Etape du Tour survival: Your bike

Posted on 12 June 2010 by Alex Murray

So it’s about six weeks away now and most people have done a handful of long tough sportives to get in shape. I’ve been battering out the bike time with a mix of riding in the Surrey Hills (usually a door-to-door of around 140km) and racing on Tuesdays.

This is the first in a series of posts on advice gleaned from experience, common sense and advice read/heard elsewhere. I thought I’d start with the bike as it’s the most central piece of the experience, apart from fitness which I can tell you nothing about.

  • Get comfortable with you bike AKA Get yourself fitted

This is probably the single best thing you can do to improve your on-bike experience. The Etape hurts, so minimising the discomfort from the bike is one key area that is constant and fixable.

Some people swear by getting yourself fitted by someone with experience who simply knows how to fit you. But there’s also a range of fit systems out there with a more scientific (or at least pseudo-scientific) approach. I can’t say one is better than the other as I’ve not tried them all, so take your pick from what’s available.

I’ve had my setup from Cyclefit since 2007 and it has greatly improved my riding. Retul is a system used by Team Sky and Radioshack while Specialized have their own BG Fit system which has been used by Saxo Bank and Astana.

  • Use a compact crankset

Sammy Dumoulin of Cofidis runs a 50/36 or 50/34 chainset with an 11/23 cassette. Michael Barry and David Millar both train on a compact. If you run 50/34 and an 11/28 cassette, you’ve got a range covering walking pace to hurtling down a mountain full bore.

Those three will probably finish the Etape stage at least 30 minutes faster that the fastest finisher in the Etape. Now tell me you think you need a 53/39. Unless you are an elite, or near elite level rider, it’s far more likely that a compact is what you need.

  • Run your tyres at slightly lower pressures

This is one I heard Greg Lemond talk about. He suggested dropping five to ten PSI out to account for the heat generated from braking on long descents and from being in among 8000 other cyclists. Both are things you don’t do that often and mean the rims heat up much more, increasing the risk of blowout. Dropping a bit of air out before you set off can help counter this.

  • Use 25mm tyres

They’ve got a bigger contact patch. They can be run at slightly lower pressure, resulting in a much smoother ride, for negligible extra rolling resistance. They soak up the bumps and chatter much better than 23mm.

I would be riding them but Eddy Merckx didn’t see fit to leave too much clearance for them. He doesn’t seem to like anything bigger than a 500ml bottle either. I used to run Michelin Pro Race 25mm but they scraped the inside of the fork. It was hard giving them up because they were a great ride.

  • Make it practical

I use clinchers for the same reason I almost always carry a frame pump: they are practical and effective at their job. There’s no point riding silk tubulars if you then puncture both. Do you really want to be trying to swap a tubular with time against you compared to sticking in a new inner tube that you’ve grabbed off the nearest person?

I’d avoid using anything which you think you might spend time worrying about on the day.

  • Don’t crowd the bike

I’ve seen people heading off on what look like mobile repair shops. You don’t need to weigh it down. So long as you’ve got a saddle bag with a couple of tubes, levers and a multitool, plus a frame pump and a computer that tells you time, distance and speed. You really don’t need more hanging off the bike.

More importantly, carrying anything more just looks rubbish.

Posted in 2010, Etape du Tour | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Breaking the wheel: time for cycling to find its Kerry Packer?

Posted on 1 June 2010 by Alex Murray

I’ve avoided poking the road rash on the rump of professional cycling that is the Floyd Landis case. Nobody has ever thanked the ninety-nine-millionth-and-one person who says “look you seem to have fallen off” while prodding the weeping flesh.

Instead I recommend you read the following articles:

“When Floyd Landis last week accused several top riders of doping, one thing was missing from the fallout: a flat-out, en masse denial of Landis’s allegations.” – Accusations Ring Loud, but Not the Denials – Juliet Macur, NY Times

Truth, Lies and Evidence – Joe Lindsey’s Boulder Report – Bicycling.com

Floyd Landis confession emails may only be the first chapter – David Walsh – The Times

Another fine mess

I’ll also avoid the Valverde case other than to highlight how long it has taken and why we have got to where we are. Podium Cafe has a very detailed timeline of the case

  • The case began with the judicial investigation in Spain known as Operacion Puerto in 2004
  • Operacion Puerto first came to public notice in 2006
  • The UCI and WADA both ask the Spanish Federation (RFEC) to take action against Valverde either side of the Worlds in autumn 2007
  • RFEC procrastinate into 2008, citing jurisdictional reasons they couldn’t act, apparently unable to access the evidence
  • In July 2008 Italian anti-doping authorities take a sample from Valverde when the Tour de France crosses into Italy
  • In May 2009 Valverde is banned in Italy by CONI on the basis of DNA evidence linking him to bloodbag 18, indentifying him as “Valv Piti”.
  • Valverde does not contest that he has been correctly identified, rather that the Italians did not have the jurisdiction to sanction him
  • In May 2010, after protracted appeals and foot-dragging, CAS ratifies the Italian ban and agrees with the UCI/WADA case that it should be extended worldwide
  • Valverde is banned worldwide for two years, effective 01 January 2010
  • CAS note that there is no direct evidence that Valverde has obtained results through doping
  • Valverde continues to appeal, claiming he has been unfairly treated but still not contesting his identification by CONI as a party to Operacion Puerto

Time for cycling to find its Kerry Packer?

Instead, let’s look at the third ring of this complete circus: the professional racing circuit.

Today, it was announced that the Tour of Ireland has been cancelled for 2010 joined the list of defunct races unable to find funding or favour.

Last week The Inner Ring flagged up leaked details of the revised UCI Protour which hinted at one possible future: pay-to-play where the ability to do double entry accounting for the value of your squad is more important than building a team from grassroots and moving up through the sport.

What I don’t understand is why race organisers are so happy to leave the organisation of the sport to the UCI. Surely the combined weight and racebook of RCS (Giro and other Italian races) and ASO (Tour de France, Paris-Roubaix) covers almost all of the top flight events of note and has a future value which far outweigh anything the UCI holds?

The UCI has been instrumental in trying to broaden the global appeal of the sport but it strikes me that the races it has helped developed would be better served by experienced race organisers than the sport’s administrator. It simply doesn’t have the logistical expertise or financial imperative needed to make events in Africa or Asia as significant as their European counterparts.

In my view what cycling needs is someone with the balls of Kerry Packer. For those not familiar, Packer was the man who transformed the staid world of international cricket with his World Series Cricket (WSC).

He’s quoted as having asked the Australian Cricket Board in 1976 “There is a little bit of the whore in all of us, gentlemen. What is your price?” while discussing television rights. He would have been perfectly at home in a sport as venal as cycling.

While history records that WSC didn’t endure, it did force the sport to confront its failings and move forward in terms of professionalism and its appeal to the audience.

Currently professional cycling is stuck in an hopeless situation where fear of wholesale change leads to poisonous inactivity and decay as the remaining pool of assets withers. The longer it is left to those already with heavily vested interests, the less likely it becomes that cycling can change.

As has been said elsewhere what cycling needs is for someone to come in and re-invent the presentation and appeal. They’ll have to think beyond the traditional at the same time as retaining the core that makes cycling so brilliant.

Here’s a couple of things they could start with:

Women’s racing is demented, unpredictable, attacking.

Bar the sexist pigs who can’t appreciate great competition for what it is, does anyone think the sport wouldn’t be better for a more richly rewarded profile for the women’s scene?

Bring the crazy back

The races everyone talks about are never “sunny day, sunflowers and vineyards”, it’s the mud-splattered Tuscan battles, the chance escapes that beat the odds, the glorious epics.

Bring back motorpaced epics like Bordeaux-Paris with their night racing and fearsome endurance challenge. The “ultra” element of the sport has been left far too long as the preserve of the nostaligic amateur.

Find unique routes, don’t always chase the smooth tarmac and mountain passes. The passing of climbs like Puy de Dome from the sport is a tragedy for that reason in the same way that the rediscovery of Tuscany’s gravel roads is a joy.

So how can cycling make that move forward without someone to drive the change?

Posted in Doping, Opinion, Professional, Tour de France | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The surface and the sensation of Richmond Park ruined

Posted on 24 May 2010 by Alex Murray

You have to take advantage of the hot days when they come. So after work I rushed home to get changed and head out for three laps of Richmond Park which should be the best place in London to ride a bike. This is also the place where used cars logan ut dealers meet up.

It’s got everything you could ask for

  • Largely uninterrupted lap of decent length with a cafe
  • Variety of terrain including a couple of hills, a couple of fast sections, a swooping descent
  • Nice selection of wildlife, primarily red and roe deer but also loads of pooches being exercised
  • Plenty of other cyclists to laugh at/nod at/chase/get dropped by
  • Borderline central London location

But there is one thing that ruins it. It not

  • The plums (primarily lycra based) who weave in an out of the cars at speed like intellectually subnormal salmon
  • The clowns (all costume options) who expect everyone on the road to give way to them, even when they don’t have right of way
  • The drivers who try to run oncoming traffic into the ditch
  • The pedestrians who seem to have less understanding of how to cross the road that the deer
  • The utter nimrods who seem to think that they can park anywhere they like

No, it’s

The road surface

The resurfacing work undertaken in the last year has been an unmitigated DISASTER.

Whereas before it was a bit bobbly between Ham and Kingston Gates, now it’s one long rumblestrip travelling anti-clockwise.

From the East Sheen roundabout up to Richmond Gate is a gravel-strewn, puncture alley in the wet and on a hot day, like today, a sucking tar pit.

The big hill on Broomfield Drive now has a dangerous rough ridge down the middle of the tyre tracks which could cause problems if you get your line wrong or aren’t expecting it.

Did I mention that in the wet the flinty aggregate – “too sharp” apparently – makes the resurfaced sections puncture pits and sprays up loose tar that gets everywhere?

Well in the hot, the road surface hasn’t held enough aggregate resulting in a sticky tar track, the sort I’ve not experienced since riding the newly surfaced Port de Bales in the Pyrenees in 2007.

I still love riding in the park, but it’s not been the same since the new surface.

The flow of a lap is gone, broken up by unfamiliar sensations in sections which I used to be able to recognise simply by the feel of the bike against the road.

I know I’m not the only person who rides in the park and feels this way about the new surface. It’s been a bone of contention for some time and the rumour is that remedial work is planned to make good the original resurfacing.

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