SLU Cycling

I remember when I was young, I had a fascination for bicycles and felt a surge of satisfaction and excitement when I used to go for cycling with my friend. We were not good at antics but used to get highly thrilled whenever either one of us tried a fancy swerve or a jump and then coming to a screeching halt. It is a sport, which keeps you fit and sturdy and full of energy. There was a time when we tried our stint at moonlit cycling in the hills and the experience was simply exhilarating. It’s something which all of you should try some time or the other.

Cycling is a sport, which may not be as popular as basketball, cricket, or tennis, but it has a charm of its own. When you watch the riders’ head bent in concentration and their feet tirelessly pedaling, you do feel a rush of adrenaline in your blood. The excitement is intense as you watch your favorite sportsman trying to swerve and beat his or her opponent. It is not only a challenging but a tough sport as well. Tough, because it requires immense stamina and concentration and nerve to go on cycling and pedaling at a consistent speed at a stretch.

If you follow cycling events closely, then make sure that you follow up the latest cycling events coming up such as world track cycling in Mallorca, world mountain bike championships, and world road cycling. You can get the information about the events’ schedule time and channels for the events on the BBC website.

By: Piyali Sen

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Power Cycling Training is probably the best way to train.

Woah! Quite a claim!

Here I will discuss why Power Cycling Training is the best way to train, and how to train correctly using a power meter.

So what is all this hype about power meters, and power training? Why not use a heart rate monitor, or go off perceived exertion?

A lot of different factors affect your heart rate while training: Hydration, Nutrition, Wind, Road Surface, Gradient, Tread Pattern, Tyre Pressure, Illness, Cardiac Drift and Near Death experiences. This makes it extremely difficult to keep a steady effort, whether for training purposes, or if you are Time Trialling.

The same thing applies for perceived exertion, if you are coming down with an illness, you are in a bad mood, or you just won the lottery, will all affect how you feel whilst training.

Power Cycling Training removes those other factors.

A great example of why a Power Cycling Training is so great is when you come to a hill, and want to maintain a steady effort.

If you could be bothered, you could stop, measure the gradient of the hill, your average speed, and then use a formula to calculate the speed you should go up the hill to keep your effort constant. Obviously this is very impractical!

With a power meter, you would simply look at how much power you are outputting, for the sake of this article, lets say 170W. As you start climbing, simply adjust your gearing and cadence so that you are still outputting 170W. Simple! That is why Power Cycling Training beats any other method of training into the ground!

Now lets get a little more technical, don’t worry! No need to hire Steven Hawking to help you understand the next part!

If you have just bought a power meter and are wanting to start Power Cycling Training, you need to measure something called your “Functional Threshold Power” (also known as FTP). Now don’t let that phrase scare you! It is simply the power you are capable of producing for one hour.

By periodically measuring your functional threshold power, you can see yourself progress, which gives a great boost in motivation. (You will also have a bit of an advantage over your competitors who don’t do Power Cycling Training!).

So how do you find this “magic number”?

Ideally you would want to do this on a turbo trainer, however if you don’t have one, or just can’t stand indoor training, there is no reason you couldn’t do Power Cycling Training on the road, just find a route where you wont be interrupted often, the countryside is perfect.

Get warmed up with 15-20 minutes of easy cycling, then cycle as hard as you can for 1 hour. Make sure to pace yourself correctly, so that you don’t run out of energy, and at the end, your average power output is your FTP!

This will then allow you to pace yourself correctly during time trials and road races, and you can see yourself progress! This is why Power Cycling Training is so great!

By: Sam Kennedy

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Kansieo.com

Cycling is a lot more pleasant if wearing gloves as they can protect your hands from cold weather, the wind, water and vibration from the road.

Perhaps the most important part of choosing gloves is protection from the cold, because unless you live in a tropical area, you’ll find gloves pretty much essential from the beginning of Autumn until the end of Spring. For Winter gloves, there are a number of things to look at: insulation, wind-proofing and water-proofing.

- Plenty of insulation is important, however one thing to bear in mind that if the material is too thick, you’ll be constantly be needing to take your gloves off to manipulate small objects like your keys or your mobile phone. – Wind-proofing is important because your hands are very exposed on the handlebars, and they’ll feel the full force of the wind.

- The wind can easily suck all the heat out of your hands, but it will do that even quicker if your skin is wet. Thus, water-proof gloves are certainly nice to have. However, fully water-proof gloves can be expensive as they include many seams, each of which has to be sealed against water.

Apart from cold, the other reason to wear gloves is they protect your hands from vibration. Gloves made for cyclists generally have padded palms, although the exact position of the padding may vary depending on the manufacturer. You’ll find these a boon, especially if you want to cycle home from the office at the end of a long day and have tired shoulders, arms and wrists.

By: Sunil Tanna

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Purists in the cycling world will tell you that road cycling is the classic and arguably most beautiful manifestation of cycle sport. Professional cycling is perhaps most famously associated with the Tour de France, a three week bicycle race around France, covering roughly 3,500 km over 21 days. The race was born in 1903 and has been run every year since, excepting for a four year gap caused by the instabilities of the First World War and a seven year sabbatical prompted by the Second World War.

Recently Lance Armstrong has elevated the level of exposure enjoyed by cycle sport, especially in the English speaking world, through his heroic fight against testicular cancer and his record seven consecutive victories in the Tour de France. To put this into perspective, one should remember that only five men before Armstrong have managed to win as many as five Tours, never mind seven. And the Spaniard Miguel Indurain was the only one of these riders to manage five in a row.

Cycling Teams

To be cycling in the Tour de France is to be competing at the pinnacle of professional cycling, and it is only the most talented and dedicated athletes which make the cut into professional cycling teams. Each of these professional cycling teams is managed by a cycling manager who coordinates the riders’ race calendar and publicity appearances. The director sportif is another major player within the team setup and it is this individual’s job to direct the tactical assault launched upon a race by his team leader and supporting riders. Tactics play a massive role in determining the victor when it comes to road cycling, therefore the more cohesive an approach taken by the team, the better the race results will be for the team and the sponsors.

Typically a pro cycling team will consist of a team leader, a team captain and several domestiques, otherwise known as team workers. Depending on the race, there may be one or two team leaders, a strong sprinter for flat races, or a strong climber for the tougher terrain. In essence the team leader is the rider within the team who is most likely to win the race. The team captain will generally be the most wily or tactically experienced rider; it is his job to coordinate the team so as to set up the best possible tactical position from which the team leader can succeed in his duty of winning. The domestiques play a vital role in supporting the team leader. They do this by sheltering the leader from prevailing winds and getting food and drinks from the team’s backup vehicle.

Battlefields of Cycle Sport

Pro cycling teams compete on the Pro Tour, which includes the three week long tours of France, Italy (Giro de Italia) and Spain (Vuelta a Espa