Innehållsförteckning för June 16, 2022 från Cycling Weekly

It’s time for me to make another confession, dear reader. And this week is the perfect week to do so. When I started working on Cycling Weekly back in 2001 my knowledge was confined to the Tour de France – which I obsessed over each July – and the UK domestic scene from 1995 onwards, the time when I had been racing. I knew nothing of British racing pre-1990 and I am slightly ashamed to say, had never heard of Beryl Burton. The reason I’m telling you this now is because of our exclusive feature starting on page 22, in which Jeremy Wilson, chief sports writer on the Telegraph, and Xavier Disley of Aerocoach put a Beryla-like in the Silverstone wind tunnel and worked out what her times would be…

I first became aware of Beryl Burton during the 1980s when our family would receive the old Road Time Trials Council handbook ahead of each new season. I was a sports fanatic and can still remember my 12-year-old jaw dropping when I looked through this thick A5 book and counted up 97 national time trial titles, alongside a clean sweep of competition records. The name Beryl Burton clearly remained lodged somewhere in my mind and, as cycling boomed and numerous books were published on what we might call the ‘Class of 2012’, it got me thinking. Why so little on Beryl Burton? The key learning from four years of research, and more than 100 interviews with family, friends, team-mates and fellow cyclists, was clear. Beryl Burton was incredible but, like…

Garmin has launched its newest range-topping bike computer, the Edge 1040 Solar. As the name suggests, the new solar-powered unit is capable of harnessing the sun’s rays in order to provide, according to the brand, up to 100 hours of ride time between plug-in charges. The new range of Edge 1040 units have also acquired multi-band GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) technology, which allows half-metre location accuracy, quicker acquisition and better signal reliability in dense environments, such as built-up cities or deep tree cover. Garmin says that the Edge 1040 computers have also upped the navigation, performance, safety and connectivity features over its previous models for a new – but intuitive – user experience. The ability to solar charge the Garmin 1040 Solar theoretically gains the rider an additional 42…

Below is an example of a polarised training plan for a lower-volume athlete. Each week contains the most effective quota of low, medium and high intensity work. WEEK 1 Monday: Day off Tuesday: 1hr ride, mostly low-intensity, but with 3x 8min intervals at high-intensity Wednesday: 1.5hr ride, mostly low intensity, but with 2x 10min middle-intensity towards end Thursday: Day off or 30min recovery ride Friday: 1hr ride, mostly low-intensity, but with 3x 8min intervals at high-intensity Saturday: 2.5hr ride, mostly low intensity, but with 30min middle-intensity riding Sunday: 3-4hr all low-intensity WEEK 2 Monday: Day off Tuesday: 1hr ride, mostly low-intensity, but with 3x 8min intervals at high-intensity Wednesday: 1.5hr ride, mostly low intensity, but with 2x 10min middle-intensity towards end Thursday: Day off or 30min recovery ride Friday: 1hr…

I don’t do much in the way of politics in this column. There’s a certain prurient unpicking of various skirmishes between pro riders and the UCI, but that’s a lot closer to gossip than actual politics. But I was very interested in the recent UK government plans to reintroduce imperial measurements. Cycling, at least in the UK, has a complicated relationship with imperial versus metric. Clearly, we all claim to be full-time, 100% kilometreusers, lest we be caught red-handed failing to be sufficiently Belgian. And certainly, metric is indeed the international language of cycling. I’ve got old issues of this magazine that reported Hour records in miles – one from 1942 reports that Fausto Coppi had just set a new Hour record of, “28 miles 1,099 yards or, in foreign…

The most nail-biting finish in the Women’s Tour’s eight editions was won by Elisa Longo Borghini by just one second. For the first time in the race’s history the overall lead changed hands on the final stage, as the Trek-Segafredo rider overhauled Grace Brown by finishing third in the final day bunch sprint and collecting the bonus seconds she needed to take the top spot. The inclusion of the race’s first ever mountain top finish ensured Longo Borghini began the six-day race as one of the out-and-out favourites. And while last Friday’s stage victory on Black Mountain teed up the Italian champion’s success, it was in fact the gnarly fourth stage between Wrexham and Welshpool which laid the crucial groundwork for the race’s final podium. Brown (FDJ-Nouvelle Aquitaine Futuroscope) took…

One doesn’t need to be a reader of CW to know that cyclists often get bad press from other road users. But do spare a thought for horse riders. I don’t know much about horses, but I do know that some horses are spooked by cyclists. Often it’s just the quiet of a cyclist approaching them suddenly that startles them. Earlier this week I was out in the countryside on my trusty Boardman. In front along a straight and very quiet road I came up behind a horse going the same way as me. I deliberately stayed back and avoided approaching (at 70 years old and just ridden 24 miles I was glad of the breather). Suddenly coming towards us the other way was another cyclist riding very fast. The…

Over the past decade, it became widely accepted that polarised training is the best formula for endurance cyclists. According to this model, training is divided between intensities at polar opposite ends of the spectrum: very easy and very hard, in a roughly 80/20 split. Recently, however, polarised training has become the subject of heated debate among sports scientists who disagree over what constitutes the optimum intensity distribution. Some researchers have begun arguing against conventional polarisation, instead favouring schedules that incorporate more middle-intensity riding. The debate raises the question of whether we need to rethink – or at least think more carefully about – how we define and implement polarised training. In polarised training as conventionally conceived, the majority (75-80%) of training is conducted at a low intensity that feels easy.…

Cycling isn’t to blame for very many of the world’s ills, but we do have to take some responsibility for advertising. Advertising wasn’t invented by bike manufacturers, but they took to it with a degree of dedication that was unmatched by any competing organisation (other than Pears Soap) and helped refine it and reinforce its use. This is because bicycles were among the first consumer durables. Before bikes, there was very little to actually waste your money on other than food, rent, clothes and ale. They were also among the first manufactured items that weren’t built by an artisan on a one-at-a-time bespoke basis – makers produced them on spec, and piled them up ready to sell. Most of the early adverts had a simple line drawing of the bike,…

Winning two stages and finishing second overall this year’s Women’s Tour saw FDJ-Nouvelle Aquitaine take another step in establishing themselves among the world’s top teams. Had they stopped with Marta Cavalli’s victories at Amstel Gold and Flèche Wallonne, 2022 would still have been the French squad’s best ever year in the Women’s WorldTour, but they haven’t. Clara Copponi looked competitive at last year’s Women’s Tour, and last week managed to convert that promise into a stage win and a final-day second. However, while she and Evita Muzic are doing well, it is the strategy of recruiting non-French riders in recent years which has boosted the squad’s fortunes most. Last week it was Grace Brown who shone, animating stage four into Welshpool then executing a clever sprint from a three-woman group,…

Strava gets dirty Strava has updated and expanded its platform to include new gravel and off-road features. ‘Gravel Riding’ is a new trail activity option, and there are also ‘Trail Route’ ride suggestions with difficulty information and other insights. It reflects Strava’s findings that trail-based sports are growing at twice the rate of road-based ones. The platform has also made 3D route maps available to subscriber activity uploads. Londoners go starkers A total of nine naked bike rides took place across London last Saturday. An estimated 1,000-plus riders took to their bikes, wearing either nothing or as little as they deemed possible. They were campaigning against the global dependency on oil, and car culture. Some also highlighted cyclists’ vulnerability on the road by painting messages on their skin such as…

As Beryl Burton’s sparkling old handmade steel TI-Raleigh bike was released and then carefully lifted from a mount, a series of engraved letters and numbers – ‘BB.1.81’ – briefly became visible on the bottom bracket. The exact machine on which Beryl raced during much of the 1980s, and which is photographed on the front cover of her autobiography, had just completed its most vigorous workout for more than 30 years. “People will struggle to believe this,” muttered Dr Xavier Disley, one of the world’s leading experts on aerodynamics, as he clicked through various tables, graphs and spreadsheets and began to mentally compute the information in front of him. We were inside a wind tunnel at the Silverstone motor-racing circuit, and the objective for the day had been to finally resolve…

“When I started uni I basically set some long-term cycling goals for when I finished. That was four years ago and the Commies was definitely on my mind then,” says the 22-year-old from Strathpeffer. On top of the Games, his recent graduation in marketing and French makes it a double whammy of a year for Crockett, who also won the Rutland-Melton CiCLE Classic in April. The advice from fellow Scottish team members such as Kyle Gordon, who rode in the Gold Coast Games in 2018, was simple, Crockett says. “Soak it up, the whole experience. And then obviously try to perform on the day.” It’s the biggest stage he has ever competed on, and as Crockett points out, when it comes to representing his home nation, probably the biggest there…

When using the simpler ‘session goal’ approach to classifying training, bear in mind that certain sessions elude easy classification. Here are a few guidelines to help out: ZL ride with a little ZM: Provided that the majority of training time is ZL and the amount of ZM riding doesn’t feel too challenging, then I’d classify this as a low-intensity session. An example might be a three-hour ZL ride with 15-30 minutes of ZM. ZL ride with a little ZH: Provided the amount of ZH riding is relatively low (i.e. it doesn’t feel as tiring as a fullblown interval session), this can still be classified as a low-intensity ride. An example might be a three-hour endurance ride with four two-minute efforts slightly above your FTP. Group/unstructured ride: These are hard to…

In association with TIME TRIALS SUN, 12 JUNE National 25-Mile Championship (Cullompton, Devon): Men: 1. Chris Fennell (The Independent Pedaler-Nopinz) 51.37 2. O. Peckover (Ribble Weldtite Pro Cycling) 51.41 3. J. Sargent (FTP Race Team) 52.06 4. C. Richardson (RT23) 52.57 5. C. McNamara (Nuun Sigma Sport) 53.08 6. M. Cox (Guernsey Velo Club) 53.19 Wessex Road Club 50 (Lytchett Minster, Dorset): Men: 1. Andrew Rivett (Velo Club St Raphael) 1:48.05 2. T. Clements (Wessex Road Club) 1:51.08 3. D. Orchard (Wessex Road Club) 1:52.05 4. K. Baker (Velo Club St Raphael) 1:52.53 5. D. Shepherd (…a3crg) 1:53.25 6. S. Pink (Poole Wheelers CC) 1:54.53 Women: Emma Caplan (Bournemouth Jubilee Wheelers) 2:10.26 East Sussex CA 50 (Uckfield, Sussex): Men: 1. Cris Coxon (Brighton Mitre CC) 1:49.06 2. S. Fuller (7Oaks…