Mid-Week Report: The Latest News, Products and Events
Welcome to the June 19th, Mid-Week Report!
Welcome to the June 19th, Mid-Week Report!
PHOTO OF THE WEEK
Bad News; Crash from @GeraintThomas86 pic.twitter.com/IgSOx0118a
— Tour de Suisse (@tds) June 18, 2019
Six days after losing Chris Froome for the Tour de France, Team Ineos were holding their breath Tuesday over Geraint Thomas’s shoulder as he was rushed to hospital for tests after crashing out heavily at the Tour de Suisse.
The accident happened 30 kilometers from home on stage four with reigning Tour de France champion Thomas in a good position for overall victory in the nine-day Tour warm up in the Alps, but was left ashen-faced, dazed, badly grazed and nursing his right shoulder.
Ineos said on Twitter that Thomas “has been forced to abandon the #TourDeSuisse. He was alert and speaking to the team after the crash and will be taken to hospital for checks”.
Ineos later reported that Thomas had “abrasions to his shoulder and a cut above his right eye,” which were visible as he gazed into space sat on the road where he fell.
VIDEO: TAKE CARE OF YOUR BIKE
WORKOUT WEDNESDAY: HOW TO HANDLE THE HEAT
By Chris Carmichael
Head Coach of CTS
I felt a twinge in my right leg this week when I read 4-time Tour de France Champion Chris Froome crashed and broke his femur. I broke my femur in the winter of 1986, and although every fracture, surgery, and recovery is unique, there’s no getting around the fact broken femurs and broken hips are hard injuries to come back from, particularly at the pro level.
My femur broke in a backcountry cross-country skiing accident and the bone split at the distal end between the condyles (see image above). Through the subsequent surgical repairs I lost an inch of leg length, developed scar tissue, and developed myositis ossificans (calcification within muscle tissue). I managed to return to professional cycling and raced until 1989, but I never fully regained the power and performance level I had before the injury.
A broken femur or pelvis can be a tipping point for a pro cyclist’s career. According to Procyclingstats.com, thus far in 2019 there have been a reported 123 injuries in the World Tour peloton, 9 of which were femur or pelvis fractures. A broken collarbone doesn’t typically foreshorten a career, but femur or pelvis fractures can bring a swift end to a cyclist’s best days. Besides my personal experience, the cases of Joseba Beloki and Craig Lewis come to mind. That’s not to say a full and powerful recovery is impossible; riders have returned to winning form after serious leg and hip injuries. I’m hopeful Chris Froome will be one of the fortunate athletes who makes a complete recovery and returns to full competitive strength.
Here are some specific reasons why coming back from a femur or pelvis fracture can be especially difficult:
You lose a lot of time
A professional cyclist’s career is not typically very long, and even for riders who spend 15+ years as a pro, they were most likely at their best for 5-6 years. Losing almost an entire season is a big setback because racing and training is cumulative. From days as a junior and U23 and into the pro peloton, each season builds on the previous, and that cumulative strength is invaluable. A major interruption and step backward in that process can cost a rider their most valuable commodity: time.
You lose a lot of fitness and muscle
When you break a collarbone or wrist you can often get back to training – indoors – within a matter of days or 1-2 weeks. As a result, you don’t lose a lot of fitness or muscle mass. In contrast, recovery from a broken femur or hip takes longer. You may be moving pretty quickly after the initial injury, but not training. Once you get clearance to train at full power again, it then takes a long time to rebuild the fitness you lost
Your biomechanics can be forever altered
This is one of the primary reasons my cycling career ended prematurely. With one leg an inch shorter than the other, my pedal stroke changed completely. Experienced cyclists have spent years and perhaps millions of pedal strokes creating the patterns and structures that allow for a smooth, powerful, and pain-free pedal stroke. When all of that changes as the result of an injury, you have to create new neuromuscular connections and patterns. The soft tissues that have adapted to your specific pedal stroke have to remodel themselves, too, which increases the risk of soft-tissue injuries during recovery.
For most cyclists these changes in biomechanics can be managed with bike fit, physical therapy, or other modalities and riders can continue riding and racing. At the professional level, the margin between success and failure – being on the podium or off the back, or on the team or off the team – is so thin that losing a few percentage points off your best can be a career-changing injury.
Long recoveries are hard psychologically
Getting back on the trainer quickly following a collarbone or wrist injury helps athletes stay positive. You’re still training, and the injury feels temporary. With a broken femur or pelvis, there’s a long period – sometimes months – when you can do barely anything resembling cycling training. You can see the muscle and fitness you spent so long building withering away. You start to have doubts about whether you’ll ever make it back, and maybe you even start accepting that your best days are behind you.
When you do finally get back to training at full strength, those first rides are slow and you don’t feel like the same rider. This can lead to a lot of anxiety and stress. Addressing the psychological effect of serious injuries is one of the keys to returning to competition at a high level.
Chris Froome has a long road to recovery in front of him, and I sincerely hope his recovery goes better than mine did (technology and sports medicine have changed a lot since 1986…) and that he returns to the peloton at his absolute best. Best wishes, Chris!
RECAP AND RESULTS: TOUR DE SUISSE STAGE 5
Italian road-race champion Elia Viviani outfoxed overall leader and triple world title winner Peter Sagan to clinch stage five of the Tour de Suisse on Wednesday.It was a second straight win on the Tour for the Deceuninck-Quick Step sprinter, who cut the last corner tightly to gain a yard on a stunned Sagan on a cobbled, slight incline at the end of a 177km run from Muenchenstein to Einsiedeln.
The charismatic Bora-hansgrohe captain Sagan, wearing the yellow jersey extended his advantage at the top of the general leaderboard over Australian Michael Matthews by four seconds.Sagan sidled up to Viviani after the winning post to congratulate him with a smile and handshake, but was less charitable when asked about the winning move.
“They didn’t do anything the whole day, but yeah, it was a good move,” a stone faced Sagan said with his hands on his hips. Sagan and Viviani are likely to contend for the green sprint points jersey at the upcoming Tour de France. Viviani was radiant after his seventh stage win of the season.
“The winning move came in the lead out,” Viviani said. “We didn’t do much work, we can’t take long-range wins, we count on grabbing the win at the end,” he explained.
Having missed out on a stage win at the Giro d’Italia, where he was stripped of a victory for hindering a rival in a sprint, Viviani says he wants to make up for it at the Tour de France.
“There’ll be some suffering now,” said Viviani in reference to the three mountainous stages and the time-trial which remain on the Swiss tour. Then two weeks training before the Tour, I think I’ll be ready,” he smiled.
Thursday’s sixth stage heads 120.2km east from Einsiedeln crossing the Obersee lake before a challenging 8.5km climb to a summit finish at Flumserberg.
Stage 5
1. Elia Viviani (ITA/DEC) 4:18:26, 2. Peter Sagan (SVK/BOR) same time, 3. Jasper Stuyven (BEL/TRE) s,t. 4. Matteo Trentin (ITA/MIT) s,t. 5. Michael Matthews (AUS/SUN) s,t. 6. Alexander Kristoff (NOR/UAE) s,t. 7. Fabian Lienhard (SWI/SUI) s,t. 8. Stan Dewulf (BEL/LOT) s,t. 9. Reinardt Janse Van Rensburg (RSA/DDT) s,t. 10. Patrick Bevin (NZL/CCC) st
Overall standings
1. Peter Sagan (SVK/BOR) 15:55:48, 2. Michael Matthews (AUS/SUN) at 14sec 3. Kasper Asgreen (DEN/DEC) 21., 4. Rohan Dennis (AUS/BAH) 22., 5. Lawson Craddock (USA/EF1) 27., 6. Matteo Trentin (ITA/MIT) 38., 7. Patrick Konrad (AUT/BOR) 39., 8. Jonathan Castroviejo (ESP/INE) 40., 9. Luis Leon Sanchez (ESP/AST) 40., 10. Winner Anacona (COL/MOV) 40.
FIRST LOOK: BMC ROADMACHINE
Having earned a slew of leader’s jerseys over the years, it’s safe to say that BMC has always been a brand keen on competition. However, in addition to yellow jerseys and Olympic rings, it’s the hearts, minds and pedaling experience of the enthusiast cyclist that BMC has been keen to earn. Over the years the elite brand has pursued the endurance bike segment with extra vigor – the roll-out of the 2020 Roadmachine line is the latest result.
Press release:
What established the endurance segment at BMC was the Gran Fondo model.
With this bike we introduced our Tuned Compliance Concept and Angled Compliance were what really made the granfondo series ride the way it did. We wanted to show our carbon expertise by combining the opposite ends of the spectrum: stiffness and compliance. Headtube-downtube and chainstays stiff and bold, the rest compliant and slim.
But we found that when we started putting wider rims and wider tires on the bike, we started to really lose the connection to the road that we wanted to feel – it was losing it’s high-performance feel.
So we wanted to re-tune the Tuned Compliance Concept to match with the direction of modern-wider rim and tire designs….we wanted to move more towards the middle, wanted to offer more performance.
“We wanted to create an endurance bike that is not only good for riding all types of road surfaces, from smooth tarmac to rougher roads or cobbles, but also one that also shines when roads point uphill.” Mart Otten, Senior Product Manager
INSIDE THE PRO’S CLOSET
By: Bruce Lin
Photos: The Pro’s Closet
Sprinter van backs into The Pro’s Closet’s shipping bay. Each day when it arrives, I can’t help but get that special Christmas morning-like rush of anticipation because the van is usually filled with the most joyous of cargos—dozens of fancy bikes. I stand by the bay doors, coffee in hand, and wait for the goodies to start rolling in.
Some bikes we get even seem to bring the whole building to a standstill. I remember when the ostentatious Colnago C35 Oro came in, it brought employees over in hordes, phones out for photos. For two days after that it felt like that bike dominated my Instagram and Snapchat feeds. That’s just how it goes when you’re in a place where everyone loves bikes so much.
TODAY, SOMETHING NEW
Although it’s often the old, classic bikes that mostly collect a crowd, that’s not always the case. On this particular day I was on extra alert and for good reason—I’d heard a special bike might be showing up. And soon enough, there it was—a bright red Alchemy Atlas, sleek and beautiful, built up with Ultegra Di2 and Enve 3.4 wheels
with a matching finishing kit.
I get that familiar feeling, the one that tugs at you from inside your chest and gut with a deep, machine lust.
I look at my reflection in the paint and listen to the soft ticking of the freehub as I roll the bike along. Within seconds I’m dreaming of riding this bike up one of Colorado’s numerous hors catégorie climbs, flicking effortlessly through the electronically controlled gears.
Over the last few years a lot has changed in my life. There was a time when I was a broke twenty-something and I couldn’t imagine riding, let alone owning a bike of the Alchemy’s caliber. My first real road bike was an old beat-up aluminum rig with Shimano 105 that I bought from The Pro’s Closet. With this bike I learned to clip in, wear bib shorts, and suffer and sweat as I logged thousands of miles along the way. Thanks to that bike I became a fanatic. Then I ended up working for the same company that helped start me down this path. Now I’m in a situation where, every day, a bike like the Atlas rolls past me, and the power of n+1 seriously threatens my financial well-being.
LOOK KEO TDF SPECIAL EDITION PEDALS
Press release:
Look is excited to announce the official pedal of the Tour de France with a new limited edition version of the Keo Blade Carbon Ceramic, which features a titanium axle and special design paying tribute to the race.
It breaks cover ahead of the Criterium du Dauphine, the traditional week-long warm-up race for the French Grand Tour, with key riders set to receive their pedals in the week leading up to the Grand Boucle.
The limited edition pedal is designed around the Keo Blade Carbon Ceramic which launched at Paris-Nice this year, but by incorporating a titanium axle shaves 15 grams off the standard chromoly axle pedal to weigh just 95g.
Meanwhile, the new pedal celebrates the union of two of French cycling’s iconic marques in LOOK and the Tour de France, and the undeniable historical link between the two.
Since LOOK’s beginnings, they have supported champions in the most famous race in pro cycling, and helped to shape some of the most famous moments in the Tour’s history. Look pedals have always been acclaimed by the professional peloton, and in 2019 nine teams will compete in the Tour de France with Look pedals.
Complete with a special yellow Tour de France-inspired design, the Keo Blade Carbon Ceramic Ti TDF is limited to 1,700 units worldwide, and will cost RRP €290.90. A standard Keo Blade Carbon Ceramic Ti model will be available later in the year.
FFWD RELEASES WHITE TEAM EDITION WHEELS
Press release:
The 2019 wheel range is FFWD’s best to date with updated graphics and several key performance enhancements offering truly exceptional wheels at an incredible value.
Now the much anticipated white ‘Team Edition’ color option is in stock and ready for immediate shipment!
SOURCE ENDURANCE CYCLOCROSS CAMP AUGUST 17-18
The 2019 Source Endurance Training Center Cyclocross camp will take place August 17th-18th with cyclocross mentors Master’s Nats podium finisher Steve Stefko and SE coach and longtime cyclocross athlete and enthusiast Kristen Arnold.
Just before the Colorado CX season, leave this camp with the skills and knowledge to have your best CX season yet. We will have morning coffee, a full day of cx riding, and expert instruction. We have barriers, grassy corners, run ups, off camber, SAND, everything you need to learn how to be the best cross racer you can be. Lunch and happy hour is provided after your hard days work each day. Please see the official schedule for details.
Price is $250 for the full camp. or $150 for a single day. Early bird pricing until June 30th. Unlimited SETCR Members save 20%. Current SE athletes, please contact Whitney at [email protected] for the member pricing.
The Details:
Location: Source Endurance Training Center 1833 E Harmony Rd Fort Collins, Colorado 80528 (all the way around back).
- Saturday morning 9-9:30am Free coffee available, camp overview, meet the instructors
- Saturday morning session 9:30-11:45am Training ride (45 mins warm up) Interval hill session How to do over under/threshold training for cx Fundamentals of mounting and dismounting
- Saturday Lunch – Noon
- Saturday afternoon session 12:45pm – 3:00pm Secondary mounting and dismounting session Barriers Cornering Adding in Cornering, short grass corners, barriers and mounting.
- Sunday Morning – Coffee 9:00-9:30am.
- Sunday morning session is 9:30-11:45am Mounting + dismounting advanced Run ups Off camber riding, Sand
- Sunday Lunch – Noon
- Sunday Afternoon 12:45-3:00pm Run ups turns before run ups, off camber riding, Protecting the line, Mock Race
- Wrapping Up 3:15-4:00pm Closure, Happy Hour, sponsored by Source Endurance
LANCE ARMSTRONG TO RIDE GRAN FONDO HINCAPIE
Hincapie Sportswear received confirmation on Monday that cyclist Lance Armstrong will ride in Gran Fondo Hincapie-Boise. Armstrong, a former teammate of George Hincapie’s, partner at NEXT VENTŪRES, founder of WEDŪ, and host of “THEMOVE” and “The Forward” podcasts, will join George Hincapie for the ride on July 14, 2019. He also plans to air “THEMOVE” podcast while there.
“I’m excited to come to the ride,” says Armstrong. “We aired ‘THEMOVE’ at Gran Fondo Hincapie-Fort Worth, and it was a lot of fun to interact with the crowd there.”
“We’re thrilled to have Lance with us for another fondo,” says George Hincapie. “His presence in Fort Worth really helped to take the event up a notch. And everyone had a blast watching the podcast.”
The Boise Gran Fondo will be headquartered at Cecil D. Andrus Park near the Idaho State Capitol building, with the family festival on the lawn after the event. Packet Pickup will occur the day before the ride at the Boise Twilight Criterium. Proceeds for the event will benefit the Idaho Interscholastic Cycling League, which helps to facilitate the development of high school and middle school cycling teams and clubs.
The original Gran Fondo Hincapie, located in Greenville, SC, and now in its seventh year, has topped charts and received stellar reviews, acclaimed for the cycling celebrities in attendance, as well as the careful attention to safety, on-site viewing screens, course and segment timing, live tracking and streaming, live bands at the rest stops, and free family festival.
Website: www.hincapie.com/granfondo
MAMMOTH GRAN FONDO REGISTRATION OPEN NOW
The Mammoth Gran Fondo takes riders along the east side of Yosemite and the High Sierra with incredible views of the Sierra Nevada, Mono Lake, and White Mountains. 75% of the Gran Fondo route is closed to through traffic matching the incredible scentery with the appropriate calmness. Other highlights include: free event photos, all three distances timed, Signature Event socks, 6 Feed Zones with Full SAG/Tech Support, After-Party with Food/Beer/Live Music in the Village at Mammoth!
Website: www.mammothgranfondo.com
2020 DIRTY KANZA REGISTRATION DETAILS
2020, here we come! Mark you calendars for the 15th annual Garmin Dirty Kanza on May 30, 2020. Thank you for making this year’s race one of the best ever.
The random selection process for the 2020 race will open on January 6 through January 19. Selections will then be made on or before January 27.
Is there an awesome event happening closer to you? Send a link to [email protected]
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