Welcome to the weekly newsletter! Glad to have you here and I hope you’ll have an amazing week ahead. I wish you all the best; sunshine on your rides, tailwind, great legs and a wonderful coffee stop. Let’s dive straight in to what stroke me this week.
Cycling Races
Giro d’Italia
Without a doubt you are being overloaded with Giro D’Italia articles. Personally the source I like the most for articles around the most prominent stage rage of Italy is the SubStack called derailleur. It goes without saying the derailleur is the mechanism that enables you to shift gears. Generally there is a front and a rear derailleur, however with the recent trend of one-by and developments like Classified, soon there might only be a rear derailleur. That being said, let’s give you one “blast of the past” fact to tell to your friends once the bars open again.
With Remco Evenepoel doing well in the Giro, we Belgians start to dream about the good old days. We now often refer to Johan De Munck, who was the last Belgian winner of the Giro in 1978. He did so in the famous Bianchi-FAEMA team, I guess everyone remembers the “celeste” jerseys, with the white rectangle and black “FAEMA” text. Interestingly enough, the year before (in 1977) another Belgian won the Giro. His name, Michel Pollentier and you can see him on the picture below. Maybe he even looks a bit like Remco?
Anyways, physical appearance apart, the resemblance continues as both riders started their Giro as potential “meesterknecht” or “schaduwkopman”. Forgive me the Dutch words but there is not an ideal translation, let’s say “second-in-line”. Michel in the end won the Giro as their captain Freddy Maertens quite literally fell out. It was the chance for Michel to ride for himself and he did so with success.
Whether Remco really started as the “second-in-line” or if Quick-Step already decided from the beginning that he would be their leader, that is something we will never know. By all means the Giro is just underway, if it was the Tour, we would say that “Paris is still far away”. However the early signs of the young Belgian have been good.
Three years ago, in 2018 I actually had the honour to welcome Remco in our lab. It was his famous year where he won the Junior Road and Time Trial races in the Belgian, European and World Championship. It was really interesting to study his movement on the bike and to try and discover what made him so special.
I still remember Remco as one of those athletes that really listens to people in research, people who try to help him. You know that feeling when someone actually listens so actively that they barely say anything? That was working with Remco, he is hyper focussed and wants to do things right. I think this professional attitude is really gonna help him in his career as well.
The final thing I always tell people about Remco is his dedication to Time Trials. I was very impressed when showing him the Bioracer Aero system. Not only was it nice to see how he interacts with new technology but also how he gets into his TT position. The first time we saw Remco we gave him some advice on how to optimise his aerodynamics further. You can see it in this video for example. The next time when he came to us and we asked “get into your TT position”, he was like a Transformers. Elbows tucked in, hands on top of each other, head done, ready for action!
Basically when you want to optimise your position it’s wise to do a similar movement to the butterfly stroke in swimming. You put your arms backwards, then over your heads and you bring your elbows towards each other. This helps you to optimise your frontal area and still allows you to breathe well, as your chest is not as compressed.
Cycling Training
Finally an article that says quite nicely what I have been saying about Bike Fitting for a long time. Bicycling.com talks about the 10 myths of Bike Fitting. I will not go through all of the 10 tips as you can read them in the link, for me it comes down to one story I always tell people and then some tips.
I have told this story to many different people on many different occasions already and the ones who read this and know me already heard this before. But the thing with bike fitting is, there is no regulation whatsoever. So literally anyone who is reading this right now, could print a sign that says “Bike Fitter” and put in on their doorstep. And this very thing would make them a Bike Fitter. No education, no webinars, no books, no knowledge, nothing, the only thing you need seemingly is a sign on your doorstep and somewhat decent marketing. And that will make you a bike fitter. So please be careful when choosing where to get your bike fit. Let me give you some tips around bike fitting:
A bike fit is not something static, it evolves over time. Your ideal position today is not necessarily your ideal position in a year, even if your setup is exactly the same.
Be careful when bike fitters advice you changes in your setup. Not saying that every bike fitter is like this, but some really try to profit from the “upsell” principle. Where they sell you the bike fit and try to sell you more (like a new saddle, handlebars, cleats, pedals, …)
When you change something about your setup (bike, shoes, cleat system, saddle, …) I always advice a refit. These things simply have too big of an influence on your ideal position.
If you change bike, be careful about the exact geometry, not every road bike is the same. It could be impossible to get to your ideal position if you choose the wrong frame size or simply a bike that doesn’t fit you. I know an “aero” bike looks cool, but if you have little to no flexibility it might not allow you to ride in a comfortable position.
Leisure and Business news
In the beginning of the week, Canyon started teasing us with this message on their website. Unleashing what seemed like a new gravel bike. I got rather excited as my weapon of choice is the Canyon Grail, so I was really hoping for an update of the Grail. Hoping for another crazy development like the hover bar setup on my Grail. However, now we know it is not an update for the Grail. Canyon released an all new bike called the `Grizl`. So the brand doesn’t have one line of gravel bikes but two? Well yes and at the same time no.
The Grizl is really an adventure bike, made for when the terrain gets rougher. Although it is a carbon bike, the base model weighs in at almost 10kg. From there until the top line model you can shed off a good 1.1kg which makes the top line model come in at 8.7kg. You will however have to stretch your wallet a bit further though. That being said, the base line model is really reasonably priced, for 2000 EUR you get full carbon bike with the gravel specific Shimano GRX400 groupset.
So the Grail and Grizl are definitely not identical and I can see a world where both bikes can coexist. It just will depend on your kind of riding, do you want to ride really rough terrain, go for the Grizl. If you are more speed orientated and you are just a fan of eating cobblestones for breakfast or riding in the woods, you will get there quite a bit quicker on a Grail.
By the way, did you know how the Grail got its name? The name was invented by Rhys Howell and to quote him when I asked him about the name “grail”.
I did indeed give the Grail its name. It’s actually a portmanteau of ‘gravel’ and ‘trail’. But also Monty Python is very popular in Germany, so I thought the product managers might like it - and it turns out they did.
Rhys Howell, Team Manager Canyon Esports Team
BONKERS
For this week, let’s go BONKERS ourselves, click on the button below and let me know a caption for this picture, it looks like Remco is not too happy about someone else holding his bike.
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