addicted2wheels

A blog about bikes, bike racing and physiological research.

Hi, I'm Rob, and this is a wandering diatribe of sorts, focused on the very real, human existential tragedy that is/was my cycling career. Yeah, yeah, I still ride, but not quite like I used to. Now I'd love to do 700km weeks again, sure, but somehow I don't think so. It's just not gonna happen. 100km weeks, yep; maybe even 200km. But that doesn't mean I can't bore you to tears with my 'life history on the bike'. It's optional, though. I was sucked into the vortex with my first ride on a too-large Alcon 28" fixed wheeler, and haven't stopped riding since. Bikes are magic carpets - they were when I was 16 and remain so today (and I'm much older now!). You get on a bike and - unlike a car or motorbike - you empower the machine. In return you get a buzz out of achieving something physical, pleasurable and testing. You may still like driving a car, but riding a bike puts you in touch with the air, the temperature, shade and sun; it connects you, rather than isolating you in a steel and glass cocoon. But this blog could just as well be about business, music, mythology, philosophy, photography or art...

You can check the lot out right here.

Whatever fits: if it has a recommended torque setting, can be imagined or digitised, it's in.

We do try to cover our costs by selling mugs, teeshirts, hats, bags, stickers and images...
The A2W large mug!	The GTVeloce mug!	OODB large mug!	The Tipo116 large mug!	Yet another mug!

Monday, June 02, 2008

Giro 2008: A certain strangeness about it all

It's was a strange Giro. Beautiful, with punishing mountains and stirring breakaways. Simoni trying, endlessly, to recapture his youth. Ricco attempting again and again to stamp his name on the record books. Sella brilliant, suprising himself as well as us with multiple stages; and Di Luca's power slowly leaching away like a stain And then there's the overall winner: Contador. His 2nd Grand Tour win and possibly the most remarkable. Let's not forget that he had not trained for the distances involved in a 3-week Grand Tour, nor had he done the mountain repeats that would be "normal" training for the toughest stages. Instead he entered the race with an open mind and his body fresh. It wouldn't work for me, or for anyone I know, but it worked a treat for him. Of course he would have fancied his chances on some of the stages, just because he is at a decent professional level anyway; but to pull off the overall - against competition whose only goal in training has been this race is - indeed - remarkable. His physiology must be "perfect" for this style of race, and for the mountains themselves. Or the other riders are rubbish. I'll leave you to ponder how Contador has been able to achieve what seems to have been impossible for his teammates, Kloden (sick) and Leipheimer (still somewhere out there).

As Contador said himself: "I never could have imagined it – I was at home when the team called me...," Contador recalled of his entry into the race following Saturday's mountainous stage through the Alps. "The team wanted me to come here and I wasn't convinced that it was the right thing to do. ... Playing in the final to win it all – it's something that was unimaginable a month ago"