The Koppenberg.
Serse, Mama, Fausto. They will fucking well EAT you.
T de B
This just in….
The annual APCC international expedition is GO. We shall be bringing bikes, beer, and plenty o’swearing across the water from our sceptred isle, towards the legendary mountains where the HARD MEN make their mark.
And what name do we have for this event, custom made to separate the men from the boys, the wheat from the chaff, the awesome from the merely fabulous…..US from THE NORMALS?
The Ronde Van Awesome?
The Giro de Fuckyeah?
Not us, oh no. This time we’re going for the big one.
The Tourmalet, where Lapize accused Desgranges and the rest of being “assassins!”.
We hear the Tourmalet is a touch difficult. In fact our own Jamie C declared that after the Tourmalet, riding up the Ventoux was in fact a “piece of piss”.
With this sage advice, we’re working on the theory of nominative determinism, because we’re clever like that, planning ahead, leaving nothing to chance. That’s why this one has a simple name, designed to remind us at every push of the pedals that we’re in the presence of a hard, HARD mountain.
That’s why this one is called…..The Tour de Bastard.
Look Mum No Hands is a fine establishment in London’s fashionable London. I’d recommend it, a great place to watch the cycling, and the cyclists, have a few glasses of awesomebrau and argue about the correct pronunciation of C*ntador (it’s actually pronounced “wanker”. Fact.), it’s kind of the unofficial House of Awesome, or as we spell it, Haus von Awesome (with an umlaut over the o which I couldn’t find).
What makes it really special though, is their choice of models for the homepage. Associate member Joel and founding member, me, have been selected as the ultimate representation of all things that make cycling and booze a wonderful thing. Despite the fact that the fuckers never asked me, despite the fact that I haven’t received a penny in lucrative image rights, and despite the fact that the free beer counter remains sadly stuck at zero, I will begrudgingly accept the honour they have bestowed upon me, for the glory of the APCC.
Chapeau, Look Mum!
Team leader.
(Source: fotto-graphy, via fixieporn)
Amazing. Theme from Awesome. Every day I’m riding the Tour de Fuck You.
Some tasty food!
Le Tour de France: 3 Weeks in 3 Minutes
Tour de France 2011 | 3 Weeks in 3 Minutes from cycling tips on Vimeo.
3000 images of my trip to the the 2011 Tour de France.
Music by Michael Montes: Anticyclones: Buy on iTunes here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-earlier-time-ep/id451301838
Many of these photos contributed by Veeral Patel: http://blog.onev.com.au/
Martin’s Etape……
It has been nearly a month now since that day in southeast France so I thought I’d best fill out a wee report as APCC’s newest member. I’m not really one for doing long, flowery essays so my report will be a bit different from the last three. Suffice to say, I agree with most of the sentiments and observations of Messrs Hancock, Granados and Black (Snr).
Since I’m new to cycling as a sport I thought I’d write about some of the things I learned on my Etape:
1- No matter how much training you have done, it is unlikely that you have done enough. I only bought my bike (Revolution Continental Sport 2010- Edinburgh Bicycle Coop) in the last week of the January sales, only for it to gather dust for a few weeks before its first outing. Over the next 5 months I spent 2 months offshore; the weather in Edinburgh was rarely nicer than rubbish; and finally, weekends 4, 3 and 2 before L’Etape were written off by Stag Dos in Latvia, weddings in Poland and days at the races. Next year training will be taken much more seriously!
2- Always carry a chain tool! I had never carried one before and hadn’t planned to because it had never crossed my mind that I might have chain issues whilst cycling. Carrying one is probably the best piece of advice my brother has given me because I would never have finished the stage otherwise- my chain broke twice! The first time was going into the 90 degree left hand turn right at the foot of the Telegraphe, leaving me stranded in the middle of the road on the exit of the corner with thousands of riders coming towards me unsighted. My second incident was on the last 5km of the descent towards the flat road into Bourg D’Oisans- I thought it had just come off the big ring so I saw no problem in freewheeling to the bottom rather than stopping. Once I stopped at the right hand turn at the bottom I discovered that one of the links had completely snapped. I spent about 15 minutes with tired, shaky hands trying to sort it (none of the 10 firemen 5 feet away cared to offer any help).
3- Fuel is key. Cooking meals for 4 on a camp stove doesn’t really lend to fuelling up greatly for an endurance event. Neither does an unhelpful restauranteur. The night before the race we went to a restaurant in Modane and asked for a couple of pasta dishes only to be told that they had no pasta at all and all pasta dishes were off the menu. Halfway through our chicken burgers we looked up to see that EVERY customer that came in after us was digging into massive bowls of pasta and chips! We were not impressed. Another key aspect of keeping on cycling in 41 degree heat is drinking a lot of water, something I’m normally very good at. Usually in a 1 hour spinning class I will get through 2L of water. However, having only 2x750ml bottles with me I ended up running out of water 5km from the top of the Galibier and then again about 3km from the top of the Alpe. I think next year I will take 3.
4- When I used to swim I was able to keep going and going and going. Over the last few years I seemed to have lost that mental ability. Turns out I haven’t.
A little aside:
Went to spinning the other day, which was the first bit of exercise I had done since cycling up Alpe D’Huez. It was a new instructor who uses projected videos as part of his class. We were racing up Alpe D’Huez! Very surreal. Oh, the memories…”I stopped there for a rest”, “I ran out of water there”, “I stopped for a rest there”, “I though I was near the top there…but wasn’t”. Needless to say we went up it a lot faster than I did last month.
I’ll be back!
From ilikebike
Fausto Coppi and Biagio Cavanna
(Source: suzs, via titsandtires)
