Table of contents for November 2019 in Cyclist

Pop quiz: what is Britain’s favourite ever TV advert? Need some clues? OK, it was set in Yorkshire. It was directed by Gladiator ’s Ridley Scott in 1973. And it was for bread. Ah, now you’ve got it. Britain’s favourite TV ad was that one where a boy on a heavy bike labours up a steep, cobbled hill so he can deliver his last loaf of Hovis bread to Old Ma Peggotty. He then freewheels back down to the bakery while the voiceover declares, ‘Twas a grand ride back, though.’ Despite the fact the hill was actually in Dorset, not Yorkshire, that Hovis ad was a perfect slice of nostalgia, harking back to a time when adorable ragamuffins in flat caps worked hard for their supper, but – by ’eck…

£1,774.95, extrauk.co.uk Examining the spec sheet, at first glance the FFWD F6D wheels are competitive but ordinary. They have a DT Swiss 240 hubset, weigh 1,530g per pair, and their tubeless-ready internal rim width is 19mm – all good features, but nothing remarkable. What sets the F6D wheels apart is their radical rim shape, which FFWD dubs ‘Double Arc Technology’, or ‘DARC’ for short. If we were to speak in drinking glass terms, where the profile of normal deep rims resembles a regular tumbler, the DARC profile would be more of a carafe, with a distinct low bulge from the spokes to atight neck that flares back out just below where the rim meets the tyre. FFWD says this improves aerodynamics by creating an area of negative air pressure in…

£499, powerwatch.com Track physical activity, record health metrics, take calls, check emails and map your whereabouts, all from a tiny box on your wrist. The smartwatch is one of life’s genuine mod-cons – that is until you need to take it off and charge the thing, which makes it far more of a mod-incon once every day or so. Enter the Matrix PowerWatch. It houses what Matrix says is a tiny thermoelectric engine that converts temperature change in its ‘Gemini’ material core into electric voltage. That means the user’s body heat can power the watch and it never needs charging. It doesn’t skimp on the features, either. Matrix says the PowerWatch matches its rivals – it has the same screen as the well-regarded Garmin Fenix 5 watch, and it can…

Do you want the bad news first? The body starts to slow down as we go past about 35 years of age. Now that’s out of the way, the good news is that these changes are generally small, and will continue with modest declines in performance until you’re about 60. It’s bad news again after that. Decreases in VO2 max and lactate threshold are the biggest issues because they limit human performance. And as your fitness decreases you expend less energy so you may start to gain weight. You have to understand and accept that you’re unlikely to be as fit at 50 as you were at 20 (if you were training then, of course), so yes you should adapt your training. By how much is specific to the individual,…

There aren’t many bike companies in Colombia, and there are even fewer framebuilders. But on the outskirts of Medellín, Scarab Cycles is waving the Colombian flag for custom steel. And when owners Santiago Toro and Alejandro Bustamante were kind enough to lend me a bike for this Big Ride, there could only ever be one choice: the Scarab Letras. Imbued with the ideals of climbing long ascents, the Letras is made from Columbus Spirit tubing, chosen for its light weight and compliance, and has more than a nod to a classic steel racer in geometry. The top tube is horizontal, the rear end tight and wheelbase short. Even the Pegoretti (as in the late Dario) carbon fork has a vintage soul, with a square-shouldered crown like the flat lugged crowns…

‘The Tour is like childbirth – you simply forget how shit you feel. But that fatigue racks up. People are saying Wout van Aert is the favourite today. If we’re talking after Stage 2 or Stage 3, you’d say 100 per cent. But this is Stage 13. You just don’t know how riders react to racing so many days beforehand. Throw in the heat and who knows what today will bring?’ These are the words of UAE Team Emirates’ Dan Martin as Cyclist enjoys a one-on-one with the English-born Irishman before this year’s sole individual time-trial at the Tour de France, 27.2km from Pau to Pau on the edge of the Pyrenees in the far south of the country. We’re here to shadow the team that rose from the ashes…

TRAVEL Ryanair offers a direct flight to Brest from Southend with prices starting as low as £7 one way, although it only operates once a day on Fridays and Mondays, so could prove quite limiting. You could take the overnight Brittany Ferry from Plymouth to Roscoff, which is just a one-hour drive from Lannilis. Prices start at £115 and you can even attend a black tie party on board. ACCOMMODATION Cyclist stayed at the Couett Hotel (couett-hotel-brest.fr) on the Plage du Moulin Blanc just outside Brest. Prices start at £58 per night for a twin room. It’s basic but you can keep your bike in the room. Some rooms even have an ocean view and it sits above a Paul patisserie that opens surprisingly early, despite being in France. It’s…

£148, smithoptics.com Smith Optics may seem like a relatively new brand in cycling terms, but it actually dates back to 1965, when an orthodontist called Dr Bob Smith turned his hand to making ski goggles that didn’t mist up. That spirit of innovation is alive and well with the Wildcat sunglasses, which showcase Smith’s ChromaPop lenses. Smith claims these make use of the most scientifically advanced polarising lens technology to date in order to enhance colours and clarity of vision. The glasses also come with an interchangeable clear lens for drearier days. The lenses are, clearly, enormous. That not only provides a wide field of vision, but also makes the Wildcats very much on trend.…

Pro Team Insulated £320, Pro Team Lightweight £220, rapha.cc Given Rapha’s remit for producing top-end performance apparel, it’s interesting that the brand hasn’t released ShakeDry products before now. The wonder-fabric from Gore is very light and packable, totally waterproof, breathable and very expensive, so you’d think that ShakeDry products would have slotted into Rapha’s range as soon as the material was available. Rapha says it has been in conversation with Gore-Tex for a while, and wanted to get the products right rather than rush into it. And now those products are here. The brand has launched four ShakeDry jackets: two for men and two for women. The Pro Team Lightweight Jacket is the one that’s most similar to ShakeDry jackets from other brands. It provides protection from the elements in…

According to Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers, the path to achieving world-class expertise is 10,000 hours of practice. The making of The Beatles, he cites, was the two and a half years they spent playing the clubs of Hamburg between 1960 and 1962. In that period they performed around 1,200 times – more than most bands perform in a lifetime – and they returned home ‘a different band’, scoring their first number one, Please Please Me, in 1963. It’s fair to say Winston Vaz knows more about Reynolds steel than he does about Rickenbacker guitars, but by even the most conservative calculations Vaz has logged in excess of 50,000 hours building bikes. Little surprise, then, that this ‘One Inch 953’ scooped the ‘Cyclist Best Road Bike’ award at this…

1 VELOFORTE NECTAR GELS AND HYDRATION £5.50 for 3, veloforte.cc Be more hummingbird. The little fellas can travel 500 miles in one go, eat twice their bodyweight a day while maintaining a 4g race weight, and a group of them is called a ‘bouquet’. Their primary source of fuel is nectar, and that just happens to be what Veloforte has named its all-new gels, which not only use natural ingredients but also, whisper it, actually taste really good. So too Veloforte’s new coconut-based, electrolyte-rich energy drinks, and although electrolytes are important we’re not yet sure of the velocity of a hummingbird carrying a coconut. 2 LEZYNE TUBELESS CO2 BLASTER £50, upgradebikes.co.uk You could do someone a serious injury with this thing. Or you could fix a hole in…

Never ride for longer than you have slept. That’s how the adage goes, so when my alarm’s mocking tones chime at 4.50am, I calculate I have a solid four hours 40 minutes to ride from the small town of Mariquita in Colombia to the even smaller town of Letras, 80.7km away. Easy. Except for one thing: Mariquita lies at 468m above sea level, and Letras is 3,650m above sea level. The journey from one to the other has an aggregate ascent of 3,791m. Luckily Ihave a secret weapon with me: Ben Hitchins. Ben is a British ex-pat who bikepacked around Colombia some years ago and loved the country’s joie de cycling vivre so much he moved out here to start bike travel company PiCO. As such, Ben is well versed…

The banner strung tautly between two buildings declares ‘Port de Balès: 19km de bonheur’ with a small abstract picture of some cyclists next to it. Even those optimistic sorts who blithely mix colours with whites in a 40-degree wash might question this assertion. I mean, I’ve been known to enjoy abit of climbing and invariably get a warm glow of satisfaction when cresting a summit, but the notion that this Pyrenean climb will provide an entire 19km of happiness seems a touch unlikely. Such is the wild nature of the road it’s no surprise to learn that it was just a track until the 1980s Then you set off from Mauléon-Barousse and, for the first few kilometres, a suspicion creeps over you that just maybe this will be unremittingly pleasant,…

I remember the day when I got the last mountain stage over with and I just had the time-trial to go. I can remember very clearly how that entire day went,’ recalls Sean Kelly, Eurosport commentator and winner of the Vuelta a España in 1988. ‘At that point I was pretty sure I could win it. Ever since then, this has been the race I’ve had the most respect for.’ More of a Classics rider than a climber, Kelly had fought his way over the mountain stages of the Spanish Grand Tour, doing his best to follow the attacks of the climbing specialists. He won the individual time-trial the next day to take the overall race lead and the amarillo jersey (in the days before it was red). One day…

When I first got into racing in my teens, having alight bike meant taking matters into my own hands. Thus I spent countless hours weighing components on my mum’s kitchen scales and working out ways to shave off every possible gram. I even took parts to school so that in my lunch breaks I could use the pillar drills in the technology workshop to remove any possible excess material from bolts, bars, stems, seatposts and crank arms. Not always wisely, I might add. I once peppered a chainring with so many holes that it simply folded like a piece of damp cardboard the first time I rode it. I quickly learned there was a line not to be crossed. But getting as close as possible to that line meant noticeable…

An Ecuadorian, a Colombian and a Slovenian walk into a bar… it could be the set-up to a good joke, except Primož Roglič doesn’t really do jokes. Occasionally, the Slovenian may have been ‘smiling in secret places’, as he admitted to journalists after his recent victory at the Vuelta a España, but on the whole cycling’s latest Grand Tour winner is a man so laconic that if he was forced to eat his words he would die of hunger. No, it’s no joke, but it is a reflection on the shifting Grand Tour landscape. In the dour, slurred words of Bob Dylan (Roglič is no doubt a fan), the times they are a changin’. With three maiden winners at this year’s Giro, Tour and Vuelta, you won’t see a more…

£64.99 each, schwalbe.com Schwalbe has a decent claim to have kick-started the trend for tubeless tyres back in 2015 when it introduced its One Tubeless. This top tier design has gone through several iterations, and the latest is the Pro One TLE, which claims to be around 20g lighter per size, 13% faster rolling and 22% grippier. The aim was to achieve the souplesse feel of a tubular tyre, so the new Pro One has fewer overlapping carcass layers under the tread. Importantly the tyres adhere to the new ETRTO tubeless standard, which is an assurance most tubeless tyres have yet to offer. According to Schwalbe, this helps guarantee the tyres’ safety and ease of installation.…

‘The hill climb scene is going from strength to strength,’ says Dan Evans, who won the British National Hill Climb Championships in 2014 and 2017. ‘I’d say it went really mad in 2016/17 – you had Paddy Power running bets on the Nationals – so a lot more people have got involved and have been training to make it the focal point of their season. ‘Hill climbing is really raw – there’s not too much thinking involved and the fastest rider wins every time,’ he adds. ‘If you’re a regular cyclist you’ll probably have a decent standard of fitness all year round, and by the time the hill climb season takes place in September and October it’s a case of honing your climbing. ‘Strava is great because it allows me…

When Neil Campbell pedalled his bespoke £15,000 tandem-inspired bike at 280.5kmh (174.3mph) in the slipstream of a Porsche Cayenne this summer, he became the world’s fastest man on a bike. His record speed – set at Elvington Airfield in Yorkshire on 17th August – was almost three times faster than the top speeds recorded by riders on Alpine descents at the Tour de France. It was four times faster than a gold medal-winning time in the Olympic team pursuit. ‘Cycling at that speed is like riding a mountain bike with flattish tyres on rollers, but with the rollers themselves on roller skates, so you’re bouncing all over the place with hardly any control, knowing you need to crank out 1,800 watts non-stop or you’re in trouble,’ says the 45-year-old architect…

People from Brittany are Breton before they are French. Tucked away in the northwest corner of France, Brittany is a region shaped by the harsh Atlantic weather. It is rugged but homely, and Bretons are the same. They can be tough, they can be abrupt, but they are always welcoming. Bernard Hinault is Breton. Jean-Paul Mellouet is also from Brittany. The directness of his emails before my trip and the warmth of his handshake on my arrival tell me that. His background is important, because without it the Tro Bro Leon cycling race wouldn’t exist in the first place. In 1984, so the story goes, Mellouet was looking for ideas to help fund his kids’ Diwan school. ‘Diwan’ in Breton means ‘seed’ and the school system was created in 1977…

The Rondo HVRT is a confusing bike. At either end it looks like a gravel bike with its dropped chainstay and wide fork legs that allow for extra tyre clearance. Yet the middle firmly resembles an aero road bike, with sharp aerodynamic tube shapes. So is this an aero gravel bike? ‘Nope, it’s a road bike,’ says Tomasz Cybula, brand manager of Rondo. ‘A unique one, but still a road bike. It can take big tyres and occasionally ride gravel road segments, but it’s not a gravel bike or any other kind of off-road bike.’ Cybula’s comment seems a bit odd, considering HVRT stands for ‘High Velocity, Rough Terrain’ and that the bike can take 650b wheels with up to 47mm tyres. But it makes more sense when you consider…

Little known fact: in the run up to launching Cyclist in 2012 we spent months deliberating our name. ‘Cadence’ was one of the options, until our lawyers discovered Disney had a trademarked character called ‘DJ Cadence’, which you will no doubt have seen in such movies as We Wish You A Merry Walrus. We argued that there was no conflict of interest between a bicycle magazine and acartoon penguin. ‘You do not f*** with Disney,’ replied the lawyers. So Cyclist it was. Apparently it’s a similar situation with SwiftCarbon, which has added the ‘Carbon’ bit to appease Suzuki over its Suzuki Swift (a car, not a DJ’ing flightless seabird). So what’s in a name? Rather a lot if you’re a bike company I’d reckon, because Swift has quite deliberately stuck…