Training Tips For Your First European Sportive

Short sleeves, sunglasses, swooping descents, sublime mountain landscapes, and sharp tan lines. This is summer. This is what we are training for. This is what keeps us turning the pedals through wet and wild of winter. Put the miles in the legs now, so you can conquer your big summer sportive or gran fondo. Invest well during winter and see a fruitful return in summer.

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Womens Tour: Stage One

Women’s Tour of Britain – Stage One

La Fuga’s John Deering is embedded with the crack US / Canadian squad Optum-Kelly for the duration of the Women’s Tour to provide the team support.

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Yesterday’s first stage was a brisk 94kms from Oundle to Northampton. Shooting along closed roads between leafy hedgerows and yellow fields of rapeseed, there are cycling fans scattered willy-nilly across the Northamptonshire countryside. Every gateway features a parked car with accompanying picnic chairs and expectant smiley people. Every school has abandoned the national curriculum to turf out a million happy yelling pupils on to the roadside. And despite it being still definitely morning, the many pubs that populate the little villages along the pretty route are doing a roaring trade. (more…)

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Women’s Tour – Pre-race

Tuesday 6 May 2014 – Pre-race Blog

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La Fuga’s John Deering is embedded with the crack US / Canadian squad Optum-Kelly for the duration of the Women’s Tour to provide the team support. Today he tells us about the team’s final preparations for the Grand Depart.

It’s not that far from Heathrow to the La Fuga office in leafy Mortlake, or indeed not a million miles from either place to Optum-Kelly’s pre-race HQ in Northamptonshire. I should know, as I’ve driven between the three pretty much continuously for the past four days, picking up riders, staff bikes, kit, you name it. (more…)

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