Cycling News & Blog Articles

It has been a special season for all triathletes so far but the stage was set in Hamburg this past weekend.

Due to the lack of a real racing series, the 2020 World Triathlon Series world champions were crowned in a single day event in Hamburg over the sprint distance.
Germans top athlete Laura Lindemann showed an impressive performance and finished in an excellent third position after a tough chase on the run.

Dive into our highlight gallery from Hamburg. All images by Marcel Hilger.

When DTU athletes will line up on home soil this weekend, they will race in their brand new Castelli short distance race suits that were specifically developed to meet the demands of ITU racing.
The weekend in Hamburg features an individual race for men and women on Saturday, plus the mixed relay world championship event on Sunday. It was also agreed to award the individual world championship titles for men and women at Saturday’s race.
The German Triathlon Union will be the first national triathlon federation equipped by Castelli.
We look forward to the weekend and the coming months towards Tokyo.

Check out the Castelli triathlon collection here.

With the Olympic games postponed by one year, it’s all about reorganizing a clear course and timetable towards Tokyo.
There is at least a small chance that athletes will be able to tackle a few races this fall.
The Tokyo race suit is one of the first milestones of this new collaboration. It’s clear that the majority of the preparation is done in training gear. With a strong background in cycling, Castelli leaves nothing to chance when it comes to providing DTU elite athletes with excellent training apparel.
As part of  the new partnership,  German amateur triathletes can also race and train in the official DTU x Castelli uniform from now on.
Check out the new collection: DTU webshop
Find out more about the Castelli triathlon collection here.

Here’s a small insight into the everyday training.
Photography by Marcel Hilger

We are excited to announce our new partnership with inGamba, a California-based touring company that offers unforgettable cycling adventures in Portugal, Italy, Spain, France, and in the USA. They specialize in making your cycling trip the vacation of a lifetime.

The inGamba x Castelli Collection offers the latest pro-developed pieces, each designed to give inGamba fans an edge through superior aerodynamics, cooling, comfort and protection from the elements. Check out the new InGamba Collection.

The new partnership represents a sort of homecoming because we’ve had a close connection to the inGamba founder, João Correia, for a long time — a connection that began even before he raced in our kit with the Cervélo TestTeam in 2010.

Here’s to many more kilometers together!

One of cycling’s biggest luminary, Eddy Merckx, turns 75 today. Gelukkige verjaardag Eddy !!

Merckx turned professional in 1965 with the Solo-Superia team after a successful amateur carrier winning more than 80 victories along with the 1964 World Championships Road race. From there, Merckx would go on to win virtually every major race and Grand Tour event that lay before him.

During his career from 1965 to 1978, Merckx proved to be unbeatable, with no fewer than 11 grand tour overall victories. And, upon his retirement, he had racked up a total of 525 wins – netting 445 wins out of the 1585 races he competed in.

In 1971 Merckx won 45 percent of the races he started. Come up against Merckx during that season and your chances of victory as a rival rider were as good as halved before you’d even begun.

From the classic Austrian ski resort Sölden, one of the toughest cycling races for amateurs starts and ends. We went there together with 4000 other avid cyclists to take on the four mountain passes in South Tyrol.

4000 avid cyclists

A colourful snake

First climb

When you have been riding for a while, the routine of getting dressed is part of the metronomic rhythm of your experience. First, the chamois, the jersey, cap, helmet, gloves, shoes…and now the neck gaitor. Our newest consideration as we don our kit to ride into the hills, onto the gravel, into our community, and out on the open road.

The Gaitor: our protective attempt against the spread of CoVid-19, which has been going on for 3 months. It has been terrifying and lonely… and also considered the uniquely momentous “Great Pause” of our lifetime. A time to reconsider our lives, families, health and livelihoods.

Some of us were asked not to leave our houses for weeks and months, others lost friends and family members. But throughout all of this uncertainty we have been given the opportunity to focus on the things that are clearly the most important in our lives. To determine the people and the things which truly are our sanity makers, the places and environments that act as our sanctuaries.

The Giro d’Italia Virtual, starting this weekend, will give amateurs and stars of the past and present a chance to ride together (virtually) on sections of this year’s Giro route from the comfort of the interactive smart trainers, via GPX files from Garmin Connect uploaded to their bike computers.

The first stage, which can be completed between April 18 and 21, is a 32.1km section of the 2020 Giro d’Italia stage 10 route. From there, riders will take on stages 12, 16, 17, 18, 20, and 21, with the event concluding on May 10. Discover more and sign up!

Castelli will also be actively participating in the worthy fundraising initiative throughout the entire Giro Virtual. As an official supplier of the Giro d’Italia, Castelli will donate 5 euros to the Italian Red Cross for each #Giro102 Race Jersey purchased through the Castelli-cycling.com website.

One more mile. One more minute. One more second. One THOUSAND more drips of sweat.
Done!

During this time, when most of us are staying inside to #rideitout, it’s essential to not only take care of our bikes but our kit as well. The cycling kit is an investment and requires the same amount of care as we give our bikes. Even indoors, we make sure our chain is well lubed, and gears are tuned to maximize performance. Cycling kit can also maximize your performance with its breathable fabrics and comfortable chamois— so we want to take care of these as well.

If you are anything like me, by the end of your Zwift/trainer session, the towel on your stem, the floor under your bike, and YOU are soaked: Chamois. Socks. Baselayer. Shoes. I even looked down yesterday and saw two lines of sweat on either side of my bike coming out of my SHOES!

If you’re just arriving to the world of indoor cycling, it may seem a little daunting: which type of trainer should I buy? Which accessories do I need? How does it all connect? What do I do on Zwift!? If you’re feeling a little overwhelmed, fear not, we’re here to help.

With many excellent Zwift resources on the web, there seems little point reinventing the wheel with another ‘how-to’ guide. So, instead, we’ve collated a list of top-notch articles to help you understand the gear you need, how to get set-up plus some next-level tips to enhance your Zwifting experience!

ZWIFT OFFICIAL
Of course, first port of call should be Zwift’s official getting started guide. Here you’ll find a bunch of articles covering equipment required, how to get set-up and what to do once you’re riding!

ZWIFT INSIDER
ZwiftInsider, authored by Eric Schlange, is a fantastic resource for the novice Zwifter right through to your seasoned ‘Zwift pro’. ZwiftInsider is constantly updated with new articles by Eric plus guest contributors, including getting started hints, course guides, racing tips, equipment tests and… pretty much anything you can think of in the Zwift world!

Here’s a list of ZwiftInsider articles to get you up to speed with minimal fuss:

The 2020 Paris-Roubaix is at best postponed, it will be conspicuous in its absence this weekend. It is an early-season highlight for any fan of cycling – we’re treating CHPT3 followers to exclusive, full extracts from David Millar’s book, “The Racer”. Winner of the Cycling Book of the Year, David writes from the perspective of a professional, preparing for the race and providing an enthralling look inside the crazy race with no details left out.

“It’s one thing to love watching a race, it’s another to love doing it. Paris–Roubaix is an example of this: it’s easy to love as a fan, much harder as a racer. The love hate relationship is real. I’ve started it three times and none of those times ended particularly well – which is another way of saying I didn’t finish.

It’s known as ‘the Hell of the North’, something people often mistake as being attributable to its renowned difficulty and the famous images of exhausted racers looking like they’ve been to hell and back. It actually originates from the 1919 edition, when it was held for the first time since the First World War had ended, and travelled through a devastated northern France – the journalists and riders who took part could only describe what they saw as ‘hell’. Henri Pélissier, speaking of his 1919 victory, said, ‘This wasn’t a race. It was a pilgrimage.’

An early coach of mine used to say: “Fail to plan, is planning to fail.” But how do you plan in a year where literally the wheels came off so bad? March and April are months that every cyclist anticipates dearly. For the pro tour riders, it’s the Classics and for most amateur riders it’s time for training camps, early season races or just the sheer joy of warmer temperatures, longer daylight hours and big rides on the to-do list.

Not this time: most countries are in pandemic lockdown mode. The situation differs from country to country. While some don’t even allow cyclists to ride outside, others still accept individual rider doing their spring training. All races are canceled until the end of June and this makes all kinds of planning very challenging. And this means that your season build needs to be completely redesigned. For the serious bike racer there comes another challenge: how do I keep my body composition (not just weight, but fat percentage as well) in check with a completely changed training regime or how do I adapt my planned diet to these moving targets?

I want to share a few essential points and recommendations on how to adapt your nutrition to this difficult situation and highlight a few points to consider.

Let’s look at eating (off bike, your every day) and fuelling (what you eat in training or post-ride). This time of the year, many cyclists try to lower their body weight towards the desired race weight. This only works with a negative energy balance – i.e. you burn more calories than you eat. This affects both, eating and fuelling. In order to optimize fat oxidation, they cut carbs on the bike and to attain an energy deficiency they reduce their food intake during the day. Both measures should be reconsidered currently since both will compromise your immune system decisively.

But aside from honing our form, what else can we do to enhance our cycling game when in quarantine?

IMPROVE SLEEP HYGIENE
Where long work commutes may have once had us up at the crack of dawn, many of those now working from home have the luxury of an extra hour in bed. And without professional sport on TV at night, there’s a lot less blue light around to disrupt our circadian rhythm. It seems like the perfect time to hone one of the most critical factors in recovery, our sleep hygiene. It’s important because when we sleep better, we also recover faster.

There’s no big mystery around how to improve sleep. For many, it comes down to eliminating distractions and exercising the discipline to follow through with a plan, much like a cycling training program.

Here are several things you can incorporate into your new daily routines:

The pros have taken to Zwift like never before. While their day jobs may be on hold temporarily, they can ill afford to rest up in quarantine like many of us. With cycling fitness, it’s a question of use it or lose it. And in the current climate, Zwift and other online platforms provide the only means by which many can train effectively.

If you’ve been waiting for your opportunity to test your legs against the pros, then you’ve never had a better chance. The cycling season never quite got started, so you may even stand a chance!

Many of our favorite pro riders past and present are on Zwift. And with little in the way of racing or outdoor riding available, it’s hard to keep them off the platform. Keep an eye on their twitter accounts for when they’ll be riding.