Organisers of the Dare 2b Yorkshire Festival of Cycling have released a promotional video in anticipation of the fast approaching Tour de France Grand Depart.
Filmed in the grounds of Harewood House, which will host the race itself as well of thousands of fans visiting for a weekend of cycling festivities, the video features spectacular scenery and a host of cycling personalities. Lizzie Armitstead and 2006 Tour champion Oscar Pereiro star, ITV Cycling presenter Ned Boulting features as never seen before and many more cycling faces make cameos throughout – some much easier to spot than others.
Commenting on the making of the video, Ned Boulting said: “I’ve covered many Tours de France for TV but the Tour de France in Yorkshire really is going to be something special. For me, there was no better way to get in the mood than to dress up as a Butler at the grand Harewood House; serving champagne is a skill I didn’t know I had until now.”
For more information about the Dare 2b Yorkshire Festival of Cycling, camping, viewing the race or the many events taking place at Harewood House over the Grand Depart weekend, visit: http://www.festivalofcycling.org/
The Cyclo-cross (CX) season may be well and truly underway, but there’s still plenty of time to get kitted out and give it a go.
With my first off-road sportive coming up at the weekend, I caught up with European Champion and newly crowned 8 time National CX ChampionHelen Wyman to get her top tips and advice on getting into cyclo-cross.
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What makes CX different to any other cycling sport? It’s short, fast, hard racing off road. So it’s like the combination of the accelerations of a criterium, the basic skills of MTB, the bike from road racing and the heart rate of a threshold effort.
What are the differences in the set up of a road bike to a CX bike? Are there any specific differences in the way they should be set up for use? The bottom bracket on a cyclo-cross bike is slightly higher than a road bike and the clearance around the brakes is bigger to allow bigger tyres and the mud to not clump up.
In terms of set up you may want a shorter reach and maybe a slightly smaller frame for this. I use the same set up on all my bikes but I am a cross rider first.
What first attracted you to CX? I was studying physiotherapy at university and had placements in the summer so couldn’t train enough for road racing. In the winter I could use my commute to work placements for training so took up cross. I was hooked instantly, so then it was too late to go back ha ha!
What are your top 5 (or more) tips for those transitioning to CX? 1) Take family and friends – it’s a great day out with races for everyone and a great environment to get you out of the house on a weekend.
2) Play on your bike beforehand, get to know how it feels to slip and slide and what your bike will do when you race.
3) Try to get a day at a cross clinic so you can get an idea of how to get the most out of your racing.
4) Tyre pressure is such an important thing and don’t be afraid to lower them so you get the most out of your tyre.
5) Smile! You will absolutely love getting wet, muddy and cold as it’s only 40 minutes to 1 hour long.
What about racing? How can someone get into this? There are a lot of local league races so check them out on the British Cycling website. Just go along and have a go. You will find instantly you will be racing with someone of your own level having your own little personal battles.
The dismount and remount is fundamental to a CX race, what key steps can you take to perfect this? I think in the beginning it’s probably not the most important thing but it is something you can easily learn at a clinic. It’s hard to describe but very easy to demonstrate in person. I would say the most important thing in cross is knowing your minimum speed and not be afraid to run if riding is slower than that speed.
How else do you train for CX? Skills training is really important so that you learn the feel of your bike under different conditions. After that, lots of high heart rate intervals and short sprints with some threshold work is where most of the training comes from for cross. You can be a really good level local league racer with one days cross training a week and 4 days of 1 hour each day in my opinion. If you want to be a good national level rider it takes a lot more obviously.
CX is very much considered a winter sport – what about the summer months? Criteriums are good for summer training and you can get a good endurance base from road racing too.
There’s always much discussion about tyre pressures at races, how do you determine what pressure to ride on? The best way to determine tyre pressure is whatever makes you feel most comfortable on your bike. As you move up levels in your racing then seek advice from the people around you. If you don’t know where to start, take a pump to your local park and try doing laps on different pressures and surfaces and see what you feel gives you the best grip.
You recently started racing with disc brakes (since UCI regulation changes) how do these differ to cantilevers, what are the benefits and what are your recommendations? Disc brakes operate by braking on a disc at the centre of the wheel.
Cantilevers operate by braking on the rim of the wheel.
I love disc brakes as they stop you better, however cantilever bikes at entry level naturally weigh less. At my level it’s about the same so I get all the advantages of braking while not loosing the ability to carry my bike. However, it depends on your budget and if you already have road wheels, cantilever bikes are better as you can use those wheels.
COMING UP: Part 3 of my CX adventure – tips and recommendations on how to buy a CX bike, with help from Hadron Cycles
Hayley Davies
Writer
Riding since Feb 2011 Hayley is a 30 year old female who loves adventures. If she’s not on one of her many bikes or in the water on a bodyboard/surfboard, then Hayley is probably out looking for something new to keep the adrenaline pumping! Website: www.hjdonline.co.uk
I caught up with recently crowned National Time Trial Champion Joanna Rowsell MBE to find out her plans for the next few months and her thoughts on the whirlwind of a year that brought her further success at the Olympic Games in London and her seamless transition to the road.
Jo was about to ride the Great Manchester Cycle ride. Launched in 2012, the first Great Manchester Cycle was a resounding success, with a staggering 7,000 riders taking up the challenge and this years event was even bigger. Lizzie Amitstead, who brought home Britain’s first medal of the Games last summer in the Women’s Road Race, along with former Olympic champion Rebecca Romero were among those to take part in the inaugural Great Manchester Cycle, with Armitstead describing the event as “a fantastic day out”. This year Jo got to experience the buzzing atmosphere, the olympic champion seemed to be thoroughly enjoying herself with her signature beaming smile visible at all times under her helmet.
When you’re growing up, everyone wants to be the hero –PM, astronaut, fighter pilot, racing driver – but nothing achieved in any of those roles ever happens without a vast latticework of support. Cycling is not immune; indeed, when Wiggo thrust cycling into the faces of an otherwise unknowing public last July, the nuances of the support network around him must have been hard to spot for the casual viewer. Sir Bradley had his nine-man squad on the road, of course, and everything that Team Sky could think of in the way of shiny kit and qualified personnel. And on the road, out of the spotlight but orchestrating every aspect of every race in their beautiful black and blue Jaguars were the Sports Directors.
In the never-ending pursuit of the aggregation of marginal gains, for 2013 Team Sky took the opportunity to despatch two of their Sports Directors to the MIRA proving ground at Nuneaton to learn more about handling the Jaguar XF Sportbrake. Marcus Ljungqvist and Dan Hunt both have experience from within the car during races, but neither had previously received specific driver training – under the auspices of Nigel, one of MIRA’s exceedingly capable instructors, Team Sky’s DS’s put themselves to the sword in one of their 2013 cars, merrily sliding and spinning their way around MIRA’s watered, variable grip circuits with some chap called Martin Brundle also on hand to offer the occasional word of advice.
The point was not to train Marcus and Dan how to drive like racing drivers, Martin explained as Nigel sped us around to demonstrate, it’s about teaching them how the car reacts so they know what to do if a situation occurs during a race that pushes the car over the limit. “You might think that, as racing drivers, we throw the car around wildly,” explains the former Le Mans winner and World Sportscar Champion, arguably the best Formula One driver not to win a Grand Prix. “In reality it’s all about being smooth and gentle with the car.” The limiting factor is the tyre –it transmits inputs from acceleration, braking and steering, but if you try and throw too many things at it at once, that’s when things go pear-shaped. Being smooth with the inputs not only allows you to run closer to the ultimate limit, it also means that you’re less likely to go skating wildly over it and the car will be more easily controlled.
For Marcus and Dan, the day was about learning to recognise and respond when that limit is approached, and if Nigel’s teaching is anything like his driving, the roads of ProTour cycle races will be the safer for the improvements in their competence – the Sportbrake proved itself amazingly capable, with eyeball-popping go, stop-on-a-dime brakes and a taut agility that’s just wrong in a car that size. In Nigel’s hands, it happily ran sideways on the low-grip track, then flung us around the capacious rear with gay abandon on the dry handling circuit – if the demonstration was anything to go by, it doesn’t seem likely that Marcus and Dan will often be called upon to push the big cat to the limit!
What’s clear throughout the whole process is that Jaguar and Team Sky have an exceedingly warm and productive relationship. With an engineer on hand with a view to improving the car still further for the peculiar needs of bike racing, it’s obvious that, while the cars look like a standard Sportbrake with livery and a bespoke rack, they have already been modified to suit the job (to cite one example, the rear windows in the Sportbrake didn’t quite go all the way down– now they do), and the process is ongoing with discussions taking place on improved information technology and amended wing mirrors. When it comes to marginal gains, nothing is off limits – Team Sky even went to the lengths of putting a rider on hand to practice the interactions between rider and car, Chris Sutton setting what just might be a record for the number of bidons stowed on a single rider.
So – a useful day? Dan is positive. “It’s great to be able to test the car in a safe environment and being allowed to fail without the risk of consequences.”
“We went on three different surfaces,” adds Marcus. “ Slippery, super slippery, and super-super-slippery! – and we took the car to the limit to learn how it would react. The good thing here is we can do it over and over again, in a really relaxed environment, so we can remember what we did – in a race maybe something happens but you don’t remember actually how you managed to control it.”
“It’s a core component of what we do, we SHOULD be good at it.” says Dan. “At Sky, we always want to be better at everything we do, and driving’s a critical part – getting guys like Martin and Nigel from MIRA, it’s fantastic for us.”
Marcus nods. “A lot of times it’s former bike riders, you’re supposed to be a good sport director but you have no driving experience at all – you think you’re (just) driving thirty K’s an hour behind the peloton but sometimes it’s really crazy back there.”
“Marginal gains doesn’t stop with the riders, every member of staff has a responsibility to do their job better tomorrow than they did today,” says Dan emphatically. “That’s what marginal gains is about, doing things a little bit better, all of the time –for us today it’s about improving our driving skills, tomorrow it might be involve better tactical skills. For the riders it’s about fitness, about improving their race times. Marginal gains isn’t just equipment or an empty philosophy, it’s about getting better at what you do every day, trying to be the best in the world at what we do.”
This day, as with every other day, Team Sky just got that little bit better.
I caught up with new Movistar signing Alex Dowsett and he kindly answered a few questions.
Off-Season
What is a typical off-season for Alex Dowsett?
I’ll spend 3-5 weeks where the only bike I may look at is my mountain bike, it’s good to step away from it all to refresh the body and mind, during this period there’ll usually be a holiday of some sort and a bit more partying than usual. Then when it’s time to start training I’ll do one week lightly building up the hours then into the long base mileage, so 4-6 hour rides daily looking to get 25-30 hours a week. As the season draws nearer the hours drop down a little and intensity is added through intervals.
Is that fairly standard in terms of what other pro cyclists do?
Yes that’s a fairly bog standard off season, some guys might do work in the gym, I’ve been experimenting with it a little and I know the Scandinavians may do a lot of x-country skiing as that uses the same muscle groups.
Has your off-season this year been markedly different as you face your move to Movistar for 2013?
Only with adding in Gym work into my programme
Movistar
What was the main reason for your move to ride for Movistar next season?
Opportunities, Sky is a fantastic team but I realised very quickly that with there being so many brilliant GC riders there and the fact that experience counts for a lot when getting into the big races I needed to step away to gain this experience, Movistar is a fantastic outfit that has produced some great riders and promised to give me opportunities in the bigger races.
What will your main role be at Movistar and does that differ from your role at Team Sky?
It doesn’t differ too much, I can time trial well so that will be a big focus, I have GC aspirations in races like Eneco Tour and will be supported by the team in these and in the mountainous tours I will be a domestique and maybe go for individual time trial stages.
Have you noticed any great cultural differences in the running of Movistar so far in comparison with Team Sky?
There are a lot more similarities than I thought there would be, all the big cycling teams operate in a highly efficient way
As pro cycling teams are so cosmopolitan nowadays, is there any great language barrier to overcome in terms of Team Sky being ‘British’ and Movistar ‘Spanish’?
There is, the team is keen to learn English as that’s the way the sport is going but I do need to learn Spanish, I’m having 3 lessons a week, it’s hard to get my head round that a noun, i.e. something like a bike can be masculine or feminine and the verb has to change accordingly!
You were well known when riding for Team Sky that you often remained based in Essex. Does your move to Movistar affect that?
Nope, I’m an Essex boy through and through, I race best when I’m happy and I’m happy here in Essex. I do understand the values of training abroad so ahead of grand tours I will get myself into some mountains for sure.
2013 & the Future
After your excellent result in the World Championships Time Trial, was there an increase in interest from teams in acquiring your services for 2013?
Cycling is big business but a small World, it was common knowledge that Movistar were in for me, other teams approached us as well but we followed protocol by speaking with SKY then making a decision.
What is your main objective for 2013 and which races are you most looking forward to?
Doing a Grand tour and the classics initially, the rough plan is for me to do Roubaix and Flanders and then the Giro. I’d like to retain my National Time Trial title but it will be harder given that it’s being moved in line with the National RR so Wiggo and Froome might be there. I’d like to win a tour, something like Ster Electro, Eneco, Circuit de la Sarthe, basically a hard tour with minimal mountains and with a decent TT in it.
Could you see yourself ever consider crossing over to track cycling, perhaps for an Olympic Games?
Maybe, I was hitting fairly good numbers in 2010 training for European champs but I couldn’t get myself off the start line quick enough, I can see there being more chance that I’ll be on the road for Rio
If you could pick one race to win in your career, which would it be and why?
Olympic and World TT championships, I love my time trialling and that’s the ultimate win.
Yourself
What impact did riding for Trek-Livestrong have on your career, and how would you say it has helped you in terms of you career development?
The GB academy was great and prepared me for the Trek-Livestrong experience, I entered there as one of the most disciplined riders. The GB academy presented us to pro teams as the complete package.
I also learnt how to win races and the importance of enjoying what I’m doing.
Do you see yourself as solely a time-triallist specialist, a discipline in which you have obviously had a great deal of success?
No, it’s obviously a key ingredient to my success but I’ve won road races, I think I can be a solid all rounder.
What would you say has been your career highlight so far?
8th in the World TT Championships
What is your favourite race to participate in as a rider?
I got a real kick out of the World Team Time trial championships, we didn’t do great but was a buzz nonetheless
Who are your best friends, or who do you talk to the most, in the peloton?
Mostly the lads my age, Ben King, Jesse Sergent, Taylor Phinney, Michael Matthews etc. We’re all going through roughly the same thing so we can relate to each other a lot.
What is your favourite place in the world to ride a bike?
I loved training in Switzerland, just getting lost in the hills, I want to head back this summer with a Mountain bike though! I have a ride at home I enjoy, its simply blue egg (my regular café) and back, it’s flat quiet roads and 2 hours total, I like having somewhere to aim for on a ride.
Could you ever see yourself doing a ‘Wiggo’ and going from being an outstanding rider against the clock to being a Grand Tour contender?
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