Monday, March 21, 2011
Large pro teams in UK cycle races...
Reading reports and results from UK cycle races over the weekend. Team Raleigh full 8 riders in Evesham Vale and finish 1-2-3-4 http://www.britishcycling.org.uk/road/article/20110321-Report--Evesham-Vale-RR-0 and Motorpoint finish 1-2-3-4-5 in the Peter Young memorial http://www.britishcycling.org.uk/events/details/38022/Hounslow-Peter-Young-Memorial-Road-Race. While both of these are decent National B events, they are still essentially grass roots races albeit for the slightly better or more ambitious rider. While such complete domination by the pros is impressive I can't be the only one who thinks this is little sad. If there's no big races on over a weekend then of course pros should be doing Nat B races - and its one of attractions of cycling that anyone can race against much better riders and that a guy like me has 'raced' against Cavendish, Backstedt, Elliot and Olympic gold medallists etc etc over the years - but do they really need to put whole team in just one race? Four Raleighs and four Motorpoint in each race would have surely been much better. A smaller team like Twenty3c-Orbea was happy enough to sensibly split their riders between the Peter Young and the Wally Gimber road races.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Tenerife cycling
Tenerife
This year the unofficial London Dynamo training camp went to Tenerife and I thought I would do a short write-up that maybe helpful for anyone who’s thinking of heading there for cycling training.
We flew out on a Monarch scheduled flight from Gatwick. Not particularly cheap once pay the sports equipment charges, but was all fine with 13 bikes so can’t complain. We stayed in Médano a small town only a few km from the airport so only short journey which was nice after 4 hour flight (Tenerife is fair bit further flight than south of Spain).
Médano had various advantage and disadvantages as a cycling base in Tenerife. It is a nice relaxed town which has everything need for a cycling trip (and also happens to have decent bike rental shop just in case – and came in handy for one of our group). It was nice to come back from rides and look out from terraces to the beach and watch all the windsurfers, and couple of days also went for a swim in the sea.
The main disadvantage with Medano was the relatively limited choice of routes from Medano. The first day we headed out west along the coast and it is quite messy navigating way through Playa de las Américas and getting to the TF-47 coast road. However several of us also came out this way on the penultimate day and plodding through the suburban sprawl not too bad once know way and not stopping at junctions needing to check directions. The other two main options from Medano are north towards Vilaflor and Teide, or along the inland road up the east coast through Arico/Fasnia.
Before arriving in Tenerife we were expecting we head up Teide at least once and possible twice. In the end ending up doing Teide four times, and another two days going to Vilaflor (1400m), and only one day that completely avoided Teide/Vilaflor. We were pretty lucky with the weather. The first day was around 27 deg C and sunny, and it was probably still around 18-19 deg C up at 2,300m altitude. This lulled us into a little complacency. On fifth day leaving Medano it was about 19 deg C sun/cloud and took thin arm warmers and a gilet. At Vilaflor cold misty cloud rolled in and temperature plunged to an estimated 5 deg C. It was relatively okay whilst climbing up from Vilaflor, but the descent was grim. Spent most of it braking and pedalling hard at same time trying to keep slightly warmer. Towards Vilaflor saw an Astana pro coming up in full legwarmers and balaclava and he must been surprised to see these frozen muppets descending in shorts. But this day aside we had good weather, but if weather less favourable then certainly would not want to go up Teide four times in a week and that would limit the riding somewhat.
In Tenerife generally the vast majority of the roads are either up or down, and that means options for easy rides are quite limited. And that also means more difficult to accommodate group riding with differing abilities or aims for the week, and meant fair bit of week was riding in sub-groups rather than everyone together.
Tenerife is very windy, however it only seemed to be windy at low altitude and as soon as headed into the hills the wind was rarely very noticeable. The only times wind was significant was the 5km coast road from Medano to El Abrigo, which meant a lazy 50+ km/h start to the day and/or 25 km/h grovel finish to the day. And the descents home from San Miguel or Grandilla (especially Grandilla) when it would be horrible blustery strong cross wind, while descending exposed bumpy roads with lots of traffic zooming past – I would definitely preferred not to have my deep section wheels on (currently only have Cosmic SLR race wheels or heavy Aksium training wheels).
On subject of traffic Tenerife drivers are impatient and quite aggressive (read somewhere that they are polite and considerate to cyclists – nope). They will overtake a group of cyclists immediately pretty much no matter what. Most of time its relatively okay as roads wide enough for cars to squeeze by cyclists two-a-breast but one guy nearly got taken out as he moved left a little approaching a sharp right hand bend only almost into path of guy overtaking just 10-20 metres before the bend.
Will not describe every ride we did but just to mention few comments/highlights:
- climbing Teide from the east is the least interesting direction, long stretches of bland straight road, and the section of road 1km before the TF-38/TF-21 junction is a total mess and unpleasant to ride over. The descent down to Vilaflor is quite nice though, with sweeping bends and gets little steeper and faster as approach Vilaflor (in general none of descents in Tenerife are super fast compare to Alps – lots of 60-70km/h rather than 70-80+km/h)
- the climb direct from San Miguel to Vilaflor on an unclassified road is nice, no traffic and much steeper (especially last 300m) than all other climbs to Vilaflor
- the climb up Teido from Arafo is really nice but continues climbing much more from the TF-523/TF-24 junction that you expect, and its quite a long way, rolling up and down, across the Teide plateau (scenary is stunning)
- the climb from Masca (northwest of Santiago del Teide) is brutal (4km at 11% with lots of 15-16% on very poor road surface) but is great scenary (both spectacular and quite different to rest of the island)
Staying so close the airport meant we did not bother with hire cars but would have been useful for a couple of days to be able to have a bit more variety of routes. That said depends how much bothered about doing some roads a few times in a week – sometimes doing the same road with nice scenery in warm sunshine in a week away from work is a high class problem really.
Overall I liked Tenerife a lot, although probably would not go back there again for a training camp mainly because just too climbing orientated, and somewhere like Callosa (near Calpe) was better training camp riding (although weather in south east Spain when we were in Tenerife was really bad).
This year the unofficial London Dynamo training camp went to Tenerife and I thought I would do a short write-up that maybe helpful for anyone who’s thinking of heading there for cycling training.
We flew out on a Monarch scheduled flight from Gatwick. Not particularly cheap once pay the sports equipment charges, but was all fine with 13 bikes so can’t complain. We stayed in Médano a small town only a few km from the airport so only short journey which was nice after 4 hour flight (Tenerife is fair bit further flight than south of Spain).
Médano had various advantage and disadvantages as a cycling base in Tenerife. It is a nice relaxed town which has everything need for a cycling trip (and also happens to have decent bike rental shop just in case – and came in handy for one of our group). It was nice to come back from rides and look out from terraces to the beach and watch all the windsurfers, and couple of days also went for a swim in the sea.
The main disadvantage with Medano was the relatively limited choice of routes from Medano. The first day we headed out west along the coast and it is quite messy navigating way through Playa de las Américas and getting to the TF-47 coast road. However several of us also came out this way on the penultimate day and plodding through the suburban sprawl not too bad once know way and not stopping at junctions needing to check directions. The other two main options from Medano are north towards Vilaflor and Teide, or along the inland road up the east coast through Arico/Fasnia.
Before arriving in Tenerife we were expecting we head up Teide at least once and possible twice. In the end ending up doing Teide four times, and another two days going to Vilaflor (1400m), and only one day that completely avoided Teide/Vilaflor. We were pretty lucky with the weather. The first day was around 27 deg C and sunny, and it was probably still around 18-19 deg C up at 2,300m altitude. This lulled us into a little complacency. On fifth day leaving Medano it was about 19 deg C sun/cloud and took thin arm warmers and a gilet. At Vilaflor cold misty cloud rolled in and temperature plunged to an estimated 5 deg C. It was relatively okay whilst climbing up from Vilaflor, but the descent was grim. Spent most of it braking and pedalling hard at same time trying to keep slightly warmer. Towards Vilaflor saw an Astana pro coming up in full legwarmers and balaclava and he must been surprised to see these frozen muppets descending in shorts. But this day aside we had good weather, but if weather less favourable then certainly would not want to go up Teide four times in a week and that would limit the riding somewhat.
In Tenerife generally the vast majority of the roads are either up or down, and that means options for easy rides are quite limited. And that also means more difficult to accommodate group riding with differing abilities or aims for the week, and meant fair bit of week was riding in sub-groups rather than everyone together.
Tenerife is very windy, however it only seemed to be windy at low altitude and as soon as headed into the hills the wind was rarely very noticeable. The only times wind was significant was the 5km coast road from Medano to El Abrigo, which meant a lazy 50+ km/h start to the day and/or 25 km/h grovel finish to the day. And the descents home from San Miguel or Grandilla (especially Grandilla) when it would be horrible blustery strong cross wind, while descending exposed bumpy roads with lots of traffic zooming past – I would definitely preferred not to have my deep section wheels on (currently only have Cosmic SLR race wheels or heavy Aksium training wheels).
On subject of traffic Tenerife drivers are impatient and quite aggressive (read somewhere that they are polite and considerate to cyclists – nope). They will overtake a group of cyclists immediately pretty much no matter what. Most of time its relatively okay as roads wide enough for cars to squeeze by cyclists two-a-breast but one guy nearly got taken out as he moved left a little approaching a sharp right hand bend only almost into path of guy overtaking just 10-20 metres before the bend.
Will not describe every ride we did but just to mention few comments/highlights:
- climbing Teide from the east is the least interesting direction, long stretches of bland straight road, and the section of road 1km before the TF-38/TF-21 junction is a total mess and unpleasant to ride over. The descent down to Vilaflor is quite nice though, with sweeping bends and gets little steeper and faster as approach Vilaflor (in general none of descents in Tenerife are super fast compare to Alps – lots of 60-70km/h rather than 70-80+km/h)
- the climb direct from San Miguel to Vilaflor on an unclassified road is nice, no traffic and much steeper (especially last 300m) than all other climbs to Vilaflor
- the climb up Teido from Arafo is really nice but continues climbing much more from the TF-523/TF-24 junction that you expect, and its quite a long way, rolling up and down, across the Teide plateau (scenary is stunning)
- the climb from Masca (northwest of Santiago del Teide) is brutal (4km at 11% with lots of 15-16% on very poor road surface) but is great scenary (both spectacular and quite different to rest of the island)
Staying so close the airport meant we did not bother with hire cars but would have been useful for a couple of days to be able to have a bit more variety of routes. That said depends how much bothered about doing some roads a few times in a week – sometimes doing the same road with nice scenery in warm sunshine in a week away from work is a high class problem really.
Overall I liked Tenerife a lot, although probably would not go back there again for a training camp mainly because just too climbing orientated, and somewhere like Callosa (near Calpe) was better training camp riding (although weather in south east Spain when we were in Tenerife was really bad).
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