Professional Cycling

Marianne Vos from the Netherlands surprised everybody on the world cup in Beijing to participate and to take home two world cup gold medals in Olympic events. And the reason she was there was because of the road event next year.. she wanted to tour the road course and see if the terrain suited her. Well, its clear that if it doesn’t work out on the road she has alternatives on the track in Beijing. for a report check this link.

Mauricio Soler is thinking about competing in the Giro and the Tour next year.

With a special and hard training scheme he should be able to compete in both competitions he thinks. There have been examples before of cyclists who could do this. One of the recent ones was dope related Ivan basso and of course Marco Pantani who won both races in 1998.

The Colombian Soler thinks that with the difficulties in the stages as it is now he has a big chance to compete in the top 10 of both tours. Maybe he can even compete in the Vuelta since this one implements a lot of mountains as well.

He is the winner of the mountain jersey in the Tour de France 2007, presumptions enough then.

Only problem is that he rides for a small pro tour team and is not eligible to get the entries to the tour like the big teams, they have to wait for the wild cards to be handed out.

The Colombian has been voted sportsman of the year in Colombia and thought that that was the right time to pronounce his wishes for the next season.

Lets keep him on our list for the next season.

In 2008 there will be a mountainous tour through Spain, there will be eight mountain stages, and only four of twenty one stages that are totally flat.

there is a Team event just as last year, the prologue will feature a team time trial of 7km.

The famous but controversial mountain Angliru is featuring in the stages again, its maximum ascend is 23 percent…. so a lot of riders will feel the mountain coming from miles away.

Longest stage is 224 km, from Barbasto to Andorra, this stage feature right after the first day of rest.

Favourite with this layout is Dennis Mentsjov, he’s won the Vuelta twice in the last 3 years and will be aiming for a third one next year.

Below a downhill vid of the decent of the Angliru, watch the guy filming miss the turn…..

And the pro’s in bad weather, Vuelta 1999:

For a good training session, you need a few things to measure; time, distance, speed and heart rate. There are a few options, you can use a computer and a heart rate monitor or you can combine them in one. this is what I want to look at, a few options on the heart rate monitor market that allow cycling functions to be included.

One of the main manufacturers is Polar, which is one of the leading Heart rate monitor producers world wide. It has some high end watches that will give you, functions like: speed, distance, heart rate, training zones, altitude, temperature, even a power sensor to measure which leg gives more power. they also have computers with some of those functions. They deliver a steer holder with the package. Only thing is, you have to buy the accessories like the power sensor or the pedal frequency next to it. The newest S725X features all this and more.

If you look for a cycling computer only, Polar has the CS600, which has all the above functions but is for cycling only.

A cheaper variant is the Vetta V110HR, but with its lower price comes also a little frustration in the way everthing works, batterie life is short, product is not always functioning like it is supposed to….. so try it if you want, but i’d invest a little bit more and go for the bigger producers like polar or maybe suunto in the future.

For alternatives, you have GPS systems which are able to measure almost everything except the pedal frequency. Polar supplies the RS800 G3, which uses GPS to measure speed, distance, altitude etc. but I wouldn’t recommend it for cycling.

Other manufacturers supply mainly GPS receivers in watches etc. and are not fully cycling minded. So no power/pedal output or cadence metering.

Since GPS is getting more and more integrated in everything thats has to move and locate it self. I would’nt be suprised if the big comapny’s integrated it in their new upcoming lines of outdoor watches/cycling computers.

Stay tuned and if you find anything worth while, post it in the comments.