Professional Cycling

The director of the pro-cycling team Rabobank has been fired, the team-leader Erik Breukink is under suspicion as well. During the research about how Rasmussen had managed to fool the entire team some stunning explanations were given.

Breukink new all the time about the real location and intent to mislead the UCI he even had a meeting with Rasmussen during the period he said Rasmussen was in Mexico, while the meeting was in Italy.. can you do the maths? More and more it seems obvious where and what Rasmussen was doing, he even published his blood-test results himself which showed unnatural results for a cyclist in such circumstances.

Below a picture of our fallen hero, doesn’t he look like a man who needs some…….?

Rasmussen has been fired directly after the Tour de France, team manager Theo de Rooij followed him shortly there after, The downfall in the Rabobank team hasn’t finished yet, Erik Breukink might be next. the stories are building up around him and he’s getting in a harder position each day. At the moment evidence that Breukink knew where Rasmussen was, and even worse, he knew that Rasmussen lied to the UCI to be able to get his own programme with the proved but not jet official drug Dynepo up and running. The tests from the tour showed that Rasmussen used this drug to enhance his blood to unreal levels. it Say’s that Breukink is in more deep than you’d want to be if you where wearing his shoes.

Its not clear that Breukink knew what Rasmussen was using, but you can figure out that he must have known that Rasmussen was using something that couldn’t be honest all the way. So to say that Breukink isn’t to blame is rather stretched, what hopefully will happen is that the Rabo-team decides its a good learning experience for Breukink and that he won’t make the same mistake again.

all in all you could say that the career in cycling for Michael Rasmussen is almost over, no way anybody can trust him after the stories he made up to prevent him to be blamed.

Even using his marriage to give excuses is rather pathetic if you ask me, I hope for his sake that it will stay with his cycling career and that it doesn’t end up in the deep regions of his private live. Even Rasmussen is still a cycling product from before the big doping problems and is probably influenced to much by the old cycling habits to know any better…

Tour schedule 2008, its been out a while, but with some comments from managing pro tour team directors it will be a more interesting story.

for the overview a small map of the rides.

Its a different tour compared to the last decades, there will be no prologue, 2 time trials that are not to big. It consists of 10 flat stages that will probably end in a mass sprint, 5 mountain stages, 4 medium mountain stages. of the total of 9 there will be 4 finishes on the mountain.

there will be 19 cols which will be climbed, see for details the blog about the European cols. riding the european cols.

One of the main Time trials is after 4 days of riding, so the first shift in the standings for the yellow jersey will be early in the course. There is one heavy stage in the Pyrenees, and a few undiscovered regions in the Alps, which will make the tour an interesting and invigorating sports-event.

Rabobank will aim at putting Mentsjov in the front, the stages are more suited to him than the last few years and show similarities with the Vuelta. since Mentsjov is one of the remaining grand Tour victors that hasn’t been caught on using doping, he’ll be one of the favourites for the yellow jersey.

Contador is switching teams with his manager Bruyneel, let’s hope that this transition to an European Pro tour team will have a positive effect on both of them and Bruyneel can continue his winning streak in tour victories. Especially the short individual time-trials will be in the advantage of Contador since his expertise is more in the mountains and the opportunities there will be plenty.

Management of the tour stripped the stages of the possibility to earn seconds in sprints in the hope that there will be more escapes and less politics in the stages. They want a more romantic tour, more heroes and less calculated victories.

Also since the breakup of the pro tour and the big three tours (Vuelta, Giro and Tour de france), its not an must to be a pro tour crew, so there are a lot more chances for teams to participate. only thing is they have to have bio passports, so the director of the Tour de france can choose the teams which stand for anti doping and thus give the smaller teams a chance to show themselves.

All in all a promising start, now lets hope the doping predicaments come to an end, and we’ll be cheering for a yellow jersey that wins the tour and gets to keep the victory without having to fight for it in court……

Ever been dreaming of riding the big tour de France cols? Always wanted to know which one is steepest or hardest? which one is best to start with when its your first time? or, which one is ridden most during the tour de France? Here’s a link to a dutch/english site with a lot of cool infomation about the mountains in western Europe.

www.cyclingcols.com

use it to your own pleasure, it helped me planning my tours in the Apls in the past years and gave me a few pretty good hollidays.

enjoy,

Once again, you-tube will give us some simple explanations by showing some vids.

I found a couple of you-tube bike maintenance vids. pretty handy if you ever get mechanical problems in an place far far away from any mechanical bike shop.

I had on a trip through Italy, my spokes gave way under the pressure of my luggage and I had to fix them myself. Using a spoke wrench, my home bought spare spokes and my very good hearing helped me back on the road.

Funny thing was, I had no idea how I could fix the spoke and keep my wheel from falling apart on the next bump in the road, I figured that the tune of the tension on the spokes should be the same, so with a little bit of gut feeling I began to put tension on the spokes and tried to get all the tunes in line…… luckily in knew how to turn my spokes to get them tight or loose. but if you don’t watch the vid below.

about tuning your wheels, fixing spokes etc.

for the really beginners here’s a vid about fixing your flat tires.

This I can show when my girlfriend is asking me again if I can fix her tire… tiring

Resupplying Nutrition’s,

Lot’s of athletes are known to the fact that you have to use not only water for fluid intake, but also a hypo-tonic solution, or a isotonic one. To keep up nutrition going to your muscle to keep it from depleting its food-chain.

Before we go in to the deep stuff, i’ll explain what isotonic, hypo-tonic and hyper-tonic mean.

Isotonic means an substance that is of equal consistence of the human blood, so to keep it simple your blood has an amount of ingredients per ml, an isotonic drink has the same amount of ingredients as the blood per ml.

Hyper-tonic means that there is a lot more of the same ingredients per ml in comparison to your blood.

hypo-tonic means there are less ingredients per ml fluid in comparison to your blood.

Most of us are familiar with the fact that its unwise to drink only water when you’re in an time consuming exercise like a marathon or say a 200km road trip on your bike. if you only drink water, the balance in your blood disrupts and in the extreme it can lead to life threatening situations. When sweating during an exercise you sweat out water to cool yourself from the generated heat, with all this water there is also a lot of minerals leaving the body, which results in time to a disrupted concentration in the blood. This can lead to nausea and dizziness or even in an seizure in the brain due to a lack of minerals. (water intoxication) to prevent this we have to drink fluids which contain the minerals and energy we loose during the exercise.

These fluids come in three different forms: isotonic, hypo-tone and hyper-tone.

One of the main reasons this is known is because of the grown popularity of the long distance races, marathons, triathlons and of course the iron man. There have been a lot of unexplainable deaths during the first years of these events that have been solved now that we now that the body is sensitive to the refreshments we take during a long-distance race. If you drink more than 3l. an hour and only water, you’re getting to the amount that can become dangerous, especially if its hot and you’re sweating a lot. So everywhere you go these days, there are a lot of stands along the race which have a lot of variations in drinks available.

What are good drinks to bring with you?

There are a lot of commercial products on the market, most known are Aquarius, isostar and AA. They all try to give the drinks nice flavours and ingredients to make your experience as pleasurable as possible.

If you’re not in to the commercial stuff, you can go for the powders that you can dose yourself, heaps of companys offer dehydrated minerals so you can make your own solution, so you can decide if its iso, hypo or hyper-tonic.

Once you have done this, its simple, drink regularly and switch between water and your sportdrink.

Not only will it help you during the excersise but it will also help you recover from it and get you fit for the next one. Not much negative things to think off using it, only make sure you brush your teeth regulary to prevent damage due to the amount of acids and sugars you’re using…….

have fun.

There are a lot of ways to explore countries by bicycle, one of the most popular ones is watching the tour the France and let al the professionals ride you through the country. Commentators on television will tell you everything about Cycling, the region, the food and drinks and all to other interesting stuff, you get to see a lot of people along the roads and with a little imagination their cheering for you as well.

that’s the easy way, sit in your arm chair and eat lots of food… you’ll probably get fat, got no condition after the 3 weeks of touring and probably no sun-taint or muscles as well.

It’s better to go touring yourself, you can follow in the tracks of the tour riders and try to ride as much of the tracks as possible from the official tour, ignoring all the highways that had to be shut down for the competition of course, and choosing the more accommodating inland routes in-exchange.

sleep in hotels and use the credit-card for money, maybe ask the wife to follow with the kids in a car and have an whole array of spare-parts on the roof. or…. bring your own little cart which you can hook up behind the rear wheel and cycle yourself, your clothing and spare parts totally self-dependent through anywhere you want to go.

To give you some ideas of cycling routes in Europe, or to help you on the way, here is a link to the European cyclists federation.

try the cycling routes in the middle first, so northern Italy and southern France, good weather, nice people and lots of place to stay.

have fun

To give some examples of exceptional riding, here are some you-tube videos showing what it means to be a professional cyclist.

evade colleagues….

Some advice for exploring more of the you-tube movies, make sure you’re finished with what ever you where doing before entering the site… you wont get back to what you were doing anytime soon.

And when you start cycling, always bring your helmet, in most countries a cycling helmet is mandatory anyway.

A few good spots to see lots of cycling in real life are the local competitions of course, but if you get the chance to go to Europe and visit the alps or any other western European mountain range, you’ll meet a lot of cyclists and even some professional cyclists.

Most of the professionals have houses in france, northern Italy or spain. and if they’re not active they’re running a hostel or restaurant where you can gape at old cycling pictures or listen to stories from the past.

I went in the off season to one of the most beautifull cycling places in europe (Briancon) and had a hard time not encountering fellow cyclists that were trying to beat me reaching the top of the mountain…. The amount of cols that are ridden in the tour each year are huge, the sun is always shining and places to stay are plenty.

There is no single greater challenge for a road racer than the individual time trial. The “Race of Truth” tests every physical and mental skill and ability you possess. There is no place to hide, no tactics to play off of, no shelter from the elements. Just you and your bike and the clock. All the things that make you a good ITT rider, maximal aerobic capacity, anaerobic power, aerobic recovery and mental toughness are vital to successful performance regardless of the racing venue.

The athlete that races well against the clock is always a threat. A 40K ITT requires that you ride at and sometimes above maximal aerobic capacity for close to 60min. If your fitness is good and you ride a 40K ITT correctly you should have next to nothing left when you cross the line. I’ve worked with elite riders who have ridden a 40K ITT so hard that they someone to catch them at the finish because they were not able to stand up. This may sound a bit extreme but if you take the ITT seriously and you want to be competitive you have to be prepared to put out that level of effort.

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I am a strong advocate of resistance training as a means to increase strength during the off season. A useful resistance program should focus on the specific demands your particular racing discipline. This does away with the notion of a standardized resistance program that works best for all types of cyclists. As an endurance rider you depend more on muscular strength and aerobic endurance than on raw power. The Endurance Lifting Program was created to develop these critical elements of competitive performance for endurance road, track and mountain bike riders.

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Having a consistent routine will help eliminate errors in planning and provide much needed focus and concentration on race day. Whatever routine you develop it needs to be repeatable and consistent and should reflect your particular needs in preparing for competition.

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