Saturday, April 20, 2024

Tag: Calar Alto

David Hewett Blog – Winter Training, Part Two

At the end of my last blog post, I explained that I had left Girona, having got a good few weeks of initial base miles in the tank, and had returned home to spend Christmas with my family. After six days at home relaxing and enjoying the festivities, I packed what felt like almost all my worldly belongings into my car (including almost £20 worth of Sainsbury’s crunchy peanut butter jars), and set off at 4:30am on 29th December towards Dover ferry port.

At Random

Tour de France 4 Stages In, 4 Contenders

Tour de France 4 Stages... We have finally made it to the first of two stages that have loomed large over this whole race, and will play a huge role in determining who is the 2011 Tour de France champion. Today is officially a filthy stage on the bike. 200km, three hors categorie climbs, approximately 470om vertical gain through the stage, including a single climb from 335m above sea level to 2744m! Holy smokes.

“Man on the Run” by Manuela Ronchi

"Man on the Run" by Manuela Ronchi is the story of the last few years of Marco Pantani's life. The title works on two levels: after being slung out of the Giro D'Italia race on the penultimate day on a charge of suspected EPO use, whilst leading by a long way, Marco was hounded by demons - insecurity, shame, confusion, betrayal, distrust - all the way through a terrible cocaine addiction to his demise of an overdose.

Will They or Won’t They? (Preview: TDF 2012 Stage 10)

Will They or Won't They? Stage 10 has the classic look of a day when they break will get away and stay away all through to the finish. It is 194km long through high mountains, but the final 43km of the stage has 33km of descending in it. This is the sort of stage that Thor Hushovd won on last year, and will see the usual breakaway specialists licking their lips at the prospect of a shot at a stage win.

‘Young and exciting’ Team Sky squad with Kristoffer Halvorsen set for Tour Down Under

Team Sky will line up with a ‘young and exciting’ squad as the 2018 season gets under way at the Tour Down Under. Neo-pros Kristoffer Halvorsen and Chris Lawless make their first appearances as Team Sky riders alongside Egan Bernal, who will target the general classification across the six-day WorldTour event.

Ged Dennis – 1980’s Pro who rode “a la musette”

We can’t all be big sprinting/hard climbing/glam winners who get our faces on the pages of Cycling Weekly and International Cycle Sport. Enter Ged Dennis, 80’s professional racing cyclist, with a tale of monkeys, IOU’s, unheated bedrooms, gifts from the Gods and … choreography. 

Tom Zirbel: What a Waste of a Great Career

Fourth in the Worlds Elite TT, second only to Zabriskie in the US TT champs and with a Garmin contract neatly signed. But scratch all of the above and file under, "Another one bites the dust!" albeit the 'B' sample might just be 'clean.' We asked Paul Coats, who's a lecturer at Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy & Biomedical Sciences, for an expert view.