Cycling thread

Black Belt Jones said:
Wouldn't surprise me to see Froome getting partially dropped / gapped on 1 or 2 of the mountain stages this year - the Giro / TdF double is a huge ask, but overall his consistency and experience will be too much for the others IMHO.

Saying that, I was just looking at the profile of the time trial penultimate stage and that is one hilly customer (also short-ish at 30K). Very favourable for the less powerful testers like Quintana, Bardet, Yates etc. So that's another thing Froome (and Domoulin) will have to deal with, he can't rely on burying these guys in the TT like he normally would.
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Froome has proven to be great on longer climbs, poor on short ones. Probably why he's never bothered with LBL.
 
Bruce Wayne said:
Incidentally @Black Belt Jones , do you know much about the Specialized Roubaix? I'm doing some riding in Vercors next month and that's the bike the rental shop are giving me. From the name it doesn't sound much like a climbing bike, but I don't really have a clue.
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No mate - I ride road on a track, cross, and TT bike but don't actually own or know anything about pure road stuff. Must say I take a dim view of suspension gimmicks on road bikes, but I'm generally a traditionalist in bike design, I'm sure the overall ride will be nice (if not the absolute best for climbing - it might descend well though).

If I have time this winter I'm going to do some training classes on the local crit track [affectionately dubbed the carbon graveyard!] and then try and do some cat 4/5 racing next year, which will mean getting a road bike. Looks like a lot of of argy-bargy in these crits, though - a lot of blokes banging elbows, so I need to learn the ropes to see if I'd like it [I love the ebb and flow of cross racing but you're not in a group, so sending folk into the bushes is actually very rare].
 
Black Belt Jones said:
No mate - I ride road on a track, cross, and TT bike but don't actually own or know anything about pure road stuff. Must say I take a dim view of suspension gimmicks on road bikes, but I'm generally a traditionalist in bike design, I'm sure the overall ride will be nice (if not the absolute best for climbing - it might descend well though).

If I have time this winter I'm going to do some training classes on the local crit track [affectionately dubbed the carbon graveyard!] and then try and do some cat 4/5 racing next year, which will mean getting a road bike. Looks like a lot of of argy-bargy in these crits, though - a lot of blokes banging elbows, so I need to learn the ropes to see if I'd like it [I love the ebb and flow of cross racing but you're not in a group, so sending folk into the bushes is actually very rare].
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I've done a few crits and they're not really my bag. I'm 58kg so am not really built for it, but also didn't really get into cycling to do laps of a small (and usually featureless) circuit alongside a bunch of blokes who take it and themselves very seriously.
 
All back together, but a big effort from the chase group. Will they pay for that towards the end? Movistar have been sitting pretty as they haven't had to do too much work. Don't think they have any team mates for their 'big three' though, so if one has a problem, what will they do?
 

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