Cycle clothing brand Vulpine will be making a few big announcements this week. Sounds like a good time for an interview with founder Nick Hussey… Vulpine like to do things differently. Set up in Spring 2012, the brand has quickly become a highly visible part of the UK cycling apparel market, garnering praise for both the design and quality of their garments as well as for ... Read More
Latest Blog Entries
The Off Season (or What the Hell Do We Do Now?)
The absence of competitive road cycling from mid October has not really been a big issue for me in the past. As a kid and then as a teenager I only followed the Tour de France and never even considered the fact that cycling had a wider season which waxed and waned around it. The Tour was everything and everything was the Tour. It was ... Read More
The Jersey Pocket Podiums – #3 – Cycling Films
It was the BFI’s Bicycle Film Festival last week and The Armstrong Lie is hitting the screens next month so it seems like a good time for a Jersey Pocket Podium for cycling films: 3rd spot: Breaking Away – Peter Yates – 1979. Capturing the exotic appeal of Continental road racing (as seen through the eyes of a young American) Breaking Away warmly ... Read More
Foreign Starts – Grand Tours on Tour
With both the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia set to start outside of their own borders next year it seems like a good time to have a look at this increasingly regular phenomenon. In 2014 the Giro will spend three days in Ireland during May, visiting both Belfast and Dublin, before Le Tour comes to Yorkshire, Cambridge and London in July. Whilst the ... Read More
The Hour – Michael Hutchinson – Book Review
A seasonal cold is keeping me pretty much off the bike this weekend so here’s another book review for you.. Racing against the clock in any form of time trial is a Race of Truth. How far? How fast? Nothing else matters. Time trialling on the track is an even purer Test. Stripped bare of all the issues of weather, terrain and surface it ... Read More
Ride Report – Unfinished Business – Ride of The Falling Leaves 2013
First up, a confession: I have a bit of ‘previous’ with this ride – I had to abandon half way round last year after suffering from the ongoing effects of some poor meal choices on a trip to Cairo in the preceding days. Having just come back from a potentially equally debilitating trip to some of the more remote parts of Russia this week I was ... Read More
One Steppe at a Time – (Not) Cycling in Moscow
I am in Moscow this week and I’m trying to remember the last occasion I was in such a cycling un-friendly city. It’s got me stumped. I have covered a fair few global miles in my time and cannot readily think of a single place – certainly not another capital city – where I would be less inclined to get my bike out and tootle ... Read More
Book Review – On The Road Bike – Ned Boulting
Reading Ned Boulting’s book, On The Road Bike – The Search For a Nation’s Cycling Soul, about his exploration of the idiosyncratic world of cycling in Britain is, I would imagine, a bit like joining him for a bike ride. Initially there would be plenty of self-deprecation as he painstakingly points out all his likely shortcomings for the selected route or distance. Then there ... Read More
Chasing Rainbows – UCI Road World Championship preview
Now that the Tour of Britain has concluded, all eyes are fully focussed on Tuscany for the UCI World Road Race Championships this week. Racing started today with the Team Time Trial before moving onto the individual time trials in the middle of the week and then culminating with the Blue Riband road race events next weekend. Junior (Men and Women) and U23 (Men only) ... Read More
The Mavericks – Adam Hansen – Seventh Heaven for Grand Tour Glutton
Lotto Bellisol’s Adam Hansen has just completed his seventh straight Grand Tour. Since late 2011 he has ridden the Giro and the Tour twice each and La Vuelta three times – all without a break. He has covered almost 24,000 Grand Tour kilometres in those 2 years and raced an incredible total of 16,059km over 106 days last year alone. In an era of ever increased targeting of races ... Read More