the Vertix 2 as being “for adventurers who go to the extreme”. It’s a beast of a watch, with a 1.4in touchscreen and it has a host of features including a 32GB memory to which you can upload music and navigation features. It comes with an optical wrist HR sensor (you can pair a chest strap if you want better accuracy). It will also track your HRV, sleep data and a whole host of biological metrics. From Coros, you have two main mapping options. The first, ‘topographic maps’, shows a record of a land area, giving geographic positions and elevations for both natural and man-made features. The second, ‘landscape maps’, are more basic, showing street information and some natural features but leaving…

Thomas, a 43-year-old competitive road cyclist, was training up to 15 hours a week. He explained how he had heard that being lightweight would help him fly up hills and improve his performance. Although he was already slim, Thomas went about trying to lose weight by reducing what he ate, particularly carbohydrates, and started doing lots of fasted training. Initially he did indeed improve on the bike, he told me, but after about two months he noticed that he was feeling fatigued and his libido had decreased. He thought that maybe doing some running might help, but after a few runs, he noticed pain in his lower back. It turned out that Thomas had developed RED-S: low levels of hormones, particularly testosterone, was the cause of his reduced libido and…

HILL-CLIMBS SUNDAY, 6 NOV Sussex Nomads CC (Ditchling Beacon, Westmeston, Sussex, 1576 yards): Men: 1. Andy Cunningham (Wheelbase CabTech Castelli) 4:19.5 2. F. Hawker (VC Londres) 4:37.4 3. D. Park (Bigfoot CC) 4:39.4 4. B. Neal (LVC Racing) 4:41.8 5. O. Thomas (Sussex Revolution) 4:46.2 6. J. Blight (Rapha CC) 4:53.7 Women: 1. Eline Smit (Laka X Pedal Mafia RT) 6:15.9 2. I. Mitchell (Brixton Cycles) 6:22.7 3. N. Ray (Brixton Cycles) 6:28.7 4. C. Lowe (4T+ Cyclopark) 7:16.8 5. K. Stillwell (Petersfield Tri Club) 7:17.7 6. A. Culshaw (Brighton Phoenix) 7:28.3 ROAD RACING SATURDAY, 5 NOV Full Gas Winter Circuit Series round six (Lee Valley VeloPark, London): Men 2, 3, 4: 1. Casper Brazier (Trash Mile); 2. C. Slade (BPC Race Team); 3. H. Ives (trainSharp Elite); 4. M.…

The cycling stupidity/domestic stupidity crossover is well-established. But every so often I hear of someone who takes the concept to a new level. Our hero in this regard is a regular club rider who was delighted when his wife became pregnant with their first child. His instinct to be supportive was admirable, but took a seriously wrong turn when he decided to see what being pregnant was really like. To this end he added four kilos to his Zwift e-racing profile, did a few events, then announced to his wife that, “It really doesn’t make much difference, does it?”…

Sir Bradley Wiggins is disputing a near £1m claim against him made by the liquidators of his companies and is selling a property to raise funds. The 2012 Tour de France winner’s company Wiggins Rights Limited, the company used to “exploit Bradley Wiggins’s name and image rights”, entered into voluntary liquidation in 2020 with debts of £650,000. In an update filed at Companies House last month, administrators Georgina Eason and Michael Sanders of accountancy firm MHA MacIntyre Hudson said they had increased the claim from Wiggins to £979,953. Administrators are seeking money from Wiggins to repay an overdrawn director’s loan account. In 2021 they had submitted a claim for £760,373 but have now increased it to close to £1m “after reviewing the company’s books and records”. Wiggins Rights’s creditors include…

Cyclo-cross fans from the sport’s home nations of Belgium and the Netherlands were in good spirits at the European Championships when Michael Vanthourenhout and Fem van Empel won the men’s and women’s titles respectively. Rising star van Empel moved up from the under-23 to the elite category for the champs after taking seven wins from eight events so far this season. She lost time after having a puncture early in the race but fought back before attacking, beating fellow countrywoman Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado into second, while Hungarian Blanka Kata Vas finished third. British rider Anna Kay finished in 10th, a place behind Marianne Vos. Belgian rider Vanthourenhout delighted the home fans by taking victory after seeing off Dutchman Lars van der Haar, who was hampered by crashes and a…

Great racing, great atmosphere and a great course – hard-pack chalky doubletrack mixed in with sandy sectors and wooded trails – yes, for the second year running, the fast and flat course of the King’s Cup Gravel in Suffolk was the event to crown the country’s gravel champions. The course wasn’t super-technical, but it wasn’t wide throughout, so positioning and being on the right wheel counted for something, especially in the opening few kilometres. Five laps is the perfect number, in my opinion. It’s enough that you become fully familiar with the course, knowing exactly where’s best to make a move in the closing laps or kilometres, but too much more and it would start to feel repetitive or dizzying. The pace that the girls kicked off at was incredible.…

Molly was a 51-year-old competitive cyclist who, over the past few years, had not been feeling herself. She explained to me that she was not performing so well on the bike, feeling anxious and, at times, really hot and that this was disturbing her sleep. When I asked Molly about her periods, she said that, although usually “like clockwork”, over the past few years these had become very erratic. In fact, her last period was over six months ago. Molly was describing the typical symptoms of perimenopause, the transition to menopause. After discussing the potential benefits, Molly decided to start HRT. Taking oestrogen through the skin (transdermal) via a patch or gel is the optimal way; for athletes, the gel form is the most convenient. Unless a woman has had…

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend over the last couple of racing seasons. I don’t know how to say this without triggering all sorts of identity issues for bike riders everywhere, but there is a creeping sense of… well… let’s just say it. Fun. There. I know, I know. Bike racing isn’t about fun. It’s about suffering. It’s about muddy Paris-Roubaix races, crashes on wet descents, spectacular physiological meltdowns in the high mountains. If it starts being fun, well, we’re all going to end up with a hobby that’s a pleasure rather than a long-winded way of asking for sympathy. But let’s look at the evidence. Once upon a time the winner of a Grand Tour retired for the season when they finished the final stage, and they did it with…