Innehållsförteckning för July 16, 2020 från Cycling Weekly

Within the world of cycling media there is an in-joke around ‘the Tour’s the Tour’ – a phrase overused by riders and Team DSs. We tend to throw it around with a smile when something interesting happens at or before the Tour de France that probably wouldn’t happen anywhere else. The Chris Froome transfer news is a good example of when the phrase works just perfectly. You wouldn’t have a career changing leadership battle fought over any other race. The story is the real start of the build-up to the Tour. It will frame almost every conversation and story between now and 29 August. And it’s a humdinger of a story. As talented as Froome obviously is, that talent probably wouldn’t have been turned into a six-time Grand Tour winner…

Snowdonia safe passing distance signs a UK first Snowdonia has become the first area in the UK to install road signs telling motorists the correct distance to leave when passing a cyclist. Each sign clearly shows that cars should be giving cyclists 1.5 metres on the road. The new signs have been put up on Snowdonia National Park’s most popular mountain roads “to ensure that cyclists continue to get the respect and space they deserve”. Canyon-dhb join Bardet and Porte on Ventoux race British squad Canyon-dhb will line up against top-flight stars including Romain Bardet, Richie Porte and Fabio Aru in a one-day race up Mont Ventoux. Last season, Jesús Herrada (Cofidis) and Bardet (Ag2r La Mondiale) went head-to-head on the slopes of the Ventoux for the inaugural CIC-Mont Ventoux…

Michelle Arthurs-Brennan, Tech editor Over the course of the testing period, the Kinesis G2 became my ‘go-to’ bike for days I wanted to forget about heart rate, forget about power, and just concentrate on feeding my brain and body with fresh air. In those instances, it was an absolute joy to ride. Kinesis calls this an ‘adventure bike’ and I’d say it’s most suited to these mash-up days when the direction of travel is predominately off-road, but with tarmac chucked in to connect the tapestry of dirt.…

World Class Men: 6.60 - 5.83 W/kg World Class Women: 5.69 - 5.01 W/kg Exceptional Men: 6.02 - 5.26 W/kg Exceptional Women: 5.18 - 4.51 W/kg Excellent Men: 5.45 - 4.69 W/kg Excellent Women: 4.68 - 4.01 W/kg Very good Men: 4.88 - 4.12 W/kg Very good Women: 4.17 - 3.50 W/kg Good Men: 4.31 - 3.55 W/kg Moderate Men: 3.74 - 2.98 W/kg Moderate Women: 3.17 - 2.50 W/kg Fair Men: 3.17 - 2.50 W/kg Fair Women: 2.66 - 1.99 W/kg Novice 2 Men: 2.60 - 1.83 W/kg Novice 2 Women: 2.16 - 1.49 W/kg Novice 1 Men: 2.02 - 1.68 W/kg Novice 1 Women: 1.66 - 0.99 W/kg…

The week: 14-20th June, 2020 Location: Chiltern Hills, Bedfordshire/Buckinghamshire Training for: Post-lockdown return to racing Twenty-nineteen was a breakthrough year for Anna Henderson: she won the national under-23 champs TT and road race, was Britain’s highest finisher in the Worlds road race, and also picked up bronze in the Worlds mixed team relay – all of which earned her a WorldTour contract with Sunweb. The 21-year-old made her WT debut at the Women’s Tour Down Under, before Covid-19 brought racing to a halt. Here, she talks us through a week of lockdown training from last month. How did you find lockdown in terms of keeping motivated? I was at home in the UK with my family, and found it a bit hard at the start, but learnt to deal with…

It’s hard to believe that by now we expected to be approaching the end of the Tour de France, and eyeing up the Tokyo Olympics. The thing that has surprised me most about the last few months is how easy it was to move all these things that seemed so immovable. But, at last, we’re edging our way towards some actual bike racing. You remember this, I hope. It’s like an analogue version of Zwift. I’ll be the first to admit that there are things about virtual racing that I like. When watching a peloton full of identical-looking pros, a label hovering above them with their name on it is very, very useful. And there is no shonky number pinning to raise my blood pressure. But otherwise? Well, the main…

“Both events went exceptionally well. As a result, we’ve got club events starting from today [Monday], with the first open events on Saturday,” said Nick Sharpe of time trials body, CTT. Newbury’s demonstration events have proved valuable for CTT and race organisers more widely, he said. “We worked closely with Newbury Velo — firstly, to put into practice the risk assessment before racing could start again in earnest. And secondly, as it turned out, to help boost confidence, to show other organisers that it can be done, because it’s all unknown territory for people.”…

1 Eddy Merckx won the 1972 Tour, but how many stages did he win on the way to victory? 2 How many stages were won by Belgian riders? 3 Merckx won by over 10 minutes. How many riders finished within one hour of his 108hr 17min and 18 seconds? 4 How many British riders were in the field that year? 5 How many countries outside of France did the race visit? 6 Who won the climbers’ jersey? 7 Great Britain won one Olympic medal in Munich, what was it? 8 The USSR won the men’s 100km team time trial, Malaysia were last, what was the time difference between the two teams? 12, 20 or 35 minutes? 9 Why was no bronze medal awarded in the men’s team time trial? 10…

In the letter ‘Ahead of his time’ (CW, 2 July) Richard Coomer noticed the stem on the bike of a very young Jacques Anquetil. Probably when he was a junior rider, around the early 50s. He is shown with a clip-type headset. These were the norm before the threaded headset came along. All bikes from the 30s through to the 40s were fitted with this type of headset, and in some instances through into the early 50s. A new/old stock Chater-Lea headset nowadays would fetch hundreds of pounds. My 1937 Saxon twin-tube is fitted with a clip-type headset. Derek Browne Secretary of the The Classic Lightweight Yorkshire Section, The Veteran-Cycle Club…

“I spent hours looking for a segment that would be good for it. I wrote a lot of them off as they required too much power,” says Hannah Rhodes Patterson. It’s a tricky balancing act: after her world record, Emma Pooley bemoaned the steepness of the 13 per cent hill she’d chosen, plus the technical nature of the descent. Patterson says: “The Mam Tor climb is just about doable but the descent would have taken too long; also there’s a chance of getting held up by cars. The main thing is I wanted to do 20-25 per cent off the QOM and still break the record. I didn’t want less than nine per cent average gradient and I wanted the descent to be straight and have no prolonged sections over…

Anthony McCrossan’s #icancommentate competition entailed entrants submitting two minutes of their commentary, with the hope of making some connections. Fellow commentators Laura Winter, Rob Hatch and Simon Brotherton acted as judges. McCrossan came up with the idea in lockdown when his diary become suddenly very empty. “I thought, let’s just do something that might give people some fun,” he says. “Or there might be a young voice out there, someone who wants to do this and gets a bit inspired. I think that they all learned something, because we gave them feedback about things that they could do to improve and learn. “The top three I think were really good. I think they all have potential.” The competition was won by Jonathan Simon from Melbourne, Australia, who is keen to…

TT efforts at threshold A classic time-efficient session 10min warm up 2x 20min @Z4 (5min rest between) 10min cool down Be warned, this session is hard! If you’re not ready for it, build up from three times 10 minutes at Z4, moving on to two times 15 minutes at Z4.…

A big thank you from all of us here at CW to all of you who took part in CW’s Max Watts Challenge. It’s been a lockdown distraction par excellence, with some mighty fine performances right across the genders and age groups. Special congratulations to our overall winners: female champion Rhianna Parris-Smith, with a peak power-to-weight of 19.44w/kg, and winning man Danny Lake, with 25.4w/kg – you both go down in CW history! The most powerful member of CW’s staff? Celebratory (virtual) office cakes go to art editor Dan Baines, for an excellent 19.7w/kg. From next week, we’ll be devoting this page to a longer-range form of hard-fought competition – the new Cycling Weekly Club 10 TT on Zwift. SILVER Kim Baptista 15.88w/kg 905 watts GOLD Rhianna Parris-Smith 19.44w/kg 1,322…

Now that travel is possible again, the airports will be recruiting new baggage handlers. If you fancy giving it a go, here is some general advice. Most of the baggage will be very boring – durable, inexpensive suitcases and bags. But sometimes the gods will send you bicycles to play with. And, honestly, there is nothing more entertaining than seeing just what jolly misadventures a bicycle can have between the check-in and the carousel. There are the traditional baggage-handler Olympic events – the throw-for-distance, where you simply throw the bike as far as possible. Bicycle Jenga, where you see how high you can stack the boxes and bags, then start kicking them out one by one. There is an excellent variation on that where you build the bike tower on…

1. GIRO D’ITALIA, 2018, STAGE 19 Chris Froome’s racing has often been criticised for lacking panache. But riding solo for 80km to capture the stage, the jersey and ultimately the entire Giro, had that in spades. A performance fitting of a champion was only made possible by the support of an equally ambitious and committed team fuelling him from the roadside. 2. TOUR DE FRANCE 2013, STAGE 15 Already in yellow and having extended his lead in the mid-race time trial, Froome distanced Alberto Contador before successfully attacking Nairo Quintana to become the first Brit to win atop the Giant of Provence. 3. VUELTA A ESPANA 2 011, STAGE 17 Team-mate Geraint Thomas recalled to CW last year: “That was insane. Froomey did a monstrous attack and then [Juan José]…

Riders who have been there and done it offer their advice to any CW readers thinking of taking on an Everesting for the first time. Alice Lethbridge: “First of all, get your pacing right — it should feel really easy at the start because you need to ride within yourself. The second point is fuelling. You have to eat when you’re not hungry and drink when you’re not thirsty. Plan that, say, right from the start, every half an hour you’re going to eat something. People might not be used to this because unless you’re riding for more than a few hours, you don’t usually need to eat at all.” Mason Hollyman: “Find a climb that’s a decent enough gradient and make sure you like it before you start! And…

Former Hour record holder Alex Dowsett, who now rides for Israel Start-Up Nation, told CW how he often battles with Irish TT specialist Ryan Mullen, and how, despite being similar in weight, Mullen has an additional 30 watts at his disposal, and so “gets hugely frustrated when I beat him”. Dowsett’s point is, it’s not all about the on-paper power figure. He doesn’t do FTP tests, but does complete threshold efforts to gauge his form. “Last year, I set my [theoretical] FTP at 375 watts for the majority of the year, which meant training was bliss,” he says. He doesn’t mean training was easy, but controlled. “I’d be riding to feel, as I knew [375 watts] was an underestimation,” he says. “Then, just before the Tour de France, as a…

I get chest pains sometimes. Do I need to worry? Chest pain is one of the most common reasons for seeing a cardiologist. But the vast majority of people we see do not have a serious underlying problem, and only about one in 20 need an operation. As cardiologists, we naturally worry that the chest pain is due to a heart problem. If you develop sudden onset severe chest pain, call an ambulance. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have a serious heart problem (see nhs.uk/conditions/chest-pain); most people notice chest pains from time to time. But always err on the side of caution. There tend to be three characteristics of the chest pain that mark it out as being to do with the heart. The first is that it tends to…

Writing to tell you about the non-cycling husband of a cycling friend who decided to buy a bike for the commute. A week after he bought it, it was stolen from outside his office. When it became clear he wasn’t getting it back, he looked for another bike on a local second-hand website, and was lucky enough to find one much the same as the one he’d had nicked. So he bought it. He also made a note of the frame number. When he put it in his phone, he realised it was identical to the frame number on the bike he’d had nicked. That’s right. He’d bought his own bike back, without even stopping to wonder at the odds of a bike of the same model, colour and size…