Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2023 i Cyclist

Some races have a special magic, an aura that lifts them above the mass of similar events. They are the races the fans most want to see and the riders most want to win. Strade Bianche is one such race. Perhaps it’s the beautiful Tuscan backdrop that makes it so alluring, with its oil painting of rolling vineyards, cypress trees and hilltop towns. Or its appeal could be the white gravel roads that give the race its name – strade bianche – and offer the perilous excitement of Roubaix with the added drama of clouds of dust engulfing the peloton as it barrels across the landscape. Or maybe it’s just because it falls right at the beginning of the pro season, when we’re all still starved of racing after a…

1 CLIF MINIS £11.90 (10pk), extrauk.co.uk When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds. When cyclists are hungry they reach for their Clif Minis. Made with the same stuff as normal Clif Bars but at less than half the size – 28g compared to 68g – the Minis reduce the faff of eating big bars on the go while still squeezing in 16g of carbohydrate and 4.2g of protein. 2 WOLF TOOTH AXLE HANDLE MULTITOOL £36, saddleback.co.uk Someone glued our deck of cards together and we don’t know how to deal with it. What we do know how to deal with is forgetting to take a multitool on a ride thanks to Wolf Tooth’s Axle Handle tool. It fits onto the end of a rear thru-axle, serving as…

Less than 10km from the top of the climb to Arcalís, Jan Ullrich finally made his move. It was Stage 10 of the 1997 Tour and he had been biding his time. He had spent most of the race looking out for his teammate Bjarne Riis, who was riding in defence of the title he had won the previous year. Despite Ullrich and his Deutsche Telekom team holding the line that the number one wearing Riis was their main man, most observers could see it was actually the rider wearing number eight who was by far the strongest in the race. It was a difficult stage. At 252km long and taking in five major climbs, including the final 18km drag up to the Arcalís ski station, it was one of…

Intervals. We’re not talking the gap between the peloton, the yellow jersey group and the lunatic solo breakaway rider here – the intervals we’re interested in are those training sessions that hurt but make you fitter, faster. ‘Intervals are simply a way to break up training sessions into hard and easy periods,’ says coach Ric Stern (cyclecoach.com). ‘By making the hard work harder and the easy work easier you manipulate the intensity and can put in harder efforts to gain better physiological adaptations. Hard, easy, repeat. Hopefully don’t throw up!’ The ideal place to perform intervals is indoors on a turbo trainer, where there are no junctions, potholes or traffic, but outdoors is fine if you can find a suitable stretch of road or loop, either flat or with a…

Tell me, you’re standing there at the pearly gates with St Peter looming over you. He asks, “Do you regret anything of your life?” You look sad and answer, “Yes, I have never owned a Trek bike.” Buy one. Buy one…’ The biking behemoth’s marketing team must love Markel Irizar. The 43-year-old former domestique and now DS of Trek-Segafredo’s women’s team is doing a fine sales job as he chaperones Cyclist around the team’s training camp in Denia, Spain. It’s January, the brief off-season drawing to a close, and we’re here to see how one of the most progressive teams in cycling juggles a successful women’s team and arguably a less-successful men’s team. It’s a tale of complex sessions and maximising resources… World-class women Trek-Segafredo was founded in 2011 under…

Thanks to updates to the UCI’s rules concerning frameset shape (the cross sections of certain tubes can now be deeper for the same width), new aero bikes have been released by almost all the major brands to take advantage of the drag-reducing benefits the modified rules could allow. This has reinvigorated the aero sector in some respects. The new bikes reportedly test faster than old designs, and the ones I’ve had the opportunity to ride have indeed felt quick. We’ve seen some interesting new designs, if nothing else. But in other areas, little has changed. Tyre choice is one example: 28mm stock tyres on an aero bike is still a rarity. The new generation of bikes might have space for larger tyres but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have been…

Most cycling trends tend to be pretty short-lived but one that has proven remarkable in its endurance is silver components. Their appeal started as one of necessity: the beautiful simplicity of early drivetrain components from the likes of Campagnolo wasn’t available with the electroplated or thermally sprayed finishes modern parts often boast. That theme has continued to this day and is likely to continue long into the future given the quality of the options currently on the market. The classic design of Thomson’s Elite seatpost is as relevant as ever for those looking for an easily adjustable, fit-and-forget component, while newer seatpost, bar and stem options from the likes of Zipp and Ritchey can create a vintage look despite offering similar weight, stiffness and ergonomics. In components such as its…

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In a recent white paper entitled Total System Efficiency: Making You Faster, engineers at Zipp put forward the idea that there are ‘five principal impending forces acting on a cyclist… wind resistance, gravity, inertia, rolling resistance and vibration’. To move forward, you must overcome these forces by putting more energy into the rider-bike system than the sum forces acting against the path of travel. So where do tyres fit in? The simple answer is everywhere. However, to find a way into this extremely complex subject, let’s start with that most touted term in regard to tyres: rolling resistance. ‘As a tyre rolls along it deforms and relaxes, resulting in energy loss – that is rolling resistance,’ says Oliver Kiesel, tyres and tubes product manager at Specialized. ‘This is elastic hysteresis…

We scramble to the side of the track as around the corner comes a gargantuan metal beast Our sense of peaceful solitude is broken by what begins as a faint rumbling, but quickly becomes a violent shaking of the ground that reverberates up through our bodies. Until now our ride through the heart of the Galloway Forest Park has been one of misty beauty, the only sounds to be heard coming from the babbling rivers, the chattering of birds and the crunch of gravel under our tyres. This is about as remote a corner of Britain as you could hope to visit. Galloway is a region in the far southwest corner of Scotland, squashed between the border with England to the east and the Irish Sea to the west. The…

Back in the 1800s, Manaus, which sits at the confluence of the Amazon River’s major Brazilian tributaries, was South America’s wealthiest city – built on the rubber that flowed from the Amazon’s indigenous rubber trees. In typical style, the profiteers weren’t the locals but the European settlers, and with their booming economy came great excess. French ladies sent laundry back to Paris to get washed in the Seine (believing the Amazon too dirty); in the old part of town, inhabitants built an opera house. The steel was imported from Glasgow, marble columns and chandeliers from Italy and the tiles came from Alsace – no mean feat given it took weeks just to sail to the next town. But perhaps most elaborate of all were the cobbles outside. These were coated…

Under the Tuscan Sun p56 Limar Air Pro Mips helmet, £255.59 chickencyclekit.co.uk BBB Cycling Commander sunglasses, £69.95 bbbcycling.com Mavic Cosmic jersey, £90 mavic.com Mavic Essential gloves, £37.50 mavic.com Mavic Ksyrium Pro II bibshorts, £140 mavic.com Mavic Essential High socks, £15 mavic.com DMT KR0 shoes, £369.99 chickencyclekit.co.uk Grosse Scheidegg p86 Specialized S-Works Prevail II Vent helmet, £240 specialized.com 100% Westcraft sunglasses, £199.99 freewheel.co.uk Maap Evade Pro Base jersey, £155 maap.cc Maap Team Bib Evo shorts, £225 maap.cc Maap Path socks, £18 maap.cc Shimano S-Phyre RC9 shoes, £319.99 freewheel.co.uk Loch And Roll p106 Poc Ventral Air Mips helmet, £230 pocsports.com SunGod Airas sunglasses, £130 sungod.co Pearl Izumi Zephyrr Barrier gilet, £89.99 pearlizumi.co.uk Pearl Izumi Attack Thermal jersey, £89.99 pearlizumi.co.uk Pearl Izumi Expedition bibshorts, £219.99 pearlizumi.co.uk Pearl Izumi Merino socks, £14.95 pearlizumi.co.uk Rapha Explore…

Numbers are a cultural thing in cycling. From heart rate and functional threshold power to average speed and annual kilometres ridden, and on to bike weights, tyre pressures and trail figures, nothing is anything unless it is quantitatively qualified. This data-driven approach extends into (or perhaps more likely, originates from) the research, development and marketing of new products. With every product launch, the ubiquitous ‘stiffer, lighter, faster’ trope is rolled out in one form or another. I’ll admit, as Cyclist ’s tech editor I play my part in propogating this, but the binary nature of the participation in cycling, as well as the commercialisation of it, is hardwired into this sport arguably to a greater extent than it is in any other. Football boots aren’t sold on being 20g lighter…

When I wrote my book, The Midlife Cyclist, the word inflammation appeared in almost every chapter. I became concerned that its overuse was starting to diminish its importance. In early drafts, I made the point that just as Inuit people have many words for snow, so clinicians and research academics need a whole raft of separate terms for the incidence and effects of inflammation. I forget why this reference never made it to the final draft. It probably should have. I have also referred to inflammation in countless Cyclist columns and even tried to define this demonically slippery word in a recent vitamins and supplements article. In short, I am way overdue pinning the tail on this particularly perplexing donkey. So here goes. I went back to the person that, to…

Note to self: when finally giving in to the gravel revolution, it’s perhaps best not to go straight in at the deep end. Barely has the sun nudged above the horizon and I find my back wheel spinning wildly on the loose surface as I struggle up the steepening gradient. I’m on the rocky road to Monte Sante Marie, a key section of sterrato – dirt road – that features in the spring Classic many believe has become cycling’s sixth Monument: Strade Bianche. It’s here where Tadej Pogačar struck out 50km from the finish to win last year’s edition, and it’s here where I’m already starting to think I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. It has only been a matter of minutes since I rolled out of nearby…

Two men who are very good at intellectual sparring and very bad at hand-to-hand combat are locked in a struggle on a grassy outcrop above a roaring waterfall. There’s a lot of grunting and eye-swivelling against a soundtrack of mournful string vibrato. The pair almost seem to embrace, their eyes locked, and then with a final descending cry they plunge into the water and disappear over the edge. So ends the will-they-won’t-they (kill each other) arc of Sherlock and Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, at least in the 1985 Granada Television telling of the story – possibly the only portrayal to be filmed at the real location. Of course, it later turned out Holmes somehow didn’t perish, because Arthur Conan Doyle needed the royalties, but that’s not going…

1 3T Strada ICR p116 This aero bike from 3T has always been different, and the latest version takes advantage of UCI rule changes in ways other manufacturers haven’t 2 Swift Univox GR p120 There are two Univox models: one endurance, one gravel. So why is the GR gravel bike better at endurance than it is at gravel? We’ll explain… 3 Ribble Gravel SL p124 If you’re confused about exactly what a gravel bike should do, Ribble has the answer – the versatile SL promises to do it all, on and off-road…

You’d be forgiven for thinking the Ribble Gravel SL looks remarkably similar to the Ribble CGR, the British company’s do-everything ‘cross-gravel-road’ bike. That’s because the frame is essentially the same, other than having sprouted an array of rack mounts on the top tube, the underside of the down tube and the fork legs. That means the bike can do duty as a multi-day tourer as well as a rough-and-tumble off-roader or a comfort oriented road bike, as the frame cherry-picks features from the Endurance SL road bike too. According to Ribble’s head of product, Jamie Burrow, the Gravel SL is a deliberately versatile bike precisely because the category is still young and the definition of what gravel means is still being worked out. ‘It’s difficult to sum up what each…

When a cycling hall of fame devoted to great historic innovations is finally opened, I know which invention I’d nominate for the title of ‘Greatest of All Time’. It won’t be disc brakes, pneumatic tyres or the derailleur – condemned by Tour de France founder Henri Desgrange as ‘artifice’ though embraced by the wider cycling community as a tool to make cycling more inclusive. It won’t be tubeless tyres, ceramic bearings or the ‘safety bicycle’ – so called because riders could mount it without a running leap, while the risk of injury caused by plunging from the equivalent height of a two-storey building was considerably reduced. It won’t be a titanium, 3D-printed frame fashioned in a lab by aerodynamicists and astrophysicists, rims inspired by the pectoral fins of humpback whales…