Blogs
Band of Brothers
by Ben Greenwood | 26/07/10
Briggs, Craven, Cronshaw, Dempster, Downing, Greenwood, House, Lapthorne, Newton, Southam, Locke, Windsor…
12 names; 12 lives; 12 personalities; all brought together for a common goal. But what makes these riders come together as a team, and more importantly, what drives them apart?
Old flames
by Tom Southam | 21/07/10
I was reunited with an old friend the other day. I’d last seen my race bike when she was swept away from me and put up on the roof of the team car a good few months ago while I gulped down big hazy lung full’s of painkilling gases. I’m pretty sure I heard her say at the time, not to bother calling until I had sorted myself out, and I knew how to look after her properly.
Domestique
by Ben Greenwood | 21/07/10
Ben Greenwood gives a glimpse into the unseen and unglamorous world of the Team domestique and makes it easy to see why the Team’s success wouldn’t be possible without the support of riders like him.
Too easy
by Tom Southam | 08/07/10
Tom Southam finds himself on the other side of the crash barriers and gives a frustrated perspective on spectating from a bike racer’s point of view.
I heart NYC
by Tom Southam | 04/05/10
“So do you like it?” This must have been a rhetorical question, asked as it was by a man who could clearly see that my mind was in a diving pool of joy and the smile on my perennially unshaven face must also have been a large clue as to my state of mind on my second night in New York.
New Amsterdam - so good, they named it twice
by Tom Southam | 04/05/10
This came to me from a mate of John’s, Neil Storey, former press officer at Island Records and our aide celebre in NYC over the Battenkill weekend.
Rules..? There are no rules – just a few guidelines… So, tipping the Trilby in a chapeau sort of manner, here is a suggested companion CD to Tom – yes, I shave my legs more often than my face – Southam’s original compilation.
A Knife, a Fork, a Bottle, and a Cork
by Tom Southam | 12/04/10
It has taken a while, about 10 years I think, but finally I have got myself onto a racing trip that will take me somewhere I’ve wanted to go for quite a while. New York has always loomed large on my horizon. As a music fan, should I need to face my Mecca and pray at any stage then it would have to be the five boroughs I turned to.
The Music Follows Me
by Tom Southam | 19/03/10
Someone should ban iphones, someone should switch off my wireless internet; someone really should take responsibility for my itunes account and put some sort of limit on it. I mean it’s either all that or I could just show some self-restraint when I have 30 or 40 seconds to spare in my day.
Time for the real racing to begin
by Zak Dempster | 12/03/10
All the work is done, the measurement of the proverbial hath been recorded during the training camp, and now it’s time for the real racing to begin.
We train in Spain, mainly in the rain
by Paul Rowlands | 16/02/10
Day one of the second Rapha Condor Sharp training camp and words cannot convey just how wet it is. There’s a band of pretty filthy weather sitting across most of this part of southern Europe and we hear from Chris Newton that it’s affecting the GB team in Mallorca as much as it is us, so at least we’re not alone!
No Hablas Espangnol
by Tom Southam | 11/02/10
My Spanish is appalling. I find it so rude and embarrassing to be in a country and not have much of a grasp on their language. What’s so frustrating is that I really should know better, and I almost do.
Team Training Camp 2010 - Malaga pt.4
by Paul Rowlands | 08/02/10
Today I rode with some of the team into the hills, out from our base near Malaga. The plan had been to ride for an hour then sling the bike onto the team car to watch from a comfier seat and catch up with John Herety on how the week had gone. That little plan went somewhat awry when the team car got caught in traffic and lost us for a couple of hours, leaving me with a perfect opportunity to compare myself against the professionals.
Team Training Camp 2010 - Malaga pt.3
by Paul Rowlands | 04/02/10
The thing about training camps is, nothing very different happens from day to day. You’ve seen the bikes, seen the kit, seen the riders. The riders have ridden the bikes and worn the kit, the mechanics have cleaned the bikes and I, in turn, have written, photographed and filmed it for your consumption.
Team Training Camp 2010 - Malaga pt.2
by Paul Rowlands | 03/02/10
It was the first day of full training on the road today and the only time we’ll have all 12 riders together this week. We took the opportunity to get some good pictures with Gerard Brown joining us in the team car to shoot a few pics for the people back at Condor and, if we’re very nice to him, a few for the team website too!
Team Training Camp 2010 - Malaga
by Paul Rowlands | 02/02/10
Today was the first full day at the Rapha Condor Sharp 2010 training camp at Sol Andalusi in Malaga. As is normal at a camp like this the first day was one of preparation as the riders arrived over the course of the day and trips to the airport and supermarket took precedence over getting the miles in on the bikes.
Zak Dempster's New Season
by Zak Dempster | 04/01/10
Here we all sit in anticipation of a new season. For me it signals a start with a new team which I couldn’t be happier about. My experiences of 2009, albeit different, weren’t the most rewarding of my career thus far. The positive thing is I came through still on my bike, pedalling forward. I feel very glad that John [Herety] has faith enough in my ability to bring me onto the Rapha Condor Sharp roster – faith I intend on repaying.
Down Under Tunes
by Tom Southam | 27/11/09
This, they say, is the time of year when seasons are won and lost. The really motivated, determined, dedicated riders (who will all be pulling the pin on their seasons in early May), are out already smashing themselves into pieces. Those of us who have a long season planned are carefully guarding our motivational matches, saving them instead for lighting the big victory cigars a lot further down the track. With the idea of getting back on the bike but not overdoing it, I’ve put together a few tunes to make the off-season hours last as long as possible.
Blessed are the happy go-lucky boys and girls
by Tom Southam | 27/10/09
The sun rose in the UK, at about the same time it had snuck around the corner and disappeared on Australia and simultaneously on my racing season. I’m looking at an unprecedented four whole weeks off the bike this year. The longest I have managed before this was a brief and mostly symbolic three weeks in 2002. It takes serious commitment to go training everyday when you are a pro bike rider, it takes a lot more not to ride your bike at all when you are a pro bike rider.
ToB stage 5
by Paul Rowlands | 17/09/09
When I wrote about the music I’d be listening to on the race before the start I mentioned Hot Chip’s tune, Over and Over. So far it’s proved to be an apt description of the race to date. Every day the possibility that something would happen, some defining moment of the race, but every day the pattern is (on the whole) repeated. More often than not, with a certain Norwegian cyclist on the top step of the podium.
Half Time
by Paul Rowlands | 16/09/09
I write this from the hotel, it’s 7.47 and the procession of bags and bodies has begun to move around the hotel in preparation for the transfer to the start of stage 5. We’re officially over half way and I’d love to say all downhill from here. In actual fact it’s the harder phase of the race, certainly for the next three days anyway.
Idolization
by Ben Greenwood | 15/09/09
The Tour of Britian is the zenith of the season, for riders like us it’s our big stage, our Wembley, our Lords. The Tour de France may be the pinnacle of pro cycling, but for every pro rider in a small team, it’s their national tour that catches the imagination. The chance to race on roads you know, in front of people who know you. For 8 days you are a star who people come to see. Your sitting room might not smell of mahogany, you might not own a number of leather bound books, but for a week you’re quite a big thing.
ToB stage 1: And then it changes
by Paul Rowlands | 13/09/09
Funny how things change overnight, the night before the race felt tense, not just our guys, it’s something across the whole hotel. Lots of people, all waiting.
Tour Tunes: The inside outsiders' view
by Paul Rowlands | 10/09/09
As a veteran of three Tours of Britain, none of them in the saddle but with plenty of hours at the wheel, I’ve had more opportunity than most to consider what makes good road music for the preservation of sanity, displacement of anger or just the plain need to take the mind somewhere else for a moment.
Happy Eater
by Tom Southam | 08/09/09
Tom Southam has a favourite place where he likes to eat while on the road.
Every morning in Africa
by Ben Greenwood | 06/09/09
Motivation is more like the British weather, unpredictable, changeable, and not always around on the days when it’s meant to be. When the sun is shining and the legs are good it’s easy to put in the big attack in the race or do the extra hour in training, but these aren’t the days when a rider really wins a race.
Luck
by Ben Greenwood | 01/09/09
A professional cyclist spends hours training, preparing, eating well and resting properly, all in order to achieve their goal and targets. We like to believe that we’re in control of our own destiny, that it’s us who decides who wins and loses. The best rider always wins right?
Autumn Playlist
by Tom Southam | 28/08/09
I think summer ended today. It’s a funny thing but I get a feeling once a year when I realise summer is slipping away and with it pretty is going another racing season. It’s not a date or time thing, it’s not a temperature thing or a daylight thing. It’s just a change I think, in myself, in direction, in what I am doing. Training in autumn is its own unique challenge and one has to be ready for it.
Bretagne
by Tom Southam | 17/08/09
Looking about the bunch I saw a lot of very young faces and undeveloped legs, and didn’t they just race like it too. Interestingly enough, in the Second World War the optimum age for a P51 Mustang pilot was 21 and under (thanks Dad). Any older and this thing called a brain would start to work out that the high risk and high speeds required to go off dog-fighting Mitsubishi Zero’s were a little silly and the will to survive would instead take over.
Cycling Etiquette
by Simon Richardson | 11/08/09
…he broke unwritten rule number 153.1: thou shall not sit on for 2/3rds of the race claiming you are there for training and then attack.
A Soigneur's Story
by Martyn Frank | 30/07/09
Back in January when I was the soigneur for the team’s first training camp in Malaga, I was speaking with my D.S. John (Herety) to ask which races I should do. The Tours of Ireland and Britain were first on the list and then something a bit different, John guided me to the Tour of Qinghai Lake.
Trip to the Moon
by Tom Southam | 30/07/09
You can’t talk Qinghai without talking altitude, altitude, altitude. Let me just sum up for anyone who hasn’t ever exercised at altitude; reducing the oxygen pressure to 66% of that of sea level is like someone taking away all of your heart rate zones between zone 2 and zone 7.
Monkey Doesn’t Know East From West
by Tom Southam | 11/07/09
So here is my loose approach to what will be my first foray into China, and what I imagine my headphones will be whispering into my ears pre and post stage somewhere near Tibet:
Mondialisation
by Tom Southam | 10/07/09
But then when after a good mate of mine rang me from the team car telling me how good Lance’s iPod selection looked I have to confess that I just had to know.
Canada Clean
by Tom Southam | 05/06/09
During my research for a musical accompaniment to our upcoming racing trip to Canada, I found that a lot of good and some almost forgivable badness have come out of the Canadian music scene.
Ras Playlist
by John Herety | 14/05/09
Now on a more serious note, as you may of gathered Tom Southam likes his music, as do I, and over the years we have shared this love affair to what I thought was mutual gain, however the relationship is now over.
Couch Grooves
by Tom Southam | 08/05/09
The hardest part of being a Pro Cyclist in the UK is not the racing at all, it’s all the time you have to spend not racing that can be challenging.
Confidence
by Matt Cronshaw | 01/05/09
I went the whole ride without anyone saying a single word about it and I thought that the jokes were over, alas later that evening after dinner, I had a visit from Dr Southam.
Bad luck in the East Mids
by Tom Southam | 28/04/09
…in terms of races it’s more like Brittany’s Tro Bro Leon than anything else. Through gateways, onto farm tracks, lefts, rights, deceptively difficult drags, down lanes, through hamlets and villages, always out of sight never out of mind. And every now and again seeing a bunch of annoyed dropped riders stopped at a junction looking perplexed and furious that the complex maze of lanes and their distance behind the front has literally stopped them in their tracks as we reuse the same roads in another direction.
Caps
by Tom Southam | 26/04/09
The cycling cap needs to be actually ridden in, with purpose, to be kept alive. Despite looking so cool, it wasn’t just designed for posing. The cycling cap needs to be worn backwards at speed, with the peak turned up. Think back through the depths of your cycling memory, riders always looked so much faster with a backwards cap, it was a symbol of intent to speed. You can’t get much more aero and you could never ever look cooler than racing in towards a race finish in a backwards cap.
Postcards from Normandy
by Tom Southam | 01/04/09
Face covered in dirt, jersey and legs plastered with layers of mud, obligatory can of coke in hand and an expression that probably says it all.
Seven days ago…
by Simon Richardson | 20/03/09
Seven days ago it was pushing 40 degrees, even at night, and as I lay there at one o’clock in the morning bathed in sweat and with one hand permanently fixed to a luke warm bidon, I swore to myself that I would never complain about the rain and cold again.
Giro del Capo
by Tom Southam | 11/03/09
I don’t think I have ever raced such a hot day in all my life. Seconds after crossing the line and putting up an exhausted sprint to come in 5th on the second day of the Giro del Capo, I wanted to puke, drink, get out of the sun, go straight to sleep, and more than anything just want to feel like there is actually some air to breathe.
This is Africa
by Tom Southam | 09/03/09
The wind means it’s a constant battle for echelons and the South African pro teams are all impressively well organised when it comes to riding as a unit all day long. This combined with heat means that it is mentally exhausting to try to stay in contention at the front all day and not get caught out.
57 Channels an' nothin' on
by Tom Southam | 16/02/09
I did something I haven’t done for a long time yesterday and skived a day off work. I just looked once out the window, it wasn’t bad weather, I looked again and I had a little notion inside that just said, “Don’t go out. Stay in. Sit on the couch. Drink more coffee. Spend two hours on Wikipedia. Watch more T.V.”
In Europe…
by Tom Southam | 10/02/09
The sun don't shine on a sleeping dog’s ass
by Tom Southam | 09/02/09
Training camps are like war, flanked by boredom on one side and time on the other.
The Open Aussie Champs 2009
by Tom Southam | 07/02/09
The Australian Road Race Championships, January 2009.
One for all, all for one
by Charlie Pearch | 23/01/09
A cold snap had hit Europe. The Gers a heaven like department of France oft referred to as Gascony had not escaped the phenomenon and thus freezing temperatures welcomed seven members of the Rapha Condor team as it disembarked from the flight from Manchester…
