Table of contents for Aug 2019 in Cyclist

It is the curse of monthly magazines. A two-week time lag between sending the finished pages to the printer and the magazine hitting the newsagent shelves means that any predictions we make about upcoming events are almost certainly going to be overturned and rendered bogus in the intervening period. Take last issue. In my Ed’s Letter, I confidently predicted a fifth Tour win for Chris Froome, waxing lyrical about how he would join the pantheon of all-time greats. No sooner had I pushed the big red button that whisks the final pages off to the printer than Froome decides to blow his nose while descending at 65kmh on a TT bike. One gust of wind later and Froome’s Tour chances lie crumpled in a gutter. For the next few days,…

£374.99, zyrofisher.co.uk Giro created the world’s lightest production cycling shoe – its 150g Prolight Techlace – back in 2017. But while there are undoubtedly those who just want the most featherweight kit, there are others who would sacrifice a little weight saving in exchange for improved adjustability and comfort. Enter Giro’s Imperial, a shoe that product manager Peter Curran says ‘offers more features, greater adjustability and professional-grade performance with best-in-class comfort’. The Imperial is still a very light shoe, a size 44 weighing just 236g. This figure is achieved by using materials and construction techniques similar to the Prolight. The upper is made from a monofilament mesh called Synchwire that’s paired with Giro’s lightest and stiffest Easton EC90 SLX carbon sole, while the dual Boa dials use soft lace guides…

£79.99, muc-off.com Jet-washing is bad for bikes, right? Not any more. Muc-Off’s latest release is, it claims, the word’s first ‘bike-specific’ pressure washer. ‘I’ve always been keen to develop this product because there isn’t really anything on the market that’s specific to two wheels,’ says Muc-Off CEO Alex Trimnell. Two years in development, the key is a specific array of spray lances that Muc-Off says can deliver a sufficiently powerful blast to tackle tough grime but not so much as to damage precious bearings and components.…

On 12th April 1992 Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle, or ‘Gibus’ as he was known, lined up at the start of Paris-Roubaix, eyes focussed on the Roubaix velodrome. He was no stranger to the race. It was the 14th time the Frenchman had been on the start line, having first ridden the Hell of the North in 1978. He had finished 28th that day but over the course of the 263km had discovered a love for the cobbles. Since that debut his fortunes had ebbed and flowed in France’s greatest one-day race, with DNFs and low placings interspersed with some great performances. He was second in 1980 behind a dominant Francesco Moser, and again in 1983 behind Hennie Kuiper, the Dutchman benefitting from the tireless work of Gibus and Moser before launching a…

1 ROKA GP SUNGLASSES £215, uk.roka.com Glasses can alter one’s character completely, if you empty enough of them. And sunglasses? Well, a good pair will transform you from amateurish squinter to paid-up pro sprinter, just like Fernando Gaviria, who with his UAE Team Emirates teammates sports Roka’s optically tuned, finely crafted GP glasses. At 25g they might just be the lightest on-trend-oversized shades in the business. 2 TOKEN SHURIKEN PULLEY WHEEL SYSTEM £289.99, i-ride.co.uk Contrary to popular belief, shuriken stars – those pointy throwing discs that are the preserve of ninjas – were designed to distract rather than kill adversaries. And contrary to popular belief, the stock pulley system on your rear mech is simply not good enough and you need this ensemble from Token, which comprises oversize…

The experience of riding in Tucson, Arizona, might best be described by a dish I ate last night. It was at the Downtown Kitchen and the menu read Pork belly-foie gras donuts, caramel sauce, apple-fennel slaw, sea salt. Goose-cruelty aside, this is a dish that had no right to work, but it did. In fact, it was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever eaten. The Guardian restaurant critic Jay Rayner would probably describe it as ‘a thrillingly joyous whack of gutsy pork pillows launched from a toffee apple stand run by swine and gander.’ I’d just call it phenomenal. Like that dish, cycling in Tucson shouldn’t work either. Many of the roads are long and desolate, populated by either nothing at all or trucks driven with the intensity…

‘The founder of Vaaru Cycles, James Beresford, and I have a long history both as friends and on a professional level,’ says McLean. ‘We learned how to anodise together over the course of about a year. As I’m not good at marketing Fatcreations, people don’t really know I can anodise, so the idea behind this frame was to show multiple finishes in one design. That way it could be used as a demonstration piece in the Vaaru studio, showcasing my finishes and James’s frames. ‘It has been anodised in a wide spectrum of colours, glass-bead blasted, aluminium-oxide blasted, polished and brushed but still designed to look like a single cohesive design,’ McLean adds. ‘The glass-bead blasting gives a satin finish and the oxide blasting a more matte/coarse finish, but I…

TRAVEL You can fly direct to Muscat from London Heathrow with Oman Air, and the Haute Route team puts on transfers from the airport to Nizwa. If you want to drive, it’s a 90-minute car journey down Highway 15. ACCOMMODATION The Golden Tulip Hotel (nizwa.goldentulip. com) and the Nizwa Hotel Apartments (nizwahotelapartments.com) are the two main places to lay your head in town. The first two stages start at the Tulip, which has a swimming pool and spectacular views of the Hajar Mountains. Your event fee does not include your hotel room, so expect to pay around £230 to £460 a night at the Tulip, and £175 to £280 at the Nizwa Apartments. BIKE While there are bike shops in Muscat, there are none in Nizwa, so bringing your own…

THE SPEC  Model Heroïn HR Groupset Sram Red eTap HRD Deviations None Wheels DT Swiss PRC 1400 Finishing kit Heroïn integrated bar/stem, Heroïn carbon fibre seatpost, Heroïn standard saddle Hutchinson Fusion 5 Performance Black Limited Edition 25mm tyres Weight 7.06kg (size L) Price £10,339 (£4,920 frameset only) Contact heroin-bikes.com Heroïn is the lovechild of ultra-wealthy French businessman Marc Simoncini and design engineer Remi Chenu, a veteran of the bike industry. The pair joined forces in 2013 with the goal of creating the ‘perfect bike’, and by 2016 had unveiled the Heroïn H1. The concept of a ‘perfect’ bicycle is open to interpretation, but I’d say they didn’t get too close to it with the H1. It was a solid bike, but no better than many others and dizzyingly expensive at…

Yes, us. Buy a copy of our Big Rides poster book and get a free 227g bag of finest Cyclist ground or whole bean coffee. The Big Rides book comprises 20 of the best riding images from Cyclist reproduced in ultra-high quality on heavyweight A3 card so they can be detached and framed. The coffee is either 100% Colombian Arabica (bean or espresso fine grind) or Qualita Rossa Blend (bean, espresso or cafetière). Each bag is worth £5, and to claim a free one simply go to shop.cyclist. co.uk, add the book and coffee to your basket and use the code COFFSUM19.…

£179.99, madison.co.uk Fittingly, 100%’s new S3 sunglasses take inspiration from three models that have come before them. They have the nose bridge and intake vents of the Speedcraft, the rimless lower lens of the S2 and the coverage of the massive Glendale. 100% says the main benefits of this combination are ventilation and an unrestricted field of vision. The lens is scratch-resistant, hydrophobic and oleophobic, so repels oil, dirt and water. What’s more, the HiPER variant shown here boosts contrast so road surfaces stand out and it’s easier to transition from light into shade at speed. This will be useful, as anyone hoping to pull off glasses this bold had better be prepared to ride fast.…

If you read the last issue of Cyclist you will be familiar with the many tales surrounding the Col du Tourmalet. It’s one of the most fêted mountain roads in cycling, up there with the likes of Alpe d’Huez and Passo dello Stelvio. It’s the highest paved pass in the French Pyrenees and the most visited major col in the Tour de France, featuring an impressive 86 times to date (on the day this magazine hits the shops, the Tour will be preparing for its 87th visit, with a summit finish on Stage 14). You’ll also know about the statue at the top. Known as Le Géant du Tourmalet, it is a representation of Octave Lapize, the stage winner when the Tour de France first visited in 1910. A climbing…

It’s been a fun month. With a significant volume of training under my belt, I’ve been doing bigger, harder rides and loving it. For the first time, I truly believe I can get back to my best fitness, or maybe even better. I have even applied for a French race licence. But it has also been tough at points. Buried in work, I missed some sessions for the first time and my weight loss hit a wall. I barely managed to lose any extra weight this month so I need to refocus on my diet, but I’m still getting stronger, and some of that is down to the work I have been doing off the bike. My trainer, Chris McNamara at trainSharp, explains the importance of strength and conditioning for…

To download this route, go to cyclist.co.uk/90arizona. Starting at Nico’s Taco Shop at Three Points on West Ajo Highway/Highway 86, head 20km west to the left turning for the Kitt Peak road, signed South 386. Then it’s simple: stick with the 386 until you run out of road some 19.5km later. For good lookout spots, keep an eye out for Baboquivari Peak on the horizon around 15km into the climb, and for views of Mexico a kilometre or so later. For sustenance, there is a visitor centre at the summit, but best to check opening times before heading out if you expect to need extra supplies.…

It’s the night before the second and final stage of the Tour de Yorkshire and Lizzie Deignan and her Trek-Segafredo teammates have no idea what’s coming. Having endured a wet first stage from Barnsley to Bedale, and seen their Italian sprinter Letizia Paternoster rushed to hospital overnight with stomach pains, the depleted five-woman team knows tomorrow’s stage – a 132km slog from Bridlington to Scarborough via the punchy North York Moors – will hurt. But not even Otley-born Deignan could predict the knife-edged headwinds and 50kmh hailstorms that will greet the peloton, when barrelling waves will pound the Yorkshire coastline and blue-lipped riders will shiver up 15% climbs. Trek’s American rider Tayler Wiles will later crown it her ‘worst ever’ day on a bike. ‘I felt a bit empty today,…

Of all the climbs in this series, the Izoard has the most relaxing start. Clip in at the town of Guillestre and the Izoard greets you in a friendly fashion. Yes there’s a bit of traffic on the D947, but the road is wide and the air is often cool as the sun struggles to find a way down into the steep-sided gorge. The gradient is also more of a false flat, so you can easily turn the legs over with the chain on the big ring. And as you pedal, quietly pleased at how quickly you’re ticking off the 31.5km, it’s worth thinking of Fausto Coppi. When he raced along here on the way to the summit in 1949 he’d started the day with the smell of the sea…

‘This was a joint project between us and Cannondale for the 2017 Rouleur Classic show,’ says McLean. ‘The show includes an auction, and Cannondale put up a frame that included a custom paintjob from us as a prize. This one was painted to give bidders an idea of what they could own. ‘That year the theme of the show was the five Monuments, so the idea was conceived to weave the cobblestone logos from each of the races into the frame’s design. Each and every cobblestone in the pattern is unique – they were all cut and applied by Becky by hand. The racing stripes were added to make the frame more eye-catching. ‘The prize garnered a lot of interest and raised a decent amount of money. Cannondale recently gifted…

High up in the Hajar Mountains of Oman, Jenson Button is in a spot of bother. The former F1 World Champion is answering a call of nature in a Portaloo on the top of a cliff, which is shaking furiously in strong winds and looks like it might take off at any moment. But death by flying lavatory isn’t the biggest challenge facing Button today. The Grand Prix legend is taking part in Haute Route Oman, a climbing extravaganza that is not for the faint-hearted. Since the first Haute Route was staged in the French Alps in 2011, the organisers have been quick to expand the multi-day format to other regions around Europe, as well as a few more far-flung destinations such as Mexico and San Francisco. This is the…

THE SPEC Model Argon 18 Nitrogen Disc Groupset Sram Red eTap HRD Deviations None Wheels Zipp 404 Firecrest Finishing kit Zipp SL70 Aero handlebar, Zipp SL Speed stem, Argon 18 carbon aero seatpost, Selle San Marco Mantra CFX saddle, Panaracer Race A Evo 3 25mm tyres Weight 7.37kg (M) Price £2,500 frame, fork, headset, seatpost, approx £8,500 as tested Contact zyrofisher.co.uk Depending on who you ask, disc brakes are either (a) the best and most exciting technology to happen to road bikes for years or (b) completely unnecessary – they’re ugly, heavy and we could stop just fine before they came along, couldn’t we? For the record, I began as a ‘b’ but it didn’t take long before I reached the fence, sat on it for a while, then fell…

When we speak of custom carbon fibre it is usually that the frames are cut and bonded tubes. When we speak of our frames, they are custom for each customer, but they are monocoque moulded.’ Antonio del Pino follows up this statement with a beaming smile befitting a head of marketing who feels he’s just announced the headline act. While his words may not seem that noteworthy, amid a sea of independent framebuilders at this year’s Bespoked Handmade Bicycle Show, they are intriguing. Moulding carbon fibre frames is nothing new – it’s the underlying process behind every mass-produced carbon fibre frame – but doing it from a small workshop in Galicia, Spain, is quite possibly groundbreaking. Sum of parts To give some context, custom carbon fibre frames – ones built…

Three things dictate recovery: training intensity, frequency and duration. Of those, intensity and duration have the greatest impact on how long it takes your body to recover. The first thing to point out is that a long ride isn’t necessarily as hard on the muscles as an intense ride, so the recovery period may not be as long as for a hard interval session. Conversely, because it’s a long ride you may well feel battered, so the recovery period is self-governing because you’ll be too tired to get back on the bike. Often you feel more up for the next session after a shorter interval session, and that’s the time when you risk hurting yourself. As a rule of thumb I’d say don’t do back-to-back high-intensity sessions. The quality will…

If the colour scheme looks retro and familiar, that’s because it is. A custom bike designed in collaboration with the Dublin framebuilder, the paint is based on Greg LeMond’s 1990 carbon-tubed, alloy lugged TVT. But with Sram eTap and colour-matched Enve finishing kit and wheels, the tube-to-tube carbon FiftyOne is modern in every regard, except perhaps for handling and position. Where today many manufacturers look to more upright positions with rather neutral handling, the FiftyOne embraces a racier philosophy from days gone by, with a short head tube, low stack height and short fork trail. This creates a naturally aggressive position with sharp handling, yet any tendency towards the twitchy is tempered by a long-ish wheelbase, and any would-be lack of comfort is compensated for by carefully selected tube stiffnesses…

The mountains of the Giro d’Italia are a long way from Ventoux and Alpe d’Huez. More so than a map or a calendar might suggest. The Tour de France’s greatest climbs are hot to the touch under July’s sun, crowded with tourists, awash with colour and the buzz of the summer holidays. Even people with no interest in cycling know about the Tour and it’s easy to entertain yourself with the atmosphere, the views and some food and a cool beer on a balmy afternoon under blue skies. You don’t care if it takes the riders all day to get up that climb. There’s no rush. La vie est belle. Northern Italy in May is a different prospect altogether. It can often be cold and grey, and even though you…

‘This was a last-minute job for Astana’s young star,’ says McLean. ‘We’ve painted a few custom colour frames for Miguel in the past so we usually have a suitable Argon 18 frame in the workshop just in case. Miguel rode into some good form during last year’s Vuelta – had Simon Yates faded like he did at the Giro, Lopez could have taken the lead – so Astana wanted a frame painted for him to ride to match his potential leader’s jersey. ‘We got the go-ahead in the early hours of a Wednesday morning and had 48 hours to finish the project. Becky was primed to fly it out to the team in Barcelona on the Friday afternoon but unfortunately for Astana, Yates held onto the race lead so the…

It seemed logical to take a climbing bike to tackle the brutal ascents of Oman, and French brand Look’s aptly named Huez was more than up to the task. This bike came from Haute Route support team Revolution Cycles, a bike shop in Dubai, and we swapped out its standard, heavy Mavic Aksium wheelset for some lightweight Hunt alloy rims that shaved a good 400g off the overall weight, and added a Power2Max power meter, which was fun for seeing just how many watts were required to keep moving on those 20% gradients. While it’s not as good a climber as the 785 Huez RS (which can come in at under 6kg if you can afford the £8,000 to pimp it with super-light components), it still delivered a stiff, responsive…

THE SPEC Model Cicli Barco XCR Groupset Campagnolo Super Record EPS 12-speed Deviations None Wheels Campagnolo Bora Ultra 35 Finishing kit WR Compositi RM08 bars, ST1 stem, WRC seatpost and Maranello Carbon saddle, Pirelli P-Zero 28mm tyres Weight 7.98kg Price £2,499/£430 (frame/fork), £3,065 (frameset incl. Chris King headset), approx £10,000 as tested Contact lifecycleuk.com No sooner had I got astride the bike for a test tour than I found that the frame is admirably laid out to give the most comfortable riding position possible, whilst, at the same time, full power can be applied to the pedals. This enabled me to cover long distances without feeling undue fatigue. ‘The gear-change itself was delightfully easy to operate, quick, and foolproof. The new leather top saddle was a delight to use. We…

Last month I strategically timed my holiday to coincide with the relative lull between the Giro and the Tour, when there’s normally nothing much to report from the world of cycling. Well, that backfired. Unwisely logging on to Twitter from a rainy Cornish seaside town, I discovered that Britain’s most successful Grand Tour rider was apparently the centre of a masonic plot in which he had supposedly staged a high-speed crash to serve a secret suspension and avoid a doping control. Crazy, huh? The Ineos conspiracy theories stretched further back to Egan Bernal faking a broken collarbone before the Giro. And then Geraint Thomas crashed in Switzerland! The flat earthers were driven over the edge (or would have been if they’d been able to find it). Of course, there was…